MKVToolNix v79.0 released

[Sakura-chan]

So MKVToolNix will be forever stuck in dark mode with no way to change it back? A shame really. The interface looks horrible in dark mode to me. And having to switch the whole system for one external program doesn't make sense. I like dark mode on Windows itself but I want programs in light mode. For me things I stay little time in or are mostly in the background are good in dark mode, like windows settings, explorer. Programs I spent quite some time with are better in light mode.

All programs with dark modes that I've encountered have a switch, like MKVToolNix did until 75.0.0. Usually a "default", meaning follow system scheme, and a light and dark options, or other colour schemes if the program has them. It's like the most basic of options. Never an issue until today.

Why Fusion doesn't allow for a switch between modes I don't understand. Time to keep and cherish 75.0.0 indefinitely then. I do mostly BD remuxing which has a limited selection of settings/codecs already very mature so I'm not really too bothered. But talk about silly regressions.

[Mosu]

Originally Posted by Sakura-chan

So MKVToolNix will be forever stuck in dark mode with no way to change it back?

No. Please read the corresponding FAQ entry for the current state of things.

[Ripman]

Thank you - as usual - for the new version, M. Best…..

[Mosu]

Hey! 😁

It's nearly summer & the weather's nice where I live. So why not do another MKVToolNix release today? 😁 This release mostly fixes the messy situation with the dark application mode on Windows among a lot of other things. Additionally mkvmerge will now sort tracks by their type by default!

Here are the usual links: the MKVToolNix home page, the downloads section and the source code.

The Windows and macOS binaries as well as the Linux AppImage are available already. The other Linux binaries are still being built and will be available over the course of the next couple of hours.

Here are the NEWS since the previous release:

Version 77.0 "Elemental" 2023-06-04
New features and enhancements

• mkvmerge: tracks in the destination file will now be sorted by their type automatically unless the track order is specified with the "--track-order" option. The order is as follows: video tracks first followed by audio & subtitle tracks with other rarely used types of tracks last. Tracks of the same type will be sorted in the same order as their source files occur in the command-line arguments. Note that this doesn't affect file identification. Implements #3545.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the default list colors used for distinguishing source files does not include the darkest tier anymore (the ones where one or two components are set to the value 0x3f) as they're hard to distinguish from each other. Only affects new installations, or when the user presses the "reset to default colors" button. Implements #3533.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the GUI will now check the state of the 'track enabled' flag of all video, audio & subtitle tracks when starting to multiplex or adding a job to the job queue. If there's no track with its flag turned on for a type, the GUI will turn on the flag for the first track of the type. This behavior can be turned off in the preferences. Implements #3535.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: the columns in the tracks/attachments view and the values on the "track type" page will now be updated each time a corresponding property is changed (e.g. when a track's name is changed) instead of showing what's in the file on disk. Implements #3554.
• MKVToolNix GUI: macOS: when you install the application from the DMG it'll register itself as an alternate handler for its supported file types. This allows the use of the "Open with" context menu action in Finder.
• MKVToolNix GUI: Windows: a new settings in the preferences lets the user chose whether to use the light or the dark color palette, or to follow the system settings. Part of the fix for #3528.

Bug fixes

• Fixed compilation with fmt v10.0.0.
• mkvmerge: fixed several instances of wrong format strings for "fmt::format" used in debug messages. Fixes #3548.
• mkvmerge: AV1 packetizer: the packetizer did not honor the aspect ratio (factor) given on the command-line via the "--aspect-ratio" or "--aspect-ratio-factor" options.
• mkvmerge: JSON identification: cropping parameters are reported again even if some of the four values are not present in the file or set to 0. Fixes #3534.
• mkvmerge: Windows: when writing to a network share connected via SMB1 "mkvmerge" was aborting with a error about "create_directory() failed" with existing directories. This was due to a bug in recent versions of the Boost.Filesystem library. The Windows version of MKVToolNix will be built with Boost 1.82.0 from now on which includes the fix. Fixes #3547.
• MKVToolNix GUI: the defunct "disable the dark mode" checkbox was removed from the preferences.
• MKVToolNix GUI: language dialog: under certain conditions the controls for the individual components remained disabled when the dialog is opened even though editing of individual components is selected. Part of the fix of #3532.
• MKVToolNix GUI: language dialog: the controls for the individual components weren't re-initialized properly after opening the dialog for the second & all following times, potentially leaving previously selected/entered entries intact, primarily when editing multiple tracks at once. Part of the fix of #3532.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: using the actions from the "modify selected track" context menu only worked if the user right-clicked on the first column in the view. They now work for clicks on any of the columns. See also #3554.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: some of the actions toggling specific flags from the "modify selected track" did not work correctly if the flag wasn't currently present in the file, especially if the underlying value has a default value in the Matroska specs.
• MKVToolNix GUI: Windows: the GUI will now always use its own implementation of light & dark palettes instead of relying on Qt. This circumvents two issues with the palette support in Qt 6.5.0: 1. if Windows 11's dark application mode is active, links were displayed in a hard-to-read dark blue. 2. for unknown reasons the the dark palette was not chosen on some Windows 11 installations even though Windows 11's color mode was set to "dark". This is a workaround for #3528.

Build system changes

• The bundled "fmt" library was updated to v10.0.0.
• MKVToolNix GUI now uses an external Qt resource file instead of compiling it into the executable. The resource file has reached a size at which the C++ compiler exhausts available virtual memory on some 32-bit architectures. On Windows & macOS the GUI will look for the file in "<folder_with_executables>/data/qt_resources.rcc", and in the directory set with "configure"'s "--datadir" parameter on other systems (which usually means "/usr/share/mkvtoolnix"). The "install" build system commands installs it into that folder.

Have fun 😁

[-QfG-]

Bug in v0.77 (x64 / x86)

If i using the "Header Editor" load a file and then i choose "Segment Information - Title" and set "Add Element" now to Yes/No the Tool crashes. This feature works fine in v0.76.



EDIT Not only the function "Title" is corrupt, all functions under Segment Informations corrupted.

[Mosu]

Already fixed. See this issue.

[-QfG-]

Thanks, works fine now with r011

[Kairys]

How to make a Blu Ray Remux? Tell me the procedure for creating a Bluray remux with Dolby Vision 7 from a BDMV container.
I use programs: MakeMKV, MKVToolNix. Do I need to make mkvextract gMKVExtractGUI after MakeMKV or just add MKV to MKVToolNix?

[Mosu]

First use MakeMKV as that'll preserve DV properly when reading from Blu-rays (MKVToolNix doesn't support reading DV from MPEG transport streams yet, nor from HEVC elementary streams). Then remux the MKV created with MakeMKV with MKVToolNix. No need for extraction. In fact extraction of DV & remuxing the extracted streams will be result in non-compliant Matroska files for the moment as, again, MKVToolNix doesn't support readint DV from MPEG TS & HEVC elementary streams.

[Kairys]

Is it better to add soundtracks in AC3 format or is it possible to add MKA (Matroska Audio)?

[Mosu]

There's no codec called "Matroska Audio". "Matroska Audio" can only mean a Matroska container that only contains audio (no video, no subtitles), but the audio codec can be anything (AAC, AC-3, DTS, Opus…).

[hello_hello]

I have a couple of suggestions/requests regarding the MKVToolNix GUI. How hard they'd be to implement, I have no idea.

One of the things I seem to do most when remuxing is to set or change a delay for a stream and also change a stream's name/description. I had to do this for quite a few files today and having to constantly switch tabs makes the process harder, so it made me wonder how hard it'd be to add a Custom tab to the GUI. The idea being the Custom tab could be configured by the user to contain the most used items from any of the other tabs, saving a lot of tab switching.

Another idea would be to make the columns themselves more useful, so appropriate items could be changed "in-place", rather than just passively display what's been entered under a tab. I'm referring to the section of the GUI in the screenshot below. An example would be changing the delay by clicking on the area where -21 is displayed and entering a new value, or by clicking under the default track column to automatically change the default status. That sort of thing.

Cheers.

https://i.imgur.com/IJID3z7.png

PS I still think having a copy of the "Abort Job" button on the multiplexer window would be a good idea. 99% of the time when I need to abort a job it's right after I've started it running from the multiplexer widow only to realize I need to change something, so it'd be handy to be able to stop the job from the same window too.

[Mosu]

Thanks for your suggestions. However, I won't implement them. They're all require a lot of effort to implement correctly, and I'm not keen on doing any of the work. Additionally I consider having an "Abort job" button on the multiplexer to be very bad design as there's no guarantee that the job that'll be aborted has anything to do at all with the current multiplex settings.

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by Mosu

Thanks for your suggestions. However, I won't implement them. They're all require a lot of effort to implement correctly, and I'm not keen on doing any of the work.

No problem. I suspected as much.

Originally Posted by Mosu

Additionally I consider having an "Abort job" button on the multiplexer to be very bad design as there's no guarantee that the job that'll be aborted has anything to do at all with the current multiplex settings.

I'm an idiot, so for a running job I want to abort, I invariably switch to the Job Queue tab before remembering the Abort button's under the Job Output tab, and by the time I've switched tabs again the job's often finished or almost finished running, so these days I usually just add the modified job to the queue and let it over-write the first output file.

What about a situation like that where a second job is added to the queue with the same name as a running job or a job already in the queue? You have to click through a warning about over-writing the first job to show that's you're intention, so would it make sense for any existing job with the same name to be aborted automatically if it's running or prevented from running if it hasn't started, given it'll be over-written anyway? The warning dialogue could possibly have an extra button, one to add the new job to the queue without killing any existing job as it currently works, and another to also stop/abort any existing job with the same output file name, or something like that....

[Selur]

Using mkvmerge v77:

mkvmerge --ui-language en -o "G:\Output\2023-06-15@16_46_50_3010__03.mkv" --global-tags "G:\Output\mkvtags_2023-06-15@16_46_50_3010__03.xml" -d 0 --default-track 0:yes --default-duration "0:50/1fps" --aspect-ratio-factor 0:1150/1053 --fourcc 0:MP4V --no-chapters --compression -1:none --forced-track 0:yes --field-order 0:0 --no-audio --no-subtitles "G:\Output\2023-06-15@16_47_01_0110_02.264"

and

MP4Box -par 1=1150:1053 -add "G:\Output\2023-06-15@16_47_01_0110_02.264"#video:fps=50:name="":lang="" -brand avc1 -itags tool="Hybrid 2023.06.15.1" -tmp "G:\Output" -new "G:\Output\2023-06-15@16_47_01_0110__03.mp4"

both tell the muxer that the PAR should be 1150:1053.

For the mkv 'mediainfo --full' reports:

Width                                    : 692
Width                                    : 692 pixels
Height                                   : 568
Height                                   : 568 pixels
Stored_Width                             : 704
Stored_Height                            : 576
Sampled_Width                            : 692
Sampled_Height                           : 568
Pixel aspect ratio                       : 1.331
Original pixel aspect ratio              : 1.092
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.621
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:10
Original display aspect ratio            : 1.331
Original display aspect ratio            : 4:3

for the mp4 'mediainfo --full' reports:

Width                                    : 692
Width                                    : 692 pixels
Height                                   : 568
Height                                   : 568 pixels
Stored_Width                             : 704
Stored_Height                            : 576
Sampled_Width                            : 692
Sampled_Height                           : 568
Pixel aspect ratio                       : 1.092
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.329
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Original display aspect ratio            : 1.331
Original display aspect ratio            : 4:3

Using ffmpeg as muxer:

ffmpeg -y  -r 50/1 -i "J:\tmp\2023-06-15@17_04_11_3410__04.mkv" -vcodec copy -metadata encoding_tool="Hybrid 2023.06.15.1" -map 0:0  -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -aspect 1.3305378330 -r 50/1 "G:\Output\par_1150_1053_ffmpeg.mkv"

(using DAR instead of PAR since ffmpeg only handles DAR)
I get:

Width                                    : 692
Width                                    : 692 pixels
Height                                   : 568
Height                                   : 568 pixels
Stored_Width                             : 704
Stored_Height                            : 576
Sampled_Width                            : 692
Sampled_Height                           : 568
Pixel aspect ratio                       : 1.092
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.331
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3

Using AV-1 and:

mkvmerge --ui-language en -o "G:\Output\2023-06-15@17_09_18_2810_02.mkv" --global-tags "J:\tmp\mkvtags_2023-06-15@17_07_47_7110__04.xml" -d 0 --default-track 0:yes --default-duration "0:50/1fps" --aspect-ratio-factor 0:1150/1053 --no-chapters --compression -1:none --forced-track 0:yes --field-order 0:0 --no-audio --no-subtitles "J:\tmp\av1_mkvmerge_1_2023-06-15@17_07_47_7110_02.265"

Width                                    : 692
Width                                    : 692 pixels
Height                                   : 568
Height                                   : 568 pixels
Stored_Width                             : 704
Stored_Height                            : 576
Sampled_Width                            : 692
Sampled_Height                           : 568
Pixel aspect ratio                       : 1.331
Original pixel aspect ratio              : 1.092
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.621
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:10
Original display aspect ratio            : 1.331
Original display aspect ratio            : 4:3

vs MP4Box and:

MP4Box -par 1=1150:1053 -add "J:\tmp\av1_1_2023-06-15@17_09_18_2810_02.265"#video:fps=50:name="":lang="" -brand hvc1 -itags tool="Hybrid 2023.06.15.1" -tmp "J:\tmp" -new "G:\Output\2023-06-15@17_09_18_2810__04.mp4"

mediainfo reports:

Width                                    : 692
Width                                    : 692 pixels
Height                                   : 568
Height                                   : 568 pixels
Stored_Width                             : 704
Stored_Height                            : 576
Sampled_Width                            : 692
Sampled_Height                           : 568
Pixel aspect ratio                       : 1.092
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.329
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Original display aspect ratio            : 1.331
Original display aspect ratio            : 4:3

with ffmpeg I get the same as with MP4Box.


=> Did something change on how to tell mkvmerge so set a specific par, is something broken?

Cu Selur

[Mosu]

Originally Posted by hello_hello

What about a situation like that where a second job is added to the queue with the same name as a running job or a job already in the queue?

Sure, one could add yet even more functionality and special-cases for those types of user errors, but I just don't want to.

[Mosu]

Originally Posted by Selur

Did something change on how to tell mkvmerge so set a specific par, is something broken?

I don't think so. Did you try earlier versions? How do they behave compared to v77?

[Selur]

I only tested the last two versions (same behaviour), will test more over the weekend.

[Mosu]

If you find one that behaves differently & the next one doesn't, that'd help me a great deal. I really cannot think of the last time I changed aspect ratio handling.

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by Mosu

Sure, one could add yet even more functionality and special-cases for those types of user errors, but I just don't want to.

Fair enough, but to me it'd just be an extension of checking a file with the same name doesn't already exist on the disk, except instead of a file being over-written, the job in the queue is replaced.