You can customize the look and behavior of Media Encoder, from starting the queue automatically to setting the brightness of the user interface. Most of these preferences remain in effect until you change them. 

To open the Preferences dialog box, choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Adobe Media Encoder > Preferences (macOS).

To restore default preference settings, hold down the Shift key while the application is starting (for both Windows and macOS).

The user Preferences file and the Presets folder are located in the following paths on your computer: 

• For Windows: \Users\<username>\Documents\Adobe\Adobe Media Encoder\25.0\ 
• For macOS: <drive>/Users/<username>/Documents/Adobe/Adobe Media Encoder/25.0/

The encoding process begins automatically within the specified time after an item has been added to the queue. The countdown timer is reset when you interact with the application. To disable this automatic starting, deselect this option. This preference is switched off by default.

Shows the amount of time that has elapsed since the encoding was started.

Video frames are shown as they are being encoded in the Encoding Panel.

A chime is played when encoding is done.

Removes any encoded items from the encoding queue when you quit the application.

Parallel encoding speeds up processing times by encoding all outputs of a source at the same time. If the output format doesn't support parallel encoding, each output is rendered separately (aka serial encoding)

For some MXF sources, when decoding errors are detected, duplicated frames will be inserted. Use this option to stop encoding when decoding errors are detected instead of inserting duplicated frames. This option is enabled by default.

When enabled, sequentially named image files in watch folders will be imported as a single source.  Set the timer to adjust how long AME should wait before importing all the sequential files.

Allows Premiere sequences to be imported on systems where Premiere Pro is not installed.

Media Encoder displays a warning on certain sources & outputs when missing items are detected (offline media, missing fonts, etc.).  Enable this setting if you don’t want outputs with missing items to be encoded.

Automatically adds the encoding preset name to the output file name.

By default, if you create an output file with the same name as an existing file in the same location, Media Encoder increments the name of the new file. For example, you encode a video clip and create the output file video.avi. Then re-encode the same file without first deleting video.avi, Media Encoder names the next file video_1.avi.

If Increment output file name check box is disabled, name your files in such a way so that they don't inadvertently overwrite one another.

By default, Media Encoder places exported files in the same folder as the source video clip. To choose a different destination folder for encoded media clips, navigate to the desired folder on your system.

Appearance

Adjust the brightness of the interface.

Specify the language used in the application.

Audio Hardware

Select the audio driver type used to access the hardware.

Select the default output device.

Set the delay time (in milliseconds) between input and output audio signals.

Modify the settings of the playback device.

Color

Set the gamma level to control brightness and contrast for media preview.

Allow automatic color management for log and raw media formats.

Allow accurate color display based on your monitor’s color profile.

Media

A default location is provided. Select Browse to navigate to the desired location.

A default location for the database is provided. Select Browse... to navigate to the desired location. Select Clean to clean the database.

Set the frame rate for sources without an inherent time base, such as image sequences.

Select to include captions when you import files into Media Encoder.

Select to ensure that wide-aspect CEA-708 captions are imported correctly. 

Select to enable hardware decoding from AMD. Media Encoder displays AMD based on your system's card availability. This option is enabled by default, and it's available only on Windows.

Select to enable hardware encoding. By default, this option is enabled, and it's only available on Windows.

For more information, see Managing the media cache database article.

Metadata

Writes unique identifier to imported files that don’t already contain one.

For information about other settings in the Metadata category, see Export and thin XMP metadata.

Memory

Media Encoder shares a memory pool with other apps, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop. The RAM reserved for other applications value indicates how much memory is in this memory pool. You can affect this value by giving more or less RAM to other applications (and the operating system). Give more RAM to the applications that share the memory pool by decreasing the RAM reserved for other applications value.

Note: Don’t set the RAM reserved for other applications preference too low. Depriving the operating system and other applications of memory can cause poor performance.

Notifications

Send notification when all items in the queue finish encoding  Media Encoder sends a single notification when all encoding jobs are finished, ideal for batch processing without frequent interruptions.

Send notification after each item in the queue finishes encoding Media Encoder sends a notification after each file finishes encoding, providing real-time updates that help track individual file progress and priorities.