Export presets

A preset is a set of export choices you’ve saved under a name. Pick it and the whole sheet is set, in any project. It’s the quick way back to the export you make every week.

Menu: File ▸ Export…
Keys: ⌘E
Where: Export sheet ▸ PresetExport sheet ▸ the gear beside Preset

Apply a preset

Pick the preset in Preset:. Every control is set exactly as if you had clicked it.

The first row is Custom, then your presets. Picking Custom leaves the sheet as it is. The gear beside the popup saves and deletes presets.

Save a preset

Set the sheet the way you want it.
Click the gear beside Preset: and choose Save….
Type a name and click Save, or Cancel to save nothing. The name field starts with the name of the preset now chosen.

Saving under a name that already exists, ignoring case, replaces that preset in its place in the list. New presets go at the end.

Frame Job beeps and saves nothing when:

The name is empty.
The name is Custom, in any case. It’s reserved for the popup’s first row.
The sheet has an error, for example an empty custom field.
The presets file can’t be written.

Change a preset

Apply it, adjust the controls, and save again under the same name. There’s no separate rename: to rename a preset, save it under the new name and delete the old one.

Delete a preset

Choose the preset in Preset:, then choose Delete from the gear. Delete is available only while a saved preset is chosen, and it doesn’t ask you to confirm.

The controls keep the preset’s values, so Save… under the same name puts it back. It returns at the end of the list.

What a preset stores

A preset stores the choices on the sheet, not the numbers they resolve to, so it means the same on a project of another size. A preset saved on a 1080p project that says “4K, High” exports at the right 4K size and bit rate on any other project.

It stores:

Format
Size row, or the custom size
Frame rate
Quality tier
Loudness
Range
Burn in timecode
Speed
Bit depth
Stems

Dynamic Range isn’t stored.

The format decides what a preset can hold. Size, frame rate, quality, loudness and burn-in aren’t stored when the format can’t use them, so a preset saved on an audio-only format has no size, and one saved on Animated GIF has no loudness. Applying it puts those controls back on their defaults. Speed, Bit depth and Stems are stored whichever format is chosen.

When a preset meets a different project:

A range falls back to Whole project if the project has no range.
A size row hidden on this project, because an earlier row has the same numbers, lands on that earlier row. A size row the format doesn’t offer falls back to the format’s default.
A custom size stays those exact numbers.

Back to Custom

Changing Format:, Size:, Frame rate:, Quality:, Speed:, Bit depth:, Stems:, Loudness:, Range:, Burn in timecode or a custom field puts the popup back on Custom. Changing the value back doesn’t select the preset again.

The popup opens on Custom each time, even when your remembered choices happen to match a preset.

The presets file

Presets are kept for your macOS user account, so every project and window shares them. They live in ~/Library/Application Support/Frame Job/ExportPresets.json.

You can open the file in a text editor. A damaged file reads as no presets, and the export sheet works as usual.

Saving or deleting reads the file first, so two open sheets can’t lose each other’s presets. A sheet that’s already open keeps listing a preset you’ve deleted elsewhere until it saves or deletes a preset itself, or you open it again.

Transparent presets

A preset on a transparent format, such as ProRes 4444 (MOV) or HEVC with Alpha (MOV), stores the format and nothing about the canvas. The file is transparent only when the project’s canvas background is. A custom size also has to match the canvas’s shape on these formats, so a preset with a custom size can fail on a canvas of another shape. Use a size row instead, because the rows fit each project’s shape. See Transparent exports.

With an agent

Presets belong to the sheet, and export doesn’t read them. Its preset argument is something else: it names the format, and the call sets each other choice itself. See Export: start, then poll.