MKVToolNix v70.0.0 released

Heyo!

A new small release is ready, mostly fixing two annoying bugs in the GUI’s handling of color parameters that unfortunately slipped in in v69.

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

  • MKVToolNix GUI: the user can now control where the job queue files & the preferences INI file are stored via environment variables. If set, the variable MKVTOOLNIX_GUI_STATE_DIR can point to a directory where the GUI stores both the job queue sub-directory and the preferences INI file. If you only want to relocate the preferences INI file, you can store the desired file name for the INI file in MKVTOOLNIX_GUI_CONFIG_FILE. Implements #3382.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: when adding directories via drag & drop/copy & paste the GUI will now offer the user the option to create one multiplex settings tab per directory & adding all files from that directory to the corresponding, newly created tab. Implements #3371.

Bug fixes

  • mkvmerge: AV1 OBU parser: fixed identifying files that only contain single frame. Fixes #3380.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when reading color parameters from identified files that are floating point numbers (minimum/maximum luminance, projection pitch/roll/yaw) the numbers will be formatted in floating-point notation instead of scientific notation as mkvmerge only supports the former. Fixes #3368.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: color parameters that are floating point numbers (minimum/maximum luminance, projection pitch/roll/yaw) will only be set to a value during identification if the identification actually contains the property, and not to 0 anymore if it doesn’t.

Build system changes

  • Several merge requests where accepted that improve compilation on MSYS2 on Windows. Note that this build type isn’t supported.

Have fun 😁

MKVToolNix v69.0.0 released

Well hello, everyone!

Long time no release, for various reasons, including having had caught Covid. Luckily it was rather mild. But still; I’d rather not have gotten it at all.

Anyway. Here’s a small release, couple of fixes, couple of features. Nothing overly revolutionary. Nevertheless, enjoy!

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:

Important notes

  • all: the spelling of “colour” was changed to “color” throughout all programs to match the use of American English spelling in MKVToolNix. This not only affects documentation and user interface controls, but also program options for mkvmerge & mkvpropedit. Both programs will continue to accept the British English spelling of their respective options indefinitely. One breaking change is that the property names in mkvmerge’s JSON identification mode have also been changed to American English spelling. As those properties have only been introduced in release v68, this seems like a small enough window to make such a change.

New features and enhancements

  • MKVToolNix GUI: the number of recently used entries (e.g. destination directories) remembered by the GUI can now be configured in the preferences. Implements #3362.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding files the track properties regarding color information & color mastering meta information will be parsed & set in the corresponding GUI controls. Implements #3359.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: job queue: the job queue can now be sorted by clicking on the column headers. Part of the implementation of #3365.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: job queue: when loading jobs from the queue directory that weren’t previously known to the program those jobs will be sorted by their “date added” timestamp instead of using the order the operating system returns them in. Part of the implementation of #3365.

Bug fixes

  • build system: fixed compilation with fmt v9. Fixes #3366.
  • mkvmerge: HEVC ES parser: the parser will now parse at least the first full access unit before reporting that it has found all the required headers. Otherwise parsing might stop in the middle of the access unit due to the source reader not providing more data in the first call, leading to the parser not finding the unspec62 and unspec63 NALUs required for Dolby Vision. Fixes #3363.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: preferences: the default actions added to the “execute programs” section on new installations now default to use WebM file names instead of Ogg, matching the format of the included audio files.

Build system changes

  • The bundled fmt library was updated to v9.0.0.

Have fun 😁

MKVToolNix v68.0.0 released

Heyo!

Here’s MKVToolNix v68 in which a lot of work has gone into replacing the icons in the GUI with scalable versions (SVG instead of PNG), improving support for odd scaling factors such as 125%.

A note to for package maintainers: due to the aforementioned change Qt’s SVG library is now required.

A note to users of Raspberry Pi: please migrate to using my Debian repository instead of the Raspbian repository I used to host. The Debian binaries are now available for the armhf architecture, removing the need for a Raspbian-specific repository.

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: HDMV PGS subtitles: mkvmerge now tries to detect bogus timestamps (where the current timestamp is two hours or more after the previous timestamp) & correct them to something more sensible (1s after the previous timestamp). That way one bogus timestamp cannot cause the rest of the frames to not be interleaved properly with the other audio & video packets. Implemented for #3268.
  • mkvmerge: added colour information, colour mastering meta information & video projection information properties to the JSON identification format. The properties are reported for container types for which mkvmerge supports reading them (Matroska & MP4). The JSON identification format version number has been bumped to v15.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: added controls for all the video colour information & the video projection information.

Bug fixes

  • mkvmerge: SRT reader: entries with a duration of 0 or less will now be skipped. Fixes #3332.
  • mkvpropedit, MKVToolNix GUI’s chapter & header editors: fixed an invalid memory access when trying to update existing Matroska files whose EBML Head element had a “size” field length of eight bytes, and where rewriting said element would shrink the element by one byte. Files created by gstreamer fit the first part whereas the second depends on the changes requested by the user. Part of the fix of #3325.
  • mkvpropedit, MKVToolNix GUI’s chapter & header editors: fixed the programs not handling having to remove EBML void elements at the end of the file correctly and consequently aborting. Part of the fix of #3325.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: the GUI now uses almost all SVG icons, allowing proper scaling even for scaling factors such as 125%. Fixes #3335.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: when compiled with Qt 5 the character set of INI files is forced to UTF-8 in order to fix reading INI files written by a version compiled with Qt 6. Fixes #3346.

Build system changes

  • Qt’s SVG library is now required.

Have fun 😁

MKVToolNix v67.0.0 released

Heyo!

Here’s a new release of MKVToolNix. Quite a lot of work has gone into this release, vastly improving the support for BCP 47 language tags. While a lot of you won’t see much of a difference, the support has vastly improved for a lot of Asian languages, both adding new features such as canoncalization, as well as fixing bugs, e.g. not allowing certain variants with certain languages even though they do make total sense together.

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

  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: when deriving the legacy language element codes to use a language tag’s ISO 639 code is also potentially interpreted as an & its prefix is used as the legacy language code. For example, “Yue Chinese” = yue is not part of ISO 639-2. However, there is an extlang subtag yue with a valid prefix of zh (“Chinese”), and for “Chinese” there is an ISO 639-2 language code: chi. In this example the IETF language element would be set to yue and the corresponding legacy element to chi. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: grandfathered language tags are now supported. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: all deprecated subtags from the IANA language subtag registry are now supported. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: all lists of valid subtags have been updated from their respective authoritative sources. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: all in the IANA language subtag registry are now supported, even those marked as deprecated and of type ‘grandfathered’. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: reduced the maximum number of extended language subtags that are present in a valid tag from 3 to 1 in compliance with RFC 5646 section 2.2.2. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: all language codes reserved for private/local use (qaa–qtz) are now supported. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: Digital Cinema Naming Convention language codes that fall into the IETF BCP 47 range of “private use” tags (qaa–qtz) are now replaced by their IETF BCP 47 equivalents during normalization (e.g. QMS → cmn-Hans). Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • all: added a new translation to Chinese Simplified (Singapore) by Dian Li.
  • mkvmerge, mkvpropedit: added a new command line option called --enable-legacy-font-mime-types. With this option on the two programs will use the same legacy MIME types for fonts whenever new attachments are added (both programs), when reading existing attachments (only mkvmerge) or when replacing existing ones (only mkvpropedit).
  • mkvmerge, mkvpropedit: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: added a command line option --normalize-language-ietf <mode> which turns on normalization of IETF BCP 47 language tags to either their canonical (mode canonical) or extended language subtags form (mode extlang) or turns it off (mode off). If the option isn’t given, language tags will now be normalized to the canonical form. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: ISO 639-3 and 639-5 languages will now be used by default. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: the language editor dialog will now show warnings in several cases: when deprecated tags are used; when the tag’s canonical and/or extlang forms differ from the user input. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: the language editor now has a button to replace the current tag with a normalized form (canonical or extlang) if those differ from the current tag. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: added an option in the preferences to always normalize all language tags to their canonical or extlang forms or to turn normalization off. Can also be enabled from the language editor dialog. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: the language dialog now shows a warning if a variant is used with a prefix that isn’t in the variant’s list of suitable prefixes. It’ll also say if the corresponding canonical/extlang forms would have a suitable prefix. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: the language dialog now shows a warning if a script is used with a language for which it should be suppressed. Part of the implementation of #3307.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the track property group boxes in the scrollable pane are now collapsible & expandable, saving their state over restarts of the GUI. This is in preparation of adding many more track properties in future releases, allowing the user to hide parts they don’t use all that often.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: if the option “use legacy font MIME types” is enabled in the preferences, the new command line option --enable-legacy-font-mime-types will be passed to mkvmerge in order to have it remap the MIME types of existing attachments, too.

Bug fixes

  • all: IETF BCP 47/RFC 5646 language tags: variants aren’t validated wrt. to prefixes anymore as BCP 47 doesn’t actually pose restrictions on them, saying only that prefixes “are suitable sequences” for use with the variants. What is now verified, though, is that no variant is used multiple times within the same language tag. Part of the implementation/fix of #3307.
  • build system & MKVToolNix GUI: fixed detecting the presence of & the compilation with the multimedia module of Qt version 6.2.0 and newer.
  • build system: fixed compilation on Unices other than Linux & macOS (e.g. FreeBSD). Fixes #3316.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: job queue: fixed compiling in the audio player code for the the “play audio” end-of-job action. Fixes #3303.
  • MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: recognizing added XML chapter, segment info or chapter files required the XML declaration & root node (e.g. <?xml…?> … <Chapters> for chapters) be located within the first 1 KB, which wasn’t enough for files that contain a lot of comments at the start like the included example-chapters-2.xml. The detection range was extended to 10 KB. Fixes #3302.

Build system changes

  • build system: the provided Windows binaries are now compiled with Qt 6. A drawback is that certain audio formats aren’t supported anymore by Qt for the “end of job” sound notification playback, notably the Ogg file format & the Vorbis audio codec. MKVToolNix therefore now ships Opus-in-WebM files for the same purpose.
  • The bundled fmt library was updated to v8.1.1.
  • The bundled nlohmann-json library was updated to v3.10.5.
  • The bundled pugixml library was updated to v1.12.1.

Have fun 😁