Timeline Markers

Markers are colored pins that annotate moments in your edit — a beat drop, the start of a section, a spot a reviewer flagged. They live in the project (saved with it, visible to agents), never appear in renders, and double as magnetic snap targets while you arrange clips.

There are two kinds, and they behave identically apart from where they live:

Where it livesPointsDefault color
Timeline markerThe time ruler — one set for the whole project, fixed to a moment in timeDown, from the rulerViolet
Layer markerA clip on a layer’s track row — it travels with that clipUp, from the floor of the rowTeal

Use a timeline marker for something about the edit as a whole (“chapter 2 starts here”) and a layer marker for something about one layer (“the logo lands on this frame”).

Marker pins on the timeline ruler

Add a marker

Right-click an empty spot on the time ruler (the strip with the second labels above the tracks) and choose Add marker. A pin is dropped exactly where you clicked.

  • Click a pin to park the playhead on it.
  • Drag a pin left or right to move it — it snaps to clip edges, the playhead and other markers, exactly like clip dragging (hold Alt/Option to bypass snapping).
  • Hover a pin to see its name and time.

Name, recolor, remove

Right-click a pin:

Menu itemWhat it does
Set colorOpens the same 20-color preset palette used by canvas color labels
Set nameType a label; it’s shown next to the pin on the ruler
RemoveDeletes the marker
Marker color palette

Layer markers

To pin a note to one layer instead of the whole project, right-click the clip you want to annotate and choose Add marker — the pin lands on that clip at the spot you clicked. It stands on the floor of the row with its point aimed up at the clip above it, and a hairline runs up through the clip so you can see exactly which frame it names.

Everything else works the same as a ruler marker:

  • Click a pin to park the playhead on it.
  • Drag it to move it; it snaps to clip edges, the playhead and other markers (Alt/Option bypasses). Drag it past its clip’s edge and it re-attaches to the neighbouring clip on the same layer.
  • Right-click it for Set color, Set name and Remove — the same 20-color palette.

A layer marker belongs to the clip, so it travels with it: move the clip and the marker moves with it, trim or re-time the clip and the marker keeps its place inside it — the same way a keyframe does. That also means a marker always sits on a clip: right-clicking empty track-row space offers no Add marker, and deleting a clip (or its whole layer) takes its markers with it.

Markers in the keyframe panel

Open a layer’s KEYFRAMES panel and a marker lane sits at the foot of the track stack. It shows the selected clip’s own markers plus any project markers crossing it, in the clip’s 0–100% space so each pin lines up with the keys above it:

  • Teal pins pointing up are that layer’s own markers. Drag one to move it, and right-click it for Set color, Set name and Remove — the same menu as on the timeline. Right-click empty lane space for Add marker.
  • Dimmed pins pointing down are the project’s timeline markers crossing this clip. They’re shown for reference and are edited on the ruler.

Every pin in that lane is also a magnetic snap target for keyframe dragging — drag a diamond near one and it locks to the marker exactly, with the usual cyan snap guide. Hold Alt/Option to bypass. That’s the fast way to land a key precisely on a beat you pinned earlier.

Show only one color

Once you have markers, the ruler (and track-row) right-click menu grows a Show only by Color submenu. It lists exactly the colors currently in use (with a count per color) — pick one to hide every other marker, or All colors to bring them back. One filter covers both kinds, and it also scopes snapping: hidden markers don’t attract dragged clips.

Jump between markers

When the project has timeline markers, the player transport gains two extra buttons around Play: previous marker and next marker. Each jump pauses playback, moves the playhead to the marker and scrolls the timeline so it’s visible.

Markers and agents

Markers are stored in the project data as two flat arrays, so GLEA and headless agents can read them as edit instructions (“cut at every red marker”), or create/rename/recolor them for you:

  • markersid, time in seconds, color hex, name
  • layerMarkersid, color, name, plus itemId (the clip the pin is attached to) and position, a 0–100% offset inside that clip — the same coordinate a keyframe uses. There is no stored second: the timeline position is whatever the clip’s current placement makes it.

Neither is part of undo history (like the background and canvas size), invalid entries are dropped on load, layer markers whose clip is gone are dropped, and renders ignore markers entirely.

Where to go next

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