Importing Descript Markers into Logic Pro
We’ve been using Descript to do a first-pass edit of our podcast The Springfield Googolplex for a couple years now and it’s really made the editing process so much easier. One of the features I love the most is the ability to add markers to your composition, which you can eventually translate into chapter markers in your final episode.
There’s only one small wrinkle: you can’t import Descript’s markers into Logic Pro. Or at least not natively.
It turns out you can get markers to import into Logic Pro using a slightly annoying (and potentially costly) work-around involving Adobe Audition. I don’t use Audition myself for much of anything but it is included in my Creative Cloud bundle. This is why I say “potentially costly”, as if you aren’t already paying for a bundle that includes Audition, you will have to fork over extra money to Adobe (and who wants to do that?)
The first step is to export your “timeline” from Descript. You’re going to need to do this twice (I mentioned this was annoying); the first time export as an Audition .sesx file, then export as a ProTools/Logic .aaf format.
When your export has finished, open up the Audition session. We don’t actually have to do anything fancy here, just export the audio. With the session open, go to Export > Multitrack Mixdown > Entire Session.
Make sure to save your file someplace you’ll be able to easily find it, because we’re going to import it into Logic in our next step.
With the export finished, you can down delete your Audition session along with any corresponding media. Next open up Logic and import your AAF you downloaded from Descript. This should give you your timeline with your multitrack audio separated out into separate tracks. Note: I’m using a custom template for my Logic session so yours might look a little different from mine.
Now, here’s where the magic happens. Drag the exported mixdown from Audition onto a new track in Logic. When you do, a pop-up should open asking if you want to import markers from the file. Click Import and it will add the markers to your timeline.
There is a chance your timeline won’t prompt you to import this data — for whatever reason my podcast template does not and I can’t figure out the setting to re-enable this pop-up. That’s okay though, you can still import the marker data by making sure you’ve selected the mixdown audio file (not just the track it is on) in your timeline and navigating to Navigate > Other > Import Marker from Audio File.
And there you have it! Your marker data from Descript is now in Logic, ready for you to make your final edits and adjustments. When you export/bounce your file, that marker data will be saved, and can be read by software like Forecast so you can embed chapter markers into your episode.
Hopefully one day Descript will come up with a solution that allows this information to be injected either directly into the AAF, or so that you can at least export the file directly from Descript and skip the Audition work-around. Until then, this is how we’ve been doing it for the past 25 episodes and it’s worked really well.