The VideoLAN Forums

https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/2100

I believe this ticket indicates that Bookmarks are not fixed yet?

At least I can't get them to work in either the latest trunk or branch nightly nor in the latest released version 0.9.9. I'm on Windows. When bookmarks do work I assume (from the documentation) that they works as follows: first you create bookmarks (cttl-b for bookmarks mgr window). Then you save to a playlist. Quit vlc; restart; and drag the playlist onto vlc. And the bookmarks should be there and you should be able (through context/right-clicking on the vlc window) to travel to each. Is that correct?

Anyway ...

well, yeah, that ticket is still open and in bugs paradise, meaning that it won't be addressed any time soon unless someone steps up and sends a patch.

However, your idea of using Bookmarks is absolutely correct, just that you can't save them for now...