Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[locust]

Hi I would like to request this feature...

I have had some ideas concerning it..

To my understanding there would be an issue concerning Previous / Next buttons. They would need two behaviours, switching between items in playing now and skipping chapters.. (A toggle button could be handy to switch the behaviour). The other option would be to make new skins that would have extra Previous / Next buttons specifically for chapters (Which even could be done much farther in the future, if the other options are made available, or people could just edit skins themselves)

Another good addition to help overcome the issue, could be press Alt + Click, on the buttons to skip chapters (A toggle button would still be nice even if this were the path, although it could be somewhat confusing because it means depending on the state of the toggle button the alt click would alternate what it does as well)

A another feature that would be nice would be to be able to right click a file and build chapters (Just like how we build thumbnails, it would also have a place within options to set the specified interval between chapters..

Also custom keyboard shortcuts to add chapters could prove really handy as well

For videos the best place to store chapter information would probably be the sidecar files (Probably stores likea  delimited list) I'm not sure where the best place would be for audio

Anyway thanks for your time

[DaveMan538]

This would be nice!  I've ripped all my home movies into the computer and I now have mpg files that vary in length up to ~2 hours.  To be able to bookmark the various events in each file would be terrific!

[glynor]

MC does already support MP4s and MKVs with chapters, like it does with DVDs and whatnot.  But those chapters have to be added to the media file itself as a track when it is created.  So, it seems like you mean that you want MC to allow you to create chapters in files that don't otherwise have them embedded.  Right?

Well... You can do that too!  Sort-of.  Disclaimer: I haven't played with this much at all yet, personally, but I have read lots of the threads and followed along.  I think using it is still a little clunky, but... MC 17 has a new feature called Particles which can be used for things much like this.  Particles are like "virtual copies" of a particular file, which can each have their own playback range and other characteristics.  It is a new feature, and (like I said) I'm no expert, but others could comment.

Try searching Interact for "particles".  Here is the wiki page: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles

One thing to note: It isn't quite chapter support.  For example, because you'd then be playing a "playlist" of separate "files" in MC to play through the whole thing, I'm not sure how seamless playback switching from one "chapter" to the next will be.  My guess is that it would be something like switching from video to video in MC now.  Very quick (if your disk is fast and not sleeping), but still there is a slight blip as it switches.  But, maybe not... Someone who has used them would have to chime in.  If so, then this system really might just be better suited to things like are described on the wiki page:  Chopping up episodes on a TV Show DVD, or separate songs/movements in a live recording.

For things that are actually like chapter support, MC does also support sidecar EDL files (used for commercial skipping and generated by something like comskip).  With this I really haven't played with it at all (I really need to get around to that one of these days), but here's the thread where Matt introduced the feature.  Search for more info.  An EDL file could contain chapter regions, in theory, just as easily as they could contain commercials.  And many video editors can output EDL lists from manually defined marks, so that would maybe be another way to do it.  I don't know how well MC's commercial-skipping-focused EDL support would handle this, but it might be worth looking into as well.

[rick.ca]

I'm not sure exactly what's being requested here, but I suppose it's just a general request for better Chapter support...

For some things, like concert videos, Chapters are probably a better solution than Particles and certainly better than chopping the video up into separate 'track' files. Particles can still be made from the chapters if there's a desire to create a pseudo file for each track that can be separately tagged. Chapters, however, allow the video to be played seamlessly, while providing the means to jump by chapter.

Chapter data can be added to an MKV or existing chapters edited using a tool like MKVmerge. It's step apart from the creation of an MKV anyway, so it's not something that can only be done when the MKV is created. And they're more than just bookmark-like position markers—they can have descriptive names. It would be nice if MC could read chapter data from some kind of easily editable sidecar file, but I doubt there are standards for such things. MKVmerge saves an XML file according to the Matroska standard. That might be a logical format to support, but it's not as user-friendly as a simple text file. In any case, there is a solution available now—any video files (e.g., home videos) can be added to a MKV container, and then chapters added to that. ChapterGrabber is a handy tool for extracting times, finding names and saving the results as a Matroska-format XML that can be added to a MKV.

As for navigation, the OSD already supports navigating to the next and previous chapters. Unfortunately, it doesn't support jumping to a specific chapter not immediately before or after the current one. There is a jump menu on the context menu, but that's not available to most users using a remote. Even if it is, it's a poor solution when viewed from the couch. What's needed is for a 'Chapter Jump' menu in the OSD. This would be in addition to the existing menu item, and when selected would present a full vertical chapter list (i.e., just like the context menu) to scroll through an pick the chapter to jump to.

[glynor]

Chapter data can be added to an MKV or existing chapters edited using a tool like MKVmerge. It's step apart from the creation of an MKV anyway, so it's not something that can only be done when the MKV is created. And they're more than just bookmark-like position markers—they can have descriptive names. It would be nice if MC could read chapter data from some kind of easily editable sidecar file, but I doubt there are standards for such things. MKVmerge saves an XML file according to the Matroska standard. That might be a logical format to support, but it's not as user-friendly as a simple text file. In any case, there is a solution available now—any video files (e.g., home videos) can be added to a MKV container, and then chapters added to that. ChapterGrabber is a handy tool for extracting times, finding names and saving the results as a Matroska-format XML that can be added to a MKV.

That's all very true (and a good point, Rick).  If the file format is easily converted to a MKV then adding real chapters to the MKV is simple.

I always want to convert my TS files, which MKVMerge doesn't support directly, so it is a pain to deal with.  If the source file is a MKV, AVI, MP4, or something else that MKVMerge can handle easily, then that's a good solution.

[rick.ca]

I always want to convert my TS files, which MKVMerge doesn't support directly, so it is a pain to deal with.

You do, of course, have to have something to start with. I normally use MakeMKV, which takes time, but is easy to use. Is that the 'pain' you're referring to, or am I missing something? I find creating or getting the chapter data (i.e., the captions for existing chapter markings), if not ready available online, more of a pain than anything else.

I suppose if it comes down to justifying the effort in converting an existing TS, the utility of chapters may be the deciding factor. I most often use MKVmerge just to get files into one container, without adding any chapter data. It was the concert videos that convinced me to make use of chapters. I also like the idea of including any extra feature I might want to see (some of the 'making of' documentaries are good) after a movie, and just marking them as chapters. If a 'chapter jump' menu were included in the OSD, that would be sufficient for telling me such things are included (e.g., by checking the OSD as the movie is starting), and serving as a menu. That would be much more effective than fighting with some goofy DVD menu.

BTW, I notice Matroska (and MKVmerge) support nested chapters (i.e., chapters and sub-chapters). That adds a wrinkle to how chapters should be supported in the OSD and sidecar files.

[glynor]

You do, of course, have to have something to start with. I normally use MakeMKV, which takes time, but is easy to use. Is that the 'pain' you're referring to, or am I missing something?

I was just referring to remuxing the files with MKVMerge.  I haven't played with MakeMKV nearly enough (only to rip one DVD, honestly, which it did very well and simply).  Can you use it to simply take TS files, drop them in directly, and simply remux the files to MKV (without re-encoding)?  It looks like it can on their site, but the detailed info about the application is very thin.  I can't even find confirmation that it supports HD-PVR style TS files as an input file format, much less details on remuxing.  Just vague things about "preserving the information" and whatnot (though I do remember that the DVD rip was "lossless").

And, of course, my server is dead so I can't pull it up and try it.

MKVMerge doesn't accept TS files as a source format, so you have to first demux them into their elementary streams, and then remux them with MKVMerge.  It isn't absurdly difficult, but you have to be careful of audio offsets and other little gotchas, and it would be nice if it just worked.

Instead, I use VideoReDo to do it when I need to, but that's a pretty darn heavyweight application (with a clunky UI - just make it a standard three-point editor and be done with it please) for a simple conversion task like that.

[rick.ca]

Can you use it to simply take TS files, drop them in directly, and simply remux the files to MKV (without re-encoding)?

I don't recall. It seems to me it's reasonably fast, and the resulting file is a little smaller than the source files. Is it possible to compress streams without re-encoding? It is rather thin on documentation, and if it just happened to work on what I tried it on (DVD rips, I believe), I wouldn't have even wondered what it might not do. What it did do was very easy.

Maybe you can tell from the MediaInfo for one of them...

Code: [Select]

General
Complete name                    : D:\Video\Concerts\Nirvana - Live at Reading (2009).mkv
Format                           : Matroska
File size                        : 6.16 GiB
Duration                         : 1h 37mn
Overall bit rate                 : 9 054 Kbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2012-03-11 02:29:40
Writing application              : MakeMKV v1.7.2 win(x64-release)
Writing library                  : libmakemkv v1.7.2 (1.2.0/1.1.0) win(x64-release)

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : MPEG Video
Format version                   : Version 2
Format profile                   : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP            : No
Format settings, Matrix          : Default
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG2
Codec ID/Info                    : MPEG 1 or 2 Video
Duration                         : 1h 37mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 6 900 Kbps
Width                            : 720 pixels
Height                           : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 4:3
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Standard                         : NTSC
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Interlaced
Scan order                       : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.666
Stream size                      : 4.58 GiB (74%)
Language                         : English

Audio #1
ID                               : 2
Format                           : DTS
Format/Info                      : Digital Theater Systems
Codec ID                         : A_DTS
Duration                         : 1h 37mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 1 510 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 6 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 1.03 GiB (17%)
Title                            : 3/2+1
Language                         : English

Audio #2
ID                               : 3
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Codec ID                         : A_AC3
Duration                         : 1h 37mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 448 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 6 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 312 MiB (5%)
Title                            : 3/2+1
Language                         : English

Audio #3
ID                               : 4
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Codec ID                         : A_AC3
Duration                         : 1h 37mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 192 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L R
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 134 MiB (2%)
Title                            : 2/0
Language                         : English

Menu
00:00:00.000                     : Intro
00:01:44.934                     : Breed
00:04:42.835                     : Drain You
00:08:37.803                     : Aneurysm
00:13:12.537                     : School
00:16:25.304                     : Sliver
00:18:38.871                     : In Bloom
00:23:12.405                     : Come as You Are
00:26:47.106                     : Lithium
00:31:57.940                     : About a Girl
00:35:07.174                     : Tourette's
00:36:59.075                     : Polly
00:39:47.442                     : Lounge Act
00:42:51.876                     : Smells Like Teen Spirit
00:48:45.110                     : On a Plain
00:51:45.110                     : Negative Creep
00:54:39.711                     : Been a Son
00:58:03.145                     : All Apologies
01:01:28.679                     : Blew
01:06:52.179                     : Dumb
01:09:26.546                     : Stay Away
01:13:07.713                     : Spank Thru
01:16:13.480                     : Love Buzz
01:21:10.247                     : The Money Will Roll Right In
01:23:24.081                     : D-7
01:27:07.114                     : Territorial Pissings
01:34:20.082                     : Credits


[locust]

MKVMerge sounds great but sounds a little time consuming..

I don't have many mkv files..

It would be nice if MC could read chapter data from some kind of easily editable sidecar file, but I doubt there are standards for such things. MKVmerge saves an XML file according to the Matroska standard.

Does there have to be standards for this, I wouldn't be bothered much if I could only use the chapter data with mc. Couldn't mc just use the xml files according to the Matroska standard?

I think it would be nice if developed that there were options in the import dialogue to set a default time between chapters. Maybe not set in time but a percentage of the total running time of the video. You wouldn't want to set x amount of minutes (and or seconds) between chapters and have a 60 min video only to get a chapter starting at 59mins 30secs.

Also if done maybe there could be an option to rebuild chapter data when you right click a file just like rebuilding thumbnails, so if you were to change the global setting it would be easy to update.

As for manually editing chapter data I believe the best option would be having a dialogue box where you could add chapters that would appear as sliders on a timeline, where you could give them names and easily slide each chapter to where you want, instead of relying on typing in times to a field. Maybe a little video window so you can see where it is in the video of the current slider selected and so you can play the video as well to quickly skim through it..

(On a side note if you had the commercial skipping files for a video, they would have to work seamlessly with the chapter files. i.e. when importing a video that has the commercial skipping files the chapters would only appear when there is no advertising. On the timeline where the commercial skipping files were in effect maybe those segments on the timeline would be greyed out and un-selectable.)
 
If a mkv had internal chapter data I would assume that mc would have to either ignore it and create it's own data or just use the internal data - Possibly a setting that users could choose on their own, as some would like it one way and other would like it the other way.

I do hope this will get considered in a future version, I like the particles but somehow I feel this might be of more use to a lot more people than particles.

Alot of things for consideration for this but I think it is a step in a the right direction.

[rick.ca]

Does there have to be standards for this, I wouldn't be bothered much if I could only use the chapter data with mc. Couldn't mc just use the xml files according to the Matroska standard?

Whether or not you're bothered isn't the point. In the absence of a universal standard, it's more difficult to decide what format to support—just your own, somebody else's or multiple formats. The Matroska standard might be a good choice because they can be added directly to an MKV file, and any other video format can be saved in an MKV container.

I think it would be nice if developed that there were options in the import dialogue to set a default time between chapters.

For what purpose?

As for manually editing chapter data I believe the best option would be having a dialogue box where you could add chapters that would appear as sliders on a timeline...

Yes, this would be nice. Even though DVD rips should already have chapter markings, this would be helpful in cases where no chapter data (i.e., names matching the markings) is available. But what's needed first is the ability to use chapters effectively in Theatre View. There are other tools for adding and modifying chapter data.

On a side note if you had the commercial skipping files for a video...

It's difficult to imagine why a video with commercial skipping would have chapters in it, or why you would want to add them. If you do, they would work independently.

If a mkv had internal chapter data I would assume that mc would have to either ignore it and create it's own data...

What might the purpose of that be?

Alot of things for consideration for this but I think it is a step in a the right direction.

I agree better support for chapters is in order, but it doesn't need to be nearly as complicated as you seem to be suggesting. First, no matter how involved, we need a better way to use them in Theatre View. Beyond that, just supporting chapter data in sidecar would be enough to satisfy most needs.

[locust]

Whether or not you're bothered isn't the point.

It is for me, as I only plan to watch videos with mc but I do understand if there is a suitable universal standard that would be best used

I think it would be nice if developed that there were options in the import dialogue to set a default time between chapters.

Choice. Because not everybody would want set rigid chapter lengths if the were auto created during import, probably best for home videos of people who just want the chapters to slice up their home videos without much tweaking. I couldn't imagine that everybody would want to tweak every video they have to chapter perfection. It's similar to why we have to many options for track change standard gapped, cross fade etc and they all have a variance between 0.1 to 16 secs. Not everybody is the same

But what's needed first is the ability to use chapters effectively in Theatre View.

Do you mean like a film strip view that shows all slices of a video? As for the remote control, the button that skips the video perhaps a long press would skip chapter.

I haven't used the commercial skipping files so my opinion doesn't really matter but I would imagine that some would still like chapters between the commercials for tv shows.

What might the purpose of that be?

Brain fart, I was just throwing out some rough ideas, I though maybe people would want to override the default chapters but yes there isn't really any point.

I don't agree that most of the stuff I said was over complicated maybe apart from the commercial skipping files..

I'm sure there are a lot of valid points be haven't thought of yet but I do agree it has to work with theatre view

[rick.ca]

It [the point] is for me

Then what you think is the point is not the point. Program changes are not made to satisfy the whim of one user. They're only made if the effort results in something of significant utility to many users. Others who also only watch videos in MC may want a particular file format that provides compatibility with other tools used in the ripping and processing of their videos.

I think it would be nice if developed that there were options in the import dialogue to set a default time between chapters.

I still don't understand what you're talking about. Chapter markings normally include only a start time. They can (e.g., in an MKV) include an end time, but the only functional purpose I can imagine for that is for reporting the duration. Although not every segment of a video needs to be labelled as a chapter, I can't image any purpose for specifying 'gaps' between chapters.

Do you mean like a film strip view that shows all slices of a video? As for the remote control, the button that skips the video perhaps a long press would skip chapter.

No. Being able to represent chapters with thumbnails would be nice (if they included chapter names as well), but I'm not interested in such frills. And we already have an OSD mechanism for 'skipping' chapters. As I explained in my first post, we need a way to select a chapter from a list of chapters using the OSD. Without that, there's little point in any form of chapter support.

I haven't used the commercial skipping files so my opinion doesn't really matter but I would imagine that some would still like chapters between the commercials for tv shows.

It doesn't matter. Commercial skipping and chapter are two completely different things. If you wanted to, you could make chapter marks for your favourite commercials that will otherwise be skipped by a commercial skipping function.

I don't agree that most of the stuff I said was over complicated maybe apart from the commercial skipping files.

'Complicated' may not be the best word, but we've generated a lot of words for something the developers would understand perfectly as...

We want the ability to...

• specify chapters in a text sidecar file (one written by the program would include the details of any existing chapters), and
• choose a chapter from a list of chapters using the OSD.

If and when that's implemented, we might see whether there's any demand for frills.

[glynor]

I think having a simple UI to add Chapters and Particles from within MC would be quite handy.  It doesn't have to be a very complex UI.  The way most NLEs do it is simple.  You don't need sliders or any of that.  Chapter points aren't ranges, they're single points on the timeline.  In Final Cut, you just add a Marker by hitting "M" (or picking Add Marker from one of the drop downs, but hitting M is easier).

It adds a little "tick" to the scrub bar, and you can export them as a chapter list.

This seems like it would work in MC too.  Put the playhead where you want the chapter marker to be, hit M to add it, and MC shows a little tick on the scrub bar.  Then you could export these out to either Particles or to a Chapter EDL, via a new right-click command.

I'd use it.  And that seems like it would be a good UI for the new Particles feature too.

[rick.ca]

And that seems like it would be a good UI for the new Particles feature too.

Clearly, the Particles feature needs the ability to create particles from chapters. In a situation where one was only interested in making particles, would there be any harm in creating chapters for the subject video (using such a UI), and then generating the particles from the chapters? I think not, as the chapters would only exist in a sidecar. It could be deleted after the particles are created if it's not wanted—although in most cases it wouldn't hurt to have both. It might even be very cool if, when playing a particle, the chapter list for the entire video is available for jumping to another chapter.