I have multiple audiobook files (m4b) that ffprobe is able to retrieve the chapters from just fine… except the chapter information is printed to stderr and never in the formatted (STDOUT) output. The Perl module FFprobe doesn’t handle the chapters so I submitted feature request #73803

Feature request is to format the chapter output.

jason@jason-Inspiron-1545 ~/bin $ ffprobe "/home/jason/Audiobooks/Ben Bova/Mars/Mars 1.m4b" 1>/dev/null

  libavutil    51.  7. 0 / 51.  7. 0
  libavcodec   53.  5. 0 / 53.  5. 0
  libavformat  53.  2. 0 / 53.  2. 0
  libavdevice  53.  0. 0 / 53.  0. 0
  libavfilter   2.  4. 0 /  2.  4. 0
  libswscale    2.  0. 0 /  2.  0. 0
  libpostproc  52.  0. 0 / 52.  0. 0
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0xddfac0] max_analyze_duration reached
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/home/jason/Audiobooks/Ben Bova/Mars/Mars 1.m4b':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : M4B 
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: M4B mp42isom
    creation_time   : 2009-09-08 16:19:29
    album           : Mars
    artist          : Ben Bova
    genre           : Audiobook
  Duration: 03:51:23.41, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 81 kb/s
    Chapter #0.0: start 0.000000, end 2779.567914
    Metadata:
      title           : Mars - 01 of 24
    Chapter #0.1: start 2779.567914, end 5555.049161
    Metadata:
      title           : Mars - 02 of 24
    Chapter #0.2: start 5555.049161, end 8334.617075
    Metadata:
      title           : Mars - 03 of 24
    Chapter #0.3: start 8334.617075, end 11110.098322
    Metadata:
      title           : Mars - 04 of 24
    Chapter #0.4: start 11110.098322, end 13883.419864
    Metadata:
      title           : Mars - 05 of 24
    Stream #0.0(und): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 80 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2009-09-08 16:19:29
    Stream #0.1(eng): Subtitle: text / 0x74786574
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2009-09-08 17:31:00
Unsupported codec with id 94213 for input stream 1

patch to add m4b chapter support:

82c82
< my ($tree, $branch, $tag, $stream);
---
>     my ($tree, $branch, $tag, $stream, $chapter);
100c100,108
< }
---
> 	} elsif ($line =~ m/Chapter \#(\d+\.*\d+): start (\d+\.*\d+)\, end (\d+\.*\d+)/i) {
>       my ($start, $end) = ($2, $3);
>       $chapter = $1;
>       $chapter =~ s/\.//g;
>       $chapter =~ s/^0+(\d)/$1/;
> 
>       $$tree{chapters}{$chapter} = { start => $start, end => $end };
>     } elsif ($line =~ /title\s+: (.+)$/) {
>       $$tree{chapters}{$chapter}{title} = $1;
101a110
>   }