Wedding Film Chapters: How to Add Them from DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro

A full wedding film runs for forty minutes, an hour, or sometimes even longer. The couple might watch it all the way through, but then the requests start coming in: Mom wants to see the father's toast, the bridesmaids want the first dance, and Grandma wants to see the moment the bride walks out to the groom. Every time, someone ends up dragging the progress bar, missing the mark by a couple of minutes, and having to start over.

Now, with OurStoria, you can break the film down into chapters. A row of titles—such as "Getting Ready," "Ceremony," "First Dance," "Toasts," and "Party"—appears below the player, allowing viewers to jump instantly to the desired moment with a single click.

In this article, we’ll look at how these chapters appear to the couple, explore four ways to add them, and discuss the benefits they offer you as the filmmaker.

How chapters appear for the viewer

Chapters appear as a row beneath the player. The start time is displayed next to each title. As the video plays, the current chapter is highlighted, so the viewer always knows their current position.

Chapters work:

• in all 14 gallery templates — from Classic to Kinetic;
• in galleries embedded on your website;
• on the portfolio page, if the film has been added there;
• on mobile devices — the chapter row can be swiped sideways.

If a film has no chapters, nothing changes: the gallery looks exactly as it did before. Chapters are available on all plans, including the trial period.

Method 1. DaVinci Resolve: automatic chapter import

This is the fastest method if you edit in Resolve. Chapters are embedded directly into the video file, and OurStoria reads them upon upload.

1. Place a marker at the start of each chapter on the timeline (press the M key).
2. Double-click the marker and enter the title in the Name field.
3. Set all chapter markers to the same color. Use a different color for personal notes—these won't be included in the file.
4. On the Deliver page, select the MP4 format and the H.264 or H.265 codec.
5. In the render settings, check the Chapters from markers box and select the color used for your chapter markers.
6. Render and upload the file to your project as usual.

Once the video is processed, the chapters will be in place. An "Imported from file" label will appear next to them in the video card, indicating that they originated from the file. For more details on export settings, check out our guide on exporting wedding videos from DaVinci Resolve.

Method 2. DaVinci Resolve: EDL marker file

If the film has already been rendered without “Chapters from markers” enabled, there is no need to re-render it. You can simply export the markers as a separate file.

1. In Resolve, right-click the timeline in the Media Pool and select Timelines → Export → Timeline Markers to EDL.
2. In OurStoria, open the video card, go to the Chapters section, and click Import markers file.
3. Select the saved .edl file.

There is one detail to note: the EDL records time based on the timeline's timecode, and by default, a Resolve timeline starts at 01:00:00:00 rather than zero. OurStoria automatically detects the start time and displays it in the Timeline starts at field. If you changed the starting timecode (for example, by adding a countdown before the film), adjust the value in this field—the chapter timestamps will update immediately.

If the timeline contains markers of different colors, you will be prompted to choose which color represents the chapters. The most frequently used color is selected by default.

Method 3. Premiere Pro: CSV marker file

Premiere only embeds chapter data into the file when exporting to QuickTime MOV; it does not do so for MP4. Therefore, it is more convenient to export markers separately from Premiere.

1. Place markers on the sequence (press the M key).
2. Double-click a marker, enter a name, and select the Chapter Marker type.
3. Go to File → Export → Markers and save the file in CSV format.
4. In OurStoria, open the video card, go to the Chapters section, click Import markers file, and select that file.

If the file contains "Chapter" type markers, OurStoria will import only those and ignore Comment markers. If you only placed standard markers, all of them will be imported.

Be sure to choose CSV: Premiere’s TXT export does not include marker names, so OurStoria will not accept that file format and will tell you what to do instead.

Method 4. Manually or via a list

If you are editing in a different program or simply want to tweak a few names, you can add chapters directly within OurStoria.

• Add chapter at current time. Start the preview in the video card, pause at the desired frame, and click the button—the timestamp will be filled in automatically, leaving only the name for you to enter.
• Paste list. Paste a list where each line begins with a timestamp:

0:00 Getting ready
4:12 Ceremony
18:40 First dance

If you already publish videos on YouTube with chapters in the description, you can simply copy that list.

Nothing is published until you click Save

Any import—whether an EDL file, CSV, or a pasted list—only populates the draft. You can view all the chapters, adjust timestamps and names, remove unwanted items, and only then click Save chapters. If something goes wrong, the Discard changes button will revert to the saved version.

The limits are simple: up to 50 chapters per video and up to 100 characters per chapter title.

Which chapters viewers jump to most

On paid plans, a Chapters section appears in the project’s Analytics tab. It shows how many times the couple and their guests navigated to each chapter during the selected period.

This reveals which moments are being rewatched over and over. If viewers jump to the toasts most often, it’s a sign that you should offer a separate video featuring the speeches. If it’s the first dance, that suggests it should be placed at the beginning of the highlight reel.

Tips for chapters

• Name the chapters based on how the couple remembers them, rather than using the scene names from your project file. "First Look" is more meaningful than "Scene 3."
• Start the first chapter at 0:00 so the beginning of the film has a title, too.
• Avoid over-segmenting. A chapter should mark a point where a viewer might want to start watching, not just every single shot change.
• Chapters are especially useful for long documentaries—the longer the film, the harder it is to find a specific moment. Read more about film length in our study.

The bottom line

Chapters transform a long, single-file film into a story that is easy to navigate. The couple can quickly find their favorite moments, relatives won't get lost on the progress bar, and you can see which parts of the film resonate most.

Open any project, expand the video card, and look for the Chapters section below the player.