A multimedia processing system identifies chapter breaks in a program represented by multimedia data through an analysis of audio content of a portion of the multimedia data so as to identify an interval that potentially represents a chapter break. This audio analysis can include an analysis to identify changes in high frequency edges in the audio content, an analysis to identify changes in the total energy in a central frequency band of the audio content, an analysis to identify patterns of sequentially repeating values in the audio content, an analysis to identify changes in bitrate, or some combination thereof. One or more variances in the audio information at (e.g., before) the start of the interval and the audio information at (e.g., after) the end of the interval then may be used to identify or otherwise characterize the interval as representing an actual chapter break. Further, a chapter represented by two consecutive chapter breaks can be identified as an advertisement based on the duration between the two consecutive chapter breaks and thus the multimedia processing device can implement a “commercial skip function” by omitting playback of the portion of the multimedia data representing the chapter responsive to the chapter being identified as an advertisement.