Cleanfeed Knowledgebase

Markers and notes: best practices for editors

In our guide to markers and notes we explained how to place markers during a recording. This page summarises best practices for working with these in your chosen audio editor (DAW).

We’re always interested to make your workflow as smooth as possible. If your chosen audio editor is not supported, or you have something important that you think we should mention then let us know.

Audacity

Watch a quick tutorial video.

  1. From the menu, select File, Import, Labels....
  2. Select the Markers text file from the Cleanfeed recording bundle.

Hindenburg

Watch a quick tutorial video.

Hindenburg is a great editor tuned for spoken-word content, and it supports Cleanfeed markers.

  1. Open the markers view in Hindenburg using View, Markers.
  2. The Markers pane will appear. Right-click within it and select Import....
  3. Select the Markers text file from the Cleanfeed recording bundle.

Hindenburg reserves markers number 1 and 2 for the start, and end of your session respectively. So your personalised markers begin at number 3.

Adobe Audition

Import the audio files into your session, then:

  1. From the menu, select File, Import, Markers from File....
  2. Select the Markers Audition text file from the Cleanfeed recording bundle.

Be sure to use the Audition-specific file. Audition has some quirks when importing markers, one of which is that it's actually a tab-separated file masquerading as a CSV (comma-separated) file.

Reaper

Reaper is another popular audio editing tool. Regions and markers are global in the Reaper session, and the steps to import them from Cleanfeed are:

  1. From the menu, select View, Regions/Markers manager. If the menu is too overwhelming, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R goes straight to the window.
  2. You’ll see an Options button to the bottom-right of the new window. Press it.
  3. Select Import regions/markers... (replace existing).
  4. Select the Markers Reaper CSV file from the Cleanfeed recording bundle.

Moving clips around won’t affect the global markers, so they can easily get out of sync. That’s if you aren’t using the ripple editing modes: specifically Ripple editing all tracks from the main toolbar. In fact, that’s a good general advice for multitrack editing in Reaper; see this tutorial video for Ripple Editing in Reaper.

ProTools

One of the audio editors you’re more likely to find in high-end professional use.

To import Cleanfeed markers into ProTools we MIDI as the standard file format. This means the markers appear on their own 'track'.

  1. Select File, Import, MIDI....
  2. From the Cleanfeed recording bundle, select the the Markers "MIDI" file.
  3. A MIDI Import Options dialogue will be presented to you. Select Import tempo map from MIDI File.

Markers in the MIDI file are relative to timings at 120 BPM. Be sure to honour the tempo map, and that your session is 120 BPM.