Home > Working with Chapters
Video tutorials: "How to use chapters", "How to split a concert 1", "How to split a concert 2", "Add chapters at a time interval".
Related topics: Annotate a movie. Prepare chapters for iDVD, for iTunes. Create a Playlist.
Movies can be organized into Chapters.
By placing some markers along the movie, and assigning a name to each marker, you divide the movie into Chapters that can be navigated through.
The list of Chapters is like the table of contents of a book, and gives direct access to the beginning to each marked sequence inside the movie.
Main functions available in the Chapters pane are:
- Add Chapter: Create a new chapter marker in current playhead position. Chapter name can be edited or default one be accepted with Enter.
- Update: Modify active chapter marker to current playhead position.
- Delete: Deleta chapter marker. It doesn't delete any audio or video footage, just the marker.
- Cut white/blue chapters: Chapter markers are used as boundaries of sequences to keep, and this option removes all the rest. This is useful to cut commercials in one shot, for example.
- Cut black chapter: Current chapter is displayed with a black strip in the timeline. This command cuts it.
- Split into Movies: This option creates one movie for every chapter. For example, it splits a concert movie into songs. Current document is not modified.
- Split into RefMovies: This option does the same, but creates RefMovies.
- Copy and Paste Chapters: It's very useful to change all chapters in one shot. See below.
- Delete All Chapter Markers: All markers are removed. Audio and video are not modified.
Other functions:
- Navigation through pop-up menu or by selecting in chapters list.
- Keyboard shortcut Command-/ to create a chapter "on the fly", for example during playback.
- Navigation with keyboard. Control - Left Arrow. Control - Right Arrow.
Support and applications
Any file that opens in QuickTime Player with Chapters should also do it in SimpleMovieX. For example, AIFF format can embed chapters, and SimpleMovieX will make them visible and editable. Of course, Chapters created by QuickTime Pro are supported.
After saving of exporting, the chapters will only be kept if the format is QuickTime or MPEG4. MPEG and AVI files created by SimpleMovieX don't have chapters.
Saving as RefMovie keeps the chapters, and is actually a way of creating a Playlist.
See also how to prepare chapters for iDVD, for iTunes or to annotate a movie.
MPEG-4 is supported
SimpleMovieX can create MPEG-4 files with chapters.
Whether it's through Export or native saving in MPEG-4 format, the chapter markers are kept.
MPEG-4 familly include iPod , iPhone and Apple TV files.
It's for example possible to open an existing iPod file, add chapters, and save it back to MP4 natively in a few seconds.
Why is a "Start" chapter added at the beginning of the movie?
The Start chapter is needed by iTunes and by iPod, iPhone and AppleTV, to correctly manage the chapter markers. Otherwise, the markers are seen out of place.
Outside the iTunes "ecosystem", the Start chapter is not needed.
SimpleMovieX adds by default the Start chapter, but this can be modified: see Preferences below:
Copy and Paste
When you do Copy, all the chapter markers in the document are transcribed into lines of plain text.
You can visualize it by simply pasting in any text editor:
{QTtext}{font:Lucida Grande}{bold}{doNotDisplay:on}{size:24}{textColor: 0, 0, 0}{backColor: 65535, 65535, 65535}{justify:center}{timeScale:600}{width:0}{height:0}{timeStamps:absolute}{language:0}{textEncoding:0}
[00:02:23.680]
Chapter 1
[00:05:27.040]
Chapter 2
Note that it's exactly the same output as when you export the movie in Text format.
How does Paste work?
Whenever there is text in this format in the clipboard, SimpleMovieX will enable the Paste menu item and indicate how many chapters are present. In other words, you can use your favorite text editor to create a list of chapters, then paste it in a movie. Or Copy and Paste from movie to movie.
Examples of use:
- Split a movie into fixed-length chapters: Use a text editor to create a file with a chapter every 3 minutes for example. Copy and paste in as many movies as you need.
[00:00:00.000]
1
[00:03:00.000]
2
[00:06:00.000]
3
- Re-add chapters after exporting. (use a text file to store the chapters during export phase)
- In some cases, when you merge movies with chapters, you face problems that can be avoided by merging the movies without chapters, then re-adding chapters.
- Shifting chapters. See below
Paste at current time
When you do Paste at current time, the markers are inserted in the movie, but relative to the playhead time. If it's not at the beginning of the movie, the markers are shifted.
For example, if you want to move all your chapters by 3 seconds forward, just copy them, delete all chapters, go to 00:00:03.00 and paste at current time.