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TTCJ
TTCJ
Inspiring
March 21, 2022
Answered

Importing Markers CSV - Audition

  • March 21, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 4147 views

I have a .csv listing my marker names, start, duration, cue, and description.

The .csv should be able to be imported, but Audition refuses to accept it. So I have a few questions:

-Can the markers be imported to a session?

-My timeline is BPM, does it have to be a timecode, like 00:00:00? My spreadsheet is BPM such as 15:1.00

-What are the columns named? I have seen so many varieties, some with an "end" column some without, etc. Does anyone know the exact column names and which ones we need?

-Is there an easier way to make markers in a session? For my current project I would like every quarter beat to have a marker, but doing it by hand seems so unnecessary and time-consuming.

Correct answer TTCJ

SteveG, thank you thank you. For anyone that is also looking to add generated markers to an Audition Session this is how I finally accomplished the task using SteveG's suggestion, I hope it helps someone else. Also it is quite a process, I assume there may be an easier way, but for now this is what I got:

 

STEP 1: Open Audition and either export a .wav of some generated noise or the tracks you're working on at the length or longer than you need for your session. The .wav file you export will serve as the metadata carrier for your markers so the sound doesn't matter.

STEP 2: Open the cueListTool app, link below if you need to download and install it

https://www.stefanbion.de/cuelisttool/index.htm#Download

STEP 3: in cueListTool open Edit>Generate Cues

STEP 4: Review the settings

Distance = how far apart each marker will be

Since I was using BPM in my Audition session I just made some markers as a reference to my desired location then switched the time display back to Decimal to get an idea of the time between the markers. My tempo was at 335BPM which I wanted a marker at every quarter beat so I have to do some math, but I'll get it. It'll be around .043-.045 for me.

First Cue at: Where the first marker appears, I left this at 0

Then you have a choice between How many Cues or Last Cue At to tell the generator when to stop generating markers.

Cue Type I left at Basic.

Cue Label I left as is.

Starting At I left as is.

I wanted single-point markers so I left it at points.

STEP 5: click Generate. Now you see a list of cues in the interface.

STEP 6: On the top right-click the folder open WAV button.

STEP 7: Select the temporary .wav you created at the start of this list. Click open. In the view window, you will now notice the name of the file has changed to the name of the .wav file you selected.


STEP 8: Click the red arrow WAV button on the right. Your markers have now been added to the metadata of that .wav successfully. You will not see a confirmation of this, just trust that the magic has occured. 

STEP 9: Go back to Audition.

STEP 10: Import your temporary file. You will see the markers window in Audition populate with the markers you created and added to the file using cueListTool.

STEP 11: Click into the .wav file so you are in the waveform editor.

 

STEP 12: Select all the markers in the markers window by shift-clicking them. Selecting the folder will not work, each marker has to be highlighted.

STEP 13: Go to  File>Export>Selected Markers to CSV

STEP 14: Give the .csv a name and save it.

STEP 15: Click back into your session so you are in your multitrack editor view.

STEP 16: Go to File>Import>Markers From CSV

STEP 17: Select the file and Hooray! You will now have your generated markers on your multitrack session.!!!!!

 

3 replies

GGGx
GGGx
Participant
April 16, 2025

I managed to get this to work with a direct import of a CSV file but the format is not what you'd expect which is perhaps why it isn't easy. I used a standard text editor with no formatting to create the CSV and despite the name, the variables aren't comma separated, they're tab separated!  The file needs to be in this format:

 

Name	Start	Duration	Time Format	Type	Description
Mark 10	1:30.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 09	1:21.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 08	1:12.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 07	1:03.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue
Mark 06	0:54.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 05	0:45.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 04	0:36.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 03	0:27.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 02	0:18.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue	
Mark 01	0:09.000	0:00.000	decimal	Cue
GGGx
GGGx
Participant
April 16, 2025

On a side note, I did have to start with an exported CSV from Audition and modify that file. If I create one from scratch it doesn't work and I've yet to figure out why when the files are identical. But that's really easy. Just make a Marker or two, export the file from the Markers box and edit that before importing all back in again.

 

M
Mark K B
Participant
May 5, 2025

Finally figured it out. The file needs to be in tab separated values format (not comma separated values), but the file extension must be csv (not tsv or txt). This is a bit counterintuitive, especially since Excel will save comma-separated values files as .csv and tab-separated values as .txt by default (neither of which will work). The error messages you get for attempting anything to the contrary could certainly be more helpful. But as long as you format the file per your above example and save it with a .csv extension, it doesn't matter whether it comes from Excel, Google Sheets, CueListTool, or your own manual editing in Notepad.

    StefanB_
    StefanB_
    Participant
    July 15, 2022

    Hi,

     

    could someone please send me example CSVs with different types of Cues exported from Audition CC? So I could implemet import/export of these files into/from CueListTool. - BTW, import/export of Audacity markers has been implemented last week. 🙂

     

    Thanks

    Stefan

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 21, 2022

    I don't think that CSV can be directly imported, but if you use Cuelisttool you should be able to sort this out, and it will also provide answers to your other questions. Also, if you can figure out the timing relative to the sample rate, you should also be able (although you might have to use a spreadsheet to create them) to create quarter beat cues.

    TTCJ
    TTCJAuthorCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    March 22, 2022

    SteveG, thank you thank you. For anyone that is also looking to add generated markers to an Audition Session this is how I finally accomplished the task using SteveG's suggestion, I hope it helps someone else. Also it is quite a process, I assume there may be an easier way, but for now this is what I got:

     

    STEP 1: Open Audition and either export a .wav of some generated noise or the tracks you're working on at the length or longer than you need for your session. The .wav file you export will serve as the metadata carrier for your markers so the sound doesn't matter.

    STEP 2: Open the cueListTool app, link below if you need to download and install it

    https://www.stefanbion.de/cuelisttool/index.htm#Download

    STEP 3: in cueListTool open Edit>Generate Cues

    STEP 4: Review the settings

    Distance = how far apart each marker will be

    Since I was using BPM in my Audition session I just made some markers as a reference to my desired location then switched the time display back to Decimal to get an idea of the time between the markers. My tempo was at 335BPM which I wanted a marker at every quarter beat so I have to do some math, but I'll get it. It'll be around .043-.045 for me.

    First Cue at: Where the first marker appears, I left this at 0

    Then you have a choice between How many Cues or Last Cue At to tell the generator when to stop generating markers.

    Cue Type I left at Basic.

    Cue Label I left as is.

    Starting At I left as is.

    I wanted single-point markers so I left it at points.

    STEP 5: click Generate. Now you see a list of cues in the interface.

    STEP 6: On the top right-click the folder open WAV button.

    STEP 7: Select the temporary .wav you created at the start of this list. Click open. In the view window, you will now notice the name of the file has changed to the name of the .wav file you selected.


    STEP 8: Click the red arrow WAV button on the right. Your markers have now been added to the metadata of that .wav successfully. You will not see a confirmation of this, just trust that the magic has occured. 

    STEP 9: Go back to Audition.

    STEP 10: Import your temporary file. You will see the markers window in Audition populate with the markers you created and added to the file using cueListTool.

    STEP 11: Click into the .wav file so you are in the waveform editor.

     

    STEP 12: Select all the markers in the markers window by shift-clicking them. Selecting the folder will not work, each marker has to be highlighted.

    STEP 13: Go to  File>Export>Selected Markers to CSV

    STEP 14: Give the .csv a name and save it.

    STEP 15: Click back into your session so you are in your multitrack editor view.

    STEP 16: Go to File>Import>Markers From CSV

    STEP 17: Select the file and Hooray! You will now have your generated markers on your multitrack session.!!!!!

     
    TTCJ
    TTCJAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 25, 2022

    Update 

     

    When moving to a new station, Step 16 from above was not working. "Error importing csv". 

    Took me a while to figure it out, but I realized that when you go to complete Step 13, and export to csv, be sure to set the time format to decimal. In my current setup if I did not do that then Audition did not like the csv file. 

     

    Also, I am attaching the exported csv that was output by Audition to this post. If you have a session and want to see this work try importing this csv to your session.

     

    I was thinking that since it works it may be as easy as changing the numbers to your liking and then you can import what you like. But if the numbers are changed, it stops importing. I can't really figure out why since it is just straight text. I would have assumed that as long as the formatting and the decimals are all correct that it wouldn't matter if you changed the numbers. But it will fail if it is altered. Anyone know why?

     

     

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