Not sure if possible - but since Plex can store where I left off viewing -- can it add bookmarks or break points (like chapters or scenes) so I can find a highlight in a film? Tagging positions would be helpful for finding content. Thanks for any advice or feasibility discussion.
I was looking for something similar myself recently - I started wondering if there was any mileage in a service based approach, much like thetvdb but storing bookmark information, so the community could call out points of interest in a film.
It would be a pretty trivial web site / web service to set up, then plex could just call into it and when it shows the landing page for a film (or I guess TV episode, there's no difference really) it could also show a list of community powered bookmarks.
I would have thought that would be pretty simple - plex can already start from a point in time, so retrieving a list of pre-canned start points from a service should be fairly straightforward assuming there's an obvious lookup key.
Then I thought you could take it further, which is where it started getting silly. If you additionally stored a "scene interest length" you could have "clipmarks", which you could then stack (clipstacks?). Then you could very easily start a clip show of "Arnie's greatest lines" or "Epic B move moments", (you can see where my movie tastes run... ) which has no practical value at all but would be fun :-)
Edit: As I typed this, I realised it really isn't that much work. Is there any interest around here in setting the service up? I can find various sites with scripts, quotes etc but I can't find anything with a time index and an API which is what plex would need. I could do the back end proof of concept easily enough but I'd need some help with the front end - web UI is not my strength!
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This could also be useful for concerts saved into a single file.
If only we could simply provide a short XML file describing each chapter time code, in order to skip from one song to another.
Same thing for movies and TV Shows.
MKV's already do this: you can embed this info into the file. When you play the file in VLC or MPLayer, you can jump from chapter to chapter. When ripping DVD's you can even use the internal DVD chapters (or download them from chapterdb.org). All my mkv-files (movies, series, concerts, etc.) have this info embedded, which is great on a intelligent player.If only we could simply provide a short XML file describing each chapter time code, in order to skip from one song to another.
Problem is that Plex ignores this info entirely.
Jaap
I have noticed the Night skin has this feature.
MKV's already do this...
I know it can be done with mkv or with mov files but I don't want to re-encode my video files ;-)
I would also like to see Plex support chapter markers embedded in the file as metadata.
I add chapter markers to MP4/M4V files using Subler (OS X). Apple-developed OS X and IOS applications on (e.g. iTunes and QuickTime Player as well as Video.app on iPad/iPhone/AppleTV) support chapter marker.
Are other software developers resistant to supporting this method of storing chapter marker metadata in a file? Is lack of adoption due to Apple patent or a general resistance to adopting an Apple chapter marker metadata?
This is not only do-able it has been done before by Plex. The OSX client versions before the Home Theatre releases used to have this functionality where you could define bookmarks for the playback of a file then bring up an interface from the onscreen menu during playback and add, access or delete them. I don't think that they were kept in the file itself but rather timestamp positions stored related to it's record in the Plex database.
I really miss this feature as it was great if you have lots of concert DVDs ripped and put into Plex as it meant you could just skip to your favourite parts really easily if you didn't want to sit through the whole concert (or didn't have time to do so).
OP wants to bookmark all the parts with boobs. ;)
My wife is a teacher and keeps postits with times and notes inside DVD cases. As we move to a fully digital library, bookmarks (with ability to add note) would be a nice feature.
This is the one feature that is preventing us from moving away from our old setup. This is especially useful for kids videos as well as Home Videos, I would like to see the ability to have multiple bookmarks per video. This would give you the ability to “Jump” to a specific scene in a movie / video.
Currently we are using a DVD Player Application named TheaterTek which has this feature. I converted all of my library over but we keep reverting back to the old setup for this feature only. It is somewhat difficult to jump through an full movie to find a specific scene.
Yes I can certainly see this being used for other things like mentioned about but no matter what it is used for it doesn’t matter as this would be a great added feature which I can’t imagine would be very difficult to add.
I really like this idea, but this suggestion is old and maybe it’s time to bump it up? It would be really useful
Bump.
This would be a very valuable feature, for me and I’m sure many others. DVDs have this, and as already pointed out, MKVs and MOVs have it too… we need access to it from the various Plex UIs!
I’ve got several videos of sketch comedy series – SNL, MPFC, etc. – and want to place a bookmark or chapter marker at the onset of each sketch, for easy access. I don’t see a practical way to do it without chapter markers or bookmarks.
Also, the ability to not only access existing bookmarks (that are encoded into the video files), but also to create custom bookmarks from within the plex UI, for those videos that may not have bookmarks encoded in.
(Related requests for a centralized service for sharing bookmarks would be great too, but let’s net get carried away. First comes the basic ability to use them!)
Also would be really nice for audiobooks.
Really need this feature, today I have to use an external software to place chapiters / bookmarks on a video and then import in Plex.
It could be a gain of time if the possibility to set chapiter was include directly in Plex (Like the metadatas)
Best regards
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@sugarmonster were you ever able to figure this out? I am using plex to manage personal home videos and I would love to be able to share clips within video files with others. I’d like to be able to bookmark, mark, create a chapter something to build a list of specific places in videos to reference. It blows my mind that this is not something available. Really like your idea and can’t believe in 2020 with how many video files are out there that no one has made this feature yet on any software platform!
Wow, was it really 5 years ago I wrote that?! No, I’ve not done anything with it. Not really had the spare time (although that’s changing now with covid-19. I’m not sure that’s a good thing!)
Plex does now supported embedded chapters in MKV files which I don’t think it did when this thread started. You need to use other software to embed the chapter information but it’s a start.
An external service still seems like a fun idea but obviously plex would have to call into it for it to be any use. There’s also a problem with throwing user generated content in front of people un-moderated - if enough people bookmark enough sections of a film then you’d just end up with hundreds of chapter marks which isn’t really navigable. So now you really want to have the option of showing “Community bookmarks” or “My bookmarks”.
And this is why I never do any of these things - every time I think about them, I come up with more stuff for them to do!
I am also very keen to seeing an implantation of this. It is something I have grown accustomed to while using Kaleidescape Video system at my company. We can create playlists of whole movies or just portions of them which is great for “best of” playlists. Such as best explosions, car chases, romance, funny scenes, etc. Or for creating a play-though in chronological order of a series or movie that is not. It really is quite powerful. We often use it for equipment demos but there are so many possibilities.
Here is a good one that I would personally like to do with my server:
Had the same idea. My use-case would be marking when my SO falls asleep in the middle of a show so that they can start watching later.
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I love this idea, and had somehow assumed that it was something that Plex already did but I couldn’t find it. There are a lot of use cases, as we can see by reading this thread. My idea was to bookmark some of my favorite bits from The Simpsons, Family Guy or whatever - the jokes that I would like to be able to quickly call up and show to a family member, etc., without having to remember which episode they are in, and at what points within the episodes.
I haven’t gone all in with Plex yet, but was thinking of doing so. The existence of this feature may very well be a deciding factor between Plex and other platforms.
PLEASE ADD THIS FEATURE ASAP!
Thanks!
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