Every wedding videographer carries a private map of the day in their head: the moment the groom's father wiped his eyes during the vows, the one clip where the second camera caught the ring exchange from the better angle, the toast that has to open the film because the whole family still quotes it. Your editor has none of that. They receive hundreds of clips, often hundreds of gigabytes, and a few lines of instructions. Marking key moments is how you move the map out of your head and onto the timeline, and it is one of the cheapest ways to protect the story you intended to tell.
This guide shows a practical system: what to mark, how to mark it on the day and at ingest, which colours and codes to use, how to send the notes so they survive the trip into your editor's software, and how to read the review round afterwards. It is written for studios that outsource wedding edits, but every step also makes your own edits faster.
Why marked moments beat a long email
An editor without notes has to watch everything to find the story. An editor with notes can start from your priorities and use the rest of the footage to support them. The difference is not speed alone; it is whether the film reflects your judgement or a stranger's guess about what mattered to this couple.
Written briefs are good at describing style, but they are poor at pointing to a specific frame. "Use the moment dad looks at her in the hallway" means nothing unless the editor can find the hallway clip among forty similar ones. A marker at a timecode removes the search. It also removes the most common source of revision rounds, which is the editor choosing the wrong take of a moment you already knew was the best one.
Notes also protect you from your own memory. Weeks after a wedding, your memory of which camera had focus on the first kiss is not reliable. A flag you set that evening is.
A worked example of the difference
Imagine two identical wedding folders. In the first, the editor receives a note saying "highlight film, emotional, about three minutes." They watch the ceremony, pick a handful of vow moments and build the film around the dance floor, because the dance floor has the most energy. The couple later asks where the grandmother's blessing went, which you filmed on a side camera that the editor never opened.
In the second folder, the same editor also gets a moment sheet with six green MUST markers, one of which is the grandmother's blessing, with a note that it should open the second act. The editor does not have to guess; they build the film around your priorities and use their own taste for everything else. The footage is identical, but the revision rounds are not. This is the practical value of marking: it turns an editor's open-ended discovery into a short, checkable list, and it makes the first cut much more likely to be close to what you wanted. If a first cut still misses, you can point to the marker that was not honoured and discuss it in concrete terms.
It also changes the tone of the working relationship. Feedback about a missing marked moment is an objective check against an agreed list, so it reads as a correction, not as criticism of the editor's taste. Studios that outsource regularly find this takes much of the friction out of review rounds.
What counts as a key moment
Not everything deserves a marker. If you mark every clip, the markers become noise and the editor learns to ignore them. A useful rule is to mark only what changes a decision:
- Must-use moments: the vows, the first look reaction, the kiss, a heartfelt line in a speech, the parent reaction you know the couple will want.
- Best-take choices: where two cameras or two takes cover the same event and one is clearly better.
- Problems: missed focus, wind on the audio, a lens flare you cannot use, a guest walking into frame.
- Sync and audio anchors: claps, slates and the start of lav recordings.
- Do-not-use items: anything the couple or a family member asked you to leave out.
Anything outside those five groups can stay unmarked. Silence from you is information too: it tells the editor to use their own taste.
The three layers of notes
Good marking happens in three passes, and each one catches something the previous pass cannot. Think of them as layers, not as extra work: the later layers are fast because the earlier ones exist.
| Layer | When | Tool | What it captures |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. On camera | During the wedding | Camera flags, shot marks, voice slate, hand signal | Instant reactions: "that was the one" |
| 2. At ingest | Same night or next day | Markers and flags in your editing software | Best takes, problems, sync points |
| 3. Handoff sheet | Before upload | One-page moment list | Story priorities and context the footage cannot show |
A useful way to decide how much to do is to look at how irreplaceable the footage is. Ceremonies, speeches and parent reactions happen once and cannot be reshot, so they justify full marking. Details, venue shots and drone establishing shots are repeatable or replaceable, so a single line in the sheet is enough. Spend your marking effort where a mistake would be painful.
You do not need all three on every wedding. A short elopement might need only layer 3. A twelve-hour multi-camera day almost always benefits from all of them. What matters is that you decide the system once and then repeat it, so that your editor learns your language and does not have to re-learn it on every project.
Build a colour and code system that survives export
Colour is the quickest way to communicate with markers, but colour alone is fragile. Premiere Pro users have reported that marker colour is missing when markers are exported to CSV or text files; one report on Adobe's community forum describes it in version 25.2.3, and the suggested workaround was to add a short colour code to the marker comment. That workaround is worth adopting as a rule: every marker carries a text code as well as a colour. If the colour is lost in a file conversion, the code is still there.
Keep the system small. Five or six categories are enough, and more than that makes you consult a legend on every clip. The example below is a template you can adapt, not a standard.
| Colour | Text code | Meaning | Example note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green | MUST | Must appear in the highlight film | MUST: dad sees bride, hallway |
| Blue | BEST | Preferred take or angle | BEST: cam B, ring exchange |
| Red | PROB | Technical problem, use with care | PROB: focus soft first 3 sec |
| Yellow | SYNC | Audio or multicam sync anchor | SYNC: clap at start |
| Purple | SPCH | Speech or vow line to keep | SPCH: "best friend since 2009" |
| Grey or white | NO | Do not use | NO: family request, uncle tent |
Two habits make this work. First, write the code at the start of the comment, so it sorts and filters well in a spreadsheet. Second, keep each note to one line: who, what and, if useful, which camera. The editor is reading dozens of these and should be able to absorb each one in a glance.
Use the same codes on every project
The system only pays off if it is boringly consistent. Put the legend in your handoff template and paste it at the top of every handoff sheet, even if your editor has used it before. A one-line legend costs nothing and prevents a misread when a different editor on the team picks up the project.
Marking on the day: camera flags, shot marks and voice slates
You cannot stop a ceremony to type a note, so on-camera marking has to be a single button press or a spoken word. Choose the method that fits your gear and your pace.
Camera flags and shot marks
Some cameras can write marks into the clip as you shoot. Sony's documentation for its Catalyst Prepare plugin explains that shot marks recorded in MP4 and MXF clips appear in Premiere Pro's source monitor, program monitor, timeline and Markers panel once the clip is imported. The same page notes that clip flags are converted to star ratings in Premiere: OK becomes 5, Keep becomes 3 and NG (no good) becomes 1. That means a quick OK press on camera can become a five-star rating that the editor can sort and filter by, without you typing anything.
The support depends on the camera model, the file format and the plugin, so test your own workflow before you rely on it at a wedding. Shoot a short clip, set a flag, import it into the software your editor uses, and check that the mark appears. If it does not, fall back to the next two methods.
Voice slate
A voice slate is the simplest metadata system ever invented. Before or after a key moment, say a short phrase into the camera microphone: "Camera A, vows, keeper." It takes two seconds, it works on any camera, and the editor will hear it when they scrub the waveform. Keep the phrase short and fixed so it is easy to spot in the audio. Avoid saying names or private details; the clip may be shared with a team, and the slate may end up in the delivered audio if nobody trims it.
Hand signals for second shooters
If you work with a second shooter, agree a signal for "mark this" (for example, a raised fist held for a second in front of the lens at a quiet moment). The signal lives on the footage itself, so it needs no technology at all. Brief the second shooter on it before the day starts, and have them use it sparingly: two or three per hour is enough.
| Method | Speed on the day | Works on any camera | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camera flag or shot mark | One button press | No, model dependent | Mark may not survive transcoding or import |
| Voice slate | Two seconds of speech | Yes | Audible in the file; may be missed on a long clip |
| Hand signal | Instant, silent | Yes | Needs a briefed shooter and an editor who knows the code |
| Notebook or phone note | Slow, afterwards | Yes | Timecode is approximate unless you write it down |
A phone note is the weakest option for exact moments, but it is excellent for context: "mother of the groom wore her late husband's watch" is the sort of detail that belongs in the handoff sheet, not on a timeline.
When to mark during the day
You will not mark everything, and you should not try. Most videographers find that a small number of windows produce nearly all the important moments: the first look, the ceremony, the exchange of rings and vows, the first kiss, the speeches, the first dance and the parent dances. Decide before the day which of these windows will get an on-camera mark, and use the quiet minutes between them for catching your breath, not for notes.
It also helps to mark on a delay. If you try to flag a moment while it is happening, you may miss part of it. Wait until the moment ends, then press the button or speak the slate. The editor will find the mark just after the action, which is easy to scrub back from, and you will have recorded the whole thing.
Marking at ingest: markers versus flags in Premiere and Resolve
The evening after the wedding, while you are backing up the cards, is the best time for the second pass. You are still fresh, the footage is still organised in your head, and you do not need to watch everything. Skim the clips where you set a flag or slate, and mark the moments that matter.
First, understand the difference between a marker and a flag, because they behave differently. In DaVinci Resolve, a marker belongs to a specific frame and can carry a note and keywords, while a flag applies to a whole clip, including every instance of that source clip in the media pool. Resolve offers 16 marker colours (blue is the default), and pressing M adds a marker at the playhead while G flags a clip. Premiere Pro also uses M for markers, and it lets you attach a name and a comment, plus a colour, to each one.
| Use | Marker (frame) | Flag or rating (whole clip) |
|---|---|---|
| Point to a line in a speech | Yes | No: too coarse |
| Say "this whole clip is unusable" | Possible | Yes |
| Mark a sync clap | Yes | No |
| Rank takes of the same moment | Possible | Yes, if the editor sorts by it |
| Carry a text note | Yes | Limited |
A quick ingest routine
If you shoot with several cameras, decide whether you mark on the source clips or on a synced multicam sequence. Marking on the source clips is slower but travels with the media; marking on a sequence is faster but lives only in the project. Many studios mark the sequence for story decisions and the source clips for technical problems, because a problem such as soft focus belongs to the clip, wherever it appears.
Keyboard shortcuts matter more than they seem. Adding a marker with M and a flag with G in Resolve, or M in Premiere, keeps your hands on the keyboard and your eyes on the picture, which is what makes a fast pass possible. Check your editing software's keyboard settings for shortcuts that add a marker in a specific colour; if your version offers them, a single press can drop a green or red marker without opening a dialog. Spend fifteen minutes setting this up once, and every wedding afterwards benefits.
Aim for a pass that takes about twenty to forty minutes for a typical wedding, because a routine you never finish is no routine at all. A workable order is:
- Rate or flag whole clips first: unusable clips and obvious keepers.
- Then place markers on specific frames: must-use moments, best takes and problems.
- Add sync markers last, at claps or the start of lav recordings.
- Write the text code at the start of every marker comment.
If your multicam footage is not yet synced, do that first. Our guide to syncing multicam wedding footage before handoff walks through the options.
Sending the notes: formats that survive the trip
The hard part is not making markers but getting them to the editor intact. Your editor may use a different editing application, a different version, or a different operating system. Every conversion step is a chance to lose colour, comments or timecode. The safest approach is to send the notes in more than one form.
| Format | Typically keeps | Typically loses | Best use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project file or XML | Markers, sequence structure | Compatibility across applications and versions | Editor uses the same software and version |
| EDL with markers | Timecode, names, often colour | Long comments | Moving between Resolve and Premiere |
| CSV or text export | Timecode, name, comment | Colour in some Premiere exports | Reading in a spreadsheet; backup list |
| PDF or Google Doc moment sheet | Everything you type | Nothing, but nothing is machine-readable | Context and priorities |
| Voice and hand-signal marks inside clips | Position in the footage | Nothing, if the file is intact | Fallback when all else fails |
Another practical point is naming. A marker called "Marker 14" tells the editor nothing, and a spreadsheet full of them is useless. Put the code and the note in the name field, and use the comment for longer context if the software has one. When the editor sorts the exported list by name, the MUST items group together and the problems group together, which is exactly how most editors prefer to plan a pass through the footage.
The format details change between software versions, so treat the third column as a reason to test, not as a fixed rule. Before you rely on a pipeline, do one trial with your editor: export from your project, have them import it, and ask what arrived. It takes ten minutes and saves a difficult conversation in the middle of wedding season.
The two-file rule
Whatever you send, include two things: the machine-readable file (project, XML, EDL or CSV) and a human-readable moment sheet. The machine-readable file puts the markers where they belong, and the sheet explains why. If one fails, the other still carries the intent. Our broader wedding footage handoff checklist shows where the notes sit in the full package.
The one-page moment sheet
The moment sheet is the layer that no marker can replace. It tells the editor what the day meant. Keep it to one page. If it is longer, the editor will skim it; if it is shorter than half a page, it probably leaves out the context that matters.
A strong sheet has four short parts:
- Story priorities. Three to five sentences on what this couple cares about. For example: "They are private people, so favour quiet moments over party energy. The ceremony is the emotional centre."
- Moment list. A table of timecode, camera and one line each.
- People and sensitivities. Names and roles of key family members, plus anyone to leave out.
- Audio notes. Which lav belongs to whom, where wind or noise is a problem.
| Timecode | Cam | Code | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14:32:10 | A | MUST | First look, groom turns, bride's hand to mouth |
| 15:08:44 | B | BEST | Vows, wider angle is cleaner than A |
| 15:21:05 | A | PROB | Ring exchange focus hunts for two seconds |
| 19:47:30 | Lav | SPCH | Best man: "she made him a better person" |
| 20:15:00 | A | NO | Family request: skip the table with the uncle |
The example is invented, and yours should be shorter or longer depending on the day. The point is the shape: timecode first, a code second, and a note a person can read in three seconds.
What to leave out
Do not repeat the style brief here. Style belongs in a separate document, and the moment sheet should only refer to it. Do not describe every shot either. A sheet that lists 80 moments tells the editor nothing about which ones matter. Twelve to twenty well-chosen entries are better than eighty.
Speeches and toasts deserve special care. If a speech contains a line you want to use, give the exact words and the timecode; do not make the editor transcribe it. Read the audio basics in how to prep wedding audio before you outsource editing so the lav files and the notes line up.
Reading the review round: from comments back to the timeline
Markers do not stop mattering when the first cut returns. The same system works in the other direction: your editor sends a cut, you review it, and your feedback becomes a list of timecoded comments. Review platforms make this easy because comments are tied to a frame.
Frame.io, for example, can bring comments into Premiere Pro as markers; Frame.io's documentation says each imported marker carries the comment text, the collaborator and the comment time. There is an important caveat: that import process applies to the Legacy review panel, and Frame.io's own article states that V4 accounts are not compatible with it. In Premiere Pro 25.2 or later, a separate V4 Comments panel exists. If your studio and your editor use different versions, check which panel each side has before you promise a one-click workflow.
Timecode accuracy deserves a warning. Review platforms and editing applications can differ in frame rate handling, start timecode and whether they count from the first frame of the file or of the sequence. A comment placed at 01:12:08 in one tool can land a few frames off in another, and with mixed frame rates, such as 24 fps cinematic footage and 60 fps slow motion in the same sequence, the offset can be larger. When a comment matters, describe the content as well as the time: "the kiss, just before the cheer" is robust to a few frames of drift.
Whichever tool you use, reuse the same codes in your feedback. A comment that begins with "FIX:", "SWAP:" or "CUT:" is much easier to triage than a paragraph of prose. It also lets your editor count the revision requests and see whether the cut is converging. For a full approach to reviewing a first cut, see our QC checklist for your editor's first cut.
Common mistakes to avoid
| Mistake | Why it hurts | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Marking everything | Editor stops trusting the markers | Mark only decisions |
| Colour with no text code | Colour can be lost in export | Start every comment with a code |
| No legend | New editors misread colours | Paste the legend into each sheet |
| Notes only in your head | Cannot be handed over | Write the sheet the night of ingest |
| Untested pipeline | Markers vanish on import | Run one trial export with your editor |
| Markers on unsynced angles | Each camera needs its own mark | Sync before marking |
A final rule is to treat the first project with a new editor as a calibration run. Send a smaller, simpler wedding, use the full system, and ask for feedback on what arrived and what was confusing. The second project will go faster, and the tenth will feel automatic.
Frequently asked questions
How many markers is too many for one wedding?
There is no fixed number, but if you cannot remember what a marker colour means without looking at the legend, you have too many. A useful target is a dozen to a few dozen high-priority markers for a full-day wedding, plus whatever sync anchors your multicam setup needs. If your editor tells you they stopped reading the markers, cut the list down.
Should I put markers in the footage or just send a document?
Send both. Markers put the information exactly on the frame, while a document explains the reasons behind them. If your editor uses a different editing application, a text or spreadsheet export acts as a backup, and the moment sheet carries the context. Sending only one of the two leaves a gap.
Will my markers show up if my editor uses different software?
Often only partly. Project files and XML are most reliable when both sides use the same application and version. An EDL or a CSV export crosses between applications more easily but may drop colour or long comments; one reported Premiere Pro issue involves missing marker colour in CSV and text exports. Run a short test export with your editor, and keep the text code at the start of each comment so the meaning survives even without colour.
Do camera flags like OK and NG work with every camera?
No. Support depends on the camera model, the recording format and the software that reads the metadata. Sony's documentation for its Catalyst Prepare plugin describes shot marks and clip flags in MP4 and MXF clips, with OK, Keep and NG mapping to ratings in Premiere Pro. For other cameras, check the manufacturer's manual, and test with a short clip before the wedding. If flags are not available, use voice slates.
Is a voice slate really enough for exact moments?
It is enough to point your editor to the right area of the clip, which is usually all that is needed. For frame-accurate decisions, such as the exact word of a toast to cut on, add a marker at ingest or give the timecode in your moment sheet. Use the slate for fast, in-the-moment notes and the later layers for precision.