Using mkv to make continuous movie

[lexor]

Hi guys, I've recently seen something interesting done with mkv and chapters (I presume). I was sitting in the lounge at my university and a guy was sitting next to me with his laptop, and he had an anime series playing. Only they weren't simply in a playlist, after a while I noticed that there were no intros or credits. I looked at the time line and indeed the file appeared to be over 5 hours long (in MPC).
But when I asked him if he spliced together the series or muxed them into a singe mkv and used chapters to skip intro/credits, but he said no, they were all in separate ogm per episode. He showed me the folder and indeed there were a bunch of .ogm files and one little mkv file (about 50kb). You just open up the mkv file and it plays like a 5 hour movie, you don't have to select chapters or anything.

So I ask you guys, how was it done?

[Guest]

(bump after edit)

[poisondeathray]

One option would be to use avidemux

You can use open up your mkv, then use "append" on each "episode" (much like virtualdub), and save as 1 big mkv

[lexor]

One option would be to use avidemux

You can use open up your mkv, then use "append" on each "episode" (much like virtualdub), and save as 1 big mkv

Yeah I can replicate behavior (by muxing into one file and setting intro/credit chapters as hidden), but I am interested in details of how his way works. I can't find a way to create a chapter file in mkv for files that are not in that mkv.

The reason I don't want to use 1 mkv is because it would make it incompatible with my PS3 (for the shows I have in mp4). If I can figure out how his way works, I could watch it as continuous movie on my PC and episode by episode on PS3 and even episodes that I have in mkv will take way too long to remux. Not to mention the case of shows like Firefly, which have 2 viewing orders, the order in which it aired and the chronological order, so having 2 small mkvs for different orders would be convenitent.

[sheppaul]

It looks like the function of edition in mkv container. Haali's mkv splitter supports it. When enabled, the intro and ending part of mkv will be skipped.

[Haali]

There is now a great guide to file linking, chapters and editions in Matroska: http://www.uppcon.se/thefluff/hurfdurf/?p=8, among other things it explains how to construct a virtual timeline from multiple files.

All hail TheFluff!

[lexor]

All hail TheFluff indeed!

Thanks for the help guys.

[lexor]

Well, the weekend is here and I finally had the chance to try this out... and already hit the first snag.

How do you update mkv file without re-muxing it using mkvmerge (mmg)? Here is my problem:

I have two files, I get the UID's of each using mkvinfo, now I want to link them. If I open up file1 and set link to next as the UID of file2 and then remux, according to the guide it changes UID of file1, but now I have file1 linked to file2. Now repeat same procedure for file2, upon remux the UID of file2 changes, so now I have file2 linked to file1, but file1 no longer linked to file2. A vicious circle ensues.

So how do I update the information "File/segment linking" section of mmg without remuxing the mkv?