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:
Other functions:
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:
[00:00:00.000]
1
[00:03:00.000]
2
[00:06:00.000]
3
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.