gMKVExtractGUI

[Mosu]

I appreciate your support for MKVToolNix, but the answer is unfortunately no. This is a bloody limitation of how packaging for the Windows Store works. See this issue & this FAQ entry for more details.

[gpower2]

Originally Posted by morphinapg

Is there any way to get this to work with the Windows Store version of mkvtoolnix? If I find the directory that the exe files are located in, it gives me access denied errors. If I modify permissions on the mkvtoolnix folder (which is a little difficult compared to usual) then it works, but then it breaks mkvtoolnix until I uninstall it and reinstall it again.

I think that Windows Store apps are designed to be isolated, so it would be understandable if other apps cannot access them...

[Liquid]

using folder prefix in options, does not work anymore, in v2.5.0 it worked, can we have a fix for that.

Folder prefix is converted to {Folder Name}_, where both slashes are converted to underscore.

This change was made in v2.6.1
- Replace invalid file characters with underscore character ('_') from output filename

can we have the ability to export subs to subfolders next to file we exporting from.

Thank You

[gpower2]

Hello and thanks for the feedback!

The options there never actually supported subfolders officially, so this is a new feature that needs to be added.

I will try to tackle it in a new version soon

[oniiz86]

@gpower2 I was just wondering if the bug fix that @Liquid had mentioned above regarding folder prefix in options along with subfolders support will be released soon in v2.6.5?

[gpower2]

Originally Posted by oniiz86

@gpower2 I was just wondering if the bug fix that @Liquid had mentioned above regarding folder prefix in options along with subfolders support will be released soon in v2.6.5?

Hi! Just to be clear, this is not a bug, this works like this by design 😉

This is a new feature request, I half finished it, but I didn't have the time to properly finish it, hopefully it will be done in 2024 🥹

[vertigo220]

Before I learned about this a few months ago, I was using tsMuxeR, but I've been using this instead since and use it frequently. First off, I'd like to thank you for making it, as it makes things much easier. I do have some feedback, both issues I've found with it and feature requests.

1) The popup to alert when done doesn't show on top of other windows if they're active/focused. For example, if I have a browser open and maximized, but have another small window in the corner focused, the popup will show over the browser, since it's not in focus. However, if it is in focus, the popup will show behind it, so it's not visible when done. To make things worse, it seems to put the popup under all windows when this happens, so it remains hidden even if the window that was active is minimized. For example, I'll start it then switch to watching a fullscreen video, and after a while I'll switch the video to a window, so it's no longer blocking where the popup is, but the popup isn't visible, so it looks like it's not done. I'll check the main window and it will look like it's stuck, with the abort buttons being clickable like it's still running, even though the progress bars are full, making it appear done. Only then will I realize the extra button on the taskbar for the popup, which is behind the other windows that were open in the background. In addition to all of this, there's no option to make a sound when finished.

2) I'm often wanting to compare tracks from two or more files in different locations, but unfortunately if I drag a file from one location into the input files area then drag a file from another location in, the second file replaces the first. It would be really helpful to be able to do this. The best way would be to have two drop locations, one to clear the current files with the dropped file(s), and one to add the dropped file to the current ones.

3) It would be really helpful to have some preset buttons that can be configured by the user for checking track types. For example, I often want to check all audio and subtitle tracks, but not video or chapter or attachments. To do this, I either have to right-click, go to "Check Audio Tracks..." then "All Audio Tracks," then repeat for subtitles, or I have to right-click, "Check All Tracks," then right-click and uncheck the ones I don't want. It would be much faster and save a lot of time if I could set a button to check all audio and subtitle tracks. Or even to have a button each for checking all video, audio, and sub tracks (and possible chapter and attachments), so I could just quickly click the buttons for the track types I want.

4) It would be really helpful if it would show how much space is needed for the selected tracks, changing as the selections change. It could also show the free space for the destination drive, making it easy to see if there's enough space for the selections. It could even warn somehow if there's not enough space.

5) A minor "issue," and perhaps some might have reason for it to work like it currently does, but if you run the same job multiple times, it will keep doing the extractions over again, creating duplicate files, instead of notifying they already exist.

6) A dark mode would be appreciated.

[gpower2]

Hey guys!
Long time no see!
Thanks to feedback from @Liquid, @oniiz86 and @vertigo220, I released a new version after quite some time, to address issues and introduce new features.

As always, enjoy!

Download link:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmk....0.7z/download

Changelog

v2.7.0

• Add explicit support for AV1 video codec
• Add support for appending input files via drag and drop (thanks vertigo220!)
• Make the success dialog popup appear as top most form across desktop (thanks vertigo220!)
• Fix the Abort buttons state before the success dialog pop up appears (thanks vertigo220!)
• Add new placeholder for directory separator in Options (thanks Liquid, oniiz86!)
• Add new Status Strip in Options form in order to make resize easier
• Add min size in the Options form to avoid minimizing it to size 1,1

Regarding the new feature of adding a directory separator, a new placeholder has been introduced as you can see in the screenshot, in order to separate sub-directories from filenames. ��

[gpower2]

Old Changelog, since first post got over 16k characters

v1.5.5

• Add gTaskbarProgress class to wrap the ITaskbarList3 interface in order to take advantage of Windows Vista+ taskbar features
• Fix TrueHD Audio file extension (thanks Giwyy)
• Move classes to respective folders
• Significantly decrease control flickering
• Change taskbar mode while reading file contents
• Changed frmLog to gForm class
• Comment out a Debug.WriteLine statement in gCheckedListBox

v1.5.4

• Enforce english ui language when executing mkvextract
• Always make sure that progress bar is set to 100% before showing the completion success message

v1.5.3

• Fixed setting the window's initial position to negative coordinates
• Added the window's size to settings
• Removed the help tooltip

v1.5.2

• Fix parsing for Attachment Filenames for newer mkvmerge versions (ignore uid tag)
• Added tooltip information about the track list
• Added functionality to remember window position

v1.5.1

• Increase the drag and drop area for the input file to the group box of input file info
• Add a context menu for easy selection of tracks

v1.5

• Hopefully fix Abort button from being drawn out of line in some OS (Windows XP ?)
• Fix some visual issues
• Added Output Directory and Lock Output Directory to the Settings
• Replace escape characters in mkvmerge
• Changed extraction mode to support grouping of similar tasks into one process call
• Added support of finding the delays in video and audio tracks
• Now extracted audio tracks have the relative to the video delay
• Add an extra check when selecting timecodes extraction mode
• Made a few more performance improvements

v1.4

• Added abort button. Works per track extraction.
• Added Abort All button, to abort all the extraction processes at once.
• Refactored ini file and settings in general. Now the chapter type is also included in settings.
• If MKVToolnix path is already set, ask the user before changing it.
• Added validity check for when setting MKVToolnix path.
• Added lock output directory feature. If locked, ouput directory doesn't change.
• Changed extension of OGM chapters from ".ogm" to ".ogm.txt".
• Make exception messages from mkvextract more sane.
• Added check for mkvextract.exe, mkvinfo.exe and mkvmerge.exe existance just before invoking them.
• Detect the audio delay via the track's timecodes and add it to the output filename.
• Set the Browse... buttons to show the folder that is already specified by the user.
• Check for a valid directory when drag and dropping in the output directory textbox.
• Added timecodes extraction mode.
• Changed the Status Strip Layout.
• Changed the Extract Buttons to one Extract Button and a Combo Box.

v1.3.1

• Fix loading of ini file
• Don't keep the input file in the input textbox, if it is invalid
• Add checks for user input when selecting an action

v1.3

• Use a simple ini file to store the last used MkvToolnix path
• Enable command line arguments in order to allow users to open files with gMKVExtractGUI
• Change the tags output filename to "filename_tags.xml"
• Use the --identify-verbose option of mkvmerge for checking the track contents of the matroska files, instead of mkvinfo
• Removed --gui-mode parameter to mkvinfo since it broke compatibility with older versions of MkvToolnix
• Changed the extension filter of the open file dialog to provide with an option that contains all valid extensions of matroska files

v1.2

• Make XML chapters to be written in UTF-8 without BOM
• Added more allowed extensions (.mka, .mks, .mk3d, .webm) (thanks sneaker_ger)
• Added --ui-language parameter to mkvinfo with 'en' value to avoid translations
• Added --gui-mode parameter to mkvinfo in order to double check that all output text will be in english
• Added --command-line-charset parameter to mkvinfo with value "UTF-8"
• Added --output-charset parameter to mkvinfo with value "UTF-8"
• Added new Log form, which show the Log of the application
• Added new 'Show Log' button in main form which shows the Log form

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by gpower2

Old Changelog, since first post got over 16k characters

Hey, thanks for all your hard work mate!

So, I am ignorant here (about most things!) is this automatically going to be in the MKVToolnix folder with the current version, or do I download this as a stand alone program or do I place it in the MKVtoolnix folder? What do I do? Thanks!

[vertigo220]

Originally Posted by Lathe

Hey, thanks for all your hard work mate!

So, I am ignorant here (about most things!) is this automatically going to be in the MKVToolnix folder with the current version, or do I download this as a stand alone program or do I place it in the MKVtoolnix folder? What do I do? Thanks!

This is a separate program. It's sole purpose it to demux MKVs into their individual tracks, whereas MKVToolNix is used for muxing/demuxing/combining/etc, but doesn't do so well at just extracting the raw tracks. So which program you will use depends on what you're trying to do, but they work separately from each other.

Edit to clarify that what I meant by separately is that while this program uses MKVToolNix by sending it commands to do what you want, that's the only way they're connected. You simply put this wherever you want and tell it where the MKVToolNix exe is so it can issues it commands, but it doesn't matter where each of them are as long as this knows where that is, and you only actually run one or the other and use it individually, depending on your needs. Personally, I have a directory where I house all my portable apps, then create a shortcut in the Start Menu for them and an exe that points to them that I place in a directory located in %path% so they're all accessible via the command line. I've written a script to do most of this so it's mostly automated.

[vertigo220]

Originally Posted by gpower2

I released a new version after quite some time, to address issues and introduce new features.

Thanks for the super-fast turnaround on this stuff! Regarding the appending checkbox, that's certainly much better, but any chance of making it a separate drop zone instead, so rather than having to toggle a checkbox back and forth, and possibly forgetting to check/uncheck it when meaning to append or not, files can simply be dropped into the main window to replace current files and into that area to append them?

Also, while I obviously didn't/don't expect such a fast implementation of my requests, just curious if you plan to add quick-select buttons for different track types. This is by far the biggest change I'd like to see as it would make using this program much faster.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by vertigo220

This is a separate program. It's sole purpose it to demux MKVs into their individual tracks, whereas MKVToolNix is used for muxing/demuxing/combining/etc, but doesn't do so well at just extracting the raw tracks. So which program you will use depends on what you're trying to do, but they work separately from each other.

Oh good, thanks! I will use your program then for extracting tracks as I'm sure it will work better...

[vertigo220]

Originally Posted by Lathe

Oh good, thanks! I will use your program then for extracting tracks as I'm sure it will work better...

Not my program (gpower2's), but you're welcome all the same.

If this is something you do a lot of and it's always the same task (extracting the eac3 track) you might even want to use a small batch script, add it to the right-click menu, then just right-click the file, select the script, and have it extract automatically, without having to launch a GUI, add the file(s), select the tracks, extract, and close the GUI. Just depends on how often you're doing this.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by vertigo220

Not my program (gpower2's), but you're welcome all the same.

If this is something you do a lot of and it's always the same task (extracting the eac3 track) you might even want to use a small batch script, add it to the right-click menu, then just right-click the file, select the script, and have it extract automatically, without having to launch a GUI, add the file(s), select the tracks, extract, and close the GUI. Just depends on how often you're doing this.

Good suggestion, thanks!

[Decalicatan_Decalicatan]

Thanks @gpower2 and @vertigo220 for the update and the new features!

[gpower2]

Originally Posted by vertigo220

1) The popup to alert when done doesn't show on top of other windows if they're active/focused. For example, if I have a browser open and maximized, but have another small window in the corner focused, the popup will show over the browser, since it's not in focus. However, if it is in focus, the popup will show behind it, so it's not visible when done. To make things worse, it seems to put the popup under all windows when this happens, so it remains hidden even if the window that was active is minimized. For example, I'll start it then switch to watching a fullscreen video, and after a while I'll switch the video to a window, so it's no longer blocking where the popup is, but the popup isn't visible, so it looks like it's not done. I'll check the main window and it will look like it's stuck, with the abort buttons being clickable like it's still running, even though the progress bars are full, making it appear done. Only then will I realize the extra button on the taskbar for the popup, which is behind the other windows that were open in the background. In addition to all of this, there's no option to make a sound when finished.

Can you confirm if this is now fixed? Also, a sound should be played already regardless of whether there is a popup or not, the default "Asterisk" sound from Windows.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

2) I'm often wanting to compare tracks from two or more files in different locations, but unfortunately if I drag a file from one location into the input files area then drag a file from another location in, the second file replaces the first. It would be really helpful to be able to do this. The best way would be to have two drop locations, one to clear the current files with the dropped file(s), and one to add the dropped file to the current ones.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

Thanks for the super-fast turnaround on this stuff! Regarding the appending checkbox, that's certainly much better, but any chance of making it a separate drop zone instead, so rather than having to toggle a checkbox back and forth, and possibly forgetting to check/uncheck it when meaning to append or not, files can simply be dropped into the main window to replace current files and into that area to append them?

Adding 2 separate drop zones would be reducing the drop area significantly, also it would not be easy to separate them visually, or to inform the user of which is which, at least to my eyes.
The ability to have drag and drop perfom an append operation was raised by many users in the past, so it was high time I implemented it.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

3) It would be really helpful to have some preset buttons that can be configured by the user for checking track types. For example, I often want to check all audio and subtitle tracks, but not video or chapter or attachments. To do this, I either have to right-click, go to "Check Audio Tracks..." then "All Audio Tracks," then repeat for subtitles, or I have to right-click, "Check All Tracks," then right-click and uncheck the ones I don't want. It would be much faster and save a lot of time if I could set a button to check all audio and subtitle tracks. Or even to have a button each for checking all video, audio, and sub tracks (and possible chapter and attachments), so I could just quickly click the buttons for the track types I want.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

Also, while I obviously didn't/don't expect such a fast implementation of my requests, just curious if you plan to add quick-select buttons for different track types. This is by far the biggest change I'd like to see as it would make using this program much faster.

Similar with the above request, I can not think of an intuitive way to implement such a feature. Each user has a unique way of working, I tried to find the common denominator and offer it in a simple UI.
Adding even more specifc shortcuts will make it a lot more complex imho, and not really sure of their value.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

4) It would be really helpful if it would show how much space is needed for the selected tracks, changing as the selections change. It could also show the free space for the destination drive, making it easy to see if there's enough space for the selections. It could even warn somehow if there's not enough space.

This information didn't exist in the previous versions of MKVToolnix, and not sure if it will be present for all matroska files as it depends on the muxing application.
Also, since the output might be in different target drives, calculating and showing the free space per target drive would be quite a PITA to implement and to actually visualize.
In any case, this is indeed a nice to have feature, but requires A LOT of development and testing time, which I currently don't have.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

5) A minor "issue," and perhaps some might have reason for it to work like it currently does, but if you run the same job multiple times, it will keep doing the extractions over again, creating duplicate files, instead of notifying they already exist.

This is indeed by design and there are no plans to change this, since "better safe than sorry"

Originally Posted by vertigo220

6) A dark mode would be appreciated.

This is something I also want to implement, but it is really really hard to implement correctly in the UI I use (WinForms).
If I ever find the time for a big feature, that would be it, and it would also be the v3.0 milestone

[oniiz86]

@gpower2 so very much for the latest v2.7.0 update & implementing @vertigo220's feature suggestions, it's greatly appreciated, just a heads up the thread title description still has v2.6.4 it should be v2.7.0

[vertigo220]

Originally Posted by gpower2

Can you confirm if this is now fixed? Also, a sound should be played already regardless of whether there is a popup or not, the default "Asterisk" sound from Windows.

It is fixed, though is now overly aggressive, but not sure how difficult it is to get it just right. It now shows not only the popup but the main window over everything, including a playing video. The preferred behavior, which is what most similar programs do, would be to have the popup separate and show it over all apps not set on top, e.g. over the browser and other windows but not over the video player, so it doesn't show in front of the video but is visible over everything else when I restore the video from fullscreen to a window. That said, this is still at least better.

I think the bigger issue is the sound. I could just use that and not the popup, which is really preferred for me anyway, but while it does in fact play a sound, it's tied to the system output, which I have muted. It should output sounds through itself, not the system. Look at MKVToolNix, for example, when it plays its completed sound, it shows under MKVToolNix in the sound mixer, and its volume can be individually adjusted. I mute system sounds as they are annoying, and therefore, because this program plays through that channel, it's muted as well.

Originally Posted by gpower2

Adding 2 separate drop zones would be reducing the drop area significantly, also it would not be easy to separate them visually, or to inform the user of which is which, at least to my eyes.
The ability to have drag and drop perfom an append operation was raised by many users in the past, so it was high time I implemented it.

I just figured the area where the "Append input on drag and drop" is could be made its own drop zone, or the area next to it. Doesn't have to be large. I'm not going to push the issue, but just wanted to put the idea of how to do it out there.

Originally Posted by gpower2

Similar with the above request, I can not think of an intuitive way to implement such a feature. Each user has a unique way of working, I tried to find the common denominator and offer it in a simple UI.
Adding even more specifc shortcuts will make it a lot more complex imho, and not really sure of their value.

Again, not to push the issue, but to offer ideas, there could simply be a series of buttons somewhere (a row between above or below the input files area or a column to the right of it) that can be set to do various things, thus accounting for different users. I could set the buttons to toggle marking vid/aud/sub/chapter tracks, another user could set them to mark all tracks, unmark all tracks, remove selected file, etc. I'm happy to discuss more to come up with a solution, but I also don't want to bother you with it if it's not something you want to do.

Originally Posted by gpower2

This information didn't exist in the previous versions of MKVToolnix, and not sure if it will be present for all matroska files as it depends on the muxing application.
Also, since the output might be in different target drives, calculating and showing the free space per target drive would be quite a PITA to implement and to actually visualize.
In any case, this is indeed a nice to have feature, but requires A LOT of development and testing time, which I currently don't have.

Fair enough.

Originally Posted by gpower2

This is indeed by design and there are no plans to change this, since "better safe than sorry"

Again, fair, though perhaps it should warn? As I said, this is a minor issue and not one I'm personally concerned with, just a suggestion to perhaps prevent an issue for others if they were to run it more than once unintentionally.

Originally Posted by gpower2

This is something I also want to implement, but it is really really hard to implement correctly in the UI I use (WinForms).
If I ever find the time for a big feature, that would be it, and it would also be the v3.0 milestone

Also fair. I have no experience in WinForms, just some in VB years ago, and it seems similar-ish. I did see looking at screenshots that it looks like it can be done. I was going to try and play with it a bit but, in typical MS fashion, they make things as difficult as possible, as just trying to install it all I see is an install for .NET (Digging around more it looks like I need Visual Studio, but don't want to waste bandwidth downloading then deal with installing more MS clutter if that's not it, so can someone confirm? In the meantime I'm going to check out Jetbrains Rider). Looked into WPF/GTK/Qt, but I don't care to spend the time on WPF since I don't plan on staying in the Windows ecosystem much longer, and GTK/Qt are both garbage from initial impressions.

[gpower2]

Originally Posted by vertigo220

It is fixed, though is now overly aggressive, but not sure how difficult it is to get it just right. It now shows not only the popup but the main window over everything, including a playing video. The preferred behavior, which is what most similar programs do, would be to have the popup separate and show it over all apps not set on top, e.g. over the browser and other windows but not over the video player, so it doesn't show in front of the video but is visible over everything else when I restore the video from fullscreen to a window. That said, this is still at least better.

I was troubled by the fact that when I pressed the popup, then the main window was not appearing, so I opted for bringing the main window also in front after acknowleding the popup.
In my eyes, if you have selected to have a popup appear, you would also want to continue working with the program after the operation finishes.
Otherwise, the simple sound would be enough to inform you that the operation had finished.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

I think the bigger issue is the sound. I could just use that and not the popup, which is really preferred for me anyway, but while it does in fact play a sound, it's tied to the system output, which I have muted. It should output sounds through itself, not the system. Look at MKVToolNix, for example, when it plays its completed sound, it shows under MKVToolNix in the sound mixer, and its volume can be individually adjusted. I mute system sounds as they are annoying, and therefore, because this program plays through that channel, it's muted as well.

That would require to include a separate audio file and also include the media player functionality inside the app. I understand your way of working and how it would benefit you, but it would increase the bundled size of the app, which is something I try to avoid.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

Again, not to push the issue, but to offer ideas, there could simply be a series of buttons somewhere (a row between above or below the input files area or a column to the right of it) that can be set to do various things, thus accounting for different users. I could set the buttons to toggle marking vid/aud/sub/chapter tracks, another user could set them to mark all tracks, unmark all tracks, remove selected file, etc. I'm happy to discuss more to come up with a solution, but I also don't want to bother you with it if it's not something you want to do.

Just to avoid any misunderstandings, you are requesting some placeholders to add programmable actions, right?
If this is the case, it would require A LOT of work in order to have this implemented correctly and basically it would require refactoring most of the core codebase in order to split it into separate modules/commands that could be automated.
It is definitely a nice feature, but as mentioned, it requires so much work, that I can't get to at least in the near future.

Originally Posted by vertigo220

Also fair. I have no experience in WinForms, just some in VB years ago, and it seems similar-ish. I did see looking at screenshots that it looks like it can be done. I was going to try and play with it a bit but, in typical MS fashion, they make things as difficult as possible, as just trying to install it all I see is an install for .NET (Digging around more it looks like I need Visual Studio, but don't want to waste bandwidth downloading then deal with installing more MS clutter if that's not it, so can someone confirm? In the meantime I'm going to check out Jetbrains Rider). Looked into WPF/GTK/Qt, but I don't care to spend the time on WPF since I don't plan on staying in the Windows ecosystem much longer, and GTK/Qt are both garbage from initial impressions.

Unfortunately everyone has turned to Web, so native applications are second class citizens, with only half baked solutions out there. WinForms for me is the last man standing, offering cross-platform compatibility thanks to Mono.
WPF is pretty, but very much like writing a Web app. QT requires C++ and I am not willing to dive into that. MAUI is only for modern OSes, so compatibility is out of the question and it is WPF-ish.
And then you get Electron with all its clutter and javascript, or Tauri, which requires Rust
Thanks, but I'll stick to good old WinForms for small desktop apps like this one

Rant aside, dark mode is the one big task I am willing to devote some time, since I also prefer dark mode, though I don't think I will have time to finish this soon...

Thanks for all the feedback!