Export settings for every size and frame rate.

Most editors put these on one screen. If yours hides audio behind a second tab, open it: the audio line is the one people miss.

A file built this way is ready to schedule the moment the upload finishes. Anything else is converted first, which works but adds time before the programme can air.

Pick the row for your channel size, then the column for your frame rate. The last column is the size of a one-hour programme at the standard rate, so you can plan the upload.

The 24 to 30 column covers 23.976 and 29.97 as well, and the 50 to 60 column covers 59.94. These rates sit two to three times above the best quality level your viewers receive. That headroom is what lets the channel encode a clean picture, and going higher changes nothing on screen. It only makes the upload longer: a one-hour 1080p programme at 50 Mbps is about 22 GB instead of 6.8.

In Premiere Pro, choose H.264, set Bitrate Encoding to VBR 1 pass and type the target in Mbps. In DaVinci Resolve, pick MP4 and H.264 on the Deliver page and set Quality to Restrict to the rate in Kb/s (15 Mbps is 15000 Kb/s). If your editor only offers quality presets, pick the highest and check the result as described below.

Every channel runs at one of four rates: 25, 29.97, 50 or 59.94 frames per second. Your plan sets the highest one you can pick. Programmes at any other rate still air, because each one is converted to the channel rate as it plays.

Motion looks smoothest when the file matches the channel, or is exactly half of it: 25 fps on a 50 fps channel, 29.97 on a 59.94 one. Channels in the UK, Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia usually run 25 or 50, following local television. North American channels usually run 29.97 or 59.94.

Film content at 23.976 or 24 fps airs fine on any channel. The conversion repeats the odd frame, so slow camera pans can look slightly less smooth than on the original. If your whole library is film rate, a 25 fps channel changes it the least.

Constant matters more than which rate you choose. Phones, screen recorders and meeting software record at a variable frame rate, which can slowly pull the sound away from the picture over a long programme. LIVEPLUSTV spots these files and converts them, but exporting at a constant rate fixes it at the source and skips the wait. In HandBrake, choose Same as source and tick Constant Framerate.

Broadcast audio runs at 48 kHz. Music files and some editors default to 44.1 kHz, so set 48 kHz in the export and the sound passes straight through. Use 320 kbps; the channel encodes the audio again for viewers, and a rich master keeps music clean.

Send stereo. If your channel airs 5.1 surround on the Studio plan, export the 5.1 mix for programmes that have one.

Volume is evened out on air (EBU R128 and ATSC A/85), so programmes and ads from different sources sit at the same level. A clean mix without clipping still sounds best, because evening out the level cannot repair distortion.

Check the export has an audio track at all. A timeline with the audio muted, or a picture-only clip, exports with no sound and airs silent. The console marks these files No audio in the playlist so they are easy to spot, but the fix is a fresh export.

Open the finished file in a player, not in the editor, and play the last minute. If it plays to the end with sound, the file is whole.

Then look at its properties. MediaInfo is free and shows everything on one screen: you want H.264, the frame size of your channel, a bitrate close to the table, Frame rate mode Constant, and AAC at 48 kHz with two channels.

If any line is wrong, export again rather than uploading and hoping. A wrong file costs the upload time twice.