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I have a DVD which was created for an educational institution, with 4 short videos on it.

VLC's onscreen display of the contents only shows one video. A video conversion tool is able to find all 4 videos. Apparently the .VOB file contains an MPEG video (thus probably MPEG-2).

How do I get a list of all the videos, and how do I tell VLC which one to play? I tried various title/chapter incantations, but either get the first video or no-such-item errors.

I found in dvd::rip a list of four chapters:
#1 [00:04:32]
#2 [00:08:11]
#3 [00:04:47]
#4 [00:05:59]

But I tried telling VLC to play chapters, and VLC gave errors that indicated that it couldn't find anything.

I don't know specifically about VLC and DVD chapters, however I wonder if you are trying too hard here.

VLC can play the DVD directly, either directly from the DVD media, or from a folder (just copy the complete DVD files to a folder).
Then use either "open disc" or "open folder" menus.

"VOB" files are just MPEG TS (transport streams).
VLC (or any self-respecting media player) can play a VOB directly as a stand-alone object (subject to possible copy-protection features).
Just copy the VOB(s) from the DVD.

You may need to rename ".VOB" to ".ts" for other players.
In the VOB you should get just the video, without the menus (which are stored in the other DVD objects).

For further information you could refer to Wikipedia or try "http://www.videohelp.com/" which has useful information references.

Often you may find that the seperate chapters are stored as seperate VOBs which makes it easy to find them (but this depends on how it was authored).

What happens to the chapters when it is ripped may depend on the ripping program.

I don't know specifically about VLC and DVD chapters, however I wonder if you are trying too hard here.

VLC can play the DVD directly, either directly from the DVD media, or from a folder (just copy the complete DVD files to a folder).
Then use either "open disc" or "open folder" menus.

Yes, VLC plays the entire set of videos as one long video with no problem. But I need to show each chapter separately.

There is one VIDEO_TS.VOB with a menu image with only the option for one video. That is what is shown when VLC is given the VIDEO_TS directory, VIDEO_TS.IFO, or VTS_01_0.IFO files. The VTS_01_1.VOB seems to contain all the videos in one file.

I'm not finding how to tell VLC what chapter to play, nor is VLC listing the chapters.

Sorry I haven't played around with chapters on VLC, though the documenation indicates it should work.

[When I've made a DVD with a few episodes/parts, I've always just done each bit as a seperate video (ie. a seperate menu item).
It's pretty easy to automate the DVD menu to play menu items seamlessly if required, so that's been sufficient for my limited purposes.]

May be a silly question but does the DVD work correctly on a hardware player (it could be an authoring issue, especially if it's a non-commercial DVD)?

Sorry I haven't played around with chapters on VLC, though the documenation indicates it should work.
May be a silly question but does the DVD work correctly on a hardware player (it could be an authoring issue, especially if it's a non-commercial DVD)?

Yes, it was in use in a DVD player. It actually began as a Laserdisc, then an audio-video company converted it to a DVD.

No replies in several days.
So, does VLC not support the same kind of chapters that other DVD readers support? What is VLC's definition of what is a "chapter"?

A chapter is a chapter, i.e. a seek point within a title. Depending on the content, it might also be called a scene or a part. Typically hardware player seek to the next/previous chapter when you press one of the seek buttons.

Yes, that's how hardware behaves. How does one get a list of valid VLC chapter identifiers?

Trying to tell VLC on the command line to go to chapter 2 doesn't seem to do anything but produce an error. Is chapter two known as 0002, 000002, or does it have a name? The VLC documentation only shows a prefix and the meta "chapter" without the syntax. I don't see any option to emit a list of chapters, either.

The list of chapters, titles, and chapters per titles is available in the navigation menu of the main UI.

VLC gets them from libdvdnav. libdvdnav itself is reverse engineered, since the DVD specification is confidential.

The list of chapters, titles, and chapters per titles is available in the navigation menu of the main UI.

Oh, good, I finally found radio buttons for the four chapters. But they don't play anything. And they only appear when the directory is opened, not when the video file is selected.

Playback > Navigation > Title 1 > Chapter [1,2,3,4]

(a bunch failures removed)

Yay, I finally got a chapter to play!
But the video has to be playing, and then it is allowed to use Playback > Chapter options.

That still doesn't help me to figure out how to play a certain chapter from the command line. Unless I have to use ":Chapter 1" (should the space be URL-escaped?) instead of ":1" when addressing a chapter. The few examples I've found have used numbers.

IIRC it is "dvd://PATH@TITLE:CHAPTER" on VLC 1.1 and earlier, "dvd://PATH#TITLE:CHAPTER" on VLC 1.2 and later.

Oh, good, I finally found radio buttons for the four chapters. But they don't play anything. And they only appear when the directory is opened, not when the video file is selected.

Chapters are DVD Objects. They are stored in the IFO file of the DVD directory.
So if you open the VOB (transport stream) directly you can't get the Chapters.

For more info about DVD etc. have a look at "http://www.videohelp.com/dvd" etc.


A feature of VLC GUI is that it doesn't (can't) provide access to options which are content-dependant until the content is accessed.

So for example you can't turn-off the audio until you start to access the audio. This makes sense for a audio/video stream.
However it does not fit with recorded Video, which could be opened to inspect the content in advance of playback.

It is frustrating when there is more than one audio track.
It is necessary to start play before it is possible to select the correct track. Then it is necessary to scroll back to the start manually, to play the recording.

It would be nice if VLC had an "open but don't start play" (or "pause at the start") mode.
This would open the recording (file/directory) and permit the user to access track / chapter selection options etc., before play starts (ie. pick all the necessary filters etc. but not start streaming the data).

Of course most DVDs have a top Menu which should do the track / chapter selection for you.

Eh? You can select the track, or the track language before you start. But of course, you need to know which one you want in the first place.

IIRC it is "dvd://PATH@TITLE:CHAPTER" on VLC 1.1 and earlier, "dvd://PATH#TITLE:CHAPTER" on VLC 1.2 and later.

In the documentation, title and chapter have brackets around them separately, so it looks like #TITLE is optional. Despite the documentation, is the title mandatory in order to access the chapter? I haven't found an accepted title listed, and I'm still not sure what the proper representation for CHAPTER is.

a chapter doesn't make sense without title.

a chapter doesn't make sense without title.

OK, but what makes sense to VLC as the name of a title and chapter? When I'm playing the video, I see "Title 1" and "Chapter 2" in menu options. So should the notation be "@Title 1:Chapter 2", or "@1:2"... or is there a mandatory syntax which includes a required way to escape spaces? I only found "title" and "chapter" in the documentation but not a syntax for them.

Hmm, maybe Title is optional, as it looks like "@:2" might be legal -- if "2" is a recognized name for a chapter. I wonder if another six dozen attempts might produce a functional command line.

It's simple. I'm not sure where all those answers above came from.

On that second box that pops up after convert/save. "Start point" will read 0, and title will read 0. Change them to 1, and 1. It will let you copy any DVD regardless of what kind, all chapters. If you don't do this. it only copies the first 49 seconds of the dvd and stops.

I think those complicated answers above are designed by open source haters trying to get you to give up with complicated answers. Open source keeps information free to the people, and not to just the 1% of the elite that are controlling you.