Ability to add multiple export locations to the Export interface

[Pierre Louis B.]

Editors often need to export a video to different locations, sometimes at the same time.  A simple way to greatly improve the Export interface (and possibly the Quick Export window as well), would be to allow users to add multiple export paths from which they can quickly pick and choose every time they export a new video.  Please see illustration for all of the details

Note: using the Media File destination column on the left side is NOT an adequate replacement for the new features being requested since:

a) Media File destinations don't sync video and audio settings between themselves, leading to more work and a much higher likelyhood of mistakes whenever the user wants to keeps exports settings the same between export locations.

b) It can't be universally applied across projects.

c) Selecting one Media File destination doesn't automatically deselect another one that's already selected, leading to more clicks if the user wants to toggle between two or more export locations.

The new Export interface has been getting a ton of heat for making the export experience generally worse than it used to be.  Here's a simple way for the Pr team to improve it!

[morphinapg]

I like the general idea but I feel like a drop down of saved preset locations would work better for this. Presets could even include relative paths.

[Pierre Louis B.]

The need for relative paths is a given.  However, a drop down would make it impractical to select more than 1 export location at a time, and it would require 2 clicks to select an option rather than 1.  How would a drop down be any better?

[morphinapg]

What use would there be to having multiple destinations at the same time? I thought you just had this as an easy way to select multiple frequently used folders. A drop down is more useful than having a huge list of several different folder options all filling up the screen, that's why it's usually a better use of the UI for something like that. Think about if you had like 15 different common paths for example. 

While I can't understand the use case for multiple destinations at the same time, your example isn't exactly the best way to handle UI for that either. The plus button is good, but using a blue outline as a toggle is not obvious to the user. I would instead start with one option, and when the user presses the plus option, both folders are immediately in use. In case the user no longer wants both folders, there would be an X or minus sign to the right of those secondary destinations. Each of those destinations could also have their own dropdown for selecting common paths, as well as the ability to type the path and a button for browsing to the path. 

But I'm not really sure how that would be used. If you're outputting to multiple paths, aren't you just copying the same file to multiple folders? Seems like it would be rare for anybody to want to do that. Most people would probably just do the copying themselves if they needed to copy it elsewhere.

[Pierre Louis B.]

15 different export destinations?!  Yikes, I can't imagine a workflow that would ever require that.  Maybe 3-5 at the most.  Keep in mind that any destination that isn't regularly used could be updated at any time, just like what can be done with the current, single export destination.  

My use case for exporting to more than one location at once would be to send my video to my project's 'Exports' folder as well as to my 'Clients' folder on One Drive.  This way, by the time I confirm that my exported video is good to go, it would already be uploaded to OneDrive, at which point I can instantly share it with my client.  I imagine others will have other use cases.  The ability to export to multiple locations is secondary in importance, however, to the ability to save my 2-3 most often used export locations so that I can quickly choose between them without ever losing my current path by having to overwrite it with a new one.  This alone would be a huge time saver!

As for the blue highlight around the export path that's currently selected for export, how would that not be a good UI? Wouldn't it be as obvious as can be that that's the path that's selected for export? 

I can see the simplicity of your suggested approach, but it would unfortunately come at the expense of increased functionality (i.e. ability to export to multiple locations at once), that Adobe could add at the same time or at a later time.

[morphinapg]

My point was that you could potentially use a feature like this to save commonly used export locations as presets, even across multiple projects, so if you kept doing that, the UI would keep expanding and ultimately become cumbersome. A dropdown compresses the amount of space used for multiple choice entries.

I did give you a suggestion that would work with multiple locations at once while keeping a nicer looking UI, but ultimately you're never really "exporting" to multiple locations at once. It will have to choose one location, and then copy it at the end of the export. Ultimately, something like that may be suited to a different part of the export tab perhaps, like another toggleable group that users could open only if that functionality was useful to them. Perhaps it would make sense to add it as a new item under all the publish settings on the left of the panel.

[Pierre Louis B.]

Export locations would be project-specific, unless explicitly set to 'global' through a right-click menu option. Having all export locations automatically appear for all projects makes zero sense.

Splitting the multi-location export option into a separate part of the UI would probably end up polluting it even more.  To avoid the UI layout I suggest from getting too polluted, maybe a limit of 5 export locations could be imposed.  I imagine most users would be happy with 2-3.  I can't imagine a workflow requiring more than 5, but should it be needed, the user could simply change one of their 5 export locations to a new one as required.  

[morphinapg]

No, like I said, it would make perfect sense to have presets you'd use for many projects, just like export presets. If relative paths are possible in those presets, it would be especially useful to be able to reuse presets for different projects, but there are also other common export locations you might use for many different projects that you'd like to easily access as well. Like, sometimes I just want to quickly export something to my desktop, or I may have a folder for the final videos in a web series I'm working on that spans multiple projects. So having presets for folders I use in multiple projects does make a lot of sense.

The reason I suggested putting it in the left pane, is that's what that pane appears to be designed for, posting your video to other locations once it's done exporting. While it appears to be focused on other web locations, it would make sense to have an option for other local or network locations as well. Like I said, the export itself is only going to be going to one location initially, so any other locations would be a step automatically triggering after export is done, just like those other side panel options.

[Pierre Louis B.]

The left pane options don't work the way you seem to think they do morphinapg, since each export location allows the video to be exported in a different format/resolution/bit rate/etc.  So it isn't just about copy/pasting the exported file to different locations, but rather about actually exporting the video multiple times in different formats.   Export settings don't syncronize between the different export locations in that left pane.  In my FR, they would.  That's why I pointed out that the left export pane is not an adequate substitute for the tools I'm requesting.  I guess you missed that part of my post. 

"it would make perfect sense to have presets you'd use for many projects".  I agree with you.  It sounded like you wanted this to happen automatically, but a common export location should only sync across projects if the user specifies that that's what they want.

[morphinapg]

I've got to be honest, I've never actually used those left pane options lol

[Pierre Louis B.]

Me neither. I only tested them out for the sake of making sure that they don't already offer something I was requesting in my FR. 😅