[einhänder]

hi all,

as you know it's possible to add chapter markers into e.g. mkv containers. while playing back such a video xbmc shows the chapters in the overlay at the bottom right corner.
at this point two things came into my mind.

1. would it be possible to produce screenshots of each chapter beginning and place these into the bottom overlay? this would give the user the possibility to scroll (left/right direction) through a visual chapter list and to select the desired chapter.

2. in case that a video does not contain chapter markers, would it be possible to autoadd/autocreate chapters for such videos and store this information e.g. in the videodatabase? e.g. every ten minutes.

what do you think?

best regards,
einhänder

[spiff]

1) good idea
2) why? i don't see what purpose they would serve?

[einhänder]

2) why? i don't see what purpose they would serve?

to skip in larger steps through the video. that's useful e.g. in case you are watching hd videos over a 100mbit lan. fastforwarding/fast skipping may take a while to reach the desired point of interest. i know they wouldn't match the narrative chapters at all.
in addition it would add some kind of uniformity to each video, no matter whether there are real markers or not.
maybe it's not necesseary to store this information. maybe it would be possible to give the user an option to set the duration of each chapter. then xbmc adds these user defined markers in realtime during playback?

addition to 1) this could also be nice for any kind of video serving chapter markers. e.g. dvds.

[spiff]

large skips already skip fixed intervals - more precisely, 10% of the running time by default.
if you need to skip like 70-80% you can just type the time.
introducing evil timebased "chapters" would be a true PITA and something i personally would really consider a regression feature wise.

[einhänder]

ah nice. i didn't know that.
but then would it be possible to enhance the available skipping method with the mentioned "screenshot chapters" feature for the sake of uniformity?

[spiff]

you mean 1)? yes, that is doable and something we should add imo.

[einhänder]

for 1) of course.

but in addition i meant to add the feature of 1) to the 10% skipping method since 2) failed.
in other words, create screenshots of chapterless videos every 10% and display them in the bottom overlay. just like in the 1) scenario.

[einhänder]

Six years later, I'd like to recall 1). ^^

[Memphiz]

isn't this implemented already? (via bookmarks?)

[ZwartePiet]

Yes.

The current method does have a minor problem. Thumbnails aren't generated from the chapter timestamp, but about half a second before. It's a bit of a guessing game choosing the correct scene. Now that most movies don't title their chapters anymore, the chapter menu has basically become einhänder's scenario 2 (see post #3).