5-hour Radio Show edit in FCP with Chapter Markers

[Jonathan Miller]

It looks like the best way to do this is to add the chapters using QuickTime.

So, I would say that you should export your movie using Compressor, but create a preset so that you’re encoding to a mono AAC audio file (mp4).

Then, you’ll want to make note of all of the timecode positions of your chapter markers and do this (I’m copying and pasting this from the QT Pro 7 help):

In a text editor or word processor, type your list of chapters and save the document as plain text.
Make each item very short (preferably one word but no more than two or three words) and separate each item with a carriage return.

In QuickTime Player, choose File > Open File, select the text file, and click Open.
Choose File > Export. In the Export pop-up menu, choose “Text to Text.” In the Use pop-up menu, choose “Text with Descriptors.”
Click Options. In the Text Export Settings dialog, select “Show Text, Descriptors, and Time”; select “Show time relative to start of Movie”; and set fractions of seconds to 1/30 (the default is 1/1000).
Click OK, then click Save to create a text file with descriptors.
Open the exported list in your text editor or word processor, and open the target movie in QuickTime Player.
Choose Window > Show Movie Info.
In QuickTime Player, drag the playhead on the timeline to find the first point in the movie where you want to begin a new chapter.
Use the Right and Left Arrow keys to step forward or backward a frame at a time as needed. Note the current time in the Properties window.

In the text file, find the first chapter title and change the timestamp just before that chapter title to the time you noted in the Properties window.
The timestamp might now read, for example, [00:01:30.15], meaning that selecting the first chapter title will jump the viewer 1 minute, 30 seconds, and 15 frames into the movie.

Repeat steps 9 through 11 until you’ve identified all the places in the movie that correspond to the chapter divisions and you’ve entered the proper timestamps in the text file.
Change the last timestamp (the one after the last chapter title in the text file) to match the duration of the movie.
Save the text file and import it into QuickTime Player.
QuickTime creates a new movie with just a text track.

Choose Edit > Select All, choose Edit > Copy, and close the movie.
Click in the main movie, choose Edit > Select All, then choose Edit > “Add to Movie.”
QuickTime adds the text track to the movie.

Choose Window > Show Movie Properties.
In the Properties window, select the video or audio track you want to associate with the chapter track, and click Other Settings.
Choose the main video or audio track from the Chapters pop-up menu.
If you have a movie with alternate subtitle or sound tracks, you can create multiple chapter lists in different languages and set the appropriate subtitle or sound track as the owner of each chapter list. The chapter list will change to match the selected language.

Select the text track, then select “Preload this track” (to make the chapter track load first).
Deselect the new text track so that it doesn’t display on top of the video.
The new track will still function as a chapter track.

Save the movie as a self-contained movie.
You can now choose a chapter title from the pop-up menu to the right of the timeline.

Wow, that was long, but it should work, and it should be a fairly compact file in terms of MB.

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

Currently producing these popular podcasts:

[Pat Defilippo]

Jonathan – thank you very, very much!!!

That’s the winner! It took about an hour or two to go through all of the steps, but by-and-large the steps that you found and listed were exactly what I needed to make this work and not only get a small enough file to fit onto a DVD but even small enough to fit onto a CD! The final .mov, which consists of H.264 Video and .mp3 audio and the Text Track, is 577mb!!! I could have looked these instructions right in the eye and not known that this is exactly what I needed to do – you suggesting it was what made this work perfectly!

There were a few things that I figured out along the way that might be of further explanation and assistance to those who try this later:

1) You can name chapter markers by the same exact name and it will work in Quicktime for Mac, but when you test it in Quicktime for Windows, the second marker of the same name will jump back to the first marker of the same name in the Quicktime Movie timeline. What I did was put a “(2)” next to the second chapter marker of the same name and it now works perfectly in both Quicktime for Mac and Windows.

2) When you are “adding” the Chapter Marker Text Track in Quicktime Player, and you have the “Show Movie Properties” window open, even if your first inclination is to un-check the “Text Track” so that it is not visible over whatever your video is, you instead have to “hide” the actual text track layer by making it “Layer 0”. If you un-check the “Text Track”, you will not get the pull-down chapter marker menu in Quicktime (which defeats the whole purpose). So, you have to leave the “Text Track” checked but move the layer behind your video layer so that it is not seen and it will work perfectly.

That’s really all that I learned in addition to Jonathan’s notes. It appears to work perfectly now on both platforms.

Thanks again, Jonathan – I owe you big time!
-Pat

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[Jonathan Miller]

Cool, I’m glad you’re not going to be pulling your hair out anylonger!

I read manuals (books and .pdf versions) like they’re going out of style.

My wife calls them, “Jon porn.”

I’ve never had to do what you needed, but I could remember reading about how to do it somewhere…

Glad I remembered, and it’s cool you were able to tweak it!

Jon

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

Currently producing these popular podcasts: