Tools and other software MKV Buddy - Tool to help handling of Videos (2 Viewers)

[Polar]

I'm fine for what mp3 concernes. There is only one scenario where I use MKA. The reason lies in the fact that ROKU 3 will not play DTS sound tracks unless they are in a Matroska container. If I convert to flac or wav, and stream it from my media server to ROKU 3, it will be considered as MP3 and will be played in Stereo. But then we get the issue that there does not seem to be a straight forward procedure for MKA metadata. This for information

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
A new version 2.0.3.7 can be found in our repo. Link is in first posting.
There are lots of new features and fixes- See Changelog for details:

2.0.3.7

Fixed - Issues with handling of subtitles

Enhnachment - Change remuxx tool from ffmpeg to mkvmerge on supported container for more reliability.
Enhnachment - Option to remuxx files after tagging to avoid meshed up Media Info in not 100% matroska conform 3rd party tools (like mediainfo.dll)
Enhnachment - TheMovieDB is used as alternative data source for series, priority can be set by user.
Enhnachment - New option do downscale all fanart image to user defined size.
Enhnachment - All metadata languages available on TVDB and TMDB now can be select in a dropdown list. English is set as "fallback- language"

Updates - MKVToolnix to 9.2.0
Updates - FFMpeg to git-8db203a
Updates - nfo4MPv2 to nfo4MPv3
Updates - MediaInfo.dll to 0.7.86
Updates - HandbrakeCLI to 0.10.5
Updates - ImageMagick to 7.0.2-1

The "remuxx after tagging"- option I need to explain a little bit more, I think...

When you add metatags to a mkv file those data are written into the header of the mkv. But space isn't endless here. To circumvent this the Matroska specs are suggest to attach the data at the end of the file and only link to them in the header. And exactly this is what mkvpropedit does. If this happens depends on the video file and the amount of metadata to be stored. There are enough examples where no links are needed and all metadata is stored in the header.

Sadly most of the programs out there (incl. mediainfo.dll) can not follow those links (also they have to, according to the Matroska specs). This leads to meshed up metadata and even media infos, so in a worst case scenario those files are no longer played properly.
Those files can be "repaired" by remuxing them as during a remux, the header is written from scratch. So it can be set to a big enough size for storing all metadata. And so the metadata are placed directly in the header and every "not that 100% conform" program is "happy" again.

The "remuxx after tagging"- option grabs all tagged videos and remux them one time to "repair" the header. This takes time (not too much, but notable) and temporal disk space (as much as the biggest file is), that's why it is configurable. If speed is not too important I would recommend to check this option, if possible...

For series now it's possible to use TMDB as an alternative to TVDB. The user can set which one should be preferred. If MKV-Buddy can not find an episode (or series) on the primary source, it automatically search for it on the alternative source. This way more episodes should be recognized, even if TVDB is down again (as way too often)...

Now have fun and feel free to ask, if something isn't clear.

 

[Lehmden]

HI.
Sadly a tiny error has made it into the installer. Right now I'm exchanging them in the Repo. For all who have downloaded it already, here is the file to exchange. Simply extract it into the MKV-Buddy installation dir and replace the existing file. So you don't need to download and re- install the version again. Everything else is 100% identical...
As soon as the upload is finished (will take some more minutes) the installer from the Repo is containing this fixed file too.
Sorry.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
A new version 2.0.3.10 can be found in our repo. Link is in first posting.
Main new feature is a completely new installer based on Inno Setup. This is much more powerful and it works better a lot on Win 10. It even can set proper rights so MKV-Buddy now can be installed to C:\Program Files again without issues. Aside this some fixes and updates are included.
Changelog:

2.0.3.10

Fixed - Small GUI glitches.
Fixed - Removed "Abort Button" from "remuxx after tagging" as it could lead to data lost in rare circumstances.

Enhnachment - New Installer based on Inno Setup
Enhanchment - Default installation path is set to "C:\Program Files\MKV-Buddy"

Updates - nfo4MPv3
Updates - MediaInfo.dll to 0.7.87
Updates - FFMpeg to git-d5edb6c
Updates - ImageMagick to 7.0.2-2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now have fun and feel free to ask, if something isn't clear.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
A new version 2.0.3.12 can be found in our repo. Link is in first posting.
Mostly updates and small fixes. And an option to select wehter thumbs and banner should be downloaded for movies or not.
Changelog:

2.0.3.12

Fixed - Small Bugfixes

Enhnachment - New Option to decide if Banner and Thumbs for movies are downloaded
Enhnachment - Video Wizard now also can toggle fanart and cover generation.

Updates - nfo4MPv3 to 0.55.214
Updates - MKVToolnix to 9.3.1
Updates - FFMpeg to git-04da20e
Updates - ImageMagick to 7.0.2-6

Now have fun and feel free to ask, if something isn't clear.

 

[ge2301]

HI Lehmden,

I have a couple of new movies with too large file size (30Gb).
I'm not a fan of that, as I believe, that nobody can make a difference between a 8Gb compared to a 30Gb mkv. At least I can not or it doesn't disturb me
I used MKV buddy and reduced the Bitrate in the settings, however the filesize was same afterwards.
Do you have a hint, which settings I need to touch to reduce the file size?

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
If the size did not change you have "remuxed" the movies only. You need to transcode them to get a significant smaller size.
Best is to use the wizards with default settings. This will give you 1080p movies at around 6-12 GB, depending on the length of the movie. Shorter ones (90 minutes or so) are at around 6GB, long ones (180 minutes and up) are more likely around 12 GB... And you will get them tagged and enriched with fanart and .nfo too. The wizard decide on its own (based on media infos read from the video and the boundaries set in MKV-Buddy) if a video needs to be transcoded or if a simple and fast remux (as fast as copy the video) is enough. And you also can "optimize" the video, means remove unneeded audio and/or subtitle tracks to free even more disk space, but you must not, if you want to keep them all... Personally I only keep one "German" Audio track with the "best" codec (configurable, what you prefer) and/or most channels (e.g. there is one German 7.1 and one German 2.0 track, then the 7.1 track is kept and the 2.0 track is removed) and one German "Forced" subtitle track only. All other audio and subtitle tracks I remove... But you also can keep e.G. one German and one Turkish track.

Best is to name the videos something like "tt1234567.mkv" (matching IMDB ID number so MKV-Buddy easily can match them 100%) and put them all together into one folder (maybe name it "input" or similar). This folder you set as input folder for the movies wizard. Set another folder (e.g. "output") as the output folder and MKV-Buddy is transcoding all your videos, generates movie- folders per each movie inside "output", grabs fanart, clearart, and metadata from online sources, creates .nfo files and rename all the videos to a "nice" name with a single mouse click. Once you are done and if all went good you can delete all the "raw" videos (those 30 GB files) with another single mouse click...

If your GPU is QuickSync compatible the transcoding is fast (depending on the type of your GPU and the length of the movie I have something around 20 minutes per movie on my Haswell i5). Without QS this may take some hours to complete, depending on the length of the movie and the power of your CPU. So be patient. You need to invest this time, if you want to lower the file size. There is no other, faster way available.

 

[Lehmden]

An example from today:

On the left there is the "raw" file with big size. On the right there is the output of MKV-Buddy. This movie has a duration of more than 150 minutes. The transcoding lasts about 30 minutes on my system while I had lunch...

 

[ge2301]

This will give you 1080p movies at around 6-12 GB, depending on the length of the movie. Shorter ones (90 minutes or so) are at around 6GB, long ones (180 minutes and up) are more likely around 12 GB

I prefer max 8 GB, so I might need to adjust some Bitrate settings.
I'll try it once again with default settings, just to see the result. the transcoding time is acceptable for me. Once I found the perfect settings for me, I'll let it run over all movies, that are too large from my points of view.

The mkv files are already cleaned up be me. All my files have English, Spanish and German Subtitles included. Included Audiotracks are German and English.
Also audio tracks and subtitles are names correctly and consistant. For example I don't like it an audio track it called "German", as "German" is already in the language property. So my audio tracks are called for example"DTS 7.1 769 kbps". My subtitle tracks are called e.g. "SRT Complete".

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

I prefer max 8 GB

This I would not recommend... Imagine a movie of extreme length, maybe more than 4 hours or so. This movie will be compressed too much if it is squeezes into 8GB and you definitely will see the worse picture quality. 4 GB per hour of duration is a nice size for "average" Full HD TV screens and a good compromise between quality and size.

I might need to adjust some Bitrate settings.

The bitrates only could be set in the video transcoding module (due to limited space in GUI). For 720p and 1080p you can set two values. short for videos below 1 hour (most likely series episodes) and long for videos with a duration above 1 hour (most likely movies). This is as series are consuming such an enormous amount of space. But if you like you can set both to the same value... And you can use constant quality instead of constant bitrates too. For this you only need to enter low values (all values below 100 are interpreted as CQ values). Bitrates entered in the transcoding module are also used for the wizards. In the wizard modules you only can set the boundaries up to which bitrate the video will be remuxed instead of being transcoded..