[razr37]

I have a folder with several clips in it (.m2ts and .mkvs) that I use to test my Surround Sound.
The problem is that each clip shows in my library (I use playlists) separately. I would like it to show as ONE movie....and be able to play it and skip to the next clip if I want....like a one piece movie. Movieset is not what I want
How would I accomplish this without re-encoding the clips?

Thank you in advance.

[PatK]

You could set up a smart playlist 'rule path' queue them all and 'play from here'. Might be possible to give them one custom name and use the -cd1,-cd2,-cd3,-cd3 extension and use stack to play them all with >>| to move to the next if your in a rush.I guess there's more ways to handle this and other work arounds.

Nice to hear how you've handled it..

[razr37]

What I did was (stack) them with this names:
\moviename\movie-part1.ext
movie-part2.ext
and so on.

First problem was that some files were .m2ts and others were .mkv

This will produce separate files in library. The funny thing is that for example,
part1.m2ts
part2.m2ts
part3.m2ts
part4.mkv
part5.m2ts

In the library it will show the first three files (same extension .m2ts)as ONE movie, then it will show part 4 (.mkv) as another movie and part 5 (.m2ts like the first three files) as another movie.
Then I converted everything to .mkv and that fixed it. Now it shows only one movie.....one clip will play after the other.
However, I cannot skip to the next clip...it will FF though.
I thought about adding external chapters to the folder, like a text file with chapters inside. Dont know how to accomplish it. I already created the text file... but it does not work. Probably it is not named correctly... who knows.

I found this but there is no download link.
I also tried to append (merge) the files using mkvmerge but since the audio tracks are different, makemkv will not merge them.

Anybody?? Any ideas??

[PatK]

You could just create bookmarks from the OSD, Looks like XBMC-Chapter is using Custom XML Files and SVCD txt format for chapter listing following the example added to the meta-data. You could have just changed the extension on the odd file out and XBMC would have included it without issues. Not sure what you meant by a text file, you didn't mean an srt sub file?

You could split the audio out of the files, merge the video and then convert the audio and add it back in. I did this once for a foreign language film I had without english, found a youtube of the film with english... did some cut & paste, kinda fun the first time, but I would not want to do this regularity

This is one of the new improvements in Gotham * Episodic bookmarks – If episodes are not broken into individual parts (e.g. Adventure episode 1 and 2 are in the same video file), a bookmark can be set that will cause launching episode 2 from the UI to go directly to the bookmark in the video file

[Ned Scott]

An EDL (wiki) file might work. It would basically allow you to set chapter markers in an external file.

[razr37]

An EDL (wiki) file might work. It would basically allow you to set chapter markers in an external file.

I could create and EDL file but......
"To use any scene markers that have been read, buttons on the remote need to be configured to go to the next/previous scene marker. These buttons must use the NextScene and PreviousScene codes from Keyboard.xml. "
meaning that I would have to designate two buttons on my control for this.....because if I alter the skip forward and back from my remote....they will not skip chapters when there is not an EDL file....Am I wrong?

[razr37]

You could just create bookmarks from the OSD, Looks like XBMC-Chapter is using Custom XML Files and SVCD txt format for chapter listing following the example added to the meta-data. You could have just changed the extension on the odd file out and XBMC would have included it without issues. Not sure what you meant by a text file, you didn't mean an srt sub file?

You could split the audio out of the files, merge the video and then convert the audio and add it back in. I did this once for a foreign language film I had without english, found a youtube of the film with english... did some cut & paste, kinda fun the first time, but I would not want to do this regularity

This is one of the new improvements in Gotham * Episodic bookmarks – If episodes are not broken into individual parts (e.g. Adventure episode 1 and 2 are in the same video file), a bookmark can be set that will cause launching episode 2 from the UI to go directly to the bookmark in the video file

ahhh. I didn't know that changing the extension wouldn't break the video file....nice to know.
Regarding the text file....I thought I had read long ago that you could create external chapters with the .txt extension and xbmc would read them..... but I think it was just a dream

I do not want to modify the audio.....remember that it is for testing/showing my system...audio/visual, and I want the best quality possible.

I will stick to BOOKMARKS for now until I find a better solution.

Thank you for your time....