MKVToolNix v24.0.0 released

[Lincoln Burrows]

There seems to be an issue some people have with MKV files not playing in a stand alone Blu-Ray player.

I was having this issue myself, some files would play some would not. It turns out that the problem I was having was with the MKV's header. It seems that the newest version of MKVToolnix compressed the headers for all the streams (video,audio etc.) by default and some players can not read these. Previous versions of MKVToolnix did not do this. I searched for several days before I found the solution but when you add your files click the video stream, then click the "Extra Options" tab and where is says "Compression:" choose none.

I do this for the video, audio and subtitle streams just to make sure they will play in my player and I have not had it fail yet.

I don't want you to have a huge MKV and waste a BDR disc because your player cant play the file now.

Is this really happening? I looked at the "extra options" for each stream and nothing is selected by default:



There are two options if you click on that box: none and zlib.

Should we always make sure "none" is selected? If that's the case why did you changed it?

Note: I used TsMuxer to demux the contents of m2ts files (video/audio/subtitle streams) and later MkvMerge to join all those streams into a MKV.

The author of this program replied:

Hardware players are notoriously behind in supporting official features. mkvmerge uses certain features like header removal compression by default because they've been part of the specs of over half a decade now. If your player does not support header removal compression then you have to turn it off manually, yes.

[LeMoi]

Yes, if it's not specified, it means it's enabled

[nurbs]

There is no real drawback if you disable it either. The size saved by the compression is basically zero. We're talking about a couple of hundred kilobytes per video.

[Sharc]

I have to disable the 'compression' for my new WDTV as well.
It took me a while to find out why the player refused to playback the files.....

[LeMoi]

Yes, this feature is completely useless for audio tracks and just adds compatibility issues with almost every hardware player and some software players, but Mosu refuses to disable it by default or let us the choice to disable it by default...

[GodofaGap]

Well the code for the GUI is available so if you want to make an alternate GUI that has compression 'none' as default you could do that with probably only adjusting a few lines of code.

Since there are so many complaints I'm surprised no one has done this and uploaded it somewhere yet anyway.

[LeMoi]

I don't know why, maybe because it concerns common users (like me) who don't know how to modify and compile a program like this

[robpdotcom]

I just use an older version (4.1.0 I think) from before the compression feature was added. Otherwise, I kept forgetting to disable compression, and ended up making incompatible mkv's.

[Lincoln Burrows]

Is there a way to reverse this if you already generated a MKV file with this issue?

All steps: TsMuxer (to demux the original BD files/m2ts) > Mkvmerge ----> MKV (with this problem) > What's next?

If I didn't selected "None" for all streams should I start all over again (from the beginning, see above) or simply open MKvmerge and select this option for all streams and create another MKV?

[robpdotcom]

Originally Posted by Lincoln Burrows

simply open MKvmerge and select this option for all streams and create another MKV?

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure that works.

[professor_desty_nova]

Originally Posted by Lincoln Burrows

Is there a way to reverse this if you already generated a MKV file with this issue?

All steps: TsMuxer (to demux the original BD files/m2ts) > Mkvmerge ----> MKV (with this problem) > What's next?

If I didn't selected "None" for all streams should I start all over again (from the beginning, see above) or simply open MKvmerge and select this option for all streams and create another MKV?

In the official Matroska page (http://www.matroska.org/) go to the download section and see MKClean. This should come with a program to make files compatible with broken players.

[Superb]

Originally Posted by robpdotcom

I just use an older version (4.1.0 I think) from before the compression feature was added. Otherwise, I kept forgetting to disable compression, and ended up making incompatible mkv's.

But then you're missing some very important bug fixes.

Example:

2010-08-28 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
* mkvmerge: bug fix: Certain frames in certain h.264/AVC raw tracks were handled wrong, e.g. files created by x264 versions starting with revision 1665. The situation occured if an IDR slice comes immedtiately after a non-IDR slice and the IDR slice has its frame_num and pic_order_count_lsb fields set to 0.

[nurbs]

There is no reason to create a raw AVC track with x264 if your target is MKV. Raw output is only necessary for Blu Ray (and possibly AVCHD). If you let x264 output MKV or MP4 to begin with that bug doesn't affect you.

Personally I stopped using the GUI and use the CLI now. That way I'm less likely to forget turning compression off. Setting things up is also faster that way if I do TV series. From what I read when other programs use mkvmerge they usually also disable the compression for audio and video tracks by default so I guess many people won't notice that it was added.

[asarian]

Originally Posted by LeMoi

Yes, this feature is completely useless for audio tracks and just adds compatibility issues with almost every hardware player and some software players, but Mosu refuses to disable it by default or let us the choice to disable it by default...

Basically what it boils down to, is that I have to rewrite every mkv generated by mkvtoolnix with eac3to, as tools like tsMuxeR trip over the header compression as well.

[b66pak]

@Mosu feature request:

split .mkvs in equal size when provide ONLY the max number of splits...
_

[Mosu]

Won't happen, sorry. The reason is simple: mkvmerge does not know how big the file will become. It cannot know the size of all tracks before it starts muxing, therefore it's not possible to implement something like you've requested.

[Underground78]

Hello,

Is there an easy way to cut a sample from an mkv file (by cutting only the first X MB or seconds for example) ? If the splitting mode is used, more files than needed will be created. It is probably quite easy to do so but I have found the solution yet ...

[pelle412]

Is there a thread for future feature requests? I'd like to see automatic chapter joining when two MKV files are appended and each contains their own chapters. In the current version, only the chapters in the first MKV file is kept and the chapters in the second MKV file is lost.

[Mosu]

There's no extra thread, but what you've described should already be implemented. The next release has been built already, and I just have to find the time to write all of those release messages...

See also http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...84#post1444584 and the preceding posts for a related discussion.

[SamuriHL]

Sweet! That'll be a nice feature to have!