Whether it’s with a director, producer, or within the sound department itself, reviewing a project can often leave you with more notes than you can comfortably keep track of – especially if notes are moving between SFX, dialogue, and everything else.
Audiokids Marker allows for notes to be added quickly and easily between different tracks and types, allowing for repeated notes, custom comments, suggested durations, and key moments to be highlighted very quickly. Marker creates the clips or markers within Pro Tools itself.
In this article, we’ll show you exactly how Marker can lessen the workload of any Pro Tools project review.
Marker is also great when Marking up SFX and ADR, as well as making Session Notes with a Team.
How Marker Works
Ostensibly, Marker is made up of two main features. A text box, for manually putting in your notes or loading in your favourite notes, and buttons, for loading notes onto a specific track. Buttons can be assigned to a single track, multiple iterations of the same track, or multiple different tracks at once by highlighting your desired track or tracks in Pro Tools, and selecting a button while holding Cmd/Ctrl. Buttons automatically take on the colour and name of their assigned tracks. With options for further organisation of your display, such as removing any text occurring within brackets or containing industry terms like .dup, among other settings. In the example below, assigned buttons show a more streamlined labelling system than the more in-depth Pro Tools track names.
You have nineteen custom track buttons per page, with up to 5 different pages of buttons (A-E) to organise for your different needs and use cases. Each page features a dedicated ‘selected track’ button, which imports your note on whichever track is selected within your Pro Tools project. You have three options for the destination types of your notes. Clips, markers, or clips and markers. With markers appearing on the assigned track rather than the main marker ruler. Notes can be incorporated either at the selection point within Pro Tools, or at the playhead position if you have that activated within the edit window. Marker automatically syncs with your Pro Tools session, saving your tracks, pages, and favourites automatically so they’re ready whenever you open the session.
Project reviews with Marker
When reviewing a project with a director, or whoever is leading your department, it’s always handy to make note of any questions or issues that may present themselves, and to highlight any repeat problems that are occurring. Depending on your department and the stage of your project, these notes may move between different roles within the audio post-production pipeline, and may come from multiple voices of authority who could have contrasting opinions and views. So it can be handy to not only make notes, but also to keep track of who is saying them.
For repeat issues, if you’re in an early markup stage where you’re simply highlighting areas to address without the need for much elaboration or detail in the notes, then leaving the ‘keep text’ control activated will prevent whatever catch-all term you are using from disappearing after a button is pressed. But if you find yourself in a position where you need to be more specific and move between repeated notes and amendments, then utilising the ‘favourites’ menu will save you a lot of time. Simply input your terms either before your session or as they present themselves into the favourites list, then select how you’d like them to be incorporated into the text box (IE, either replacing the text that is already there or inserting it before, amongst, or after it). This can also be useful for inputting the initials of the maker of the note alongside the note itself, if you don’t want to have a dedicated track for their feedback within your project.
Another option for repeated notes from a particular collaborator is to utilise different pages for different people or tasks, alongside using the custom text or note type controls in the edit mode to organise specific buttons for these users. For example, you are reviewing SFX with the director. They could have a page that’s purely dedicated to highlighting moments that need looking over, with their initials in the text box itself so notes can be typed or imported from the favourites list. By using the edit mode (⌘+E) you can assign specific note types to different buttons, or even create custom text that supersedes whatever is in the text box when that button is selected. Meaning that the director or collaborator can have their own custom buttons to highlight different things, using markers to single out moments where something needs to occur or change, or clips to add custom or repeated notes during specific moments.
A key element that makes Marker a great tool for collaborative note-making is its ability to be controlled remotely by collaborators (as long as they are on the same network). Meaning the person manning the desk doesn’t have to input every note as it’s said; instead, notes can be entered remotely by whoever is making them from their own phone, tablet, or laptop. Each remote configuration has its own set of permissions, so there is no risk of them unintentionally inputting notes they shouldn’t. They just have control over their dedicated page of buttons, or a select number of custom buttons throughout the Marker page. Used in conjunction with Marker’s ability to input notes in real-time with the position of the playhead, this makes any review session simpler and more intuitive for all involved.
You can keep track of each note made, who it was made by and when, and its status of implementation within the project, by using the Note log. So no matter the size of your session or the number of people contributing notes, you can be sure nothing is missed, even if something happens to go wrong with Pro Tools or something is accidentally deleted. Missed or deleted notes can be reintegrated within the Pro Tools session from the Note log itself.
As mentioned in the introduction, Marker automatically syncs with your Pro Tools project. So all buttons, favourites, and remote configurations are automatically linked to your project itself. If you’re likely to work with the same people on another project, and would like to reuse what you have already built, Marker presets and favourites can be exported and imported between projects. Automatically connecting to any buttons that share the same track naming schemes and keep all the useful repeat notes that have built up over your collaboration. These presets can also be shared between members of the post-production team, so notes made between departments share a naming scheme and can all be understood cohesively together.
Make Marker a Part of Your Workflow
Speed up your team project review processes, and make it simpler to mark up for ADR and SFX with Marker. See how much time it could save you by finding out its exact features and capabilities on our Marker Product Page.