Heyo!

With up to 31°C outside, it’s a good idea to stay inside & do the likely last release of the summer for MKVToolNix, v79.0. Not a lot’s happened, but there’s support for AV1 with Dolby Vision. Yay!

You can download the source code or one of the binaries. 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:

New features and enhancements

• mkvmerge: AV1: added support for reading Dolby Vision from AV1 IVF & OBU streams. Patches by Quietvoid.
• mkvmerge: MPEG TS reader: added support for colors in teletext subtitles. Patch by Angela Schmid.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding files the GUI can automatically enable the “forced display” flag for subtitle tracks if the file name contains the word “forced” delimited by certain characters (configurable). This feature is turned on by default. Implements #3586.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: added the option --stop-after-video-ends to the dialog for additional command line options. Implements #3594.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding Blu-ray playlists the dialog allowing the user to select the playlist to add will now show audio & video track properties as well (pixel dimensions for video; sampling frequency, channels for audio). Implements #3597.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: in order to reduce confusion with users non that versed in Matroska elements, the naming of the two “language” track properties has been changed: the old element is now titled “Language (obsolete)” & the current, IETF BCP 47 based one is simply called “Language”.
• MKVToolNix GUI: preferences: you can now use the “delete” key to remove entries from simple list widgets for strings (e.g. the list of recently used destination directories).

Bug fixes

• mkvmerge: DTS reader: if a DTS stream doesn’t start with a DTS core but a sub-stream element (EXSS), the reader will now look for a core. If found, it’ll start processing from there instead of from the start. This fixes the timestamp calculation if the sampling frequency in the core & in the extensions are different. Fixes #3602.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the “emphasis” and “stereoscopy” combo-boxes now have a much smaller minimum width, allowing to make the whole “properties” pane much smaller again. Fixes #3581.
• MKVToolNix GUI: macOS: when you install the application from the DMG it’ll no longer register itself as an alternate handler for its supported file types. It seems like this overrode existing associations, forcing people to change them manually to whatever they wanted them to be. Additionally this forced the associated file to always be shown with an MKVToolNix icon. The GUI’s own .mtxcfg files will still be registered. Fixes #3588.

Have fun! 😁

Heyo!

MKVToolNix v78 is out with tons of bug fixes, especially for those crashes in the GUI’s header editor & for the GUI hanging when adding files via drag & drop. Both have crept in in version 77. Fortunately they were only annoying but didn’t affect existing files.

You can download the source code or one of the binaries. 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:

New features and enhancements

• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: for files that only contain legacy track language elements but no IETF language elements the header editor will now derive the IETF language elements from the legacy elements. See #3557.
• AppImage: the AppImage is now built on AlmaLinux 8 with Qt 6.5.1. This means that the minimum glibc version this AppImage is compatible with has also been bumped, to v2.28. The oldest Debian coming with this version is Debian 10 “Buster”; for Ubuntu it’s 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish”.
• Windows installer: the installer will now remove the file data\portable-app if it’s present in the installation directory as its presence would signal to the app to run in portable mode, requiring write access to its base directory. This fixes some installation issues that could occur when a user extracted a portable app archive into a folder like C:\Program Files\MKVToolNix. Also added an installation check for the same issue. See #3558.

Bug fixes

• all: Linux: if initializing the locale system based on the system’s settings fails, e.g. if environment variables such as LC_ALL have been set to fr_FR.UTF-8 but the locale for fr_FR.UTF-8 hasn’t been built, MKVToolNix will try to fall back to en_US.UTF-8 first & C.UTF-8 second. If neither of the three succeeds, an error message will be shown, and the program will abort. This fixes the programs not catching an exception from the boost::filesystem library which doesn’t cope with mis-configured locale systems well. Workaround for #3574.
• mkvmerge: sorting tracks by type did not work properly when some tracks weren’t copied. Part of the fix of #3567.
• mkvmerge: track numbers in the destination file were assigned out-of-order when the track order in the source files differs from the one in the destination file. Now they’re assigned sequentially in the order the tracks appear in the destination file again. Part of the fix of #3567.
• MKVToolNix GUI: under certain circumstances the GUI would try to display error messages from a secondary thread, which isn’t allowed in Qt, causing to program to either hang or outright crash. Part of the fix of #3556 & #3561.
• MKVToolNix GUI: the GUI will check for several potential installation issues wrt. to having write access to certain directories (system’s temporary directory, MKVToolNix’s file identification cache directory and others) & display proper error messages if not. Part of the fix of #3556 & #3561.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: fixed the application crashing whenever you change a property below the “segment information” node. This bug was introduced in v77. Fixes #3556.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: when reading files that only contain legacy track language elements but no IETF track language elements, the header editor was showing all tracks as having “English” as the language. This bug was introduced in v77. Fixes #3557.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: when a legacy track language element contains a country code (e.g. fr-CA), the header editor was wrongfully using und = “undetermined” as the language for that element. Now it’ll use the language from the language/country pair, which would be fr in the earlier example. Part of the fix of #3557.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: the keyboard shortcuts from the “modify selected track” sub-menu didn’t work right after opening a file. They only started working after opening the “header editor” menu. Fixes #3573.
• AppImage: fixed the GUI resources (e.g. icons) not being found.
• AppImage: the Qt plugins required for using compose key/dead keys are now included. Fixes #3577.

Build system changes

• The compilation database (compile_commands.json) is now always built. The variable BUILD_COMPILATION_DATABASE is not evaluated anymore.

Have fun 😁

Heyo.

We’re moving: there’s now a dedicated community & help forum for MKVToolNix based on the well-known Discourse forum software. It’ll replace the sub-Reddit as the primary place to get help for & talk about MKVToolNix & Matroska.

The sub-Reddit will remain available albeit in a read-only manner.

Hope to see you there!

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!

You can download the source code or one of the binaries. 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:

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 😁