Beginning Chapter Marks not getting added

I can’t figure out why the chapter marks aren’t getting added to the final mkv file. The marks show up in the resulting EDL, but don’t get applied to mkv. It appears that the beginning marks are missing, but the end marks are added.

I’ve attached the edl and logs.

The settings I’m using are:

  • Profile - MKV Unprocessed and changed PreConversionCommercialRemover to false since it didn’t seem to add any chapters unless I changed this to false.
  • Ad Remover - Yes (Comskip)
  • Only detect Ads - checked
  • Add chapters - checked

Friends S03E12 The One With All the Jealousy.edl (97 Bytes)Friends S03E12 The One With All the Jealousy.ts-Move to TV Series-2020-09-22T15-02-02.log (593.9 KB) mcebuddy.log (1.4 MB)

It looks about right. By design MCEBuddy will set the chapter marks to the end of the commercials which is what you’re seeing. Why would like the chapter marks to the beginning of a commercial?

The main reason is to actually label the ads in the file so media servers like Plex, Emby, Kodi, etc can automatically skip them. The way it is now, there’s no way for a media server to determine what’s an ad and what isn’t. Is there a way to configure it so the beginning marks are added with actual ads labeled? Or is that something that could be added?

Is there a way for these program to identify “advertisements”? Not sure how marking the starts of the ads would help.

Right, adding a label would also be needed similar to how PlayOn adds a label. At a minimum for right now though, can I at least configure it to add the beginning chapter marks?

You can open a feature request for it on the #bugs-feature-requests sub forum. Maybe I’m missing something, why would you want a marker at the beginning on a commercial, most folks want to skip the commercial, so that’s why the chapter markers are at the end of a commercial.

Ok, I’ll open up a feature request. Is there really no way to adjust this?

I’ll test this out on a show and see how well it works, but simply put, if there is no beginning to the Ad chapter, then the chapter is both the show AND Ad mixed into 1 chapter. So when looking at the chapter list in a media server like Plex or Emby, it’s going to show 1 big chapter that mixes the show and the Ads together. It’s just not ideal especially if I want to skip multiple chapters in a movie. Or, if I want to skip to a certain commercial break, like in the Super Bowl.

Chapters are just markers, so when you list a list on the screen, why would you want to see where an ad begins? When you move to a chapter marker it will the start of a new segment (after the commercial ends). So the way most folks use it is simply to jump to the next segment of the show/movie (after a commercial ends) or while watching if a commercial starts just skip to the next chapter (i.e. end of commercial). I’m not understanding why you would want to jump to the start of a commercial?

Again, 2 scenarios:

  1. I taped the Super Bowl and I want to go to the commercials, NOT the game. I can’t do that without beginning chapter marks for the commercials.
  2. If the Commercials are labeled “commercial”, then media servers (Plex, Emby, etc) can spot the commercials and auto-skip.

Ok?

So, is there any way that I could configure it to add the beginning chapter marks? If not, I’ll submit a feature request.

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You can experiment with writing your own script to insert chapter markers which can be called from PostCustomCommand in the profile. Otherwise you’ll have to open a feature request to have MCEBuddy do it.

Ok, thanks. I’ll open a feature request.