Vorbis Comment Chapter Extension

More and more people (especially in the german speaking podcasting scene) use the new chapter extension in ogg containers or flac files, see: http://wiki.xiph.org/Chapter_Extension

This enables chapter marks for all fileformats, which use the vorbis comments metadata system (ogg vorbis, flac, speex, the new upcoming opus/celt, etc.).

It would be really cool, if VLC could support this new standard - as it is already possible to show chapters in MP4/M4A files. This is especially interesting for podcaster, audiobooks, lecture recordings, etc.

Furthermore it should be quite easy to implement. If you need any further information or some example files, let me know and I will provide them!

assigned to @fenrir

Great. Yet another format for chapters...

And of course, the hierarchically structured subchapters is pure crap...

Not to mention that this format of chapter is not correctly defined...

added Component::Demuxers Difficulty::medium labels

changed milestone to %Features paradize

Well, I have never seen any file using hierarchical chapters ...

IMHO it would be more than sufficient, to just parse the start time of each chapter and display it in the chapters menu of VLC (that's how we do it here too).

Example:

CHAPTER001=00:00:00.000-->00:05:00.000
CHAPTER001NAME=Chapter 1
CHAPTER002=00:05:00.000-->00:10:00.000
CHAPTER002NAME=Chapter 2

just take 00:00:00.000 for "Chapter 1" and 00:05:00.000 for "Chapter 2".

This would work for hierarchical chapters too (at least somehow ;) ...

This specification allows holes between chapters and allows overlapping chapters... And does not explain what to do in those cases.

This specification allows hierarchical chapters without defining correct titles (DVD/BD) or editions (MKV).

It really looks like a bad one.

Yes, you are right - I will give feedback on the vorbis-dev mailing list!

However, the whole purpose of the spec is to be able to seek to points in the media file - as it is a common usecase in e.g. podcasts. This should be perfectly possible by parsing the start time.

And it would be really great if VLC could support that - so far podcasters/audiobooks are limited to MP4, because no other format supports chapters ...

MKV supports chapters too.

Yes I know, but I am speaking of audio files here ... Ogg vorbis plays on old hardware players, nearly every audio program, etc. - MKV/MKA unfortunately not!

Because of the objections here, we started a new discussion about the Vorbis Comments chapter extension and reworked it (see this thread: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis-dev/2012-September/020292.html).

Now the hierarchical chapters support is removed, as you suggested, and it should be straight forward to implement.

Here is an example in the new format:

CHAPTER001=00:00:00.000
CHAPTER001NAME=Chapter 1
CHAPTER002=00:05:00.000
CHAPTER002NAME=Chapter 2
CHAPTER003=00:07:35.500
CHAPTER002NAME=Chapter 3
...

Here is the official recommendation: http://wiki.xiph.org/Chapter_Extension

This is especially intersting because also the new Opus format uses these chapters - and Opus is especially intersting for podcasts etc.

Would be great if you can integrate that - if you have any further objections, just let me know!

very well.

assigned to @jbk and unassigned @fenrir

changed milestone to %2.1 features

Vorbis chapter example

Added attachment:

• vorbis_chapter_extension_demo.ogg

I attached now an example with the following chapters:

CHAPTER001      : 00:00:00.000
CHAPTER001NAME  : start
CHAPTER002      : 00:00:05.000
CHAPTER002NAME  : Five Seconds
CHAPTER003      : 00:00:10.500
CHAPTER003NAME  : Ten point 5 seconds
CHAPTER004      : 00:00:15.000
CHAPTER004NAME  : 15 sec - over soon

commit 9f2442c9 Author: Jean-Baptiste Kempf jb@videolan.org Date: Wed Oct 24 12:59:00 2012 +0200

Ogg: Parse chapters in comments

Ref [#6895](https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/6895)
Signed-off-by: Jean-Baptiste Kempf <jb@videolan.org>

Original author: jb@videolan.org

The core needs to be updated too, btw.

All parsing is done. One need to actually seek in ogg, now.

assigned to @typx and unassigned @jbk

commit cab4efd5 Author: Jean-Baptiste Kempf jb@videolan.org Date: Thu Dec 6 12:22:05 2012 +0100

Ogg: parse and create Vorbis Comment Chapter Extension seekpoints

This does not actually seek to the right position yet
Ref [#6895](https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/6895)

Original author: jb@videolan.org