[200] Chapter Builder utility

[Rom]

I had some MKV files that I don't have chapters in. I found a couple of sites that listed chapters but the problem was they indicated the length of the chapter, not the position of the chapter from the start of the film.

After spending ages adding the time for each chapter to the previous total time to get a chapter file I could use in MKVToolnix, I decided to write a little application to do the calculation & formatting for me.

Please feel free to try it and let me have any feedback/improvements I can make.

You can download it from my webspace here: Chapter Builder

It is wriiten in C# with .NET 2005 so you will need the .net 2.0 framework installed (most people have this anyway).

Useage:

Find the chapter list for your film from either of these two sites:

http://www.movieweb.com

or

http://www.allmovie.com

Select the list of the chapters and copy/paste them into a plain text file.

An example paste is like this one from Movieweb. The program will ignore any lines that do not have a ']' at the end.

Code:

#
Disc #1, Side A -- Doctor Zhivago
# 1. Overture [4:23]
# 2. Credits [2:50]
# 3. Yevgraf and Tonya [6:09]
# 4. Laid to Rest [3:11]
# 5. The Balalaika [2:49]
# 6. Strangers on a Train [2:13]
# 7. Lara and Pasha [2:10]
# 8. Yuri and Lara [4:08]
# 9. The Demonstration [1:57]
# 10. Komarovsky [3:13]
# 11. Ended: Dissent [5:45]
# 12. Tonya Comes Home [2:07]
# 13. Pasha and the Gun [2:54]
# 14. "You'll Always" [3:30]
# 15. Suicide Attempt [5:55]
# 16. Yuri Sees Lara [3:22]
# 17. Plain Speaking [3:41]
# 18. Bruce Force [2:32]
# 19. The Christmas Party [5:31]
# 20. Interwoven Destinies [2:21]
# 21. Ringing Sorrow [1:46]
# 22. War's Toll [4:02]
# 23. Deserters Meet [3:49]
# 24. "Are You A Nurse?" [2:25]
# 25. No More Czars [4:02]
# 26. Understood [3:00]
# 27. Farewells [2:43]
# 28. Full House [2:23]
# 29. "The Stove's Out" [3:56]
# 30. Pilfering Firewood [2:20]
# 31. Brothers Zhivago [3:18]
# 32. Boarding the Train [2:51]
# 33. The Only Free Man [2:09]
# 34. Disinfecting [3:35]
# 35. Another Passenger [3:26]
# 36. "Strelnikov!" [1:49]
# 37. Intermission [:57]
#
Disc #1, Side B -- Doctor Zhivago
# 38. Entr'Acte [1:56]
# 39. Through the Urals [1:42]
# 40. With Stelnikov [5:42]
# 41. Varykino [3:30]
# 42. One of the People Too [2:31]
# 43. No Going Back [2:10]
# 44. Spring (Lara's Theme) [2:41]
# 45. Reunited [4:57]
# 46. Between Two Women [5:10]
# 47. Conscripted [2:48]
# 48. Soldiers to Schoolboys [3:25]
# 49. Turning Back [4:34]
# 50. Yuriatin and Laura [4:08]
# 51. Tonya's Letter [2:44]
# 52. Komarovsky's Help [5:40]
# 53. Return to Varykino [3:23]
# 54. Writing Again [6:52]
# 55. Strelnikov's End [3:52]
# 56. Final Farewell [2:02]
# 57. A Mother's Duty [1:14]
# 58. Yuri's Last Glimpse [3:23]
# 59. Yevgraf's Last Glimpse [1:14]
# 60. A Gift [2:43]
# 61. Cast List [1:44]

Open Chapter Builder and browse to select the text file you have just created.

Select which type of chapter file you wish to create (Simple/OGM or XML). MKVmerge accepts both types.

If simple then you can just click 'generate' and it will create a chapter file with OGM.txt added at the end of the filename. If you select XML then you can set the language & country for your chapters. The file in this case will have the same name as your original .txt file but ends in .xml

The output file is created in the same folder as your source file.

You can now open this output file with MKVmrge's Chapter Editor and inject it into your MKV to give it chapters.

Its a very simple program but now saves me endless hours of editting text files!

Enjoy.

[Rom]

It seems there is a bug in the XML option and when injected the chapters do not work. I will see what the issue is later today.

The OGM option works fine (tested myself on 2 films).

EDIT:

OK, I believe i have fixed it. It was a very minor xml formatting issue. Program updated at the link above.