Software Update: MKVToolnix 9.8.0

Version 9.8.0 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. MKVToolNix is ​​a collection of separate command line tools, but a graphical user interface is also included. Downloads are available for Windows, various Linux distributions, and macOS. The changelog for this release looks like this:

Important notes

• build system: the included version of the “drake” build tool has been removed. Since Ruby 2.1 rake has supported parallel builds, too. The MKVToolNix build system has been adjusted to enable parallel builds by default.

New features and enhancements

• mkvmerge: VobSub in Matroska: mkvmerge will now create and use a default index for VobSub tracks read from Matroska files that are missing their CodecPrivate element (which normally contains said index). implementations #1854.
• GUI: added checks for several common problems with the installation. These checks will be executed when the GUI starts, and any problems will be reported to the user.
• mkvmerge: added the ISO 639-2 language codes “qaa” and “qad” (both are titled “reserved for local use”) as both are used often in France. see #1848 for more information.
• mkvmerge: the JSON identification result now includes a track’s codec delay if set (only for Matroska source files). The JSON schema version has been bumped to 6.
• mkvmerge: MPEG TS: added a workaround for files where the subtitle packets are multiplexed properly, but where their timestamps are way off from the audio and video timestamps. implementations #1841.
• mkvmerge: added support for Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) subtitles (CodecID `S_DVBSUB`). They can be read from MPEG transport streams and from Matroska files. implementations #1843.

Bug fixes

• mkvmerge: MP4 reader: when an MP4 file contained fewer entries for timestamps than frames (which they never should), mkvmerge would use 0 as the timestamp for all the other frames. This resulted in effects such as the last frame of an output file having a timestamp of 0 and in split files having a much longer duration than they should have. Fixes #1847.
• GUI: the cache cleanup process that’s run automatically when the GUI starts no longer blocks file identification until it is finished. Additionally the process will only be run once per release of MKVToolNix. Fixes #1860.
• GUI: certain failures during file identification that can be traced to broken installations (eg mkvmerge being too old) won’t be stored in the cache anymore. Without this fix the GUI would still use the cached failed identification result even though the underlying might have already been fixed.
• mkvmerge: fixed that the error message “not enough space on disk” was shown twice on some operating systems. Fixes #1850.
• mkvmerge, Matroska: if a codec delay is set for a track in the input file, it is kept. Fixes #1849.
• GUI: multiplexer: changing default values ​​in the preferences (eg the default track language to set) did not affect files whose identification results had already been cached.
• mkvmerge, MP4: fixed detection of MP3 audio when the object type ID in the ESDS signals MP2 and the track headers have invalid values ​​for number of channels or sampling frequency. Fixes #1844.

Build system changes

• nlohman json-cpp: configure now looks for a system-wide installed version of the nlohmann json-cpp header-only library. If one is found, it is used; otherwise the included version will be used. implementations #1858.
• If MKVToolNix is ​​built with rake v10.0.0 or newer, its “multitask” feature will be turned on allowing automatic parallel builds.
• CURL is no longer used by MKVToolNix and is therefore not required for building anymore.

Other changes

• GUI: the update check now uses Qt’s networking classes instead of CURL.
• The command line option “–check-for-updates” has been removed, even though the deprecation warning in release 9.7.0 stated that it would be removed in 2018.