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You _CAN_ copy Markers in Final Cut Pro
Recently I was faced with a situation where several people were marking hundreds of segments on several different tapes… halfway through marking one tape I realized that someone had already marked the last half of the same tape (saved as a new clip in the browser). The good news: we each marked seperate halfs of the same tape (two clips of the same tape) (there were no redundant markers!). The bad news: I need all the markers for each tape to be on one clip and FCP does not allow you to copy or cut and paste markers.
What to do? Google of course!! I was baffled to find that everyones answer was simply “you can’t copy markers in FCP…” Well I have never been one to accept an answer like that, so I started thinking (also not something I’m used to).
There may be some problems with this method so please feel free to tell me why this might be stupid but this was the solution I came up with and (so far) it seems to be working just fine.
I select a clip in the browser with the first half of the tape marked, I expand the little triangle to the left so I can see all my markers and make sure they are correct. I then click File>Export>XML. In that export dialoge I left everything default (Apple XML Interchange Format, Version 3). Click “OK”, save it wherever. I then do the same with the clip that has the second half marked (select it in the browser, file>export etc. etc.). Now I browse to the files in my Finder and open them both with Textedit. You get a text file with some pretty streight forward tags in it… the last thing in the text file that is denoted are the markers, way at the bottom.
For me there was a huge list with each in and out point looking something like this:
< marker >
< name >in ae13< /name >
< comment >
< /comment >
< in >38810< /in >
< out >-1< /out >
< /marker >
< marker >
< name >out< /name >
< comment >
< /comment >
< in >39876< /in >
< out >-1< /out >
< /marker >I simply copied all the markers that were missing from the first file out of the second file and pasted them at the end of the first file.
Save. Browse to the file in your Finder again, this time open the file in FCP. You will get a new clip in your browser that has the same name as the first two clips (unless you changed it in the XML file). This new clip will have both sets of markers hapily placed in their respective spots.
Hooray!!
I know it is a little extensive but it sure beats re-marking 200 little clips!!
I hope this will help someone!-Logan
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3 Replies
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Good to know. Thanks.
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Four years later and you just saved my butt! Works when exporting markers from a sequence or a clip in a sequence, too.
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Funniest thing. I just ran into a problem where I wanted to copy markers. I googled it and clicked the first link, which brought me here only to find that I wrote this 5 years ago! Hahaha! 5-years-ago-me just blew my mind! Still works!
-Logan
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