DVD Maestro Chapters?

[adyf]

Is there a way of manually inserting chapters say every 5 mins without having to import a *chp file? Thanx in advance.

[IvIark]

Yes, just right click on the chapter timeline and insert.

Mark

[Milo]

No there's no way to insert chapters automatically.

The .chp file is just a text file with this format :

$Spruce_IFrame_List
00:00:00:00
00:10:00:00
00:20:00:00
etc.
hh:mms:ff
(chapters every 10 min. in this example)

So it's easy to make it by your own (I use Excel to compute timings so that my dvd is divided in 12 chapters)

[freestyler]

No there's no way to insert chapters automatically.

The .chp file is just a text file with this format :

$Spruce_IFrame_List
00:00:00:00
00:10:00:00
00:20:00:00
etc.
hh:mms:ff
(chapters every 10 min. in this example)

So it's easy to make it by your own (I use Excel to compute timings so that my dvd is divided in 12 chapters)

Your statement contradicts itself - the whole purpose of a chapter list is to automate setting chapter points. Also keep in mind that lists are not exact - it will approximate and set the point at the Iframe nearest the timecode you input in the list.

[Milo]

I don't see any contradiction and I repeat: There's NO way to let DVD Maestro automatically divide the movie and inserting chapters evenly separated.
YOU have to compute chapters point and make your OWN chapter list file.

To say it differently, Maestro can't do what TMPGEnc DVD Author can.
(and my guess is that's what adyf was asking for)

And yes, chapters point have to begin at I frame, but Maestro finds itself the right I-frame near to the chapter points defined in .chp file. (the next one, or the last one, or the nearest one; depends on your choice)

[adyf]

Yes milo you are correct that is what i was trying to do. DVD2SVCD created a *chp file but maestro reported a problem with it, so i wondered if i could manually insert chapter points at regular intervals which maestro cannot seem to do automatically. I tried chapterextractor which doesnt seem to work with avi files to create a new *chp file, so i think i need to use tmpgenc dvd or learn to create my own *chp files. Is it basically as easy as writing a text file with notepad and renaming extension to *chp? Only variables i presume are the chapter length and also movie length?

[Milo]

Yes, it's as easy as editing a text file with notepad and renaming it to .chp

The 1st line should always be :

$Spruce_IFrame_List

Then there are as many lines as chapters :
format is hh:mms:ff (Hour, Minute, Second, Frame)

Here's an example for a 2h03min movie divided in 12 chapters :
chapters every 10m15s

$Spruce_IFrame_List
00:00:00:00
00:10:15:00
00:20:30:00
00:30:45:00
00:41:00:00
00:51:15:00
01:01:30:00
01:11:45:00
01:22:00:00
01:32:15:00
01:42:30:00
01:52:45:00

[IvIark]

But he's already said that he's having problems importing the CHP file. He asked if it could be done manually and it can by right clicking on the timeline and selecting "Insert Marker" (I think it's marker anyway).

By the way adyf, the reason you're having problems importing the CHP is probably because by default CCE sets the initial timecode as 01:00:00:00 and not 00:00:00:00 as is required by Maestro. You can correct the timecode in CCE before encoding, but as you have obviously already gone through the encode process you can always run the video stream through ReStream to correct it.

Mark