How to add beat markers in Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro doesn't detect beats for you. The free way is to select the music clip, play it and tap M on every beat, then nudge the markers that landed late. mouzebeat reads the selected music clip, finds the beat, adds markers on every beat, every 2, every bar or the hits, cuts clips to 1, 2, 4 or 8 beats and ducks the music under dialogue.
- No beat detection in Premiere Pro. A request for it on Adobe's community dates from May 2014 and is still open for voting.
- By hand: M adds a marker at the playhead while the music plays.
- One beat lasts 60 ÷ BPM seconds: at 120 BPM that's 0.5 s, or 12 frames at 24 fps.
- mouzebeat's Listen plays a click on every beat, so you can check the grid by ear before you cut.
- Only mouzebeat's own markers and keys are replaced or removed; yours stay.
Does Premiere Pro add beat markers automatically?
No. There is no command that listens to a song and drops markers on the beat. The feature request for automatic beat detection on Adobe's community was posted in May 2014 and on 31 October 2026 still says Open for Voting.
What Premiere does give you is markers, snapping, Automate to Sequence and the Remix tool, which rearranges a song to fit a new length (it changes the music, not your cuts). So there are three ways to get beat markers: tap them in by hand, work them out from the tempo, or use an extension that detects the beat.
How do I add beat markers in Premiere Pro by hand?
Play the music and press M on each beat. That's the whole method; the details make it accurate:
- Select the music clip first. With a clip selected, M puts a clip marker on it, and clip markers travel with the song if you slide it later. With nothing selected, M marks the sequence instead, which you want for Automate to Sequence (below).
- Tap the drum you hear best. Kick or snare, not hi-hats. Tap through the whole section once without stopping.
- Fix the late ones. Zoom into the waveform and drag markers onto the peaks. Taps usually land a little behind the beat.
- Turn snapping on (the magnet in the Timeline panel), so cuts and clip edges snap to the markers.
It's free and it works, and for a 30-second promo it's still the quickest way. For a three-minute music video it's tedious, and taps get looser as your attention drifts.
One small upgrade: put Premiere's Add Marker on a side button of your mouse with mouzeclick's per-app buttons, so your hand stays on the mouse and the keyboard stays out of it. The mouse shortcuts guide shows how.
How do I space beat markers from the BPM?
One beat lasts 60 ÷ BPM seconds; multiply by the frame rate for frames per beat. If you know the tempo (stock music sites usually list it), this tells you where every marker goes:
| BPM | Seconds per beat | Frames at 24 fps | Frames at 25 fps | Frames at 30 fps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90 | 0.667 | 16 | 16.7 | 20 |
| 100 | 0.6 | 14.4 | 15 | 18 |
| 120 | 0.5 | 12 | 12.5 | 15 |
| 128 | 0.469 | 11.25 | 11.7 | 14.1 |
| 140 | 0.429 | 10.3 | 10.7 | 12.9 |
Some pairs land on whole frames (90 or 120 BPM at 24 or 30 fps, 100 BPM at 25 or 30). The rest drift if you place markers a fixed number of frames apart: at 128 BPM and 24 fps, a marker every 11 frames is a quarter-frame early each beat, a whole beat out after 45 beats, about 21 seconds in. Work out each marker's own time from the start and round that, and you're never more than half a frame off.
Then there's real music. A drummer playing live doesn't hold a perfect tempo, and a fixed grid wanders off within a verse. That's the case for detection.
How do I cut clips to the beat markers?
With snapping on, cut each clip at a marker with the Razor tool or by moving the playhead to the marker and adding an edit. That's precise and slow.
For a quick first assembly, Premiere's Automate to Sequence can place clips at markers: put sequence markers on the beats (nothing selected when you press M), select your clips in the bin in the order you want, choose Clip › Automate to Sequence and set Placement to At Unnumbered Markers. Untick the default transitions in the same dialog unless you want a dissolve on every beat. Treat the result as a rough cut and trim from there.
How does mouzebeat find the beat in Premiere Pro?
Select the music clip on the timeline, open Window › Extensions › mouzebeat and press Analyse music. It reads the clip and finds its beat. Press Listen and it plays the song with a click on every beat, so you check the grid by ear before anything touches your timeline. Then:
- Beat markers on every beat, every 2, every bar or the hits.
- Cut each clip to 1, 2, 4 or 8 beats, from the music start or from the playhead.
- Snap cuts rolls each existing cut onto its nearest beat. Handy for an edit you cut by eye that is nearly right.
- Pulse adds a scale bump on every beat, every 2 or each bar start.
- Auto-duck lowers the music under the selected dialogue.
Only mouzebeat's own markers and keys are replaced or removed when you run it again, so markers you placed for other reasons stay where they are. It is one of the eight Premiere Pro extensions in mouzeclick.
What if the song was played live or the tempo is off?
Check it with Listen, then correct it. If the clicks don't sit on the beat you can set the tempo by tapping along, halve or double it (a detector can lock onto half or double the real tempo), or go back to Auto.
For music played live, Follow the hits moves each beat onto a drum hit within 60 ms of it. 60 ms is under two frames at 24 or 30 fps, so the markers land on what the drummer actually played rather than on a perfect grid. For a song that changes tempo part way, listen through each section; the click tells you at once whether the grid still sits right.
How do I duck the music under the voice in Premiere Pro?
Premiere does this natively in the Essential Sound panel: tag the voice clips as Dialogue, select the music and tag it as Music, tick Ducking, set it to duck against dialogue, then press Generate Keyframes. Premiere writes volume keyframes on the music where people talk.
mouzebeat's Auto-duck does the same job from the panel you're already cutting in: select the dialogue and it lowers the music under it. Both leave keyframes you can drag. Whichever you use, duck last: silence removal moves the dialogue, and the ducking would have to be redone. The silence remover guide covers that step.
Which other tools add beat markers in Premiere Pro?
A few extensions do. blinkl's Beat Detector, for one, analyses an audio clip and puts a marker on every beat, keeps every beat, every other beat or every bar, and can cut the selected tracks at the markers. Its page says detection runs on your computer, it needs Premiere Pro 2024 or newer on macOS 11+ or Windows 10+, and it comes with blinkl's 14-day free trial, then a blinkl subscription. If beat markers are all you want, a dedicated tool like that is a fair choice.
mouzebeat goes further into the edit (cuts to 1, 2, 4 or 8 beats, Snap cuts, Pulse, Follow the hits, Auto-duck) and comes with everything else in mouzeclick. For motion work, the mouzeclick workspace for After Effects has Mark audio beats, with all-beat, kick or snare detection, on Windows only (see workspaces).
Does mouzebeat work on Mac, and what does it cost?
Yes. mouzebeat runs in Premiere Pro on macOS 12 or newer and on Windows 10 and 11 (Mac install guide). After you install the Premiere panels from the mouzeclick app and restart Premiere, it's under Window › Extensions; keep mouzeclick running while you work.
One plan covers it and everything else: $25 a month or $249 for a year (pricing). Try it free for 3 days, no card. A creator or friend code takes 10% off a new customer's first 30-day or 1-year payment.
Cut your next music edit on the beat. One plan with everything included, $25 a month, or $249 for a year.
Questions people ask
Should I cut on every beat?
Rarely for long. At 120 BPM a cut on every beat is a new shot every half second, which wears people out after ten seconds or so. Cut on bars or every 2 beats for B-roll and talking, and save every-beat cuts for a drop or a build. mouzebeat's cut lengths of 1, 2, 4 and 8 beats exist for exactly this.
Clip markers or sequence markers: which should I use for beats?
Clip markers if the song might move: they sit on the music clip and travel with it. Sequence markers if you'll use Automate to Sequence, which places clips at the sequence's unnumbered markers. If your markers ended up on the wrong one, press M with the music clip selected for clip markers, or with nothing selected for sequence markers.
Why do my beat markers drift off the beat?
Three usual reasons. You spaced them a fixed number of frames apart at a tempo that doesn't divide into whole frames. The music was played live and the tempo moves. Or you tapped them in, and taps run late. Work out each marker's time from the start, or use detection with a check by ear.
Will mouzebeat remove markers I placed myself?
No. When you run it again, mouzebeat replaces or removes only the markers and keyframes it made. Markers you added for YouTube chapters, notes or fixes stay exactly where they are. It's still worth giving your own markers a different colour, so you can tell at a glance which ones are beats.
Can I check the beats before anything is cut?
Yes, and you should. Analyse music, then press Listen: the song plays with a click on every beat. Add markers only, scrub through, and run the cuts once the grid sounds right. Cutting is the step that's annoying to redo, so it goes last.
What does Pulse do?
Pulse adds a small scale bump on every beat, every 2 or at the start of each bar, so a still picture or a title gives a little kick with the music. It's written as keyframes, which mouzebeat can replace or remove later without touching keyframes you set yourself. Use it lightly; on talking footage it looks like a shaky camera.
Can I add beat markers in After Effects?
Yes. On Windows, the mouzeclick workspace for After Effects has Mark audio beats (in Motion lab's Fx presets), with all-beat, kick or snare detection, spaced every beat or every 2nd, 4th or 8th beat, placed on the comp or a selected layer. The workspaces are Windows only. The After Effects tools guide covers what else is in there.
What music works best for beat detection?
Songs with a clear drum: pop, hip-hop, electronic, most stock tracks. Ambient pads, solo piano and rubato strings have no steady pulse, and any detector struggles there. For those, tap the tempo in yourself or place markers on the phrases you hear, which is what an editor would do by hand anyway.
Sources
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