Export a Studio timeline to Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or After Effects

One Export button

On the timeline, Export video renders your cut as an MP4 in one press, as it always has. The arrow beside it opens the Export menu, in three groups:

• Video: Video (MP4), the whole timeline rendered at full quality, the same as the orange button.
• Still: PNG, the frame at the playhead at full canvas size, or PNG with transparent background, which drops the backdrop for logo and overlay work. The still is drawn by the same renderer that makes the video, not captured from the preview.
• For editing: Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, and After Effects. Each row says in one line how to open what it downloads.

A still and an editing export both read the saved timeline, so they wait a moment while your latest edits save.

For a whole film taken from a script to this export, with the cut, the grade and the ZIP, read A short film with AI: the pipeline from script to final cut.

Unzip first, then import

The hint under each editing row, and the first lines of the README in the ZIP, say the same thing. On Windows, right-click the ZIP and choose Extract All. On a Mac, double-click it. Then:

• Premiere Pro: open or create a project, then File > Import and choose sequence.xml in the extracted folder. Use Import, not Open Project. Premiere adds a bin named after the XML, with the sequence inside it.
• DaVinci Resolve: File > Import > Timeline, then choose sequence.xml. If Resolve asks where the media is, point it at the extracted folder.
• After Effects: File > Scripts > Run Script File, then choose build.jsx. Keep it next to the media folder so it can find the footage.

The XML changed on 23 September to follow the way Premiere writes the same format itself. If an export made before then would not load, export it again.

What is in the ZIP, and what carries over

• sequence.xml, for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve: Final Cut Pro 7 XML at 30 frames per second, with your clips, trims, motion and markers.
• build.jsx, for After Effects: a script that builds the comp with text, masks and keyframes.
• media: the clips and images the timeline uses. The ZIP stops at 256 MiB, and anything left out keeps its download link in manifest.json.
• luts: a .cube file for each graded clip, and canvas.cube when the whole timeline has a grade.
• text: your text as PNG stills, where the format needs them.
• manifest.json and README.txt: the file list, the canvas and the duration, and the limits and warnings for this export.

Motion comes across in both formats: position, scale, rotation and opacity, with keyframes sampled to linear keyframes. Masks come across only to After Effects; in the XML the clip arrives unmasked.

Text becomes native text layers in After Effects, named by each font's PostScript name, so those fonts need to be on your machine. A fixed-size text box arrives as a PNG instead. Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve get all text as PNG stills drawn with a stand-in font.

Colour grades come across as LUTs you apply yourself, with Lumetri, a Resolve LUT or Apply Color LUT. In the XML, a graded clip carries a marker named LUT that names its file.

Export through the API

GET /compositions/{id}/export with format=fcpxml or format=aejsx returns the same project as a ZIP, without the media. Download each file from its signed link in manifest.json into the path it lists, before you open the project and within the hour the links last.

The Compositions and Studio export guide lists the manifest fields and the errors the endpoint returns.

What it costs

The Studio editor, the Library and projects come with every plan, Free included. Rendering a video or a still costs nothing today: it shows in your usage history as a render at no charge, and the editing export is free too. You pay for the images, clips and narration in the cut when you generate them.