MKVToolNix 5.9.0 released

Hey,

I’ve released v5.9.0.

I’ve released MKVToolNix v5.9.0. It fixes several bugs: 793 (appending empty subtitle tracks); 795 (file names containing ‘%’ read from .mmg files); reading linked seek heads in mkvmerge (fixes mkvmerge not finding attachments after usage of mkvpropedit); 801 & 802 (discarding EBML void elements when writing and reading XML chapter files); 804 (mkvmerge will keep timecodes of PCM tracks read from containers that provide timecodes); 805 (reading seek position elements bigger than 2 GB).

Enhancements include writing the newly introduced elements “cue duration” and “cue relative position” which provide more detailed information for seeking. Due to this compilation requires new versions of libEBML (1.3.0) and libMatroska (1.4.0), neither of which has been released yet: they’re only available from the Subversion repository so far. However, MKVToolNix comes bundled with internal copies of both libraries which will be used.

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

All of the binaries that I provide myself are already available.

Here’s the full ChangeLog since release 5.8.0:

  • 2012-12-09 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • Released v5.9.0.
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Fixed reading seek position values bigger than 2 GB. Fixes #805.
  • 2012-12-08 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Fixed appending non-empty tracks to empty tracks. Fixes #793.
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: mkvmerge will now keep timecodes of PCM tracks from source files if they’re available. Fixes #804.
  • 2012-12-05 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • all: bug fix: EBML void elements will be skipped when reading structures from XML (e.g. chapters). Fixes #802.
  • 2012-12-02 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • all: bug fix: EBML void elements will be skipped when saving structures to XML (e.g. chapters). Fixes #801.
    • mkvmerge: bug fix: Fixed reading linked seek heads in Matroska files.
  • 2012-11-13 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mmg: bug fix: Fixed reading file names containing a ‘%’ from a .mmg settings file (both normally saved files and the job queue files). Fixes #795.
  • 2012-10-08 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvmerge: enhancement: Dirac video code: Added four more pre-defined video types from Dirac spec v2.2.2 and two from Dirac Pro.
  • 2012-09-27 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
    • mkvmerge, mmg: enhancement: Added options for turning off writing "CueDuration" elements ("–engage no_cue_duration") and "CueRelativePosition" elements ("–engage no_cue_relative_positions").
    • mkvmerge: new feature: The element "CueRelativePosition" is written for all cue entries.
    • mkvmerge: new feature: The element "CueDuration" will be written for all cue entries referring to subtitle tracks.
    • mkvmerge: new feature: mkvmerge will write cues for subtitle tracks by default now.
    • mkvinfo: new feature: added support for the new elements CueDuration, CueRelativePosition and TimecodeScaleDenimonator. The denominator’s value is only shown so far but not taken into account when calculating any timecode.
    • mkvpropedit, mmg, mkvmerge: removal: removed support for the deprecated element TrackTimecodeScale.

Have fun.

50 thoughts on “MKVToolNix 5.9.0 released

  1. ahmet turan

    Hello,
    Have been using MKV Toolnix for more than 2 years. Upgraded to v5.9.0 today. Created a 1080p film with subs and watched it with VLC media player v2.0.4. When tried to jump to arbitrary time instants using the time slider, noticed that it takes quite a long time for the VLC mp to resume playing. Reverted to v5.8.0, recreated the same film with the exact same components & settings. The problem of slow jump to time instant with VLC mp no longer observed.
    Just to let you know as this may be due to a bug in v5.9.0. Kind regards.

    1. mosu Post author

      I doubt it’s a bug in mkvmerge. However, the index code HAS changed, yes: there are two new additional elements that are written in 5.9.0 that let players that support those elements seek faster than before. No existing elements in that code have been changed.

      If VLC has a problem with new/unknown elements then that is a bug in VLC, not in mkvmerge. Please file a bug report with them.

      See also http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1604750#post1604750 and the following three or four posts.

      1. Ivan

        Good afternoon Mosu,

        I happened to stumble across your program mkvtoolnix. I found your website due to some difficulties playing *certain* MKV movie files on my Samsung 2012 plasma TV – PN60E6500.

        By far most of the MKV movies I’ve played on the tv (copied onto a usb thumb drive, plugged directly into the tv’s usb port) has played perfectly.

        The issue is with 3 specific files (these “problem files” have the same video bitrate, audio bitrate, resolution, FPS etc. as all the other ones that have played flawlessly.

        With the 3 files in question, I have pretty much narrowed it down to some sort of video encoding specification causing problems.

        If I may, I have posted a question on various other home theatre sites but have yet to receive a definite solution to my problem. I will copy my posting just below (as these are the problematic symptons occuring with just these 3 files).

        ======================================================
        Posting:
        RE: Samsung Plasma PN60E6500

        I have just purchased a MAGNIFICENT Samsung 2012 Plasma- LOVE it!

        So far (one month owning the rig) I’ve tested numerous MKV formatted movie files of various bitrates, FPS – all 1080p though. By and far, every movie I’ve attempted to play on the Samsung TV (PN60E6500 btw) has played flawlessly. All but 2 files.

        I’ve researched and thus far am unable to explain my video playback issues with these 2 files. Both of these “problem” files are as follows:

        14GB (1st movie), 15GB file size (2nd movie)
        Video Bitrates: 12.8Mbps (1st movie), 14Mbps (2nd movie)
        1080p for both
        Audio codec: 1.5Mbps DTS Core (1st movie), 1.5Mbps DTS ES (2nd movie)
        FPS: can’t remember exactly.. prob between 24-30fps (both)

        My question is as follows:

        The above two files are the only ones I’ve had any sort of video playback issues with. In movie #1, this movie did not even begin playback. I copied this file onto a USB thumb drive, inserted directly into my TV’s USB port for playback. Upon loading this movie, the “loading” indicator came on-screen for a long while (relative to the rest of the files I’ve tested… almost 10 seconds I would say). After the “loading” message, the TV never began playback, but, rather, turned itself off, then the Tv powered itself back on again – all on its own!

        Tried to launch this movie twice, same exact result

        Movie #2:
        This movie, again, played off a USB thumb drive plugged into the USB port, DID begin video and audio playback. The problem with this file is that the STOP button my tv’s remote was frozen! Meaning completely unresponsive – I could not choose to STOP playback when I wanted to. Ironically, the FF, RW and Pause buttons all worked! Furthermore, I let this movie play through to the end with success. After the movie finished and the end credits done rolling, I was expecting my plasma tv to simply stop playback and return me to the USB drive’s sub folder menu whereby I can launch another movie. This did NOT happen. When the movie finished playback, the “Loading” indicator came onscreen (this time for only about 5 seconds)… then the TV shut itself off and powered back on again as per the movie file #1 in question.

        I have been actively trying to find out the reason for these playback errors when I have come to the conclusion that it’s probably a Video specification/compatilibity issue. I inquired into the Audio codec side of things and I’ve gathered that both DTS and DTS ES are playable with just a standard DTS Core processing ability. So audio is ruled out.

        On the video end, every OTHER movie I’ve tried to play on my TV has played perfectly (and many of these videos that succeeded were in the same bitrate/FPS/resolution vicinity as the two problem files. All these movies were ~8Mbps-15Mbps video bitrate, all 1.5Mbps audio in DTS, all 8GB-15GB in file size and all 1080p, and believe these movies have FPS in the same general region.

        Are there certain coding specs that differ from file to file even though they’re all very similar in file size, bitrate, etc. that would have caused my tv to crash in the aforementioned examples?

        What else could be the issue?

        ======================================================

        Mosu, based on my above posting, would you conclude that my Video playback “symptoms” are characteristic of Header Compression or something similar causing the issues? It’s been a tedious task narrowing down the source of the issue thus far. I’m actually lucky to have been refered to MKVmerge and similar tools as a possible solution to this.

        Appreciate any help!

    2. mosu Post author

      Alright, I found out why VLC is not doing so well. VLC does not skip elements it does not know about by default. You can switch it on, and that will make everything work again: Tools -> Preferences -> “Show settings: all” at the bottom left; In the tree on the left side: Input/Codecs -> Matroska; make sure “Dummy elements” is turned on. See this screenshot: http://www.bunkus.org/pics/vlc-preferences-matroska-dummy-elements.png

      I can understand somewhat that they don’t want bad performance for broken files, however they also violate the Matroska specs with such behavior. Again, this is not a bug in mkvmerge.

      I will file a bug report with the VLC guys.

    3. Gary

      Same problem here! Although using SMplayer, the problem disappear. Just have to wait for new VLC update.

      1. mosu Post author

        SMplayer does not use VLC for playback, and other players do not opt to abort reading a file when they encounter something they don’t know. The others do it right, that’s in accordance to Matroska’s intention. VLC does it wrong, plain and simple.

  2. Jamshed

    Hi, I have some dual audio (English-Hindi) mkv files. At ID 1 is English and ID 2 is Hindi. When I play this file on my LCD TV via USB pen drive, it plays english audio by default. I want to change the default audio in hindi but keeping both audios in that mkv file. I don’t know how to..Plz help. waiting for your reply.

  3. Vin

    I’ve also noticed that I’m having issues since upgrading to 5.9.0

    I use a standalone Sony bluray player to watch all of my MKV files. In the recent past some MKV files would crash when I tried to play them, so I came across MKVToolNix which fixed the issue. So now I just run all MKV files I get through MKVToolNix and select Compression None from the video extra options.

    I’ve never ever had an issue playing back files after they’ve gone through MKVToolNix until today where I’ve tried to play back files run through 5.9.0

    Seek is no longer working.

    I missed some of the TV show I was just watching so wanted to rewind, but I couldn’t. then I tried other MKV files I’ve run through 5.9.0 but same thing, seek works with none of them. I can play the files from start to finish, but not fast forward through them.

    Thankfully I have a laptop with an older version of MKVToolNix on it, so am now reprocessing the files through that, and…. Yes, now seek is working perfectly again. So if this is to be a permanent alteration I guess I’m going to block MKVToolNix from updating any more?

    For reference my Sony bluray player is a BDP-S470, and I play the MKV files through a USB flash drive.

    I just wanted to mention it after other people mentioning they’re having seek issues… and unlike VLC I can’t just update my standalone player as there haven’t been updates for a while, and besides, it works perfectly with older versions of MKVToolNix.

    Thanks for reading,
    Vin.

    1. mosu Post author

      Complain to Sony’s customer support. If the player stops playing when it finds an unknown element then it is simply broken and doesn’t follow the Matroska specs.

      If no one complains to the manufacturers then they will continue to produce crap such as this.

  4. Vin

    By the way, when I say seek isn’t working, I mean that the Player just quits playback altogether and moves onto the next file.

    As I said, I can just go back to 5.7.0, which I’m now using to remux the files I’ve done over the last two days so that they’re playable with seek again, so I’ll just stick with that now. I just wanted to bring the issue to someone’s attention.

    Thanks again,
    Vin.

  5. Vin

    I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t believe this player is supported any longer. I did get fairly regular firmware updates, but nothing in quite a while now.

    It plays everything else perfectly, blurays/DVDs/XviD etc, and it plays MKV files from previous versions of MKVToolNix perfectly, so I guess I’ll just have to stick with that until I upgrade in the future.

    As I said, it’s not a huge issue because I can carry on enjoying my files with previous MKVToolNix, I just wanted to mention it on here in case action could be taken. Maybe an option to disable whatever has been changed.

    I also have a Humax PVR which can play MKV files, however it refuses to play back MKV files that have been through MKVToolNix (by which I mean files that play perfectly on my bluray player and PC/VLC) I haven’t tried a 5.9.0 remuxed file yet though, so may see if that works.

    My bluray player is my main media player at the moment though, so having files work properly in that are my main priority. I’ve remuxed the files I’d originally done with 5.9.0 again with 5.7.0 and all’s well again now in the Vin household.

    Thanks for a great program.
    Even though I’m having issues with the newest version, so absolutely appreciate all the hours of entertainment it’s given me on my TV, rather than have to watch on a PC monitor, so thanks again.

    1. mosu Post author

      New elements have been added to the Matroska specs, and mkvmerge uses them. You can disable them with the appropriate “–engage” options (in mmg: muxing -> add command line options -> the ones with “no_cue_duration” and “no_cue_relative_position”). That way you’ll get 100% the same output as with 5.8.0.

  6. Vin

    Thank you very much indeed for those extra options.

    If that’ll keep my files playable for the foreseeable future through subequent releases of MKVToolNix then I’ll be delighted.

    I’m actually in the process of considering a new HTPC to avoid all these kinds of hassles, and just run VLC on my TV, but until that time, I appreciate being able to watch these files on my bluray player, and my deepest thanks for helping me out, and providing the CL options.

    If and when I get myself sorted out with a newer player I know I can always batch remux with MKVToolNix again if I need to, so nothing lost.

    Thanks very much again,
    Vin.

  7. Vin

    Hi there yet again,

    I have a further request now.
    I wonder if it would be possible in a future update to add the possibility to save Command Line options permanently?

    Maybe some people (such as me now) need to use certain options each, and every time we use the program. It would be invaluable if there were a “keep settings after quit” type tickbox, whereby each subsequent load of the program finds the command line options already set.

    Just a thought / request.
    Warm regards,
    Vin.

  8. zyril

    Hi mosu,

    Since the upgrade to v5.9.0, when using mediainfo after muxing with MKVMergeGUI, it always shows :

    Encoded date : UTC 2010-02-22 21:41:31

    in the header, under “General”.

    It seems to happen any time in any location :
    https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mkvmerge%20v5.9.0%20%22UTC%202010-02-22%2021%3A41%3A31%22

    I’ve just downgraded to v5.8.0 and it’s back to normal.

    Can this trivial bug be fixed shortly ?
    Do we have to wait until v5.10.0 ?

    Thx for your great job anyway ;)

  9. ErichV

    Hi Mosu!

    I tested the latest version of mkvtoolnix (5.9.0), everything seems to be fine as regards the playback of my mkv files. However, mkvalidator reports a new error:
    ERR009: The read DocType version 2 is higher than the Doctype version 4

    I think this belongs to the new DocTypeVersion 4 and to the fact that DocTypeReadVersion stays the same (2) due to compatibility issues.

    Is there anything I should mind in this case?

    Best regards,

    Erich

    1. mosu Post author

      Looks like two bugs in mkvalidator (which is not my program, BTW): the error message should probably read “DocTypeReadVersion” in one instance, as you said, and it’s perfectly fine that the DocType is higher than the DocTypeReadVersion. The “read version” tells a demuxer what version it must support at least in order to play the file (albeit not with all features); the “version” (without “read”) tells the maximum feature level used.

      You should report this issue to the author of mkvalidator, Steve Lhomme, and/or to the Matroska devel mailing list.

  10. ErichV

    Hi mosu,

    I’ve informed Steve Lhomme (robux4) about this bug via sourceforge.

    Thanks for your help.

  11. Alex B

    Hi.
    I found the issue with subs.
    When I merge “mkv” file with subs file in “srt” format the result file will show only first subtitle during playback.
    In “mkv” I have chapters as well.

    The previous version was working fine.

    Regards Alex

    1. mosu Post author

      Report that issue to the authors/manufacturer of your player, not to me. mkvmerge writes valid files according to the Matroska specs, and nothing has changed regarding chapter handling.

  12. Saeed

    Hi,
    I add this two optopns ( –engage no_cue_duration –engage no_cue_relative_position ) but it didn’t work

        1. Saeed

          Thanks mosu,
          I finally could see my file with FFW,
          I try your link options + add this two optopns ( –engage no_cue_duration –engage no_cue_relative_position ) in MKVToolNix 5.9.0 after all I can see my file with playback.

          P.S: I report this issue to sony’s support
          Thanks In Advance

  13. mmg

    MKVMerge 5.8.0 (+Disable header removal compression) + BD Player LG = play OK
    MKVMerge 5.9.0 (+Disable header removal compression) + BD Player LG = play fail
    What’s the problem???

    1. mosu Post author

      Why don’t you read the rest of the comments here? You could also contact LG’s support because, you know, I don’t work for them and have no idea why their player fails (yet again).

  14. Javier Trevino

    Great release!! How much time does it normally take to see a new release for MacOSX? I understand they are behind but wondering how much.

    Thanks!

  15. roc

    Hi. When I remux m2ts files to mkv it adds “Format version:Version 4 / Version 2” to the doctype. This appears to cause issues with seeking (slow and/or unresponsive behaviour)

    When I run the MKV through mkclean.exe and force only version 2 it works perfectly fine. Tried 5.9.0 release and 488 pre. Is this a bug?

    Many thanks

  16. Vic

    Hi,
    I have very specific problem.
    Now I have MKVToolNix 5.9.0.
    My question:
    is there any possibility to change/enlarge fonts inside in the interface.
    It’s a big problem. Because now I’m using Windows 8 Pro and this OS doesn’t allow to change fonts so easy as at previous OS.
    I have a 24″ monitor and I can hardly see all words, phrases using this program.
    For example when I am printing the name of output file it begins the hell!
    Is there solution (how to change/enlarge fonts, used in interface) for me?

    1. mosu Post author

      Sorry, I don’t have a solution for you for such an issue. The toolkit library I use sucks somewhat in this regard.

  17. Seb

    Since updating to 5.9.0 when I remux MKV movies I have a weird issue where the movie “pauses” for a while when I try to jump to a different time using VLC 2.0.5, sometimes it even freezes.

    I have confirmed that this issue is non existent with 5.8.0 only 5.9.0 exhibits this issue.

    I have reverted back to 5.8.0 Hopefully this can be fixed.

    other than that, keep up the great work!!!

  18. Sam

    Hi,

    Do you know why mkvmerge strip core AC3 part from Dolby True HD+AC3. After muxing it won’t play in any bluray players. Bluray players need the core part as well to playback Dolby True HD from mkv.

    Thanks

  19. Tallez

    Hi,

    First off, I’d like to thank you for making mkvmerge available because I’ve been able to repair several MKV files that wouldn’t play using the WD TV Live but were able to play on a Mac.

    I’ve encountered a few problems using mkvmerge (for Mac):
    – the software does not release storage and after several usages, my Mac is short-on-storage. I have to use a utility to release the storage before I proceed to use the utility or any other software on my Mac.
    – the software also did something to my Mac’s EFI firmware and rendered the “screen sharing” function unusable. To resolve this issue, I had to hold down the power button to do an EFI boot.

    Regards

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