Ability to deselect/unselect a marker

Please give us the ability to deselect a marker we add to a media pool clip.

Here’s my problem: In the source viewer of the Media Page I have a long piece of footage of a talking head from which I am trying to excerpt the best pieces. I do this by placing duration markers on the footage. I end up with, say, ten such markers. Then I want to go into each duration marker and add keywords that I will later use to assign subclips to smart bins.

Here’s my problem: Once I have added a name, note, and keyword to the first marker and closed the marker box, the duration marker remains selected/highlighted/in focus, and I have not figured out a way to unselect it. And as long as the first marker is selected, I am unable to edit the second marker.

I tried double-clicking the marker. That deselects it all right. But it also moves it slightly, and that I want to avoid.

I arrived at this workaround to deselect marker number 1:
1) Click an empty spot on the jog bar under the source viewer and hit COMMAND + M. This adds a marker and opens the marker box.
2) Click the button “Remove Marker.” That removes the random marker, and it deselects the marker that was previously selected.

This is a tedious process. Please provide your users with an easier way of deselecting markers. Thank you!

Shift-Up/Down Arrow to move between markers. Shift-M to edit selected marker.

Shift-Up/Down Arrow to move between markers. Shift-M to edit selected marker.

That is the expected behaviour (and how I thought it worked everywhere), but it does not work as expected on the Media page, the Fairlight page nor the Source viewer on the Edit page. On those panels the playhead jumps to the prev/next marker position, but does not select it, and leaves the prior marker selection as-is. So the wrong Marker gets modified when you Shift-M.

+1

The ability to select / deselect a marker (especially a duration marker) needs to be hotkeyable. Having to use the mouse slows things down immensely when dropping duration markers onto a timeline. Mouse selection is also very impractical on long clips (i.e. interviews) where duration markers get all bunched up and tiny.

This also affects the setting In/Out from Duration Marker function. Under ordinary circumstances (with no marker selected), setting In/Out from a Duration marker will set In/Out according to whichever marker is under the playhead. When a marker is selected, this gets "stuck", and In/Out will be set according to the selected marker no matter where the playhead is. With no quick way of deselecting the marker, this screws up quick a number of workflows that rely on picking a pre-marked clip based on playhead position.

Bump, with some additional info:

Current selection rules for markers creates some really weird behaviour, in that a marker can be selected that isn't visible. So, you're scrubbing through a clip that is full of duration markers, and you want to drop it onto the timeline. So, set in/out from duration marker (I have this hotkeyed), then F9 to insert it to the timeline.

This works great ... unless a marker is already selected. If there's a marker selected, *that marker* sets in/out, not the one under the playhead where I was scrubbing. And, if that marker is hidden from view (along with the selection), the apparent behaviour is that in/out get set to some random clip that is "stuck", not matter where the playhead is. Because the marker is hidden, there isn't even any visual evidence for why the "set in/out from duration marker" keeps failing. It just seems to be a bug.

So, please make it possible to deselect markers somehow, or perhaps just improve how marker selection from the playhead works.

Bump, still a problem in DR18.0.1

In the source viewer of the Media Page

Do the work on the Edit page, not the Media page.

That said, it does work for me on the Media page in Studio 18.0.1 on Windows 10.

Thanks Jim. Can you specify *how* you are managing to deselect markers? I'm working in the edit page, and it's definitely not obvious.

Click it again.

Thanks. I didn't know there was a mouse-based solution. At least the functionality is there.

The problem is that it only works if the selected marker is visible. You can't click on a marker that you can't see. And, as Elderberry noted, it's quite error prone: A slight mouse slip can move a marker by a minute or more on a long clip, and it's not immediately obvious when the marker moves.

So, I'm amending my feature request for a keyboard / hotkey-based method for deselecting a marker.

And, I'm adding an additional feature request: Making markers not visible should automatically deselect any markers that would be hidden. That would address a huge issue, which is that a hidden marker that is selected can invisibly change the behaviour of "set in and out from duration marker" in a way that is basically a bug.

You can't click on a marker that you can't see.

Why can't you see it?

Because I hide markers I'm not using using View->Show Markers.

OK, but I think I'm still confused.

If you're not using the Marker, why do you need to select (or deselect) it? Wouldn't you necessarily need to re-enable those Markers first?

Double-Click the Marker you want to edit. Close the dialog and Double-Click the next Marker you want to edit. If the Maker you want to edit isn't visible, you need to change that first.

It's a pretty simple process.


Now, there is already a Request to add a Next Marker option to the dialog, so closing, selecting and opening is done in one click. That would probably help you out here, if you want to search that out and add your vote.

That's a good question! I'm honestly not sure how hidden markers are getting selected, but it's happening.

My best working theory is that markers stay selected after they are edited, and I think Resolve might save marker selections across sessions. So, even though I'm not actively working with the markers, some of them stay selected for days even after they are hidden. And that causes serious bad behaviour when I'm trying to work with visible markers.

Incidentally, it *is* possible to select a hidden marker by accident if the playhead happens to be over a hidden marker and the hotkey "M" is used to add a new marker (or edit a second marker that is directly on top of the first one). The marker does not automatically become visible when it is selected, and if you aren't watching very closely, it's possible to edit the wrong marker. I run into this less commonly because it's a fluke that the playhead ends up on top of an existing (but hidden) marker, but it has happened to me a few times.

I think a lot of this has to do with use a keyboard-based workflow — yes, you can do everything with a mouse, and maybe it works. That's not how I've been working, both for speed (keyboard is much faster) and accuracy (a tiny slip of the mouse can move markers around when you are selecting or deselecting). And selection matters much more for a keyboard workflow, because selection takes place at a different time from the action. With a mouse, you just click on the marker you want, whether or not it's already selected.

I think marker selection heuristics in general could use some improvement. For example, right now "convert duration marker to in / out points" only works when the playhead is directly over the first frame of the duration marker (likely because that frame is the only point that is actually saved — the duration is extrapolated from the first frame). It would be nice if it was enough to simply have the playhead somewhere in the duration — but this would then cause selection issues if two durations overlap, so there would need to be some caution in how this was implemented.