So this is something that has annoyed me for some time, and has really been annoying me of late, so I have been trying workaround.
So basically the issue is that you can create Chapter Markers in Adobe Premiere Pro in your sequence, which are ostensibly for use in Adobe Encore, but that program stopped with CS6, and after my last hard drive bailed after the El Capitan Update I don’t even have it installed on my current hard drive.
Anyway, back in the day with Final Cut Pro 7 I could export a video with chapter markers and compress an H264 video with chapter markers using compressor. It would make Apple Compatible m4v files instead of a normal mp4 files, but chapter markers would work in most programs and show up on the web in most cases.
Unfortunately Adobe Media Encorder won’t do this, as it only makes straight mp4 files, and since Encore is a dead program, the Chapter Markers in Premiere Pro are pretty much useless.
After much searching, and seeing all the ways people were making chapter markers (most of which are really a pain the ass, and don’t use standard formatting for either the text file, or the timcode), I went back to basically my old way of doing this.
This is to export my video as a ProRES video which includes chapter markers, and then use HandBrake to encode it with Chapter Markers. Now not only this take longer, but also take up more hard drive space, but at least the chapter markers work!
And while m4v is a subset of mp4, it does play in most players including directly in Firefox, though doesn’t show the chapters markers, but at least it plays fine. And I am OK with my chapters only working on Macs, because at least they will show for most people looking at my reel.