mkvtoolnix (Matroska toolkit): new release

[niamh]

Yep, this build takes it, thank you very much :)

[Liisachan]

Thanks Mosu. I tested TTA with ID3v1 and TTA with ID3v2 and mkvmerge accepted the both normally. :)

[aketon]

I've just tried to mux theora in mkv! Every went fine, but when I am trying to play the file, the only thing I get is a green video! Is this a decoder problem? Or matroska doesn't support theora?

[Mosu]

Originally posted by aketon
I've just tried to mux theora in mkv! Every went fine, but when I am trying to play the file, the only thing I get is a green video! Is this a decoder problem? Or matroska doesn't support theora?

Not natively, not yet.

[aketon]

Thanks! I hope that is going to be supported soon!:)

BYE

[Mosu]

Me:


Ok, mkvmerge needs some more checks for this -- e.g. "Warning: there is no track with the ID 12345 in file xyz.ogg" and "Warning: No tracks will be copied from file zyx.ogg". A lot of work, though, but I'll put it on my TODO list (= into my bug tracking system):

You:

Originally posted by Liisachan
Yes, I suppose THAT is very preferable for stable "1.0 release".

Me:

Done in http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/pre/mkvtoolnix-0.9.5-build20041004-2.rar

[Mosu]

(on my way to post 1000 in this thread :D )

Hey,

weeeeeee! It's been quite some time since the last release. Probably longer than since any other release. But here we go.

This funky release features tons of bug features and a couple of new features and a complete rewrite of the chapter handling (which you won't notice, but it a really big change, so there might still be bugs. But I doubt it).

You should read the ChangeLog below -- I really don't want to repeat everything here ;)

Here are the usual URLs to...
...the home page:
https://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/
...the source code:
https://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/sources/mkvtoolnix-0.9.6.tar.bz2
...the Windows binaries:
https://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/mkvtoolnix-0.9.6.rar

The packages for SuSE Linux 9.0 and 9.1 as well as those for RedHat 9 / FedoraCore 1 and 2 are still being built and will be available from my home page shortly.

Here's the ChangeLog since the previous release, 0.9.5:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2004-10-07 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* Released v0.9.6.
* mkvextract: bug fix: The track extraction was creating the output file twice if the Matroska file contained a copy of the track headers. This resulted in the first extracted file being overwritten at the end of extraction.
* mmg: bug fix: If the file title is read from an input file, not modified by the user and that input file is removed again then the file title will be unset.

2004-10-05 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: enhancement: Converted the raw FLAC reader to use another interface to the FLAC libraries. This results in a speedup of up to 50%. Thanks to Josh Coalson for telling me about its existence.

2004-10-04 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: new feature: Added two warnings. One about invalid track IDs that were used on the command line but that don't correspond to an available track in a file and one if no track will be copied from a source file. Both warnings hint at bad command line arguments.

2004-10-03 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: Only write the segment duration as a 64bit float if there is no video track present. This way users won't have to update their DirectShow filter/apps for most files. Only audio-only files need this precision anyway.
* mkvmerge: Changed the Ogg/OGM reader to use the stream number and not its serial number as the track ID (meaning the track IDs will be 0, 1, 2... etc. instead of the random numbers oggenc uses as the serial numbers).

2004-09-30 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: new feature: The CUE sheet parser now accepts INDEX lines with indices from 00 up to 99 and implements the Red Book specification for audio CDs that way. Patch by Vegard Pettersen <vegard_p at broadpark adot no>.

2004-09-28 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge, mkvextract: bug fix: ASS was handled like SSA which is not correct in each case, especially when extracting it.
* mkvextract: bug fix: The WAV writer was not endian safe.

2004-09-27 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: The charset was not set correctly on Solaris.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: mkvmerge crashed when reading Matroska files that contain an empty tag list.

2004-09-26 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Some Matroska files that e.g. have had their timecodes offset with the Matroska Stream Editor or other means may contain timecodes that caused mkvmerge to print a warning about "timecode < last_timecode". A new fix implements a workaround and a warning message with a proper explanation for this case.

2004-09-24 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Older Matroska files containing chapters caused mkvmerge to abort muxing.

2004-09-21 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: mkvmerge was only copying the last tag of a list of tags applying to a track from a Matroska file.

2004-09-17 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: mkvmerge will show a nice warning if the entries in a SRT have non-continuous timestamps. It'll also sort the entries by their start timestamp instead of throwing the generic "timecode < previous timecode" warning.
* mmg: bug fix: The 'Matroska file analysis' window that occurs when reading chapters from a Matroska file did not disappear if it was minimized when the process finished.

2004-09-16 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: new feature: Added a new parameter --aspect-ratio-factor.
* mkvinfo: bug fix: Strings from chapters and tags were shown in UTF-8 instead of the local charset. This bug was introduced around 2004-08-28.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Not all chapter elements were copied correctly from a source Matroska file.

2004-09-07 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvextract: Sped up the extraction of attachments, chapters, cuesheets and tags by using the seek head information and not parsing the full file each time.

2004-09-02 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: The Matroska reader was not handling very big cluster timecodes correctly. Those can occur when the timecode scale factor is very small.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Empty clusters in Matroska files no longer make mkvmerge think that file has been read completely.

2004-08-31 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: new feature: Added support for MP2 (and maybe MP3) audio in MP4 containers.

2004-08-29 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: new feature: The chapter and tag parsers accept XML element attributes instead of sub-elements for those sub-elements that only contain data. Example for a "simple tag": <Simple Name="ARTIST" String="Tori Amos"/>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: The automatic MIME type detection based on the file name extension was using the file name extension as the MIME type.

2004-08-28 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge, mkvinfo: new feature: Added the four new PixelCrop elements.
* mkvmerge, mkvextract, mkvinfo: new feature: Added 'TargetTypeValue' as a supported tagging element.
* mkvmerge, mkvextract, mkvinfo: Complete rewrite of the chapter and tag parsing and output functions. Additions will be much easier now.
* mkvmerge, mkvextract, mkvinfo: feature removed: Dropped support for the very old and deprecated tagging system. No one used it anyway.

2004-08-24 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: new feature: Allow the use of two-letter ISO639-1 country codes in for the '--language' parameter. Those will be converted to the corresponding ISO639-2 language code automatically.

2004-08-22 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge, mkvinfo, mkvextract: new feature: Added support for the 'TargetType' tag element (which I meant to add before the 0.9.5 release...).
* mkvmerge: bug fix: The MP3 handling was broken on weird and rare occasions when reading MP3 from a Matroska file.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Removed a bogus warning about an attachment's MIME type having been given more than once.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Have fun :)

[Liisachan]

Mosu: Thank you for a lot of fixes.

Here's a new problem of mine. New Mkvinfo crashes if the MKV file has chapters, on my Windows XP SP2.

mkvinfo 0.9.4/0.9.5 works fine with the following commandline, but 0.9.6 crashes with it


mkvmerge.exe -o test.mkv vsshort.avi --chapters test.xml
mkvinfo test.mkv


test.xml is this:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<Chapters>
<EditionEntry>
<ChapterAtom>
<ChapterDisplay>
<ChapterString>first</ChapterString>
<ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
</ChapterDisplay>
<ChapterTimeStart>00:00:00.000000000</ChapterTimeStart>
</ChapterAtom>
</EditionEntry>
</Chapters>


Edit: test.xml was wrong. fixed. (The result is the same)

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Liisachan
...

Crap. Easy to fix, annoying that it occured. Another one of those "happened only on Windows otherwise I would have cought it sooner" bugs.

Here's the new release: http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/mkvtoolnix-0.9.6-3.rar

[Liisachan]

Fixed. ty

[kurt]

Hi mosu,

would it be possible in the next mkvtoolnix-releases to write the videobitrate into the file? I relate to this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=83555) thread...
greets
kurt

[Mosu]

Originally posted by kurt
Hi mosu,

would it be possible in the next mkvtoolnix-releases to write the videobitrate into the file?

Maybe. (It's not really difficult, I just have to see if I find the time & motivation to do it.)

I've added it to the TODO list: https://www.bunkus.org/anthill/query.php?bug=102

[malkion]

Mosu, would it also be possible to add a check box functionality to enable audio cut-off once the video duration ends?

[Liisachan]

Originally posted by malkion
Mosu, would it also be possible to add a check box functionality to enable audio cut-off once the video duration ends? This was already answered 2 pages before where Mosu said that would be much more difficult than we'd imagine (for technical reasons) and:
While I do agree that this might be useful it won't happen...
I'm against doing that. mkvmerge is already slow enough as it is (it's not multi threaded and suffers from many small read/write operations from/to the files), and that would add a considerable amount of time to the muxing process.

So for now I'll say "no sorry". Maybe I'll add such an option in the future.

[Mosu]

Thanks for answering, Liisachan :) But you left out part of the explanation:

The problem is recognizing when the video track has ended and not just a gap in the middle. With some file formats (AVI, Quicktime, RM, Ogg IF it is implemented correctly) you can tell that a stream has ended, but not with Matroska. So finding the end of the video stream would involve either very, very intricate buffering OR a complete scan of those files for which the end cannot be determined.

VDubMod choses the latter approach and scans each file when opening it, but I'm against doing that.

[karl_lillevold]

Hi, I just ran into a problem in both mkvmerge and realmediasplitter. I was creating some very low bitrate encodes, intentionally without any framedrops. However, both mkvmerge and realmediasplitter drops frames whe converting to MKV or playing back the file. See http://www.lillevold.com/files/sam_176x144.rm for an example.
Note framedrops all through the beginning of the clip, particularly around 10-15 seconds when
1) first converting to MKV with mkvmerge (0.9.6) and playback, or
2) direct playback via realmediasplitter

If played in RealPlayer, it plays at a constant 12 fps. Well, most of the time :P Sometimes it drops frames too, but not consistently. When I go in to debug in RealPlayer I also see some problems. This is clearly a complicated case, I think because I was using B frames, which we normally do not use at such low bitrates and resolutions. Very small B frames get packaged together, creating some rather complicated de-packetizing cases. I will continue to work on the RealPlayer problem with this clip, when I have time.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
Hi, I just ran into a problem in both mkvmerge and realmediasplitter....

Sorry, I haven't read this post until now. I've downloaded the file and will look into it.

[Mosu]

Here we go :)

Still not at 1.0, but we're closing in. The latest release (created yesterday) is 0.9.7 and features a couple of bug fixes, some fairly major. Don't worry, the files created with 0.9.6 are fine, but there we some bugs that wouldn't allow you to create one in the first place ;)

Anyway, read the ChangeLog below for details.

One thing I've changed is the code for external timecodes. The problem has been for quite some time that mkvmerge wrote files that weren't 100% spec compliant. Therefore I'd like to get some feedback if the handling for external timecode files is still OK (I don't have any variable FPS files, so I can't test extensively).

The usual links to...
...the homepage:
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/
...the source code:
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/sources/mkvtoolnix-0.9.7.tar.bz2
...the Windows binaries:
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/mkvtoolnix-0.9.7.rar

Binaries for other Linux distros are available from the home page, too.

Last the ChangeLog since 0.9.6:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2004-10-24 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* Released v0.9.7.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: The handling of external timecode files was still not correct but should be OK now.

2004-10-17 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mmg: Added an error message if the user selects 'mmg' as the 'mkvmerge executable' because that would lead to an infinite number of 'mmg's being spawned.

2004-10-16 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: If LFE is on for DTS then the number of channels is one more than what the DTS frame header says.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Timecodes for Vorbis were wrong on rare occasions (when reading laced Vorbis from a Matroska file and changing the lacing, e.g. when splitting for the second and all following files).

2004-10-10 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge/mkvinfo/mkvextract: bug fix: The chapter and tag element tables were not always intialized correctly depending on the compiler and the optimization flags used.
* mkvmerge: bug fix: The OGM reader was broken if at least one track was not to be copied from the file (happened between 0.9.5 and 0.9.6).
* mmg: bug fix: After loading saved mmg settings the track input box listed the tracks always coming from the last input file and not from the one they really came from.

2004-10-09 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mmg: enhancement: Made mmg's main window properly resizable.
* mkvmerge: Rewrote the code for the external timecode files. This also fixes bug 99: The durations for the individual tracks were not correct for those tracks for which --timecodes was used.

2004-10-08 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mmg: bug fix: Crash when saving chapters from the chapter editor. Same as the mkvinfo issue below but on all OS.
* mkvinfo: bug fix: The chapter and tag element tables were not initialized on Windows resulting in a crash when one of those elements was encountered.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Have fun :)

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by Mosu
Sorry, I haven't read this post until now. I've downloaded the file and will look into it.
I was going to look into the problems I saw in RealPlayer with this clip, but now I can not reproduce any of the reported problems... MPC plays back the .rm and the muxed .mkv file at a steady 12 fps, without any skipped frames. I see no problems in RealPlayer either. Very odd. The problem reproduced so easily before with frames skipped in the same scenes. So I think you can ignore this bug report. Sorry! (I'll just have to blame my dual CPU system, where one CPU has been dying and giving my instant black screen of deaths after I reported this.. :scared: the RealPlayer problems I saw in the debugger looked thread/blit/timing related. The frames are clearly in the .mkv file, and the problems were playback related, possibly decoder threading issues)

[Mosu]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
I was going to look into the problems I saw in RealPlayer with this clip, but now I can not reproduce any of the reported problems...

Ok :) I haven't spent any time working on this, so there was no harm done. Thanks for letting me knwo.

[LeMoi]

Warning: matroska_reader: exception caught
I have this error when trying to remux an mkv file which has originally been muxed with mkvtoolnix 0.9.4. I wanted to keep only subs in ths mkv which contains rmvb, ac3, ssa, srt and sub/idx, but event i check all tracks, i have this error :o
When can it come from ?

[Mosu]

Originally posted by LeMoi
I have this error when trying to remux an mkv file which has originally been muxed with mkvtoolnix 0.9.4. I wanted to keep only subs in ths mkv which contains rmvb, ac3, ssa, srt and sub/idx, but event i check all tracks, i have this error :o
When can it come from ?

No idea. Can you upload that file to my FTP server, or at least as much as is needed to cause this crash?

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
.. and the problems were playback related, possibly decoder threading issues)
I found the bug. It is in the RealVideo 8/9/10 decoder :(

Fortunately it happens very rarely:

Extra skipped frames can occur, when
0) the decoder is operating in multi-threaded mode
1) the first frame of a video is < 180 lines, and
2) the first frame of a video is very small
this means very low bitrates, and
3) in sub-sequent frames,
decoding is so quick that only one
thread handles the complete frame
4) RV9 or 10 only

.. so there is no need for a decoder update until a new RealPlayer comes out, but the fix will be included in any potential updates to HFE.

[LeMoi]

sorry but the file is 1.5 GB... I made an mkvinfo on the file and sent you the report, i hope it will help...
But it's quite weird, since if i choose to split by size and choose 3MB, it writes 9 files and then write this error, and files have the attachments, so it may come from one of the tracks, but i don't know which one :(

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by Mosu
Nothing. I have added it in preparation for implementing concatenation / appending of several tracks and files. But that does not work yet, and it won't before the 1.0 release.
Ah, that explains why I could not figure out how to get --append-to to work. I was trying to concatenate two MKV files (with RV40 and COOK, and same video dimensions), but have not been able to figure out how to. The little problem is that one of the files is > 2GB and rmeditor, which can normally merge two RM files, bails out. So I converted to MKV, and tried to find a method in that domain... :cool:

[Atamido]

AVIMux GUI can append Matroska files, but I'm not sure if it likes files containing RM.

[#2]

I'm having issues joining 2 .mkv with RV and HE-AAC streams. I'm useing mkvtoonix for each and then AVIMux to append. It is for the Flipper Starship Troopers. I have the Matroska pack installed. When I play back with MPCs Audio Switcher enabled I get a slight skipp in the audio stream at the transition but the second half in sync. If I play back with the Audio Switcher dissabled I get a smooth transition but a out of sync second half.

[LeMoi]

i don't why, but i think my mkv is corrupted, since i also have an error with matroska stream editor, but the file is playable :o

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by Pamel
AVIMux GUI can append Matroska files, but I'm not sure if it likes files containing RM.
Yes, I had tried that, but could not get it to work for RM in MKV.

[IgorC]

does last version of mkvtools 0.9.7 support H.264?
Can I mux H.264 + OGG(Vorbis Audio) to MKV?

[celtic_druid]

If they H.264 is in an AVI then yes, same as any other avi video.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by IgorC
does last version of mkvtools 0.9.7 support H.264?
Can I mux H.264 + OGG(Vorbis Audio) to MKV?

No, and it won't be added before 1.0.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by celtic_druid
If they H.264 is in an AVI then yes, same as any other avi video.

Yes, but it isn't supported natively, and neither can you mux it from MP4/MOV.

[thana]

a small bug i found in mmg up to the latest prerelease version (2004-11-11):

when i minimize the main window while muxing is in progress, it is impossible to restore it after muxing finished (except from taskmanager). left- or right-clicking on it in the taskbar has no effect. i confirmed this behaviour with all versions back to 0.9.0.

I'm puzzled why i didn't catch this bug earlier, as i use mmg regularly and almost always minimize it while muxing (at least i thought so, maybe my mind plays tricks on me here).

[LeMoi]

I have it too, but not every time :o

[Mosu]

Originally posted by thana
when i minimize the main window while muxing is in progress, it is impossible to restore it after muxing finished (except from taskmanager).

This doesn't happen on Linux so you'll have to be patient. I don't know when I'll get around to fixing that.

[Mosu]

After nearly 1000 posts it's about time to close this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85503) :D

[outlyer]

Originally posted by Mosu
After nearly 1000 posts it's about time to close this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85503) :D
Yaahooo! :D