Heyooo!

Summer’s here, so let’s stay inside & play with a new release of MKVToolNix: v59. There were several nice quality of life improvements to the GUI as well as the usual bug fixes.

Several things have changed for packagers, so many that I won’t list them here. You can find them the NEWS below.

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 stil 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: WebVTT parser: the parser now follows the specs’ rules for parsing timestamps more closely by being more lenient: it allows arbitrary number of spaces & tabs at the start of the line & around the arrow; it allows any number of digits for the hours. Part of #3139.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding a Blu-ray playlist without scanning for other playlists the GUI will now look for disc library information & let the user select which one to use if there’s more than one entry. Implements #3143.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: added an option for sorting files & tracks by track types when adding them to multiplex settings. The order is: video first followed by audio, subtitles and other types. Files & tracks can still be reordered manually later. The option is enabled by default & can be found in the preferences → “Multiplexer” page → “Adding files” section. Implements #2366.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: added an option for recognizing file name sequences such as movie.001.mp4, movie.002.mp4, movie.003.mp4 when adding multiple files at once. If a sequence is detected, the only first file will be added while the second and following file names will be appended to the first one. The option is enabled by default & can be found in the preferences → “Multiplexer” page → “Adding files” section. Implements #2866.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: added small colored boxes for each file & track in order to indicate from which file each track is read. The colors used can be configured in the preferences → “Multiplexer” page → “File & track colors” section.

Bug fixes

• build system: fixed compilation with fmt v8. Fixes #3151.
• mkvmerge: SRT subtitle reader: characters that aren’t valid according to the assumed encoding of the file will now be replaced by the Unicode “Replacement Character” U+FFFD instead of keeping the invalid characters, potentially violating the Matroska specs.
• mkvmerge: WebVTT parser: the parser now accepts timestamps with hours larger than 99. Part of #3139.
• mkvextract: TTA extraction, only on Windows: fixed removing the temporary file created during extraction.
• mkvmerge, mkvpropedit, MKVToolNix GUI’s multiplexer & header editor: MIME type detection is now done using Qt instead of the magic library. The main impact is the MIME types of TrueType & OpenType fonts are now detected correctly. Fixes #3137.
• mkvmerge, mkvinfo, MKVToolNix GUI’s info tool: only on Windows: displaying dates before 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC or after 2038-01-19 03:14:08 UTC was broken. Note that the header editor was not affected. Fixes #3148.
• MKVToolNix GUI: only on 64-bit Windows: under certain conditions, the 64-bit Windows binaries crashed when opening dialog windows. Even though the underlying bug hasn’t been identified, the investigation showed that building it with newer versions than 10.2.0 of the mingw/gcc cross-compiler enabled the crashes, while binaries built with 10.2.0 were fine. This affected v57 and v58 which were built with gcc versions 10.3.0 and 11.1.0 respectively. For the time being I’ve switched back to building Windows binaries with gcc 10.2.0. Fixes #3132 & #3133.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding files to the multiplexer by running the GUI’s executable with file names as command line arguments, the source directory will be remembered as the “last open directory” again, causing subsequent uses of the “open file” dialog to start in the same directory.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the “default track flag” column in the track list was missing its icons. Additionally it contained text even for things that aren’t regular tracks and therefore do not actually have that flag (e.g. chapters or tags). Fixes #3144.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the default for the dialog asking the user what to do with dragged & dropped files if they’ve never seen the dialog is back to adding the files to the current multiplex settings instead of “add as additional parts” which was an unintentional default.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the “show command line” dialog will now always use backward slashes for the “Windows (cmd.exe)” mode and forward slashes for the “Linux/Unix shells” mode, regardless of the operating system it’s currently running on. Fixes #3155.

Build system changes

• The Qt library is now required for building all applications, even the command-line ones, as they use Qt’s MIME type detection capabilities. In turn this means that you cannot disable the Qt usage anymore; either Qt5 or Qt 6 is required. You can still chose not to build MKVToolNix GUI, though. A new option has been added to configure for this purpose: --disable-gui.
• The gmp library is now required.
• The magic library is not used anymore.
• The PCRE2 & JPCRE2 libraries are not used anymore. The bundled version of JPCRE2 was removed.
• Boost’s “rational” library is not used anymore.
• configure: the option --enable-appimage has been removed. The location of the relevant directories within an AppImage is now detected automatically.
• The bundled fmt library was updated to v8.0.0.

Have fun 😁

Heyo,

Summer is here, and so is MKVToolNix v58.0.0. Unlike the previous releases a lot more time has gone into it. The most noticeable change (to end users at least) is how the “default track” flag is handled, bringing it up to how the latest spec says the flag should be handled by players. Another prominent change is which MIME types are used for attached fonts on Windows. See the news below for details on both changes.

There were a couple of changes for packages, though none of them should actually require work on recent distros. Again, see the news below for details.

Last, but not least: get vaccinated if at all possible, y’all!

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 stil 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, MKVToolNix GUI’s multiplexer: the handling of the “default track” flag has been changed to match the recent changes to the Matroska specifications. The new semantics are that if it is set, it is supposed to signal to the player that this track is eligible for being played by default, potentially taking other factors such as user preferences regarding languages into account. This implies that more than one track of each type can have this flag set. For example, a Blu-ray disc with three audio tracks might have the main audio in both English and Japanese, whereas the third audio track contains the director’s comments. In such a case the first two tracks should have the “default track” flag set, the third one shouldn’t. Earlier mkvmerge was enforcing that only one track of each type could have the flag set. This restriction has been removed, both in mkvmerge and in the GUI’s multiplexer. mkvpropedit and the GUI’s header editor are unaffected as they’ve always allowed to set the flag on as many tracks as the user wanted.
• mkvmerge: AVC/H.264 & HEVC/H.265 identification: added the stream’s pixel dimensions (AVC only; were present for HEVC already) & default duration. Implements #3116.
• mkvmerge, mkvextract: HEVC/H.265: added support for reading single-layer Dolby Vision from Annex B type bitstreams (elementary streams, MPEG transport streams). Patch by quietvoid. Implements #3113.
• mkvinfo: the option -X/--full-hexdump now affects all binary elements, not just the frame data in SimpleBlock and BlockGroup elements.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the “delay” and “sync” options can now be used for chapters in source files, too. Implements #3129.
• MKVToolNix GUI: when moving list entries up & down with the optional buttons or the keyboard shortcuts (instead of using drag & drop), the GUI ensures that the top-most selected entry remains visible after the move. Implements #3123.
• MKVToolNix GUI: added an option in the preference to use legacy MIME types for font attachments instead of the current standard ones (e.g. ‘application/x-truetype-font’ instead of ‘font/sfnt’ and ‘font/ttf’).

Bug fixes

• build system: fixed filtering out optimization options when compiling the file iso639_language_list.cpp (before only numeric optimization levels were filtered out and only if it wasn’t the last option in the list of flags). See #3105 for context.
• build system: when libmagic was detected via pkg-config, MKVToolNix was actually compiled without support for libmagic due to a preprocessor symbol not being defined.
• mkvmerge: MP4 reader: fixed an issue with timestamps overflowing when the file’s or the track’s time scale is large. Fixes #3124.
• mkvmerge, mkvextract: fixed key frame handling for BlockGroup elements with a forward reference but no backward references. Patches by Tom Yan.
• mkvmerge, mkvpropedit, MKVToolNix GUI’s chapter editor: the programs will no longer omit writing mandatory elements set to their default value if other elements of the same type are present in the same master. This affects mostly the “chapter language” element which may occur multiple times within the same “chapter display” master. If it does occur multiple times and one of them is set to “English” (which is that element’s default value), that element will now be written, too. Part of the fix of #3120.
• mkvmerge, mkvpropedit, MKVToolNix GUI’s chapter editor: when parsing chapter files IETF & legacy language elements as well as legacy country elements will now be properly generated depending on which exist already, especially when there’s more than one language and/or country element in a “chapter display” element. Part of the fix of #3120.
• mkvmerge, mkvpropedit, MKVToolNix GUI’s chapter editor: fixed reading OGM-style chapter files with timestamps that don’t have exactly three decimal places. Any number of decimal places between one and nine is now supported for nanosecond precision. Fixes #3121.
• MKVToolNix GUI: chapter editor: added/fixed support for “chapter display” elements with multiple languages or countries. Part of the fix of #3120.

Build system changes

• Qt 6: added support for building with Qt 6. configure will look for Qt 6 first and only continue looking for Qt 5 if Qt 6 isn’t found or disabled via --disable-qt6. Qt 6 detection works by first looking for the qmake6 binary. Its location can be specified with the --with-qmake6=… option. All other Qt 6 related facts (such as compiler & linker flags or the position of the other required tools such as lconvert, moc, rcc and uic) will be derived from the output generated by qmake6. Note that at this point Qt 6 is not yet supported for the cross-compilation build to Windows, nor is a static Qt 6 build supported yet. Note that the command line options --enable-static-qt, --with-qt-pkg-config-modules and --without-qt-pkg-config only apply to the Qt 5 and have no effect on Qt 6.
• Qt 5: the options for specifying the position of the tools (--with-moc=…, --with-rcc=… and --with-uic=…) have been removed. Their position will now be derived from the output generated by qmake.
• configure: completely disabling the GUI now requires passing both --disable-qt6 and --disable-qt options.
• Boost’s multi-precision library is now required.
• Boost v1.66 or newer is now required.

Other changes

• The Windows build is now using an updated version of the file/magic library for MIME type detection of attachments. This affects fonts whose MIME types will now be the current standard MIME types (e.g. font/sfnt or font/ttf for TrueType fonts). As this might pose problematic with older players that only support the legacy MIME type (e.g. application/x-truetype-font), a new option was added in the GUI’s preferences to use the legacy MIME types instead of the current standard ones. This is off by default. Builds for other operating systems have already been using newer versions of the file/magic library for a long time.

Have fun 😁

Hello, hello!

fresh of the presses here’s MKVToolNix v57.0.0. A lot of work has gone into the HEVC/H.265 code over the last couple days, fixing most issues with Dolby Vision and HDR content, but also fixing a couple of general issues with the HEVC/H.265 code. Everyone using that codec should definitely update.

The state of Dolby Vision & HDR is pretty good right now. The only thing still missing is reading Dolby Vision from Annex B type elementary streams (raw .h265 files or MPEG transport streams), but we’re working on that as well.

By the way: a lot of you have decided to support MKVToolNix by buying it from the Microsoft Store for which I’m very, very grateful. At the point of writing it has been sold 544 times already. One immediate benefit is that I’ve invested in Dolby Vision capable hardware in order to be better able to test & improve that part of MKVToolNix. Your support is definitely making a difference.

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 stil 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: MP4 reader: added support for reading Dolby Vision from MP4 files (FourCCs dvh1 and dvhe; configuration records dvcC, dvvC and hvcE will be converted into block addition mappings). Implements #2784.
• mkvmerge: SRT subtitles: mkvmerge now accepts empty text files with the extension .srt as SRT subtitle files, enabling the creation of empty SRT tracks. Implements #3089.
• mkvmerge, mkvextract: HEVC/H.265: access unit delimiter NALUs will no longer be discarded, neither during muxing nor during extraction.
• MKVToolNix GUI: preferences: switched the order & wording of controls in the “enabling items” panel to make it clearer that certain controls define exceptions. Inspired by 3086.

Bug fixes

• mkvmerge: HEVC/H.265 parser: several NALU types, notably the Dolby Vision-specific NALUs (“unspecified 62” and “unspecified 63”) and suffix SEI NALUs, are now stored with the frame they belong to instead of with the next frame. Part of fixing & implementing #2784, #2818, #3093 and #3113.
• mkvmerge: HEVC/H.265 packetizer: fixed setting the track’s default duration when reading HEVC/H.265 from Matroska files that don’t have a default duration set.
• mkvmerge: HEVC/H.265 packetizer: fixed the calculation of the duration of frames so that SimpleBlock elements can be used again instead of BlockGroups with BlockDuration elements. Fixes #3114.
• mkvmerge, mkvextract: HEVC/H.265 parser: fixed issues with ordering & duplication of certain NALUs (parameter set & prefix SEI NALUs). Part of fixing & implementing of #2784, #2818, #3093 and #3113.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when dragging & dropping files to the multiplexer, the source directory will be remembered as the “last open directory” again, causing subsequent uses of the “open file” dialog to start in the same directory. Fixes #3110.
• mkvinfo: fixed the position of frames in block groups containing “block duration” elements in summary mode (e.g. for subtitle tracks).

Build system changes

• configure will now try to detect libmagic via pkg-config and fall back to including & linking directly if it cannot be found via pkg-config.

Have fun 😁

Hello again,

unfortunately the release I’ve done only four days ago contains a nasty bug in the HEVC/H.265 code, and people are hitting it in droves. Therefore I’m releasing a fix for that today

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 stil 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: AAC: added support for LOAS/LATM files with channel configuration indexes 9–21 (e.g. channel count 22.2 for index 13) according to Rec. ITU-R BS.1196-7 & ISO/IEC 23008-3:2019. Fixes #3081.

Bug fixes

• mkvmerge: HEVC/H.265 parser: fixed invalid memory access that could happen when reading certain types of HEVC data (e.g. with changing parameter sets mid-stream) from certain containers (e.g. Matroska). This bug was introduced in release 56.0.0. Fixes #3083.
• mkvextract: AAC: mkvextract will now abort with an useful error message when the user tries to extract a track whose ‘audio-specific config’ element in CodecPrivate signals a number of channels of 7 or greater than 8 as that isn’t supported by the ADTS format.

Build system changes

• configure: the --enable-ubsan option hasn’t actually enabled anything since release 39.0.0.

Have fun 😎