Any way for Frame-Specific Chapter Points with freeware?

[countryMouse]

I know, the information is probably here on the forum, but search turned up so many hits, I'm going blind trying to scan thru them for what I'm seeking.

I'm looking for a freeware that will let me add chapter points on specific frames, such as the exact frame of a scene change.

I'm a Pinnacle Studio fugitive, capturing with VirtualDub using the Huffyuv lossless codec to avi YUY2.
(I'm liking the Huff encodes better than DV-avi, but my Pinnacle Studio 10 won't open the Huff captures, which is why I'm not using that to set the chapters.


I've tried DVDAuthorGui and Gui For DVDAuthor, and the chapter points don't encode on the specific frame I chose.
This may be because I'm not doing it correctly in those apps, or maybe they just can't do it?
I open the capture in VDub, go to the desired frame, and use the displayed time to enter HH:MM:SS:millisecond in the chapter setup screen of the dvdAuthor apps.
After encoding the dvd files, the chapter points have drifted several to many frames later.

I'm hoping someone will advise me how to do this in either of these programs, or can recommend other freeware and guides that will accomplish my goal.

Thanks in advance for any and all input.

[blutach]

Try ChapterEdit 1.10

http://www.digital-digest.com/~blutach/ChapterEdit.zip

Regards

[countryMouse]

Thank you blutach, I'm downloading and will try it tonight.

[bigotti5]

I am not familiar with DVDAuthorGUI and Gui For DVDAuthor but imo these are authoring tools - not mpeg encoders so you have to force your mpeg encoder to insert an I-frame on the specified frame(s).
Set chapter points requires the desired frame to be an I-frame.

[blutach]

Welcome bigotti5 - one of the most knowledgable people around on DVD authoring and editing.



Regards

[bigotti5]

Nice but immoderately salutation

[countryMouse]

well, yup, I-frames indeed. As Liquid217 was kind enough to advise me as well.
ChapterEdit also seems to only accept chapter points at existing I-Frames.

my workflow :
I capture in VDub / VDubMod using Huffyuv to YUY2.
Create avs scripts for filtering & trims, and send that to QUenc to encode to mpeg.

Load the mpeg & ac3 audio into DVDAuthorGui to add chapter points.
I don't particularly want a menu, I only want the chapter points.


How do I force the I-frames?
Would anyone be kind enough to point me to a guide on how to force Quenc or other freeware encoder to do that for me?

thanks for any input -
countryMouse

[bigotti5]

Not familiar with Quenc and a quick look did not show this capability
In HCEnc 0.18 you can define chapters (or load chapter files).

Open HCgui and load your avs - Preview/Chapters and add your chapters or load a chapter file

[countryMouse]

bigotti5, thank you for that advice.

I'll try HCenc tonight, and post back results.

[countryMouse]

I tried two aviSynth scripts in HCenc, and one worked out just fine

However, when running the other one, an INFO message popped up around 75% through the Intermediate Pass, and I didn't catch all of the message before it closed, something about AviSynth Error in Environment ........
The error message was not included in the log file.

I'll try again, and see if I can catch a screen shot of the message, unless one of you wise people is familiar with it and can tell me what steps I need to take to debug my avs script.

Thanks

[countryMouse]

well, dang it anyway.

The message said Error 2, and when that appears in VDub it means it couldn't open the file.
I don't understand why HCenc would run the first pass, and than crump out.
I posted at the "official" HCenc thread at doom9, but no joy there either.

My scripts include imports of other smaller "sub" scripts, so I guess the only way to trouble-shoot would be to try to encode each of those little ones and see where the error message pops up.


I guess after this, I will encode my bits and pieces into a single avi first, and then use a script for that aviSource to load into HCenc.
It would have been nice to save the drive space, but better to lose the drive space than my sanity

thanks anyway.

cM