Download MKVToolnix 8.5.0

Version 8.5.0 of MKVToolNix has been released. This collection of open source programs allows viewing, editing and conversion of Matroska files. For example, sound tracks and subtitles can be added, removed or set as default. They are separate command line tools, but a graphical user interface is also included. This has been replaced by a new one in version 8.0. The old one could still be used, but has been completely removed since version 8.4.0. Versions are available for download for Windows, many Linux distributions, and OS X. The release notes for this release can be found below.

Released v8.5.0.

I’ve released MKVToolNix v8.5.0. It contains the usual mix of bug fixes and enhancements, most of them for the GUI but some for mkvmerge, too. Most of these correspond directly to entries in the issue tracker.

Here’s the full ChangeLog since the previous release:

• mkvmerge: bug fix: the cropping parameters contained the “cropping:” prefix twice in the verbose identification output.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: when dropping files onto the GUI the last file’s directory is remembered as the last directory a file was opened from causing the next open file dialog to start in that directory. implementations #1477.
• all: new feature: added a Catalan translation of the man pages by Antoni Bella Pérez (see AUTHORS).
• MKVToolNix GUI: chapter editor enhancement: the start and end timestamps in the tree are displayed with nanosecond precision. implementations #1474.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: added a column to the track list containing the state of the “forced track” flag. implementations #1472.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: pressing the delete key in the attachments list removes the selected entries. implementations #1473.
• MKVToolNix GUI: enhancement: if the last directory opened doesn’t exist anymore then default to one that does in order to prevent an error message from older Windows versions about a location not being available. Fixes #1438.
• MKVToolNix GUI: enhancement: the context menu for the status bar job status counters is now shown when the user clicks with any mouse button, not just the right one. This should make the feature easier to discover. implementations #1396.
• MKVToolNix GUI: new job queue feature: added an option in the preferences for resetting the warning and error counters of all jobs and the global counters in the status bar to 0 when exiting the program. implementations #1437.
• MKVToolNix GUI: current job output enhancement: the separator lines for warnings and errors (“— Warnings emitted by Job … started on … —”) are only shown when warnings/errors actually occur and not for each job that’s run.
• MKVToolNix GUI: bug fix: the menus that are currently not shown are disabled properly so that they don’t react to keyboard shortcuts anymore. This affected eg Alt+J with the English localization as there were three shortcuts active: the “add to job queue” button (if the merge tool is active), the “job queue” menu and the “job output” menu.
• MKVToolNix GUI: bug fix (Windows): changed some options for Qt’s file dialogs in order to speed up access to network shares in certain situations. Fixes #1459.
• mkvmerge: enhancement: improved identification output for DTS 96/24. implementations #1431.
• mkvmerge: bug fix: PCM tracks: if the number of samples per packet varies then no default duration will be written. Fixes #1426.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: added buttons for previewing the character sets for text subtitles read from SRT and SSA/ASS files as well as for chapter files. They’re located next to the drop down boxes for the character sets on the input and output tabs.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: added buttons next to the ‘segment UID’, ‘previous segment UID’ and ‘next segment UID’ controls that enable the user to select a Matroska file. The GUI reads that file’s segment UID and enters its value into the corresponding control. Part of the implementation of #1363.
• mkvmerge: new feature: The three options that use segment UIDs (–segment-uid, –link-to-previous and –link-to-next) can now read the segment UID of an existing Matroska file. For this the file’s name must be given as an argument prefixed with = (eg ‘–segment-uid =some_file.mkv’). implementations #1363.
• MKVToolNix GUI: chapter editor enhancement: Added another variable to the chapter name templates called which is replaced by the chapter’s start timestamp. An optional format can be specified, eg resulting in something like 01:35:27.734. This can be used in the ‘generate sub-chapters’ or the ‘renumber sub-chapters’ functionality. implementations #1445.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool bug fix: If there’s currently no source file present when the user drags & drops files onto the merge tool then the GUI will no longer leave an empty, superfluous tab for certain drop modes. Fixes #1446.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: implemented the optional warning before overwriting existing files when starting to mux or adding a job to the queue. The pending jobs in the queue are checked for the same destination file name as well. implementations #1390.
• MKVToolNix GUI: enhancement: pressing the delete key in the chapter editor and the job queue removes the selected entries. implementations #1454.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: dropping chapter, tag and segment info files from external applications will cause those file names to be added to the appropriate controls on the ‘output’ tab. #1332 and 1345.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: the feature “default track language” has been split into track languages ​​by type. There are now three separate settings for audio, video and subtitle tracks. implementations #1338.
• mkvmerge: enhancement: the verbose identification for MP4 files will now derive basic audio parameters of MP3 and AC3 tracks from the bitstream instead of relying on the values ​​in the track headers.
• MKVToolNix GUI: new merge tool feature: implemented an optional vertical layout mode for the “input” tab in which the track properties are shown below the track list. implementations #1304.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool bug fix: the “default track flag in output” column wasn’t updated properly directly after loading settings.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool enhancement: when browsing for chapter files on the “output” tab the initial directory is the first input file’s directory instead of the directory accessed last.
• MKVToolNix GUI: merge tool bug fix: the cropping parameters were not converted into parameters for mkvmerge at all.
• all: several ISO 639-2 codes of languages ​​that are very old and not spoken anymore have been removed (eg “English, Middle (1100-1500)”).
• MKVToolNix GUI: enhancement: on Windows the drop down boxes were elliding overlong text. This has been changed to making the open combo boxes’ scroll areas wide enough to contain the whole entries. This matches the behavior of Qt on other operating systems.
• all: fixed the spelling of the AC-3, E-AC-3 and VC-1 codec names.
• MKVToolNix GUI: new merge tool feature: added context menu entries for opening the selected files/the source files of selected tracks in MediaInfo. implementations #1423.
• MKVToolNix GUI: bug fix: the interface language selection has been improved not to select wrong entries resulting in error messages from mkvmerge about unknown translations. Fixes #1434.
• MKVToolNix GUI: bug fix: if the Windows version of the GUI was started from a symbolically linked folder then it would crash when the user added a file. Fixes #1315.