Add comments to your media files
Annotate media files with notes for the editor or director to consult during editing in Premiere Pro.
Published
Adding a comment to a clip with Adobe Prelude CC is very, very straightforward.
Here I've got a clip ready for me to play it back and add a comment and let's say, for example, I decide I want to use this section of the clip and I want to highlight that for the editor.
So, what I'm going to do is line up my play head here on this frame, I can do so under the Monitor window as well if I like, click the Comment button and immediately there's an invitation for me to type in a description.
So, I'll say something like, Use this part of the take.
Now you'll notice that as soon as I added the comment it was given a duration that went from the moment I added it right to the end of the clip and if I want to stick with using the mouse at this point, I can just click away and carry on working and I can click on the end of this marker and drag it to change the end of the selected section.
Now the durations of these Comment Markers which would be referred to as a Temporal Marker they are important because they are displayed inside your nonlinear editing system, they should come up as part of the Premiere Pro CC interchange or part of the XML interchange.
And you can see here although it's pretty subtle this marker is deselected; this marker is selected and when a marker is selected I get information about it inside the Marker Inspector.
If I add another comment now, let's say maybe I want to say, don't use this section, I click add Comment and you'll notice that by default it's called Comment and the duration goes again right to the end of the clip and my original comment has just been shunted up a track.
So, I've got this multi-layer marker display area at the top of the Timeline.
So, let's say here I'm going to say, Don't use this section.
OK.
And now I'm going to click this end handle and I'm going to drag in and pull this back and now you'll see that Prelude CC has automatically shunted down this other marker.
So, it does a pretty good job of balancing where the marker information is displayed, and it'll just go up and up and up and up and up as necessary.
If I adjust the duration of either of these markers I can just, for example overlap here and Prelude CC will automatically shift the location of these so that you can see them in full.
This layout is going to be used when you're working inside your nonlinear editing system.
So, it's pretty useful, it feels pretty intuitive.
Here again I'll click the button and I'll say, I love the lighting on this shot.
OK.
And click away and there is my marker.
Now I'm showing you the mouse-driven workflow for this.
There is a keyboard driven workflow as well which is a little bit quicker but sometimes you just want to be holding a cup of coffee in the other hand and stick with using the mouse and that's absolutely fine with Adobe Prelude CC.
Now notice if I try to open up another shot, maybe I'll open up this Footsteps shot I'm going to get this warning saying, Do you want to save the changes to the Glove_compartment?
And this is interesting because there's no particular indication inside of Adobe Prelude CC that you haven't saved.
There's a tiny little marker if I cancel, you see here I've got the name of the clip at the top of the Timeline and I have it here at the top of the Monitor panel and there's a little asterisk marker and you'll notice that this is the same convention used in applications like After Effects CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC where an asterisk means that there are changes that haven't been saved.
If I had a power cut right now these comments would not appear after the reboot.
And so, if I press Control S or Command S or if I click on the File menu and choose Save which is the same you see here Ctrl+S on a PC, Command+S on a Mac then the clip is going to be updated and this asterisk will disappear.
I'll press that now on my keyboard the asterisk goes away, I'll open up this shot and I don't get the warning message.
You really are quite safe though if I add a comment here saying, Try slo mo, for example, that's okay, there's the little asterisk, if I open up another shot you're safe because as long as you read the message that comes up on the screen you're going to get the warning, you can click Yes and then you're done.
If I go back to this Footsteps shot, there's my comment and the same here on my original Mid 2 Shot that I had before and so on and so on.
There's my Glove_compartment shot.
Be aware as ever that the way Adobe Prelude CC adds these markers is a little bit different to nonlinear editing systems because these markers are being appended to the metadata associated with the media file.
This isn't just happening to a clip, a shortcut or an alias to that media, it's actually being added to the media file.
So, if I come out of Prelude CC and bring this into for example, Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 I'm going to see this media whether or not I send it directly from Prelude CC which I can do.
I can just send the media on a hard drive anywhere in the world and because it's in the metadata it's there indefinitely.
Of course, you can remove them as well, that's another option.
Okay, so that's Adding Comments using Adobe Prelude CC.
