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Creating time based markers on the timeline/project FCPX
Hi all, so I’m jumping over to fcpx from AVID and premiere and I have to be honest, I’m struggling with the language of the program. OK, so I’m editing a reality cooking show, and each section needs to a certain length of time. What I would do normally in premiere (just so that visually I am able to look quickly and say oh OK, my chopping onions bit is too long, and my baking a cake is too short) I would place a time based marker on the timeline. So from 0 to 8 minutes I have a pink line on my timeline that says cake time. And so on and so forth. How the heck do I do this in fcpx? Or is there a similar alternative? So to be clear, the marker or keyword even needs to be connected to a certain time (all clips underneath can ripple and move disconnected to this). Makes sense? Any help would be appreciated. Also any tuts for avid editors moving to fcps would be tops. Thanks!
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1 Reply
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This may shock and annoy you, but FCPX does not have timeline (or persistent) markers.
What I do to mark specific lengths of time is anchor a solid color generator to the head of the timeline and make that generator a bold color (so the thumbnail is easy to recognize) and rename it to “Cake Time” or whatever makes sense to you, give it a “TIMER” role, and then drag that under the primary or disable it. You can simply deselect the TIMER role in the Timeline Index to hide it as well (and ensure nothing gets exported).
The trick is, in order to anchor that generator, you need a gap clip at the top. So, let’s say that segment is 8 minutes, you would need to start the program at :01 on the timeline, make the segment generator 8:01:00, and always account for that one second at the top. Alternatively, you could put the generator in the primary storyline and edit above it, but then that essentially turns off the magnetic timeline, which you may or may not like.
Also, selecting clips in the primary, you will get a TRT of the selected clips in yellow next to the timecode area of the interface at the top of the timeline.
Hopefully this is helpful and not confusing.
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