Export markers in Premiere Pro to be able to jump to a section in a video with a remote control

[amriphoto]

Hi all, I have now searched for days for a solution, but I couldn't find one. I hope anybody out there can help me.

I'm doing a lot of videos on greenscreen, and want to be able to point to individual parts of the frame while shooting. So I prepared the background video beforehand and will use live greenscreen and a teleprompter to see where I'm pointing at.

When shooting, it would be great if I could jump to markers in the videos, in case I need to repeat a chapter because of slips or other things (Ideally with a remote control - I'm still searching for an option that works on a mac because the one I have tried - satechi Bluetooth media remote - isn't really satisfying).

But I couldn't get premiere pro to export the clip with markers. Since the clips have up to 100 markers, it is painful to export them individually instead.
Any help and ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!

[Michael Grenadier]

hmm.  I looked at a file earlier today that I'd exported a few weeks ago from a sequence that had markers and when I brought the file back into premiere the markers were there.  Please tell us your OS version and Premiere version.  and I'll try and remember to check the workflow on this particular export.  But are you trying to export so the markers exist in premiere?  or in some other playback option?   and are you exporting as a sequence or as clips?  In my case it was a sequence with sequence markers not clip markers (I think).  and if you look at the markers dialog, there are a bunch of different options for the kind of markers that may have some pertinence to your question.  I have no idea what they mean...

[amriphoto]

Thanks a lot for your reply. You are right. I brought it back into premiere pro and the markers are there. I used chapter markers. But I will experiment with the others, maybe they will be recognised by any of the other tools. I tried quicktime and VLC media player.
I'm Using MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 and Premiere Pro 14.7.0
Anyway: thanks again, that definitely shed some light on the issue!

[Stan Jones]

I'm not Mac and have not tried this. See the post by Stephen Abbott re Subler for Mac. Let us know.

https://creativecow.net/forums/thread/replicating-dvd-chapter-marker-functionality/

Stan

[Michael Grenadier]

Stan, thanks for this link. Although I haven't had to deliver a dvd or
blu-ray in a few years for which I'm thankful, great to have a workflow
that will hopefully allow for transfer of markers that will be usable in
vlc, etc. I'm sure this will come up in about 6 months, and I'll bang my
head against the wall trying to find this link so I've bookmarked it and
hopefully will remember where I put the bookmark.

[Stan Jones]

When the time comes, let us know how it works!

Stan

[amriphoto]

Thanks, Stan! I'll check that!

[Warren Heaton]

Set Chapter Markers in your Sequence and export to QuickTime.  Any player that recognizes embedded Chapter Markers, like QuickTime Player will be able to display the chapter points.

If your workflow happens to be all ProRes (source footage is ProRes, Sequence Video Previews are ProRes and export is ProRes), you'll also be taking advantage of Smart Rendering in Premiere Pro (everything will be faster).

If MP4 is needed with Chapter Points, right-click the resulting ProRes MOV file in the Finder (assumes macOS) and choose Services > Encode Selected Video Files (note: this requires that the exported ProRes clip have a 16-by-9 frame aspect ratio).  This results in a .m4v file with the Chapter Points.  Finish by doing forcing the file name extension to .mp4.

If exporting to QuickTime is not possible with your workflow, consider using File > Export Markers to have Premiere Pro generate a text document that can be used to accurately set chapter points elsewhere like Apple Compressor, YouTube Creator Studio, or VLC Bookmarks (the text may need to be reformatted).

An earlier version of this response included H264 and HEIC (H265) as an option when exporting from Premiere Pro to include markers in exports; however, that went away in PR with Apple's switch from QuickTime as the system driver for time-based media to AV Foundation Frameworks. 

[amriphoto]

Thanks, Warren. The weird thing is, I exported with chapter markers, and they show on reimport into premiere pro. So it has to be another issue.

[Stan Jones]

Warren: but you can no longer export QT H.264 from PR/AME, right?

As Sami says, is the only reliable option from PR using the QT player, and QT export?

amriphoto, Yes, it is odd: if I put one of each chapter marker type (comment, chapter, segmentation, and link) in a sequence, export as H.264, and reimport to PR, all the markers are there. PR appears to be putting the markers into the H.264 export; there's no sidecar file. But VLC sees nothing to use for the "chapter" list, so it is not seeing what it might expect. 

Does anyone have a good (free) mp4 header tool? Then I see that MediaInfo will produce a "header" for the developer, and it shows the PR markers. Now I'm wondering how VLC handles this. Does anyone have a file in which VLC sees the chapters?

Stan

[Warren Heaton]

Stan, this is correct.  I'd forgotten.  I've updated my response.  Thank you.

[Sami Succar · Accepted solution]

That's the only combination I could use to have something close to chapter markers.

Add chapter markers on the sequence level > export as quicktime prores > play the file in quicktime.

[amriphoto]

Thanks, Sami! Exporting as prores made all the difference!