Stuff about Markers

[Jkoseattle]

A few weeks back I posted the following to the Feature Requests board:

I would like the ability to jump to markers in the timeline. Jumping to keyframes is often much too granular to be very useful. I was also surprised to discover that there is apparently no Marker View window. This would also be very useful, listing all the markers in a list chronologically and allowing the user to click on one to jump to that marker. I could quickly jump to "Entrance" and then to "Slap", etc.

I still want that, and am surprised something like that isn't in there. Now I have further questions about Markers. In the Marker dialog you get a big paragraph to write your marker name in. (Making it impossible to just hit Enter to save a marker - you have to use the mouse, grrr) However, only the first line of the marker displays in the timeline. What is the point of allowing a big paragraph of text if you can only see the first line anyway?

How do any of you use markers? How do you jump around to specific frames in your timeline without endless scrolling and zooming in and out? Am I the only one who wants to jump to markers easily, with a marker list and with specific "Next/Prev Marker" keystrokes?

[hayasidist]

for any channel(s) with keys (including markers)

select the channel (click the channel icon) or select the range of keys you want to navigate - then shift { is previous and shift } is next

[synthsin75]

Hovering the mouse over a marker shows the whole note.

[Greenlaw]

Hovering the mouse over a marker shows the whole note.

Geez. I use Markers every day and I don't think I ever noticed that. Good to know!

[Greenlaw]

Regarding not being able to close the panel with Enter, yeah, that one does bug me at times. I would be okay if Enter worked that way and we instead used Shift-Enter for line returns in the panel.

The typical UI convention is that a highlighted button will get 'pressed' on Enter but this is used inconsistently throughout Moho. Some panels recognize that the Enter key presses the highlighted button (Layers Settings) and others don't (Markers).

There's other inconsistent UI behavior that annoy me but, now that I'm thinking about it, I'll send my list to the devs.

[Jkoseattle]

for any channel(s) with keys (including markers)

select the channel (click the channel icon) or select the range of keys you want to navigate - then shift { is previous and shift } is next

That works, but it isn't that awesome of a solution. I want to be able to put a Marker at frame 687 called "Rubs belly", because a lot of things are going to happen at that point, and then I open a little panel of all the Markers in the project, and I can click on "Rubs belly" and the timeline moves there. IMO the Markers feel really v1-ish. Nice start, but so much more could be done with them.

Maybe the problem is the workflow I've taken up, which was inherited from my experience with DAWs. Perhaps there's an obvious flaw with it that if corrected would make my Marker whine irrelevant. Keep in mind that this is a music video, so the audio track is already done and must be synced to. The workflow also happens after a storyboard is already done.

1. In the Audio software, determine all the places important things happen. "Rubs belly", "Penguin enters", "Stapler explodes"
2. Write down all these cues in Excel, with the frame number they will occur
3. In a new Moho project, put Markers at all those points listed in Excel, labeled with the event that occurs there

Now I can animate things based on these markers. Problem is, I can't jump to my Markers, and I can't even read them if they are close enough together and/or the labels are long enough.

[Greenlaw]

IMO the Markers feel really v1-ish. Nice start, but so much more could be done with them.

The timeline markers actually are a fairly recent addition, introduced in version 10 I think.

The devs have improved them a little since then but, I agree, Markers can still use improvement. The timeline got such a major overhaul for Moho 12, and I'm sure improving Markers is on their list of other things to make mo better.

FYI, besides action descriptions, I rely on them them heavily for music and dialog cues. Even in their current form, I really appreciate having them. Nowadays, I'd go nuts without Markers.

[synthsin75]

It sounds like you might be better served using note layers in a switch. That way you could always see the whole note, and navigate between them using the switch tool drop down or the switch selection window.

[hayasidist]

1. In the Audio software, determine all the places important things happen. "Rubs belly", "Penguin enters", "Stapler explodes"
2. Write down all these cues in Excel, with the frame number they will occur
3. In a new Moho project, put Markers at all those points listed in Excel, labeled with the event that occurs there

Now I can animate things based on these markers. Problem is, I can't jump to my Markers, and I can't even read them if they are close enough together and/or the labels are long enough.

that's pretty easy with a couple of scripts - (nope - I don't have time to write them this side of Easter 2017)

Set up:
read (e.g.) a CSV (from excel) - say frame (or timecode), text
for each line create a marker

Navigate:
in dolayout or in updateWidgets scan the markers channel(s) to create a list of markers and frames, present them in a drop-down (in short form)
in handle message for a given entry - jump to frame (or maybe show long test and offer {jump to frame / choose again})

(you could also add a couple of "standards" in there such as frame 0 and frame 1 if you so wanted to help you with another point you've raised.)

[Greenlaw]

All said, I have to say Moho's markers are a lot nicer to work with than Harmony's. It's super difficult to select markers there, let alone slide them around on the timeline. I also like how Moho's marker drops a vertical line down to the bottom so you can see if the keys are in alignment; in After Effect there is no vertical line, which makes is less clear what's in alignment unless you're currently right on top of the marker.

Not saying Moho's markers are perfect but, IMO, they are much better than what I work with in some other animation packages.