"ChapterEditor" to make seamless branching MKVs

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SMD88
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed May 24, 2023 10:32 am

"ChapterEditor" to make seamless branching MKVs

Post by SMD88 »

I have tried testing this programme to make a MKV from the 2015 T2 Judgement Day BD, but it is not working properly. I was wondering if any other members use this?

I made the "back-up" file with MakeMKV, decrypting it and then used "chapterEditor" to make the MKV.

VLC will play the file, and I can select between "Extended" and "Theatrical" in the Playback drop-down in VLC, but as soon as it gets to a part where a chapter has been "hidden" in the Theatrical stream, it starts showing errors. Skipping chapters does not take you to correct points in the movie and there is some weird bits of other chapters popping into other scenes for a few seconds.

There are also parts where the video glitches and jumps. Now the author does mention issues with VLC, is this just VLC's limits with playing an all-in-one "ordered chapters" file?
dcoke22
Posts: 2562
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: "ChapterEditor" to make seamless branching MKVs

Post by dcoke22 »

I don't know what chapterEditor is; I haven't used it.

MakeMKV can, however, create .mkv files from the backup you created with MakeMKV. You will end up with two .mkv files; one for the theatrical version and one for the extended version.
Radiocomms237
Posts: 344
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Re: "ChapterEditor" to make seamless branching MKVs

Post by Radiocomms237 »

Yes, I too was wondering what is the point of muxing theatrical and extended versions into the same .mkv file?

You don't save any space (file size wise) and there is no provision within an .mkv file to assign a particular audio track to a video track, so your end-user would need to be very careful to select both the "Extended" video track, and also select the corresponding audio track, otherwise you end-up with everything out-of-sync?

Not to mention having to choose the correct subtitles for whichever version happens to be playing, and having multiple chapter editions with the same chapter names but different timecodes (which sounds like part of your problem). The whole thing seems like a big mess to me, much easier just to have the different versions in unique files.

The only time I have multiple video tracks in an .mkv file is when there are different camera angles available for the same audio.

You could place a second "picture-in-picture commentary" track in the same file, but even then the end-user would need to change both the video and audio tracks at the same time? Again, I find it easier just to have two different files, one with the movie alone, and a second with the PiP overlay and the commentary audio already selected.
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