Timing your video or photos to music in Premiere Pro using Markers

Hi there, in this video we're going to play some music, and then automatically add some markers, add the different transitions, by hitting a shortcut while we're listening to the music, which is, turns out to be terrible, but you can do it. What's really interesting about this video, is that these markers, any way you want to create them, you can get either footage, or in my case, images, to kind of fill the gaps, and do transitions at every marker, which can be handy, but you must be warned before we get started, there is some terrible dad style dancing that goes on, not this guy, me, it's bad. All right, let's get started. 

I was going to skip this bit, to say, clear the timeline, but I taught, in the last video, how to clear all the markers, right click any of the markers, and to say, 'Clear All Markers', select the markers, and we'll delete this, and we are going to start again, get right to the beginning, and get ready. First things first, let's add our, let's go to our project, let's bring in our music, we do our B2, and I imagine this is going to be funny, I'm going to turn on the camera, hang on. All right, let's do this. 

People do this, apparently you can do markers to the beat, I definitely can't. So we're going to give it a go, you ready? All right, you ready? Oh, that is embarrassing. So I've just re-watched that video, I'm embarrassing myself, you're embarrassed, my editors, definitely Jason and Tayla, I'm sorry for that, that's all I had, I'm a dad now, I'm allowed to dance like that, and what did we end up, can you see the markers that are painted at the top? 

The other thing I should probably comment on, is I haven't had a shave for a while, we're in the middle of Covid, shaving doesn't seem all that necessary anymore. Anyway, so here's my little bits that I hit, I find it's probably easier, I'm going to zoom in on my Timeline, remember, 'Option +', it's probably easier just to hit them on, you know, these kind of waveforms, and just kind of move them around, but sometimes timing works, if you have good timing. So hey. 

Now we need to add our footage to it, because if we do this, if I grab, actually, I'm going to shrink this one up, let's zoom in. So if I grab a bunch of, all my images, let's grab them all, if I grab them all and dump them in here, they just plonk on their normal size. What I want them to do is adjust to this, so what I can do is have them all selected, and hit this button here, it says 'Automate to Sequence', click on that, and say, not the Order, oh no, Placement, Sequentially, no, 'At Unnumbered Markers', cool, eh. Yes, let's do that, let's click 'OK'. 

One thing you'll notice is that they ended up like at the next marker, from where my Playhead was, so you've got to make sure your Playhead, it's right at the beginning before you do that whole thing, I pretend like that was a learning exercise. Oh, the other thing is it hasn't done it for the first one, another learning exercise, you can tell how much I do this, I just match it to the beats, while I try and do my cuts, but I do it to the waveform, rather than bopping around like a dad. So put it in the first one, have them all selected again, let's do it, 'Unnumbered Markers', hooray! 

What you might find as well is, can you see, they've kind of adjusted out here. I'll show another for instance, so let's say your markers are a lot further apart, so I'm going to do a marker here, and a marker here, and a marker here. What ends up happening is, again, I'll do the same thing, can you see these big gaps here, the big gaps is because my default for an image is, how many seconds, 5 seconds by looks of it, 4 seconds, let's have a look, hover above it, 5 seconds. 

So that's the default, that is in my preferences, you can go and change that. What we can do though-- so what it does is, it says, all right, 5 seconds, unless there's another marker, it tries to be 5 seconds but it can't fit so it cuts off. These guys, can be their full 5 seconds, and then stop to the next one. So that might be useful for you, but say you do want to butt them up with longer markers, like this, you can either change your default in the preferences, or probably easiest is, I'm going to undo all that, right click, select them all, right click them all, let's go to 'Speed/Duration', and actually, let's say, these guys are all like, make them 20 seconds each, so that they're way past-- is that way past? Yeah, way past. Just longer than the breaks you have. Make it 20 minutes, it won't matter. 

Let's add them to the beginning, actually no, remember, hit that button, hit that button, and now they should stretch out to the different markers that I've got. Let's have a look how good we did with the beat, that's what you're wondering, you're like, "How good is this guy?" How good is that bopping? Let's go, ready? Not good at all, I was too busy jiggling around for the camera. There's lot of cuts that you could do, and then, give it a go, have some fun. 

Another useful thing, especially like-- this works for video clips as well, and it's, if you are doing this for images, and you want to transition between them all, select them all, and 'Command D' on a Mac, 'Ctrl D' on a PC, will put in whatever your default transition is. So let's have a little look. Look at that. So there'll be a default transition between them all, great way to do bulk stuff. Remember, to change your default transition, find your video transition that you want it to be, and just right click, and say, 'Set as Default', then when you hit 'Ctrl D' on a PC, or 'Command D' on a Mac, it'll be whatever that is, and you'll see little blue square around it. 

All right, that is it, timing your images to images, or footage to markers, and how to get markers done automatically as you go through. You might want to skip that first bit, and just put in the markers manually, but the rest of it still works. Just remember to use in your Project panel, use this one here, 'Automate to Sequence'. All right, that is it for markers, I will see you in the next video.