Custom profiles

You can customize your profiles to adapt all your media to have a certain look or feel, or to optimize your media for playback in specific scenarios. To accomplish these tasks, you can modify the existing encoding profiles, thereby creating your own profile. You can create custom profiles by altering settings in both the Profile and Advanced Codec Settings categories. After creating a custom profile, you can then save it and apply it to subsequent jobs, or even distribute the profile to other Microsoft Expression Encoder users.

Before you use your custom profiles, you should know how each option can affect the final file. To make this easier, you can use the A/B Compare feature of Expression Encoder as you create custom profiles. By using A/B Compare, you can quickly view and compare the effect of different encoding settings, thereby simplifying your experimentation and also supplementing your knowledge of the encoding settings. For example, you can test-render your source video using two different average bit rates and then visually compare which one is better. For more information about using A/B Compare, see Compare encoding methods.

You should also have some experience with encoding for various scenarios, or at least be knowledgeable about your intended audience and the quality of video that they expect or that they can play back.

When you change a setting for the profile, Expression Encoder creates a copy of the chosen profile and names it "Custom." This copy is temporary unless you save it. Expression Encoder saves custom profile files, in the .XML file format, in the "C:\Users\~username\Documents\Expression\Expression Encoder\Profiles" folder. You can also import PRX files created in Windows Encoder, with some parameters available for modification. For more information, see Support of PRX files.

To create a custom profile

1. In the Media Content panel, select the files for which you want to set a profile.

2. If you cannot see the Settings panel, on the Window menu, click Settings to select it. If Settings is already selected in the menu, on the right side of the application, click the Settings tab.

3. Expand the Profile category.

4. Click Show/Hide Advanced Properties.

5. If you want to encode video, make sure that the Video check box is selected. If you don't want to encode video, then clear the check box.

6. In the Video section, select a profile from the Video menu. Alter any of the settings in the profile by typing in new values, making choices in the menus, or dragging the displayed value to increase or decrease it. See Video settings for an explanation of the video profiles and the accompanying parameters.

7. If you want to encode audio, make sure that the Audio check box is selected. If you don't want to encode audio, then clear the check box.

8. In the Audio category, clear the Default Profile check box. If you don't see the profile settings, click the Show/Hide advanced properties button .

9. In the Audio section, select a profile from the Audio menu. Alter any of the settings in the profile by making choices in the menus. See Audio settings for an explanation of the audio profiles and the accompanying parameters.

10. If you want to perform specific modifications to the codec settings, in the Settings panel, expand the Advanced Codec Settings category and make the codec changes. It is recommended that you have some experience with adjusting codec settings as well as viewing or distributing the results before you modify these settings.

11. Note your Estimated File Size. To reduce or increase this size, change the audio or video parameters.

12. To save the profile, click the white square to the right of the Video or Audio menu. In the Save Profiles dialog box, type a name for the profile, and then if you want to link the current audio or video profile to the audio or video profile you are saving, click the corresponding profile check box to select it. Click Save.

    Note

    You must save profiles if you want to use them for other jobs. All of your custom profiles remain available during your current session, even if you don't save them. However, if you close the application without saving the profiles, you will lose them.