How to bring a song's sections into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut as markers

When you edit to music, the edit is decided before you open the editor. The song already has a shape: an intro that holds back, a build, the moment everything opens up, a way out. If you planned your shots against that shape, the first thing you want on an empty timeline is that shape: a marker where each section starts, with its name on it. A marker is the small flag you can drop on the timeline and name, so you know what belongs there before any footage is in.

Most people rebuild it by ear: play the track, tap M when it feels right, nudge, rename. It works. It is also the third time you've found those same points — once when you planned, once when you shot, and now again.

This guide covers both ways: doing it by hand properly, and importing the sections as a file. Each of the three big editors wants something different, and that is where people get stuck.

What you need first: the sections, in seconds

Whatever route you take, you start from a short list: the name of each section and the second it starts on. Most people keep that list in a note or a spreadsheet, and for six sections that is fine.

That is a real plan for a two-minute piece. If you don't have yours yet, how to cut a song into narrative sections gets you there in one listen and a half.

The manual way (works in any editor)

1. Decide your frame rate before anything else. The frame rate is how many pictures per second your video uses, usually 24, 25 or 30 (fps). The editor counts time in those pictures, not in seconds, so markers live on frames. A sequence at 25 fps and a list made for 24 will drift apart, and you'll notice at the end of the song, where it hurts most.
2. Convert each start to timecode. Timecode is the editor's clock: hours, minutes, seconds and frames, written 00:00:19:00. Seconds stay seconds; only the last pair changes. A cut at 19.5 s is 00:00:19:12 at 25 fps, because half a second is 12.5 frames. Round it, and always round the same way.
3. Put the song on the timeline first, starting at the very beginning of the sequence. Every marker is measured from there; if the track slides later, every marker is wrong by the same amount.
4. Go to each timecode and press M. In all three editors you can type a timecode to jump the playhead, the line that marks where you are. Press M once to drop the marker, M again (Premiere, Final Cut) or double-click it (Resolve) to name it.
5. Name it like the plan, not like the song. "Chorus 2" tells you nothing at 1 a.m. "The bridge — they finally meet" tells you what footage belongs there.

Six markers take five minutes. Forty, one per planned shot, take an evening. That is the point where a file starts to make sense, and where the note or the spreadsheet stops helping: it can't hear the song, and all it can hand the editor is numbers for you to retype.

The import way: each editor wants a different file

There is no single "markers file" that all three editors read. All three formats are text files that describe a timeline, not video: an EDL is the oldest, a plain list of cuts from the tape days, and the two XML files are longer descriptions of a sequence that each editor writes in its own dialect. This is what each one actually accepts:

Editor	File it imports as markers	Where they land
DaVinci Resolve	EDL (.edl)	On the timeline you chose
Premiere Pro	Final Cut 7 XML (.xml)	In a new sequence
Final Cut Pro	FCPXML (.fcpxml)	In a new project, inside an event

Two traps worth knowing before you lose an hour:

• Premiere does not turn an EDL into markers. It imports it as a cut list and gives you empty clips with nothing behind them. Markers only come in through XML.
• None of these files carries your footage or your song. They are markers only. You drop the track and the clips in afterwards.

DaVinci Resolve — EDL

Resolve can import markers from an EDL, and it is the simplest of the three because the format is plain text. This is what two of the sections above look like:

TITLE: Dawn
FCM: NON-DROP FRAME

001  001      V     C        01:00:00:00 01:00:00:01 01:00:00:00 01:00:00:01  
 |C:ResolveColorRed |M:Silence |D:475

002  001      V     C        01:00:19:00 01:00:19:01 01:00:19:00 01:00:19:01  
 |C:ResolveColorRose |M:Waking up |D:500

|M: is the marker's name, |C: its colour, |D: its length in frames (19 seconds at 25 fps is 475).

To import it: in the Media Pool, right-click your timeline → Timelines → Import → Timeline Markers from EDL, and pick the file.

Three things decide whether the markers show up at all:

• The start timecode must match your timeline. Resolve timelines start at 01:00:00:00 by default, which is why the example does too. If yours starts at 00:00:00:00, the file has to as well — otherwise the import succeeds and you see nothing.
• The project frame rate must match the one the file was made for.
• Plain letters only. Accents and symbols get lost on import. "Canción" arrives broken; "Cancion" arrives fine.

Premiere Pro — XML

Premiere reads markers from Final Cut 7 XML, the same format it writes with File → Export → Final Cut Pro XML. It is not something you would write by hand.

To import it: File → Import, select the .xml. A new sequence appears in the Project panel, holding a placeholder clip: an empty clip that exists only to carry the markers.

From there you have two options:

• Edit in that sequence. Drop your song and footage in; the markers are already there.
• Move the markers to your own sequence. Enable Markers → Copy Paste Includes Sequence Markers, copy the placeholder clip, paste it into your sequence, then delete the clip. The markers stay.

Final Cut Pro — FCPXML

To import it: File → Import → XML, select the .fcpxml. You get a new event (Final Cut's name for a folder) with a project inside: a silent gap the length of the song, holding the markers. Sections arrive as chapter markers, individual shots as standard markers, and any notes show in the Timeline Index.

Edit there, or copy the gap into your own project and build on top of it.

The same thing in PreFrame

PreFrame is where that list of sections comes from in the first place: the track as a waveform (or the emotional curve, before the track arrives), the sections cut on it and every shot on real seconds. The markers come out of that same plan, in the file each editor expects — .edl for Resolve, .xml for Premiere, .fcpxml for Final Cut — at 24, 25 or 30 fps. The list never passes through a spreadsheet you retype: it is born on the waveform and leaves as the file.

Resolve's start timecode, the one that catches everyone, is part of the export too: the markers are written for a timeline that starts at 01:00:00:00 or at zero, whichever yours does.

In the file there is one marker per section, in its colour where the editor keeps colours, and one per shot with its type and your notes. At the edit you read "Extreme wide, static drone at 80 m" on the exact frame it was planned for. A section and its first shot on the same frame become one marker instead of one silently disappearing, and accents are stripped for Resolve, which would drop them anyway. The printable shooting plan comes from the same seconds, so planning, shooting and editing all read from one clock. How the export and the audio lock work is explained in support.

Before you close the editor

• Check the first and the last marker against the music. If the first is right and the last is late, it's a frame-rate mismatch. If both are off by the same amount, the song isn't at the start of the timeline — or, in Resolve, the start timecode doesn't match.
• Lock the music track once the markers line up. Everything you cut from here on hangs off those points.