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How to use chapters

This feature requires a Pro, Business, Premium, Starter, Standard, Advanced, or Enterprise membership.

You can add chapters that will appear during the playback of your embedded videos and in showcases, as well as on Vimeo.com. Chapters are ideal for long-form content like lessons, training sessions, sermons, recitals, sports games, and narrative storytelling. Adding chapters helps your viewer create a self-guided viewing experience and allows them to easily navigate to relevant segments to find content faster. 

You’ll also be able to see which chapters get the highest engagement and track engagement rates by chapter.

In this article:

The video player's progress bar highlighting a chapter marker. The playhead is positioned at the 2:50 mark, which displays a chapter overlay containing a title, thumbnail, and additional information.

⚠️Note: You can hover over chapter segments to see timestamps and chapter titles. 

How to add chapters to your video

  1. Select the video from your Library to open the video settings page.
  2. Select the Interactive tab to the left of the video player. Then, choose Chapters. 
    A section of the left-side toolbar of the video settings page. The 'Interactive' button is selected, expanding an 'Interactivity' panel. The 'Chapters' option is selected.
  3. Under the Chapters section, select + Add a chapter.
  4. You can edit a chapter by selecting the options menu (…) to the right.
    he 'more options' icon, represented by three dots, is highlighted with a red box. The tooltip labels it as the 'Edit Chapter' button.
  5. After selecting the options menu (…) you may enter a new title or edit the timestamp for the chapter.
  6. Select Add chapter to keep going. You can add up to one chapter per second to your video.
  7. Once you’re done editing your chapters, hit the Save button.

Limitations: 

  • One Vimeo video has a limit of 80 chapters.
  • Chapter titles are limited to 50 characters.
  • Chapters are restricted to the Vimeo player and won't function on any other publishing site.

Editing chapters

To edit an existing chapter, you can select the options menu (…) next to the chapter name. You can edit the name of the chapter, and its start time. Select Close to save your settings and close the menu.

Removing chapters

In the Edit Chapter menu, select the trash icon in the bottom left corner of the modal that appears. The chapter will be deleted as soon as you press the trash icon.
The 'Edit Chapter' dialog box, where a red outline highlights the trash can icon for deleting the chapter. The dialog also includes editable fields for the chapter's 'Name' and 'Start time'.

💡Tip: Replacing a video with a shorter one will delete all chapters and timestamps that come after the end of the new video. However, if the replacement video has the same length as the original, the chapters and timestamps will remain.

Viewing chapters on desktop vs. mobile

Chapters are only supported on a Desktop viewing experience. The chapter markers aren’t visible on mobile devices and iPads; only the chapters menu is.

Analytics for chapters

To see analytics on a video, select the graph icon in the top right corner of the video page. Chapters appear within viewer retention stats so that you can see which chapters your users are engaging with the most. 

The chapters are shown along the video playbar, and the viewer retention graph shows viewership at each second of the video. By comparing the peaks in the graph with your chapter markers, you can see what percentage of viewers are being retained for each chapter. 

You can read more about analytics at Advanced Analytics. 

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