Working with markers

Markers indicate important points in time and help you position and arrange clips. You can use a marker to identify an important action or sound in a sequence or clip. Markers are for reference only and do not alter the video.

The following types of markers are available in Premiere Pro:

You can add markers to a sequence, or to a source clip. Markers are color-coded for easier identification.

Use the Marker panel (Window > Markers) to see all the markers in an open clip or sequence. Details associated with clips such as color-coded tags, In points, Out points, and comments are displayed. Clicking a clip thumbnail in the Markers panel moves the playhead to the location of the corresponding marker.

A marker on a clip or in a sequence shows the In and Out points in the Marker panel. You can scrub the In or Out point to turn the marker from a single frame in time to one covering a range of time.

You can add markers on the Source monitor, Program monitor, or on the Timeline. Markers added to Program monitor are reflected in the Timeline. Similarly, markers added to the Timeline are reflected on the Program Monitor.

In Premiere Pro, multiple markers can be added, allowing a user to add multiple notes and comment on clips on the same location in the Timeline.

Markers can be added to clips in the Source Monitor, or selected clips in the Timeline.

To add a marker to a clip in the Source Monitor, do the following:

1. Open the clip in the Source Monitor from the Timeline or the Project panel.
2. Place the Playhead where you want to place the marker.
3. Choose Marker > Add Marker, or press M.
   

The marker is added to the clip.

To add a marker to a clip in the Timeline, do the following:

1. Set up a keyboard shortcut for Add Clip Marker in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts (Windows), or Premiere Pro > Keyboard Shortcuts (Mac OS).
2. Select the clip.
3. Place the Playhead where you want to place the marker.
4. Press the keyboard shortcut you created for Add Clip Marker.

The marker is added to the clip.

You can inspect the marker dialog box by double-clicking the marker in the Source Monitor.

In the Effect Controls panel, you can view all of the markers that you created in the Timeline panel. You can also add markers to your sequence to designate where you would like to place effects in the Effect Controls panel. In addition, you can create and manipulate markers directly in the Effect Controls panel.

You can find markers by using the marker navigation tools. You can move them from their original locations by dragging them, or you can delete them altogether.

Once a marker is set, hovering over it in the time ruler produces a tool tip which displays the marker information. You can quickly scan marker contents without opening the Marker dialog box.

The sequence marker tool tip displays the following information on up to four items:

• Marker name (optional, shown only if entered)

• Timecode start (always displayed)

• Duration (optional, shown only if the marker has a duration)

• Comment text (optional, shown only if entered)

You can include sequence markers when copying and pasting items from the timeline to bring all markers and their information along with a single copy/paste action. All marker information such as color, notes, duration, marker type, is preserved during the copy/paste operation.

To include sequence markers during copy/paste, check Markers > Copy Paste Includes Sequence Markers.

The start time of a marker, and whether that start time lies within the range inclusively defined by an In and Out point or one or more selected items, is what determines if the marker is included while copying and pasting.

Here is an example indicating when the (red) marker is included.

In the below example, if you copy and paste the feet_fountain.MOV clip, only the red marker is included in the copy and paste operation.

You can view sequence timecodes for your clip markers in the markers panel so that you can accurately pinpoint to markers in the timeline. Clip markers from the timeline only appear in the markers panel when a clip is highlighted.

To display sequence timecode:

• In the markers panel menu, select the Sequence Timecode option. The marker panel timecode display changes from clip to sequence timecode.

When in sequence timecode mode, only the clip markers in the current sequence are displayed in the Markers panel. Any clip markers outside the in/out range of a clip are not shown. Sequence timecode automatically updates if sequence timebase is changed.

You can share markers between Premiere Pro and After Effects in any of the following ways.

• When you import a Premiere Pro project into After Effects, After Effects converts the sequence markers to composition markers.

• When you copy a sequence from a Premiere Pro Project panel and paste it into After Effects, the resulting composition keeps the sequence markers as composition markers, and the clip markers as layer markers. The copy-and-paste operation therefore preserves the markers in the way you would expect.

• When you export a sequence from Premiere Pro through Adobe Media Encoder into a container format, such as AVI, the sequence markers are saved into the file as XMP temporal metadata. When you use the video file as the source for a layer, After Effects converts these sequence markers to layer markers.

Premiere Pro allows you to filter markers in the markers panel by color. To display only those colored markers in the list, click one or more of the colored checkboxes at the top of the Markers panel .