Problems displaying special characters with MP4 chapters

[tedgo]

:thanks:
Wow, its a bit "dirty" but it works ;)
But i don't know how it should work with chapters. I think it might be much catchier, because mp4box itself must be "persuaded" to read special characters from a chapter-file (strange, that special characters in srt-subs are recognised but not in the chapters...)

I attached a chapter-file with three chapters (the sentences in it doesn't make sense, its only for testing ;) )
Perhaps you are able to find a way to get it to work with special charsets.

You have to add the chapters with -chap "Chapters.txt"
(Or is there any other way?)

[ac-chan123]

tedgo: do you know which chracter encoding your shell<commandline<Eingabeaufforderung use. If it is not UTF8 then you have a problem, because the field parameter need utf8.

[bond]

from my tests special characters in chapters work fine

[tedgo]

@ac-chan123
I don't know what you're talking about...
How can i check or change it?

EDIT:
I now tried to edit my batch-txt-file i use for mp4boxer by saving it in ANSI and UTF-8. The resulting bat doesn't work with UTF-8 only with ANSI. Is it that you you meant?
How can i change it?
And why is it only for chapters? The srt-subs are working with special characters...

@bond
Which commandline do you use?
If i add chapters with yamb or mp4boxer with -chap "Chapters.txt" its still the same: special characters are shown as hieroglyphs...

[defunkt]

It's true, mp4box creates the correct UTF-8 strings from your chapter file. I suspect it's your player and/or OS. When I tried MPC on Windows 98 the chapter name extended characters were decoded as ASCII rather than UTF-8, hence the hieroglyphics.

[tedgo]

Hm, strange.
I use WinXP SP2 and tried to play the file with MPC, ZoomPlayer, WMP and NeroShowTime.
All of them only shows special characters in chapters created with mp4box/mp4boxer as hieroglyphs...
Chapters from NeroRecode are shown as it should. So i thought its a problem of mp4box/mp4boxer.
Also chapters in mkv through haalimediasplitter are shown as it should, so i don't think that it's a problem of the haali splitter i use for mp4 too (btw. neroshowtime doesn't use the haali splitter, but special characters in chapters created with mp4box/mp4boxer shows hieroglyphs with it, so it can't be a problem of the haali splitter).

How can i solve this?

[ac-chan123]

I can't help on Windows Problems, because im now more on Linux then windows. Also we need more info on the Version(3.1[|1] ;-) , 95[a|b],98[|se],me|nt[3\.1[|1]|4],2k[pro|server|...],xp[home|pro|...]2003[...]), you use, to help you.

[tedgo]

Oh, it is WinXP Home SP2

[ac-chan123]

I have never run a xp installation, only DOS, win 3.1, 95, 98 and 2k.
But you can try the windows knowledge base search for unicode support on commandline.

[bond]

ok here are my findings:

when i store the chapterfile as "ANSI" in the text editor and import this into mp4 with mp4box, the umlaute are displayed correctly in MPC with haali

when i store it as "UTF-8" in the editor and import, they are shown wrongly

i dont know what mp4box exactly does with the chapters, but i remember someone talking about that the chapter text is not stored as utf-8 in mp4?

[tedgo]

I can't find any info or help on windows kb search for it... :(
So i hope someone has any idea how to solve it?

EDIT:
Ooh i was a bit too late ;)

Yes, saving the chapters.txt with ansi works!
Thank you very much ;)

[bond]

read my last post ;)

[ac-chan123]

Here're two mach german people. Have they no german forum ;) :D

[bond]

splitted this to an own thread now

ok here is my summary of the problem of wrong display of special characters in nero-style chapters in mp4:

first of all its the typical "private stuff sucks as its not standardised" situation

the main problem is that nero uses a codepage format for the chapters which is till now NOT known

so what are other tools supporting the chapters now do?
1) mp4box: input strings of the input chapter file are not translated, so its added in the MP4 file in the same format as the input text file (propably your default windows codepage).
2) haali: uses the windows default charset of the user's windows
3) gabest: uses the "ansi" (windows default?) charset
4) 3ivx: unknown (but it seems to be the same format mp4box uses on my pc)
5) hdx4: unkown

so this means that if you create chapters with your default windows codepage and than play it with haali or gabest everything will work fine
if someone with a different codepage produces a chapterfile and you want to play it on your pc (or on a nero hardware player) with a different codepage things will look f*ed up


so to solve this someone would need to grab a nero .mp4 file with special characters' chapters and check out what codepage this is

[foxyshadis]

Ugh, there's a reason UTF-8 exists, I can't believe mp4 was standardized without specifying that. I wonder if any splitters can read UTF-8 chapters.

[bond]

Ugh, there's a reason UTF-8 exists, I can't believe mp4 was standardized without specifying that. I wonder if any splitters can read UTF-8 chapters.read again, the chapters were introduced by nero and not mpeg-4

[Haali]

I tried to use utf-8, but got complaints that ppl could not see the chapters they created in nero. You can find the messages in this forum. Obviously nero uses a windows default codepage. I personally couldn't care less about this charset. I can write there whatever ppl use, just tell me what.

[bond]

I tried to use utf-8, but got complaints that ppl could not see the chapters they created in nero. You can find the messages in this forum. Obviously nero uses a windows default codepage. I personally couldn't care less about this charset. I can write there whatever ppl use, just tell me what.well if nero uses simply the default windows codepage this would really suck cause interoperability would be gone (between users with different windows versions)

i somehow dont think that they are that dumb especially as they have to standardize a format to be used on the hardware players

[stax76]

I did search and found contradicting info, DVD Decrypter and ChapterXTractor likely gonna use local ANSII charset, should I convert this to another charset before using MP4Box? If so what would that be?

[bond]

nero is afaik using utf-8 for chapters. if you convert the chapters .txt to utf-8 mp4box will also output utf-8 chapters

[stax76]

I read the chapter file normally and then write it as UTF-8 to another location which I then use to mux but some russian user figured it does not work. He's a programmer so I hope we can find the reason, I'll report back if know more.