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  1. I have been using AutoGK for ripping DVDs to avi, all things good, except there are no chapter markers.

    Recently, I felt a need of chapter markers in that avi file, but I am not too sure if avi supports it and if it does, its easy enough for a person like me who doesn't like much of feedling around.

    I am willing to move on to different format if it needs, like mkv or mp4.

    Anybody has idea, please point me to any article, if any, that explains this stuff in details or program that will help me do that.

    Thanks in advance.
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  2. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    No. Avi does not support chapters.

    Try instead handbrake and make a mkv with chapters
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  3. Will Handbrake with mp4 work?
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    Did you try searching something like "video mp4 chapters"?

    It's possible to have chapter markers in mp4 files in handbrake. It may try to put a .m4v extension on the file ... it's been a while since I did it but I think that's what it did ... because officlallly Apple formats are the only ones that actually support it, though any decent video playback software should be able to handle it.

    But I wouldn't expect chapters to work on non Apple devices or TVs that have .mp4 support. When a device says it supports mp4s that's not all that meaningful anyway since that's just a container, not a format.

    What's wrong with .mkv anyway? You can embed subs without separate files.
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  5. The only way you can re-create the effect of chapters with AVI is to make individual files for each chapters, give them consecutive filenames and place them in a folder. Media playing devices will handle them properly if they handle folders properly i.e. I've seen devices that build a list of all media files where ever they are; you end up with every files getting mixed together. It would still work with such a device, you'd only have to make sure all the files that constitute a movie have the same name and something to sequence them:

    01-Robocop.avi
    02-Robocop.avi
    ... (Yeah, I went and saw it last night, pretty good, I'd say better story than the original and nice to see Gary Oldman not playing the evil guy)

    You can easily convert your existing AVI's without losing quality with Vdub set to direct stream copy. It's actually best to do it that way to maintain audio and sub synch.
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  6. Member Krispy Kritter's Avatar
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    Use VidCoder and convert to mp4 or mkv. It can maintain the chapters from the DVD.
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  7. Originally Posted by indijay View Post
    I have been using AutoGK for ripping DVDs to avi, all things good, except there are no chapter markers.

    Recently, I felt a need of chapter markers in that avi file, but I am not too sure if avi supports it and if it does, its easy enough for a person like me who doesn't like much of feedling around.
    I used AutoGK for years myself. When I moved on to x264 encoding (although it'll also encode with Xvid) I started using MeGUI and I've been using it ever since. It's not as "auto" as AutoGK but it uses mostly the same tools behind the scenes for DVD encoding so it might seem a little familiar. It has quite a few utilities under the Tools menu. One of them is a chapter creator which can extract DVD chapters to a text file which can then be muxed into an MKV/MP4.

    Alternatively, you could even encode with AutoGK, use MeGUI's chapter creator to extract the DVD chapters, then MKVMergeGUI to open the AVI which AutoGK created, add the subtitles, and save the output as an MKV (no re-encoding).

    Most software players support chapters. If a hardware player supports them, it'll probably support them in both MKV and MP4. Unless it's an Apple player. I think you may need to use M4V instead of MP4. You should be able to simply change the MP4 extensions to M4V.

    Unless you particularly need Xvid/Avi for some reason you should consider moving on to x264 encoding. The x264 encoder should retain more detail.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 27th Feb 2014 at 07:11.
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  8. Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post
    Alternatively, you could even encode with AutoGK, use MeGUI's chapter creator to extract the DVD chapters, then MKVMergeGUI to open the AVI which AutoGK created, add the subtitles, and save the output as an MKV (no re-encoding).
    That will make my life lot easier.

    Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post
    Most software players support chapters. If a hardware player supports them, it'll probably support them in both MKV and MP4. Unless it's an Apple player. I think you may need to use M4V instead of MP4. You should be able to simply change the MP4 extensions to M4V.
    No I do not have any Apple hardware anymore, except 1st Gen iPad (and most likely that will the last until near future).

    Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post
    Unless you particularly need Xvid/Avi for some reason you should consider moving on to x264 encoding. The x264 encoder should retain more detail.
    I was sticking to XviD/avi, only because my DVD player does not play mp4 or mkv and Roku would not recognize 5 flash drives I had from variety of manufacturers, until I got considerably ill-reviewed SanDisk flash drive. Good quality SanDisk drive was not recognized.
    But now I can move over to x264.
    My only gripe so far with x264 encoders is, it doesn't resize the picture to fit other parameters, like in case of AutoGK if I select file size to be 700mb for a DVD, it will resize the picture so that it is best for that file, otherwise the picture looks super grainy. I don't have enough experience with encoding mp4 and zero with mkv, hence I may change this statement eventually. I hope I made some sense.

    Do you have any trick to circumvent this shortcoming?

    Thanks again.
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  9. Originally Posted by indijay View Post
    My only gripe so far with x264 encoders is, it doesn't resize the picture to fit other parameters, like in case of AutoGK if I select file size to be 700mb for a DVD, it will resize the picture so that it is best for that file, otherwise the picture looks super grainy.

    Do you have any trick to circumvent this shortcoming?

    Thanks again.
    AutoGK is/was the only program I'm aware of which would do the auto adjusting thing. It's not Xvid adjusting, it's AutoGK. Other programs were capable of running a compression test and reporting quality, but you'd need to adjust manually. These days, I don't think many programs even run compressions tests. One of the reasons for that is no doubt because hard drive space is cheap now so compressing a movie to burn to a CD really isn't done much any more.

    Whether it be x264 or Xvid, mostly these days it's done the other way around. Instead of picking a file size and hoping for the best (or letting the program make adjustments like AutoGK does) most people pick the resolution and quality and let the file size be what it needs to be. It'll vary quite a bit, depending how hard the video is to compress. Once you've encoded a few movies etc though, you'll eventually settle on a resolution and quality which gives you.... on average.... a file size you're happy with.

    Me..... I aim for fairly "transparent" quality. Cropping not included, I resize NTSC 16:9 DVDs to 854x480, PAL to 1024x576, I use CRF18 for the x264 quality setting, and I keep the original AC3 5.1ch audio. If I had to guess.... my average DVD encode would probably end up roughly 1.5GB, but I could never go back to 700MB Xvid encodes, even using AutoGK.

    Even in my AutoGK days I decided pretty early encoding for file size wasn't for me. So I'd often pick a fixed resolution and run compression tests while adjusting the file size until AutoGK reported 70% to 75% quality, then I'd let it encode. Or I'd run a single pass encode at 75% quality, then I'd use the resulting file size for a 2 pass encode. Unlike Xvid though, the x264 encoder has a true quality based encoding method. No need for compression tests and 2 pass encoding unless you do want a certain file size. Just crop and resize etc, pick a quality and encode. And if you're not running compression tests, 2 pass encoding or re-encoding the audio.... well x264 mightn't be as fast as xvid, but for a DVD total encoding time isn't all that different.

    Originally Posted by indijay View Post
    I don't have enough experience with encoding mp4 and zero with mkv, hence I may change this statement eventually. I hope I made some sense.
    AVI, MKV, MP4 etc are all just containers which can hold different types of audio and video. They won't all hold the same types of audio or video, but generally if it can be put in an AVI it can be put in an MP4 and MKV will hold just about anything. For x264 encoding you can choose whether the output is MKV or MP4, for example, but the video and audio will still be encoded the same way. It's just a different container. I mainly stick to MKV these days as thanks to MKVMergeGUI working with MKVs is fairly easy, but MP4 is probably still a little more widely supported by hardware players. That doesn't worry me though. The USB media player built into my TV, my Bluray player and my PC all play MKV files, which is all I really care about.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 3rd Mar 2014 at 11:15.
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  10. Member hech54's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by pavtube View Post
    If you are making uncompressed MKV, both MakeMKV and ByteCopy support MKV with chapter markers. I have used MakeMKV on Windows before moving to Mac OS. For me, the conversion is to remux DVD/BD content to MKV container losslessly with all the audio options as well as chapter markers. There's no recoding or so and the conversion are much quicker than ripping to other formats like AVI.
    Don't you have anything better to do than dig up MULTIPLE old posts about chapter markers just to add your 2 cents?
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  11. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by hech54 View Post
    Originally Posted by pavtube View Post
    If you are making uncompressed MKV, both MakeMKV and ByteCopy support MKV with chapter markers. I have used MakeMKV on Windows before moving to Mac OS. For me, the conversion is to remux DVD/BD content to MKV container losslessly with all the audio options as well as chapter markers. There's no recoding or so and the conversion are much quicker than ripping to other formats like AVI.
    Don't you have anything better to do than dig up MULTIPLE old posts about chapter markers just to add your 2 cents?
    Banned and deleted. All off topic crap.
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  12. Member hech54's Avatar
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    WHOA...Baldrick. You are in the same mood I am in today.
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    Originally Posted by hech54 View Post

    Don't you have anything better to do than dig up MULTIPLE old posts about chapter markers just to add your 2 cents?
    The individual to whom you are referring chose a third-rate software company as his username and mentions products from that company in his posts, so my guess is he was doing what he was hired to do.
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  14. Member hech54's Avatar
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    I knew that name looked familiar.
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