Why don't I get chapters with Handbrake from a DVD?

[Henderson]

After having a purchased DVD go bad (no fingerprints, smudges or scratches, just glitched and won't play through anymore), I decided to backup at least my favorite DVDs and Blurays that I wouldn't want to lose (or have to buy again). When I use my favorite program for this, Handbrake, it only gives 1 chapter per title from every disk. It doesn't matter if I have it rip directly off the disk in the drive with AnyDVD running, or if I first copy it to the hard drive using AnyDVD and let it rip from that copy, still only one chapter per movie title.

If I use DVDFab or MakeMKV on the same disks (or from the same files on the hard drive), they both will have all the chapters correctly in the mkv file.

I have the box checked to create chapter markers in HB. If I'm re-encoding an existing mkv file to get a smaller size, then HB sees and includes all the chapters.

I must be doing something wrong or have some setting wrong somewhere in HB. Any help would be appreciated.

[Baldrick]

Latest Handbrake?

Or try latest vidcoder beta.

[Henderson]

Yes, latest Handbrake v10.2.7286 64bit. My OS is Windows 7 Pro 64bit.

I just downloaded Vidcoder and letting it do the next movie now. And yes, it's showing chapters where HB doesn't. From what I've read about VidCoder, can I assume the quality, time to rip, etc. to be pretty much the same since it's using the HB engine?

But I'm still baffled why HB never gives me chapters. Shouldn't it? The chapter info is obviously there since the other programs pick them up.

Thanks for the help.

[johns0]

Did you check the chapter tab in handbrake and have it checked and it shows a chapter list?

[Henderson]

Yes, the box is checked, I've tried unchecking and rechecking it. But it always shows only one chapter for the entire movie.

At the top under Source across from the title where the chapters should be something like from 1 through 63 or whatever the number, it always says from 1 through 1 and the dropdown never gives any choice other than 1.

[ronmaz]

How are you opening the DVD with handbrake? From the Source button, are you choosing Folder? You need to do this, and choose the VIDEO_TS folder where the DVD files are as the chapter information is stored in the IFO files on the DVD and opening with the folder option will read this information (I'm sure someone here will correct me if I am wrong). Do not load individual VOB files.

[Henderson]

I either select the drive the disk is in, and have tried copying the movie to the HDD with AnyDVD first and pointing to the main title directory of the movie with everything in it, also tried pointing to specific files or the Stream directory.

But when you mentioned the VIDEO_TS directory, I thought maybe it's just a Bluray problem since that's what I've been ripping the last several days and tried a regular DVD. HB apparently sees the chapters in normal DVDs with a typical VIDEO_TS directory. So it seems it's just Blurays that it's not seeing the chapters for.

But that VidCoder, MakeMKV and DVDFab can pull the chapter info from Blurays just fine makes me think HB should certainly be able to do the same, shouldn't it?

[johns0]

Handbrake doesn't show subtitles for me on certain dvds so i use vidcoder which sees them.

[Henderson]

I haven't had any problems with Handbrake not showing subtitles at all, it's only the chapters that I'm having problems with.

Handbrake has been my favorite for quite awhile, but after using VidCoder for a few movies I'm really starting to like it now that I have settings where I want them. I also rediscovered DVDFab that I haven't used in ages while looking for a solution and that's also quite a nice program to work with, same with MakeMKV, another really good program I found during this. MakeMKV seems more forgiving of problem DVDs, although I then have to shrink the huge file size down after the initial rip so it's more time consuming.

[Henderson]

Well now comes an odd update to this. I decided to rerip a few titles and now all the chapters are showing in HandBrake on the blurays as they should.

The other day I was looking at the log files created for each title by HB, noticed they did indeed say 1 chapter only, and when done deleted most of those old log files. Maybe a glitch when I first put the disk in the drive (or AnyDVD not fully done scanning possibly), and then it just uses an old copy of the file instead of creating a new one? Or maybe VidCoder creates similar files and now HB is using the logs from VidCoder? Those are the only possible explanations I can think of why HB is now showing chapters.

Anyway, HandBrake seems to be including chapters now as it should. I'm grateful for the problem in a way though because I got to try out new ripping programs and found some really great ones to also use.

Thanks for the suggestions and help with this.