Why do my Media Encoder exports default to "Work Area" when my sequence that is sent from Premiere has no In/Out Points set?

Whenever I send a sequence from Premiere to Media Encoder, regardless of In/Out Points, ME defaults to an arbitrary Work Area that may or may not be the entire sequence. For example, I can remove all In/Out Points from a sequence that is :30. When I send to Media Encoder, it says the Work Area starts at :14.11 and ends beyond the limits of the sequence, resulting in an extra minute of black at the end of the video. There is no media in the sequence beyond :30 so why does the Work Area extend beyond it? If I toggle on and off the Work Area bar in Premiere, Media Encoder still ALWAYS defaults to Work Area for the Source Range. You can’t even remove the Work Area In/Out Points in Premiere once they are set.

This Work Area issue has been consistent across versions of Premiere + ME 2025/2026.

Is there a way to change Media Encoder from defaulting to “Work Area” for exports? Would much prefer it either being “Entire Sequence” or “In/Out Points”. Why is “Work Area” a setting when the “Sequence In/Out Point” already covers the use case but better? 

Will Adobe engineers stop vibe coding unstable AI applications into their software and actually work on making a stable program? The full bore into AI-Slop tools while neglecting the rest of the software really has cratered it’s professional application.

There are posts from 7 YEARS AGO on this forum that talk about this, so either Adobe doesn’t care about their App or they don’t care about their users.