If you want to compile the tools yourself then you must first decide if you want to use a 'proper' release version or the current development version. As both Matroska and MKVToolNix are under heavy development there might be features available in the Git source code repository that are not available in the releases. On the other hand the Git source code repository version might not even compile.
Requirements
In order to compile MKVToolNix you need a couple of libraries. Most of them should be available pre-compiled for your distribution. The libraries you absolutely need are:
- libebml and libmatroska for low-level access to Matroska files. Instructions on how to compile them are a bit further down on this page.
- expat -- a light-weight XML parser library
- libOgg and libVorbis for access to Ogg/OGM files and Vorbis support
- zlib -- a compression library
- Boost -- portable C++ libraries
Other libraries are optional and only limit the features that are built. These include:
- wxWidgets 2.6.0 and newer -- a cross-platform GUI toolkit. You need this if you want to use mmg (the mkvmerge GUI) or mkvinfo's GUI.
- libFLAC for FLAC support (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
- lzo and bzip2 are compression libraries. These are the least important libraries as almost no application supports Matroska content that is compressed with either of these libs. The aforementioned zlib is what every program supports.
libmatroska and libebml
Start with the two libraries. Either get libebml 0.7.8 and libmatroska 0.8.1 or a fresh copy from the Subversion repository.
svn co https://svn.matroska.org/svn/matroska/trunk/libebml svn co https://svn.matroska.org/svn/matroska/trunk/libmatroska
Change to libebml/make/linux and run
make staticlib. If you have root-access then
run make install_staticlib install_headers
as root in order to install the files. Change
to libmatroska/make/linux. Once more run
make staticlib. If you have root-access then
run make install_staticlib install_headers
as root in order to install the files.
MKVtoolNix
Either download the release 2.9.7 and unpack it or get a fresh copy from my Git source code repository by running the following command:
git clone git://git.bunkus.org/mkvtoolnix.git
You can also browse the Git repository online.
The source code for all older releases is available from the sources directory.
Additional step if you're using the development version:
change to the mkvtoolnix directory and run
./autogen.sh which will generate
the configure script. The autoconf needs
to be installed for this step.
If you have run make install_staticlib for both
libraries then configure should automatically find the
libraries' position. Otherwise you need to
tell configure where the
libmatroska and libebml sources are:
./configure \ --with-extra-includes=/where/i/put/libebml\;/where/i/put/libmatroska \ --with-extra-libs=/where/i/put/libebml/make/linux\;/where/i/put/libmatroska/make/linux
Now run make. You can create a Matroska file with
mkvmerge -o output.mkv input1.avi input2.ac3 input3.ogg ...
At the moment the following sources are supported (this list is
OUTDATED):
- AVI files with MPEG4 video and MP3, AC3 or PCM audio
- external AC3, MP3, WAV, DTS and AAC/MP4 files
- Ogg/OGM files with all the stuff mentioned above AND Vorbis audio :)
- Subtitle Ripper text subtitle (e.g. those created with Subtitle Ripper)
- SSA/ASS files (a bit limited at the moment)
- Matroska files themselves
- RealMedia files (both RealVideo and RealAudio)
- Chapters, tags, attachments
MPlayer
Since April 30, 2003 MPlayer's 'main' CVS module contains my Matroska demuxer. It is also present in the official releases marked as mplayer 1.0pre1 and later. Version 1.0pre5 and newer contain a new Matroska demuxer that doesn't even need libebml and libmatroska anymore. Head over to www.mplayerhq.hu and get a fresh copy of the current release or MPlayer's CVS version. Remember: Neither the stable module '0_90' nor the official releases 0.9x contain the demuxer.
Additional information about compiling MPlayer itself can be found in its documentation.
Playback of Matroska files is as simple as playing other files. Just
run mplayer file.mkv. You can select the audio and
subtitle tracks by using mplayer's -aid,
-alang, -sid and -slang options. The
two ID options count the number of tracks from 0 on - e.g. the first
subtitle track found has the -sid 0. If the tracks have their
language code set (ISO639-2 language codes) then you can also use the
-alang, -slang options. Example:
mplayer -slang ger movie.mkv.
mplayer will also print some information about the Matroska files and the tracks found in it upon playback. That way you can easily see which options you'll have to use for specific tracks. Example:
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MS/VFW/FOURCC), -vid 0 [mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_MPEG/L3), -aid 0, -alang eng [mkv] Track ID 3: audio (A_VORBIS), -aid 1, -alang ger [mkv] Track ID 4: subtitles (S_TEXT/UTF8), -sid 0, -slang eng [mkv] Track ID 5: subtitles (S_TEXT/UTF8), -sid 1, -slang ger