mkvtoolnix v4.3.0 released

I’ve released mkvtoolnix v4.3.0. It contains a lot of bug fixes and a few enhancements but no major new features.

There’s one change for people building from source in general and package maintainers in particular: the build system has been changed from “make” to “rake”. Here’s the ChangeLog entry:

build system: The build system has been changed from “make” to “rake”, the Ruby based build tool. MKVToolNix includes its own copy of it so all you need is to have Ruby itself installed. The build proecss has been tested with Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7 and 1.9.1. Building is pretty much the same as before: “./configure”, “./drake”, “sudo ./drake install”. Most of the build targets have similar if not identical names, e.g. “./drake install”. You can override variables just like with make, e.g. “./drake prefix=/somewhere install”.

Adjusting build scripts should be easy enough. If you need any help just let me know.

Here are the usual links: the home page, the source code and the Windows installer and 7zip archive.

All binaries that I provide myself have already been uploaded.

Here’s the full ChangeLog since release 4.2.0:

  • 2010-09-04 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • Released v4.3.0.
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Appending tracks which would normally be compressed (e.g. with header removal compression) and turning off compression for those tracks with "--compression TID:none" (or the corresponsing option in mmg) was resulting in the second and all following appended tracks to be compressed all the same.
  • 2010-09-01 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvextract: bug fix: Errors such as ‘file does not exist’ did not cause mkvextract to quit. Instead it continued and exited with the result code 0.
  • 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.
  • 2010-08-26 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvmerge: enhancement: Attachments will be rendered at the beginning of the file again. Fix for bug 516.
  • 2010-08-24 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvpropedit, mmg’s header editor: Fixed a crash corrupting files in certain situations. If the updated header fields required filling exactly one byte with an EbmlVoid element and if the next Matroska element’s "size" was already written with its maximum length (8 bytes) then the crash would occur. Such files are written by e.g. lavf. Fix for bug 536.
  • 2010-08-17 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • All: bug fix: Fixed a couple of format strings in translations which could cause the programs to crash.
  • 2010-08-14 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvinfo: new feature: mkvinfo will show the h.264 profile and level for AVC/h.264 tracks along with the CodecPrivate element.
  • 2010-08-10 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Video tracks with a width or height of 0 are not read from AVI files anymore. Fix for bug 538.
  • 2010-08-05 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Fixed an error with losing packets (error message "packet queue not empty") when reading IVF (VP8) files using --default-duration on it.
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Fixed access to uninitialized memory in the MPEG-2 ES parser.
  • 2010-08-03 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mmg: bug fix: The ‘total remaining time’ shown by the job manager was totally wrong. Fix for bug 529.
  • 2010-08-01 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • build system: The build system has been changed from "make" to "rake", the Ruby based build tool. MKVToolNix includes its own copy of it so all you need is to have Ruby itself installed. The build proecss has been tested with Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7 and 1.9.1. Building is pretty much the same as before: "./configure", "./drake", "sudo ./drake install". Most of the build targets have similar if not identical names, e.g. "./drake install". You can override variables just like with make, e.g. "./drake prefix=/somewhere install".
  • 2010-07-30 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mmg header editor: bug fix: If a file was loaded that did not contain ‘track language’ elements and those elements were unchanged then they would be set to ‘und’ upon saving. Now they’re left as-is, and when adding them to the file the drop-down box defaults to ‘eng’ being selected as per Matroska default value specifications. Fix for bug 525.
  • 2010-07-29 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvextract, mkvinfo, mkvpropedit: new feature: Added the option "-q" and its long version "--quiet". With "--quiet" active only warnings and errors are output. Fix for bug 527.
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: The option "--quiet" was not working properly.
    • mkgmerge: bug fix: mkvmerge was treating SSA/ASS subtitle files as audio files for the purpose of track selection (--no-subtitles / --no-audio). Fix for bug 526.

Have fun.

24 thoughts on “mkvtoolnix v4.3.0 released”

    1. mosu Post author

      ’cause header removal compression is enabled in 4.2.0 but wasn’t in earlier versions. The bug in the DivX thumbnail component is not being able to handle header removal compression at all, but as long as it wasn’t used for video tracks it was fine ’cause the thumbnail component obviously didn’t need to process audio tracks.

  5. Christian

    Thank you very much for the updated mkvpropedit. I use this CLI in my software and previous version corrupted some new MKVs (presume have to do with compressed headers). Again, thanks a lot!

    1. Tahir Abbas

      Please any body send me procedure how to rip a dvd in mkv format in such a low size 300mb to 500mb with mkvtoolnix v4.3.0 or any other software.

  6. bearb

    Problems for WDTV ( standalone Mediaplayer WesternDigital).
    I’ve rip & convert several movies, it play OK on my PC but play on WDTH it will not play. No sound and sometimes freeze.

        1. Nitro

          4.3.0 works fine with wdtv as long as you remember to set compression to none for all tracks in extra optons on the input tab, the problem is it is so easy to forget to do this, the resulting crash is so severe the wdtv requires a full reset before it will playback again, I am in fear it could corrupt a hdd full of data. It’s also not consumer friendly or green as I so often have to redo the same job again.

          @mosu is there any way I can set the compression option to ‘none’ for all tracks by defalt on startup of mmg ?

  7. bearb

    OK thanks for the reply.
    Solution for me, buy another Mediaplayer, because WDTV (gen.1) don’t update the firmware anymore.

    thx.

  8. Lotus

    MKVToolnix is the best muxer and indispensable thing but recently I have found that mkvextract.exe and mkvinfo.exe 4.3.0 set ‘below normal’ priority to themself. Is it intended? Without manual priority boost using Taskmanager they are unable to work acceptably fast in Windows XP SP3 if CPU is 100% loaded by other ‘below normal’ priority tasks (4 parallel x264.exe –thread 1 instances on 4-core CPU).

    1. mosu Post author

      Yes, that is intentional. You can change the priority in mmg’s preferences dialog on the “mkvmerge” tab.

  9. Jeremy Hall

    The windows explorer crash is likely not a problem with windows and doubt it has anything to do with the version of mkvmerge you’re using. The reason I say this is because after I edited my registry and after I used 4 different older versions of mkvmerge I still had the same problem with windows explorer crashing. The fix I used was uninstalling any codecs I had installed and then reinstalling them. Immediately after I did that I never had another crash.

  10. Jeremy Hall

    And just to note, the easiest tool to use for DTS to AC# would have to be Popcorn AudioConverter … after using about 10 different things that is the quickest and easiest tool I have found, and it’s free.

  11. Lotus

    I never use GUI, but if my guess is correct mmg.exe simply passes –priority to mkvmerge.exe. But mkvmerge.exe starts with ‘normal’ priority and works without problems. mmg.exe displays ‘normal’ value in mkvmerge Tab.

    The problem is with mkvextract.exe and mkvinfo.exe. They have no –priority command-line option and start ‘below normal’ regardless of that the priority of calling process is ‘normal’. Isn’t it better to start all command-line tools with unchanged (automatically inherited) priority by default and change it only if –priority options explicitly specified?

    1. mosu Post author

      Ah, now I know what you mean. Yeah well… you’re probably right. Patches to fix this are welcome. I don’t have a lot of time at the moment, so I will most likely not do it myself as it is definitely not a severe bug.

  13. Pinar

    A wish for MKVMerge GUI:

    Modal dialogs that remain on screen for a very long time are real pain –I am referring to, for example, the modal dialog pane that comes up when I press ‘Start Muxing’..

    The reason these are pain is because they make the main window totally paralyzed –can’t move it, can’t resize or minimize it.

    A more user friendly GUI, IMO, would have none of these long-running modal dialogs; but instead display whatever data necessary in a tab.

    1. mosu Post author

      I know, but converting from a modal to a non-modal dialog is not trivial. Sure, for the dialog itself it is trivial, but the rest of the program is neither designed nor tested to be used while muxing is running. I don’t have the time or motivation to work on this myself. I’d definitely accept patches that implement this as long as the rest of the program is well-tested.

      On Windows the main window is minimized during muxing for this reason. On Linux most window managers still allow you to minimize windows even though they’re overlaid by a modal dialog box which is why the main window is not hidden on Linux.

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