Playing Around With Markers

If you have used markers to divide up your source into potential shots or if you have organized content on your timeline using markers, you might want to be able to play and preview marked segments easily. Though they are somewhat ungainly, there are shortcuts for these operations. If you want to play from the current marker (which is the marker you are on or have most recently passed) to the next marker, you can hit CTRL OPT 6

Think of this as the marker version of the “play in to out” (SHIFT \) command which is so useful in the Viewer. If you want to do the same thing, but loop it, use CTRL OPT 7

If you want to simply play to the next marker without jumping back to the previous one (as CTRL OPT 6 and 7 do), use CTRL OPT 1

This is analogous to the “play to out point” (SHIFT P) command which is also very handy in the Viewer.

Here’s a little tip for using these commands: if you have laid out chapter markers on your timeline in preparation for going out to DVD, using the “play current” or “play to next” commands will give you a nice clean way to test the effectiveness of your chapter placements (and let you hear how the audio will sound when a chapter starts).

Have a great weekend–we’ll be back with a rudimentary Saturday tip tomorrow!