How to Add Comments in Premiere Pro That Clients Can Actually See

Sequence markers in Premiere Pro cost my agency a full extra revision round on a brand film, and the embarrassing part is that I thought I was being organised, right. I had taken the client's feedback email, opened the project and sat down to add every one of their comments as a sequence marker at the timecode they'd written, so my editor would see each note on the timeline the next morning. Then I slipped and swapped a few shots in the first minute myself, and never noticed how every sequence marker in that stretch stayed exactly where I'd dropped it on the ruler while different footage now sat underneath it.

So my editor fixed the note at 1:12 on a shot the client never meant, and did the same with the next few. The cut went back with the original problems still there plus two changed shots the client had actually liked, which meant another full round. To be very honest the software did nothing wrong, right, I had used a note to self feature as a client feedback system, and that's how I learned that how to add comments in Premiere Pro for yourself and how a client's comments get into Premiere Pro are two completely different jobs.

So this post covers both, the native markers I still use every day for my own notes first, and then how I get client comments onto the exact frame and back inside Premiere without anybody retyping a thing.

Two kinds of comments editors mean when they ask this

Search this question and the results split in two, and that split is the whole answer. Half the pages teach markers, the colored flags you drop on a clip or on the timeline ruler with a note inside, and the other half cover reviewer comments from somebody who isn't editing, usually through Adobe's shared projects or Frame.io.

The first job is notes to yourself or another editor, like an audio pop to clean at 00:02:14:08, a temp music cue that still needs licensing, and so on. The second job is a client or producer who has never opened your project telling you what to change, and that person usually has no Premiere and no Creative Cloud login, and zero interest in getting either just to tell you the logo comes in early. Premiere Pro is a desktop editing application built for the person cutting, right, not the person approving, so the second job needs comments that are born somewhere else and then arrive on your timeline.

Most of the client notes I get land at the rough cut stage, when the structure is still moving, which is exactly when a note pinned to the wrong thing does the most damage. Adobe's own route for client review runs through Frame.io, which bills per user from $15 per user per month, and that's a fair option if your team and your client already live there. My Frame.io alternative for Premiere Pro post sets it against flat workspace pricing.

Adding Premiere Pro marker notes to sequences and clips

Basically there are two kinds of marker, right, and which one you get depends on what's selected when you press the key. Park the playhead where the note belongs and press M, and with nothing selected you get a sequence marker on the ruler at the top. If a clip happens to be selected, M quietly drops a clip marker on that clip instead, which has caught almost every editor I've trained, and for a clip marker on purpose you can also open the clip in the Source Monitor and press M there.

To write the note, double-click the marker, or press M a second time on the same frame, and the Marker dialog opens with a Name field, the timecode, a Duration, a Comments box and a row of color swatches. Leave the type on its default, Comment Marker, because Chapter, Segmentation and Web Link markers are for delivery work. I keep the Name short enough to read on the ruler and put the full thought in Comments. For instance, my audio note reads "Audio pop" as the Name and "lav rustle under the second sentence, try the boom track or a 2-frame crossfade" in Comments, colored red, so whoever opens the sequence can fix it without messaging me.

For a stretch where the pacing drags, hold Alt on Windows or Option on Mac and drag the marker to stretch it, or type a Duration in the dialog. Window, Markers then lists every marker in the sequence with its timecode, name and comment, clicking one jumps the playhead there, and you can search the text or filter by color. Shift+M jumps to the next marker and Ctrl+Shift+M, or Cmd+Shift+M on a Mac, jumps back, which is how I walk a sequence note by note without touching the mouse.

So notes about a piece of media go on clip markers and notes about the edit go on sequence markers, right. Before any heavy restructuring I tick Ripple Sequence Markers and still assume that anything I slip or swap will leave its sequence notes behind, because I learned that one the expensive way.

Where native markers stop working for client feedback

Everything above works because the person writing the note sits inside the project, and the catch here is that your client never will. A marker lives in your project file, so somebody on your side has to translate every client note into one, and each translation is a place where the note can quietly go wrong.

The client writes "the logo around 1:12 feels early", right, and at 25 frames per second "around 1:12" could be any one of 25 frames. Then there's the offset, because their video player started counting at zero while my sequence starts at 01:00:00:00, so their 1:12 is 01:01:12:00 on my ruler, and the one time an editor forgets that sum the marker lands somewhere the client never looked. Or they watched the version from two days ago, or the note says "move this text a bit up" and a marker can't show which text or how far. And when I have a question back, like whether they mean the first logo or the end card, the marker can't ask it, so it goes to email and the thread splits into three places.

I go deeper into that trade in Premiere markers versus a review tool, but the short version is that markers are a brilliant private notebook and a terrible inbox, does that make sense, right, so the fix is to stop treating them as the inbox.

Getting client comments onto the exact frame

What I do now is export the cut, upload it to PlayPause and send the client one share link, which they open in a browser with no account and no install. They press play, pause on the moment that bothers them and type, right, and the comment sticks to that exact frame as a time-coded annotation, so "around 1:12" turns into one precise frame without anybody guessing. For "this whole intro drags" they leave a range comment across the stretch, and for "move this text up" they draw on the frame with the drawing and markup tools, which in my agency kills more revision rounds than any feedback form.

Say you send a 90-second product video as MV1 and the client leaves 14 comments, for instance two range comments across the intro, one drawing circling the price text and eleven single-frame notes, and one of those is unclear. I reply in the thread on that comment and @mention the editor who owns the fix, so the whole conversation stays attached to the frame it's about instead of scattering across WhatsApp and email.

I also send the review copy with the same start timecode and frame rate as the sequence, which is the routine in syncing client comments to the exact frame, so a timecode the client quotes in a reply matches my ruler. And I check the export against the timeline, because when Premiere export colors look different the client ends up commenting on a grade you never made.

Seeing client comments inside Premiere Pro

The PlayPause Premiere Pro panel shows those client comments inside Premiere next to your timeline, and when you click a comment the playhead jumps to that frame. So the editor reads the note and lands on the frame in one motion, which is exactly the loop my old marker habit left open. Pairing is done with a code, so no password gets typed into Premiere, and I'm pretty sure nobody wants a password saved in an editing app that three freelancers share.

Answering, for me, still happens in the review thread, right, because that's where the client reads it, so the editor works through the comments in the panel and I reply in PlayPause when a note needs a question or a quick "done, have a look in the next cut". I've walked through this end to end in reviewing video inside Premiere Pro, and the Premiere Pro workflow page shows how it fits an Adobe setup. The PlayPause pricing page lists which plans include the panel, so check there first.

Uploading the next cut from the timeline without leaving the edit

Once the notes are done, the panel uploads the cut straight from the timeline, so you skip hunting for the exported file and dragging it into a browser tab. The new cut lands on the same card as a version stack, right, so MV2 sits on top of MV1 and the client isn't digging through files called final, final two and final really really final. It's basically version control for a cut, with the whole history of the edit on one card.

On Agency and up, side-by-side version compare lets you put MV1 against MV2 and check the 14 notes were actually addressed, and I cover that routine in showing a client what changed. Who-watched analytics, from Creator up, tells you who opened the new cut and when, which saves me the "did you see it" message. For subtitled projects, AI transcription on Agency and up gives a clickable transcript and an SRT export, and the round trip back into the edit is in importing a checked SRT into Premiere.

A marker color system for tracking which notes are done

None of this means I stopped using markers, right, I just moved them back to the job they're good at. Client comments stay in PlayPause with their thread, and markers carry everything internal, like the audio pop, the unlicensed temp track and the shot waiting on a pickup, with colors telling anyone who opens the sequence what state each note is in.

The rule that makes it work is filtering the Markers panel to red and yellow before every upload, and if anything shows up, the cut doesn't go out. When an editor finishes a fix they switch the marker to green instead of deleting it, so the next person sees what changed, and at the end of the day that one habit gives a handover more context than any notes document. Anything that stays true for a client across projects, like a font rule or where the logo lives, goes into that client's Playbook on Agency and up, because a marker dies with the sequence, you see what I mean here.

Frequently asked questions

How do I add a comment to a marker in Premiere Pro?

Park the playhead on the frame and press M, then double-click the marker, or press M again on the same frame, to open the Marker dialog. Type a short Name, put the full note in Comments, pick a color and click OK. Window, Markers shows every note in one list, and Shift+M jumps to the next one, which is the whole native workflow I still use daily for internal notes.

Can clients see my Premiere Pro markers?

Not in any useful way, because markers live inside your project file and your client isn't in your project, so they can't reply to a marker or draw on the frame. For client feedback, send a review link where they comment on the exact frame in a browser, then read those comments inside Premiere with a panel, and trust me on any level, retyping is where notes go wrong.

How do I see client comments in Premiere Pro?

Upload the cut to PlayPause and send the client the share link, where they comment on the exact frame without creating an account. Pair the PlayPause Premiere Pro panel with a code and their comments show up inside Premiere beside your timeline, and clicking one jumps the playhead to that frame. When the fixes are done, upload the next cut from the timeline and it stacks on the same card.

Why are my marker notes on the wrong frame after editing?

You were almost certainly relying on sequence markers, which belong to the ruler rather than the footage. Ripple Sequence Markers in the Markers menu makes them follow ripple edits, so tick it before heavy trimming, but a slipped shot or a clip dragged over another still leaves the note sitting on different footage. Notes about a specific shot are safer on that shot's clip marker, which travels with the clip.

If you want your client's notes landing on the exact frame and showing up inside Premiere instead of in your inbox, every plan on PlayPause pricing starts with a 7-day free trial, so run one live project through it and see whether a single notes round comes back cleaner than your last three.

So yeah. That's my way of saying it.