If you’re managing a project file that’s being contributed to by multiple departments, all giving and receiving feedback, it can be a logistical nightmare to keep track of what notes are from whom, and to ensure everyone is on the same page.
With Marker, you can easily streamline the notemaking process, giving each member of your team a platform to quickly incorporate custom notes cohesively, whether they’re manning the desk or on their own devices nearby.
In this article, we’ll show you exactly how Marker can make project reviews within a team simple and manageable for all involved.
Working Smarter with Marker
Marker is also great when marking up SFX and ADR, as well as Speeding Up Project Review, for example, with a director.
Marker, first and foremost, is a way of importing notes into Pro Tools in an intuitive way that doesn’t impede what you are focusing on or get in the way of your workflow. Built around ways of implementing text, primarily with the text box and favourites list, and buttons, that connect to your tracks in Pro Tools. When connected (achieved by highlighting a track in Pro Tools and clicking on a button while holding Cmd/Ctrl), the buttons take on the name and colour of the track. Multiple tracks may be linked at a time by simply highlighting them and assigning them like you would with one button. The tracks will automatically populate the button page; see below for an example of multiple tracks being assigned to Marker:
When clicked, buttons load the text as a note in Pro Tools as either a clip, a marker, or a combination of the two, to the desired track. The note insertion point can either be chosen by using the timeline selection, or if activated in the Marker edit window, using the position of the playhead. Meaning notes can be made in real time as a session is being played. There are further options for the notes to be anchored to your typing, so they will be loaded into Pro Tools from when you begin typing rather than when you actually press the button. You have access to five pages of nineteen buttons (A-E), as well as a dedicated ‘selected track’ button that sends the note to whatever track is currently selected within Pro Tools. Marker automatically syncs with your Pro Tools session, saving your tracks, pages, and favourites automatically so they’re ready whenever you open the session.
Using Marker between different parts of the post-production pipeline
If you want to share your Marker layout between collaborators, presets can be saved for both your button and page layout, as well as your favourites list. Meaning that your team shares a cohesive framework for creating notes that is already synced with their project file and tracks. Using this framework as a jumping-off point, different roles within the production chain can have their own pre-made pages and buttons for specific tasks or areas. For example, one page can be purely for marking up or reviewing Foley, while another for atmos, another for overdubs, and so on. See our example below, which is a page dedicated to marking up ADR sessions:
Different buttons on these pages can have dedicated uses that move beyond simply deciding which track receives the information from the text box. By going into edit mode (Cmd/Ctrl-E), you can create custom text and note types for each button that supersede the global Marker settings. This means that on your dedicated Foley page, for example, you could have two buttons for each important track. One that’s for importing specific text from the text box as a clip, and another that is just for highlighting moments that need looking over or reappraising, importing a marker alongside a generic term such as ‘look at this’.
Favourites are a key time-saving tool when incorporating information into your notes, especially if you are likely to be repeating certain phrases throughout the project. These notes, as previously mentioned, can be shared across collaborators, but more than likely, each collaborator will have their own set of terms that will be most useful to them. Instead, the project manager could create a more basic favourites preset for each person or department that leaves out the phrases they may not need. Instead, they could add the initials of who is making the note or who is receiving it, so the favourites list acts as a quick way of identifying who made the note or who it’s for.
In the above example, it is important to point out that favourites can be incorporated within the text in a number of ways; for the above, text in the favourites list will be inserted at the end of any text in the box (append). However, if you are simply using favourites to import repeat terms into the text box, then settings such as replace would be more useful.
Remote Configurations and managing notes from a large team
Moving beyond sharing presets between their different systems. Marker’s ability to be controlled remotely by multiple people and devices on a single project file allows for collaborators to all contribute during a single project review session. As long as you’re all on the same network, then anyone can contribute notes in real time, which are integrated without needing to take control from whoever is manning the desk. Notes can be made remotely via any phone, tablet, or laptop, with each remote configuration having its own custom set of buttons and permissions. Meaning that each department could have access to the specific notes page(s) and buttons that relate to their work, so there is no risk of notes accidentally being sent where they shouldn’t.
Each note, made remotely or otherwise, is logged in Marker’s Note Log system. This includes the information of who made the note, who it was made by, and when, as well as its status of integration within the Pro Tools project file. Meaning that no matter the size of your sound department or session, you can make sure no notes have been missed either by you or the project file. Any notes that may have fallen through the cracks and haven’t been implemented successfully can be re-integrated within the Note Log itself by pressing ‘retry’. If in the interim a track is no longer there for its intended note, Marker will issue a track mismatch dialogue, so you can decide whether to reassign or skip the note.
Get Marker to Make It Happen
Ready to speed up your project review process and to make it quicker to review SFX and ADR? See more about Marker on our dedicated Marker page.