Seamless branching with MKV

[trondmm]

Hi.

MKV supports seamless branching through its "ordered chapters" feature, which allows linking to segments from external files. It can also be accomplished with a single file which has multiple editions.

More info is here: http://www.mod16.org/hurfdurf/?p=8

I've successfully created seamless branching MKV-files of Blade Runner International theatrical, US theatrical and Director's cut, using eac3to and mkvmerge. One of the mkv-files contain the entire US theatrical cut, and is about 21GB. The other two contains just the parts that are unique to that version of the movie, and all other segments are read from the US theatrical cut. These files are about 500MB each. This actually works very well. I'm using MPC to play the files, and I'm unable to spot where the player changes from file A to file B. Unfortunately, player support is not that good, but it definately works with MPC.

Anyway - it would be great it MakeMKV could add an option to create branching MKV-files instead of creating multiple files containing the entire movie.

[GoColts]

agree w/ op on this topic completely, would be a great feature to have

[BluFix]

I've successfully created seamless branching MKV-files of Blade Runner International theatrical, US theatrical and Director's cut, using eac3to and mkvmerge. One of the mkv-files contain the entire US theatrical cut, and is about 21GB. The other two contains just the parts that are unique to that version of the movie, and all other segments are read from the US theatrical cut. These files are about 500MB each. This actually works very well. I'm using MPC to play the files, and I'm unable to spot where the player changes from file A to file B. Unfortunately, player support is not that good, but it definately works with MPC.

This is very interesting trondmm, thanks. Is there a guide somewhere on how to accomplish it? If not, can you just provide a basic outline on how to do it?
I use eac3to regularly, checked your mod16 link but it's a bit over the top...
Hopefully, makeMKV will handle this soon.

[jasonwc]

This is already possible using a tool called the "Xin1Generator". It's called Xin1 because it's not limited to 2 cuts of a movie. I've made a 3in1 and there is no limit to the number of editions. Xin1Generator is dead simple to use and makes full use of Matroska's ordered chapters functionality. For example, it outputs not merely an XML Chapters file which allows Haali to properly select between the editions, but also a small tag file, allowing you to name each edition.

Xin1Generator scans the Blu-Ray using xport, and outputs a batch file for eac3to demuxing, an XML Chapter file, an XML Tag file, and a file with a list of frames that need to be encoded as I Frames if re-encoding. After demuxing with eac3to, you can add the video, audio, and subtitle streams you desire to MKVMerge.

I've successfully made 2in1 MKVs for Gladiator (Extended and Theatrical) and Leon (International and US Cut). Both played back perfectly, and the overhead was less than 10% more than the larger edition.

The only downside to ordered chapters is that Haali is the only splitter that properly supports them. Hardware players do not support ordered chapters yet. However, this really isn't so bad, as the scenes from the second edition are nearly appended to the first cut. Therefore, even with an unsupported splitter, you will still be able to play through the full first edition.

Binary - http://upload.riposte.nl/upload/Xin1Generator_v0.6.7z
Source- http://upload.riposte.nl/upload/Xin1Gen ... _source.7z