Chapter Grabber

Posted in Software by Jarrett on 11/19/2008 3:14:00 PM - CST

ChapterGrabber will extract chapter times from DVD, HD-DVD, and BluRay discs and combine them with chapter names from the internet. It produces chapter text that are useful when muxing ogg media and matroska files. It is particularly useful for those who like to convert their movies to a portable format for on the go watching.

DiscFormatsWideSm

Install

You must have .NET Framework 3.5 available from WindowsUpdate.

Whats New?

2013-02-17 : New versions at ChapterDb.org

2011-12-23 : v5.2
Small bugfixes to database and searches
Added link to new database website

... missing history ...

2010-06-04 : v4.4
Queue search so interface stays responsive (add wait indicator)
Add new support for choosing correct title with help of Google
Title indictor for when good title chosen

2010-06-04 : v4.3
Queue database work to keep from slowing UI down
Show animation while waiting on database work
Fix import from clipboard for chapters copied from spun website

2010-06-03 : v4.2
Added new online database support from chapterdb.org
Names automatically loaded when found in database
Database automatically updated upon save

2010-05-14 : v4.1
Added automatic application updater that downloads and installs new updates

2010-05-13 : v4.0
Added update-checking and auto notification
Added chapters file association

2010-05-10 : v3.9
Update TagChimpGrabber to specify type of movie

2010-05-09 : v3.8
Removed MetaGrabber
Fixed TagChimpGrabber

2009-05-01 : v3.7
Attempt to fix globalization issues for non-US cultures
Source code included download

2010-01-25 : Source Code
I have released the source code on google code!

2009-01-23 : v3.6
HD-DVD support added. You can now extract chapters from the disc or directly from an XPL file.
4 new output formats added: TsMuxeR Meta, Timecodes, Celltimes, x264 QP File.
You can now change current FPS without recalculating chapter times.

2009-01-09 : v3.5
New source for chapter names can now be grabbed from metaservices.
ChapterGrabber now stores last open directory in settings and points to parent directory when it doesn't exist.

2008-12-19 : v3.4
ChapterGrabber can now detect the fps of BluRay discs via the CLIPINFO data. However, it does not yet support extracting the fps when directly opening a MPLS file.
The new ChapterGrabber format has been finalized and can be properly loaded and saved.
When moving the chapters up or down, only the names are moved and not the times.
I also added some additional framerates to the config file, 50fps and 60/1.001fps.

2008-12-06 : v3.3
Two new output formats added: Matroska XML and ChapterGrabber XML formats (no support yet for loading these files). You can now choose a language to apply to all chapter names through a new menu. ChapterGrabber now detects and removes invalid characters in the tagChimp search results.

2008-12-03 : v3.2
IFO parsing was re-written with increased accuracy. It also no longer depends on vStrip.dll for IFO parsing. You can now change the FPS of your chapters in case you do a pulldown or want to switch chapter times from NTSC to PAL. A new menu for recently opened files is now available. Please note that Bluray FPS is not yet detected. A new configuration file stores user and app settings.

2008-11-25 : v3.1
New support for reading chapters directly from BluRay discs. Also, IFO parsing was optimized and you can now read chapters directly from DVD discs without having to choose the IFO file. A new setting allows you to ignore the short last chapter that sometimes occur at the very end.

2008-11-19 : v3.0
Updated to .NET Framework 3.5. All changes prior to 2.0 were lost. :( IFO parsing was rewritten based on Zulu's previous work. I've added tagchimp chapter title import. You can search for your title and then choose from the search results. I've disabled the import from web as amazon no longer has chapter names on their website.

Directions

Open your IFO, MPLS, or text file containing chapter times
OR Open your BluRay, HD-DVD, or DVD disc
Type in the title of your movie
Click search to download chapter names
Choose the best result
Save your new text file

Discussion

Doom9 Forum New and alternative a/v containers

Chapter Grabber Discussion Thread

Thanks to

OpenMediaLibrary - http://code.google.com/p/open-media-library/
BDInfo - http://www.cinemasquid.com/Tools.aspx
tagChimp - http://tagchimp.com/
ChapterStripper code by zulu (no longer in use) - http://zuludev.de.vu
metaservices by Kristian - http://www.e-home.no/metaservices/

Comments

Posted by 3Nitro on 6/17/2009 7:33:53 AM - CST

nice

Posted by Ryan on 6/18/2009 11:38:28 PM - CST

how do i download it?

Posted by JarrettV on 6/22/2009 11:30:33 PM - CST

http://jvance.com/files/ChapterGrabber.3.7.zip

Posted by Bob on 8/5/2009 2:54:35 AM - CST

Nice app but the sits it uses to get the metadata on movies from no longer work.
Nothing happens with Tagchimp (sites still online) and MetaService times out (the site appears to be offline).

Posted by Nabman on 8/21/2009 6:54:53 PM - CST

Great app that I've been using for some time ... but as Bob says, it has stopped working of late. TagChimp returns 0 results. MetaService has been timing out for a while, but today it came back with "The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error."

Posted by me.yahoo.com/a/wYhyDxZ.nIlN17RKkdHNK7ukt9zbww-- on 11/19/2009 12:02:04 AM - CST

I have written a fix for the Tag Chimp search results using a library I wrote: http://tagchimp.codeplex.com. Jarrett - do you take code contributions? Is there some other way I can distribute the fix?

Posted by Chubby on 12/7/2009 6:45:18 PM - CST

Be nice if it worked...

Posted by tacky on 1/2/2010 10:50:11 PM - CST

Just register your own account on tagChimp, edit the source and replace the old developer token with your new developer token and it will work.
I've also found that the totalChapters parameter to be inconsistent. So I added a small UI override to that allows you to turn off chaptercount altogether, specify a value, or specify an offset. Works great.