Seperate clips as chapters in one mkv ?

[ivanova]

I did a quick search and didn't find anything.
I have a few real video clips that I'd like to put in one mkv file each as a chapter. If it were another format I could use virtualdub to add the files together and then mux that into one mkv, but I don't know how to do that with RV.

Any help would be appreciated.

[ChristianHJW]

You can use avi-mux GUI or the matroska stream editor to concatenate them, but only if they have the same codec and resolution.

In future things like that will be handled by control tracks ... you simply throw all the clips into one file, each being tracks of their own, and make a control track to play them sequentially ...

[bond]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
In future things like that will be handled by control tracks ... you simply throw all the clips into one file, each being tracks of their own, and make a control track to play them sequentially ...no need to wait to do this, its already possible ;)

btw are there already plans how you will use these control tracks during playback? will there be a dshow filter which handles them? or will it only work in tcmp or...?

[SeeMoreDigital]

It's a shame you can't simply create a bookmark file (.bmk) and slip it in to the MKV container.

Here's a section of one such file I made for my XviD encode of Blade Runner: -

<bookmarks>
<bookmark time="00:00:00" name="01 Credits And Foreword"/>
<bookmark time="00:03:06" name="02 Eye On The Sky"/>
<bookmark time="00:04:33" name="03 Leons Emotional Response"/>
<bookmark time="00:07:19" name="04 Street Scene"/>
<bookmark time="00:11:03" name="05 The Old Blade Runner Magic"/>
<bookmark time="00:13:03" name="06 The Replicants In Question"/>
<bookmark time="00:16:11" name="07 Rachael: The Voigt-Kampff Test"/>
<bookmark time="00:22:20" name="08 Leon's Apartment"/>
<bookmark time="00:24:41" name="09 Chew's Visitors"/>
<bookmark time="00:27:27" name="10 If Only I could See..."/>
</bookmarks>
Please note that the above contains 'chapter names' too, which can be viewed on screen... The nice thing about bookmarks is, they are so easy to make... The only thing is we will need software player support :(

Cheers

[Didée]

Originally posted by bond
no need to wait to do this, its already possible ;)
:confused:

Please elaborate a little more, bond!

- Didée


edit:
Hmh, were you ;)'ing because of MP4? Well, that'd be no good option for several hundreds of files with audio streams in a not supported (e.g. Vorbis) format...

[bond]

Originally posted by Didée
Well, that'd be no good option for several hundreds of files with audio streams in a not supported (e.g. Vorbis) format...well there already exists a tool, which allows muxing vorbis in mp4! and thats not a hack, private tracks are allowed in mp4...

[alexnoe]

Just like AVI supports VBR for CFR (e.g. video, mp3, aac) :devil:

[bond]

Originally posted by alexnoe
Just like AVI supports VBR for CFR (e.g. video, mp3, aac)first of all, as i said already, the mp4 specs define how to place non-mpeg streams in .mp4...
as you say yourself placing vbrmp3 and aac in avi is hackery
now you only have to proove that placing a non-mpeg stream, for example apples lossless audio codec (not mpeg defined) in .mp4, as itunes does it now, is a hack ;)
there is a difference between hacking things into an outdated format, which wouldnt handle the streams correctly otherwise, and a format which is smart enough to handle them without hacks

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
...now proove that placing a non-mpeg stream, for example Apples lossless audio codec (not mpeg defined) in .mp4, as itunes does it now, is a hack... Wow, I've missed this innovation. Can anybody provide (or point me to) some samples, so I can add them to my 'test files' collection?

Cheers

[Atamido]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
It's a shame you can't simply create a bookmark file (.bmk) and slip it in to the MKV container. The chapters.xml files that mkvmerve uses to add chapters to matroska files are very similar. Why not just use them?

@ivanova: The files must have the same resolution/codecs to be able to add them to each other. You could technically do it otherwise, but there is no DirectShow filter yet that supports video switching. Bug Toff about it if you're really interested.

[HeadlessCow]

To save you the time of having to convert your bookmarks file, you can use this xsl stylesheet to do the conversion for you. Save it as bookmarks2chapters.xsl

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="ISO-8859-1" doctype-system="matroskachapters.dtd" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<Chapters>
<EditionEntry>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</EditionEntry>
</Chapters>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="bookmark">
<ChaptorAtom>
<ChaptorTimeStart><xsl:value-of select="@time"/>
</ChaptorTimeStart>
<ChapterTimeEnd><xsl:value-of select="following-sibling::bookmark[1]/@time"/>
</ChapterTimeEnd>
<ChapterDisplay>
<ChapterString><xsl:value-of select="@name"/>
</ChapterString>
<ChapterLanguage><xsl:text>eng</xsl:text>
</ChapterLanguage>
</ChapterDisplay>
</ChaptorAtom>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match='text()'/> <!-- suppress blank lines -->
</xsl:stylesheet>

If you don't have an XSLT processor there's on for java at http://saxon.sourceforge.net/ extract the jar files and you can convert using the command
java -jar saxon7.jar bookmarks.xml bookmarks2chapters.xsl You can add "> chapters.xml" if you want to create a file rather than see the output on standard out.