QC notes & marker converter

From client notes to markers on the timeline.

Paste or drop QC notes (a spreadsheet or QC-platform export, an Avid marker list as text or XML, a Final Cut Pro FCPXML, a Premiere marker CSV, a Resolve marker EDL or plain timecoded lines), check every timecode against your frame rate (times without frames, HH:MM:SS, go on the first frame of their second), clear duplicates and overlaps, shift or rebase them, and download markers for Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. Before each download you see exactly what the target format can’t hold. It all runs in your browser: nothing is uploaded or kept.

1. Your notes

Choose a file

Several files

Convert several notes files at once with the settings above: the same frame rate, timeline and export, and columns matched by their header names. Cleanup steps aren’t applied, since they name markers in one file.

Choose files

Settings

Preset

Save these settings as

Settings only: how to read the notes, the timeline and the export. Your notes are never saved or put in a link.

Nothing is uploaded: the notes are read and converted in your browser, and nothing is kept when you leave.

Nothing is corrected behind your back

A timecode that can’t exist is listed with its row and line, not nudged to the nearest frame. That covers a frame number past the frame rate, an hour past 23, and a drop-frame label that drop-frame skips: at 29.97 DF, 00:01:00;00 and 00:01:00;01 don’t exist, the minute starts at 00:01:00;02. A drop-frame timecode (written with a semicolon) on a non-drop timeline is a question, not a guess, and an Out before its In is an error, not a swap.

Programme timecode and source timecode

Notes can carry two kinds of timecode. Programme (record) timecode says where on the edited timeline; source timecode says where in a camera file or clip. The converter places markers by programme timecode and keeps any source timecode beside them, at its own frame rate, so 23.976 rushes in a 25 fps cut stay correct.

What each format can hold

CSV keeps everything and reads back into this tool unchanged. Avid marker lists hold a user, timecode, track, one of eight colours (sixteen from Media Composer 2024.6, which also adds a marker name), a one-line comment and a duration; tabs and line breaks can’t be in a comment (Media Composer’s text export leaves out a marker whose comment has one; export XML and drop that here instead). Media Composer puts a ranged marker on the TC1 track, and keeps text as Mac Roman, so characters outside it (Chinese, emoji) become “?”. FCPXML markers hold a name, a note, a duration and a to-do flag, but no colour; DaVinci Resolve 20.3 imports no markers from FCPXML at all, so use the Resolve marker EDL for Resolve. Resolve marker EDLs hold a name, a one-line note, one of Resolve’s 16 colours and a duration, but no track or user; Resolve reads every “|” as a field break, so the file has “¦” instead, and its import turns emoji into “�”. Premiere Pro can only import markers inside a Final Cut Pro 7 XML, which opens as a new sequence holding them; with “Copy Paste Includes Sequence Markers” on, copying its slug clip into your own sequence carries the markers across. Name, comment and duration survive, but no colour (they come in green), and tabs and line breaks are dropped. Its File › Export › Markers CSV reads straight back in here. Anything a format can’t hold is either carried in the comment or note, if you choose, or listed as dropped before you download.

Column profiles read known exports without matching columns by hand: Frame.io comments (commenter, and Complete as Done/Open; set the frame rate yourself, as the export doesn’t say whether it’s 30 or 29.97), Vimeo review comments (whole seconds from the start of the video, so each marker lands on the first frame of its second), SyncSketch notes (a frame number from the start of the video, not a timecode), Wipster comments (player time in seconds, placed on the frame showing then, so the frame rate must be exact) and SDVI Rally markers (automated QC events and people’s markers, with the frame rate taken from the file). Kollaborate’s markers CSV needs no profile: it reads as it is.

Sources: Avid Media Composer Editing Guide (marker text files); Apple’s FCPXML 1.10 DTD; Resolve’s own marker EDL export. Compatibility is only claimed for versions the files have been imported into and exported back from: Avid marker lists in Media Composer 26.8, FCPXML in Final Cut Pro 12.4, marker EDLs in DaVinci Resolve 20.3, Final Cut Pro 7 XML and marker CSVs in Premiere Pro 26.5.2.