Extending Markers Extends Markers’ Usefulness

We continue our exploration of the various keyboard shortcuts that involve markers with the “extend marker” shortcut, OPT Grave

Here’s how it works: if you’ve already laid down a marker and gone forward a few seconds, you can hit OPT Grave and the result is an extended marker which look like this:

The extended marker can be placed on the timeline ruler, in a selected clip on the timeline, in the canvas or in a clip opened in the Viewer. For all intents and purposes, the extended marker works like two separate markers–if you surf your markers with SHIFT Up and Down Arrows, you’ll see that you stop at both the beginning and end of the extended marker. If you use the CTRL OPT shortcuts to play and loop markers (we’ll discuss this in depth tomorrow), the end point of the extended marker works like a second marker.

Also, and sometimes very usefully, when you make subclips from markers, your subclips will end at the end of the extended marker (again, treating the end point as a subsequent marker).

My favorite use for the extended marker however, goes back to the way I like to use markers as a way to capture and record a producer’s notes when we’re going through the timeline together. As I have discussed before, I like to create a marker  for each note and write the notes right into the marker (i.e., “swap this b-roll clip for a crowd shot”) and the extended marker is very handy for precisely marking footage that is to be excised.