Where are the chapter markers?

[nedguy]

I've been using MakeMKV to rip my blurays and it works great. I just started wanting to reencode the MKVs to something smaller for my portable devices and I can't seem to retain the chapter markers. When playing the MKV generated by MakeMKV the chapters work great and are seen by VLC or my WD Live player. However, when I try to use Handbrake or MeGUI to reencode I can't find or retain the chapter markers.

Using eac3to I can't see a stream for the chapters. Are the chapter markers somehow embedded in the h264/AVC stream? If so, anyone know how to extract them for use during the muxing of the reencoded video?

Thanks!

[setarip_old]

Hi!

I can tell you that both "tsMuxeR" and "multiAVCHD" retain and use chapter settings in MKVs.

[nedguy]

Yeah, since neither one of those are actually re-encoding the video stream I really makes me believe that the chapter markers are indeed part of this or embedded in this stream.

I can always extract the chapters from the original blu-ray, but I was interested in where it's being kept and how they could be extracted in the MKV that MakeMKV generates. It would be easier if I can pull them from there. I'm used to seeing the chapter markers as a separate stream in the MKV and never really noticed them not being there in the MakeMKV streams.

[NomadCF]

For anyone working with MKVs you really should have at the every least the fallowing utils. (and maybe they should be included with newer version of MakeMKV. Or at the very least mentioned during the install).

mkvtoolnix
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoo ... loads.html

MKVToolnix is a set of tools to create, alter and inspect Matroska files under Linux, other Unices and Windows. They do for Matroska what the OGMtools do for the OGM format and then some.

MKVExtractGUI & MKVE Wizard
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVExtractGUI

MKVEXtractGUI and MKVE Wizard are demultiplexer GUIs that allow you to demux mkv streams, split video, audio and subtitle to separate files, from an MKV file. GUI for mkvtoolnix (mkvextract/ mkvmerge). Requires mkvtoolnix in same folder as mkvextractgui.exe/mkvewizard.exe.

But to answer your Question, Load the file in question in to mkvextractgui and have it extract the chapters for you.

Also don't forget, that the MKV container is extremely flexible and able to handle more then just movies and audio. Your able to have "attachments" within the container. For example other fronts types for the subtitles or like in my case I export my XBMC info on each movie/show and embed it into the MKV. This includes movie info, Cover art work, etc. And I've even see people go crazy and include mini-portable players inside them.