As a feature request I would like to ask for chapters implementation.
Chapters are timeline images with timestamps of scenes in movies/episodes. It is a common feature in DVDs and Bluray. Most DVDs and Bluray discs contain chapters to make skipping around a movie more convenient. By adding chapters support, one can navigate to a specified scene when playing back instead of seeking through the entire video backward or forward. It is very useful specially when looking for a specific part of a video but can't remember where it is exactly. You'll now simply browse through the images or the timestamps and select the scene you'll like to start watching from.
This feature would make watching movies and tv series in plex so much pleasant.
Don't forget to like this post to vote for this feature! :)
Would like to bump this, breezy is familiar with that plex alternative that can do this, i think if people would understand what you could do with this it would have hundred of votes, back on xbmc last year their was a big discussion about chapter images and chapter selection.
If you ever watched a blu ray it provides a chapter timeline with images, quite frankly, one of the biggest things preventing me from switching to plex fully is a lack of chapter images and timelines.
The other software simply uses ffmpeg to run a scheduled scan on the server to extract images and provide you with chapter sections complete with images. It makes the entire media experience more professional like i used to get on blu ray discs. I see no reason why this could not easily be added to plex and be a staple of the movie/tv experience throughout plex.
Maybe the topic title is misleading. I am not sure. I thought everyone would love to have this feature. Seek forward and backward is a thing of the past when it comes to chapters.
Might be more support if you clearly explain what you mean in the first post. Some people may like this, but not have a clue what your talking about. My first thought would have been, isn't this what generating indexes is for? Apparently this is not the case? This would obviously have to come with better chapter support as well, it seems quite hit or miss whether they are even supported and on top of that as soon as any transcoding happens they are gone.
Short version: If you explain what you are talking about, maybe more people will support it. :)
You never say anything regarding chapters in your first post though, and I'm betting for feature requests most people only look at that. I didn't understand until I read the following posts. You might want to add chapter support in general to this as well since it's pretty spotty.
I know on xbmc people who have concerts were continually asking for this as well.
I dont think i can post a video of how that other software displays it on a plex forum, but you hit chapters and it pulls a timeline with chapter images and times, sometimes you may want to skip to a certain scene, and i simply look at the images and time stamp and instantly know which to select. It makes navigating your media so much nicer. Every client could then support it, i know their ipad app supports it, its really nice and not to be harsh one of the area's i find plex simply seems to be overlooking.
Hopefully its ok to post a picture just so everyone is clear.
breezy when you get a moment could you update your first post just to ensure people who read the OP understand what this is, frankly i think every plex user would benefit from this and it should be a core feature, otherwise why would blu rays/dvd have scene selections included in discs?
That isn't at all what I had thought it would be, thanks for the illustration. Worst come to worst, Ghostm could make a feature request thread that actually has the information posted, since the OP seems to not have bothered to update this.
Sorry plexters. I had a long week. I updated it. If you guys want me to change anything, by all means feel free to ask. I made my original post so blunt because I was under the impression every one knew what chapters and scenes were. Big mistake on my part. I apologize.
Additional thought on pictures for chapter markers:
There is a certain spoiler potential with this. Imagine you call up the chapters list and see a thumbnail of a character that just died on screen.
So I think, if the thumbnails for chapters are implemented they must be switchable.
May the character is Jesus Christ and two chapters after is a picture of him rising from the dead. :D - This not a religion joke so please don't anyone get offended by it.
On DVDs it depends on the author of the disc, if he implemented it with thumbnails or not, thus leaving the end user no choice.
IMHO this is one of the many reasons, why no one watches DVDs anymore if he can avoid it.
Besides that, many DVD players have a remopte control with jump buttons, which one can use to jump back and forth between chapter markers. This way there are no thumbnail pics involved.
This wasn't at all what I was thinking in the beginning, looks like its basically the chapter menu from a dvd. I like it.
Additional thought on pictures for chapter markers:
There is a certain spoiler potential with this. Imagine you call up the chapters list and see a thumbnail of a character that just died on screen.
So I think, if the thumbnails for chapters are implemented they must be switchable.
Maybe for this, instead of having it go to this screen everytime, make a button on the play button on the movies main screen for the chapters. That way you can either hit play and start at the beginning or go to that screen and select a chapter. This could also be accessible within the movie to jump forward.
Love this idea the more I think about it. Thanks for bringing it up breezytm!
I'd like chapter support even more for music content.
Think of a music DVD (like a 'best of' or a live concert) with several songs in one file.
It should definitely not only show numbers or a generic 'chapter 1', 'chapter 2' etc. but the chapter title like it is possible already in mkv chapters.
Bonus for supporting stacked chapters (i.e. chapters and sub-chapters) and displaying the title of both.
example of stacked chapters in mkv:
[spoiler]
<?xml version="1.0"?>
0
1
11259487995717138071
2346922394386838689
0
1
00:00:00.000000000
At the Hippodrome Golder Green, London, 1977-10-27
und
@OttoKerner - I guess it just a matter of getting dev to add the feature and your suggestions can be an enhancements. I do like the option to have the chapters images disabled or enabled base on the user's preferences. I personally never actually use chapters to browse through something I haven't yet seen. I mostly use it to look for a scene I want to watch again or showed to a someone else. It has also been useful when a player crashes in the middle of a video and I need to find where I left off at. In your scenario I can see how some users might find it to be a spoiler.
The way I understand it, most video formats do not support chapters (I think mkv is the only one), so any method of doing this would have to be done by the server itself storing bookmarks in the database for each individual video. This also means all chapters would have to be setup manually for each video that chapters are desired for, as normally you want those to start at the beginning of a scene, which is a random point in the video. So while I like the idea in theory, in practice it seems it would first need to be supported by the various video codecs, or it just seems like way too much work to implement if it all has to be done manually, one video at a time by the user.
The way I understand it, most video formats do not support chapters (I think mkv is the only one), so any method of doing this would have to be done by the server itself storing bookmarks in the database for each individual video.
MP4-video (m4v) also supports this.
I would be very interested in this because it would make navigating across a movie easier. What I notice when I am watching a movie on VLC and encounter a dull part, I simply skip to the next chapter. It would be great if Plex could do this as well...
