Any idea when/if ChapterDB.org will be back online? Any alternatives?

[dukdukgoos]

http://chapterdb.org/ has been down with a 404 for a few weeks now. Wondering if the knowledgeable people on this site have any information about what's going on...

[redwudz]

Sounds like it's closed for present, at least info from this site seems to say:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/any-alternatives-to-chapterdb-org.1684452/

[ThePendulum]

Sounds like it's closed for present, at least info from this site seems to say:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/any-alternatives-to-chapterdb-org.1684452/

That thread is from 2013! I'm quite certain ChapterDB has been online in the meantime. I'd like to know if it will come back this time, too, though.

[dukdukgoos]

There is an archive site available for the time being. It's read-only so no new information can be added, but at least there's something while the main site figures out how to get back online.

http://chapterdb.plex.tv/

[Dyaxler]

You can modify ChapterGrabber to use this new DB... edit ChapterGrabber.exe.config in the install directory and change this:

            <setting name="DatabaseSite" serializeAs="String">
                <value>http://chapterdb.org</value>

To this...

            <setting name="DatabaseSite" serializeAs="String">
                <value>http://chapterdb.plex.tv</value>

[HoftHome]

I know this doesn't help those looking to add to or update existing chapter details, and, I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, breaching any contracts, or otherwise, failing any promises, but, Jarrett Vance is/was ChapterDB.org's owner/operator/DBA.

His reply to my Feb 2019 "Getting the dreaded '404 Web Site not found' on ChapterDB.org . . ." email is "I've taken it offline due to lack of funds."

Again, here's hoping no toes got stepped on or contracts breached. Pls forgive me if I did.

Hope this helps somehow . . .

[tom42]

You can modify ChapterGrabber to use this new DB... edit ChapterGrabber.exe.config in the install directory and change this:

            <setting name="DatabaseSite" serializeAs="String">
                <value>http://chapterdb.org</value>

To this...

            <setting name="DatabaseSite" serializeAs="String">
                <value>http://chapterdb.plex.tv</value>

I get an API error after doing this

[pYPsfVARqM3nH7hD]

Don't be too sad about the situation.

I also was excited about that database initially. However, in the meantime I had to notice that it is pure crap and a complete waste of time. Obviously, there never was any sort of quality control. *Not even one* chapter list I downloaded from there was correct.

The first problem is that the kids who uploaded the chapter lists are not able to write a few consecutive one-, two- or three-word sentences correctly, even if they only need to copy them. For example, although being a non-native English speaker, I immediately noticed several typos in the chapter lists for "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" and "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones". Considering that these movies are among the most well-known movies ever, this is just ridiculous. I have done a few tests with other well-known movies as well, basically with the same result.

While this on its own already would have been a reason for not using that database any more, the final no-go were the f****** idiots who uploaded auto-generated chapter lists there, then used the original chapter titles (or even invented their own titles in case they had generated too much chapters), and sold that as the original chapter list to us. As with the typos, this happened even to well-known movies. As an example, consider the chapter list for the BD version of "Resident Evil: Apocalypse". The a****** who uploaded that list just has auto-generated chapters with a fixed time interval of five minutes (i.e. exactly 5 minutes are between the chapters' beginnings). Why do people act like that? I have archived that movie using that chapter list and now have a lot of work to fix it.

I hope that all copies of that database will be taken down as soon as possible. I am quite upset about the situation because I noticed it too late. Now I have to fix chapter titles and chapter start times for nearly every movie long after having archived it, because I initially trusted chaptersdb.org and didn't check the correctness of their chapter lists. Fortunately, all of my players still can read the original disks; without that, I'd have no chance to fix the chapter titles and start times ...

Summary: You are nearly guaranteed to get wrong chapter titles or wrong chapter start times when using chaptersdb.org or one of its copies.

Instead, I'd recommend making your own chapter list when archiving your DVDs or BDs, and feeding that to mkvtoolnix and its friends. It is not that hard; the chapter list format for the common tools (e.g. mkvtoolnix) is extremely simple. The most work actually consists of looking for the chapter titles on the original DVD or BD and of typing them correctly into the file, which is a matter of a few minutes per disk. As for the chapter timestamps, they are easily created by tools like BDInfo or tsMuxeR.

Regards, and stay healthy!

[dukdukgoos]

My experience has been much better. While you definitely can't just automatically take any values from the db and consider them gold, there are usually good entries with accurate data, you just have to look through them and compare them with your files to see that the timecodes match and titles are accurate. Occasionally you need to tweak them a little. It's not meant to be something you just 'set and forget', it takes a little work.

It's been super useful and valuable for me and I'm thankful the Plex mirror is still working.