1MKVMERGE(1) User Commands MKVMERGE(1)
2
6 mkvmerge - Merge multimedia streams into a Matroska(TM) file
7
9 mkvmerge [global options] {-o out} [options1] {file1}
10 [[options2] {file2}] [@options-file.json]
11
13 This program takes the input from several media files and joins their
14 streams (all of them or just a selection) into a Matroska(TM) file; see
15 the Matroska(TM) website[1].
16 Important
18 The order of command line options is important. Please read the
19 section "Option order" if you're new to the program.
20 Global options
22 -v, --verbose
23 Increase verbosity.
24 -q, --quiet
26 Suppress status output.
27 -o, --output file-name
29 Write to the file file-name. If splitting is used then this
30 parameter is treated a bit differently. See the explanation for the
31 --split option for details.
32 -w, --webm
34 Create a WebM compliant file. This is also turned on if the output
35 file name's extension is "webm". This mode enforces several
36 restrictions. The only allowed codecs are VP8, VP9 video and Opus,
37 Vorbis audio tracks. The DocType header item is changed to "webm".
38 For chapters and tags only a subset of elements are allowed.
40 mkvmerge(1) will automatically remove all elements not allowed by
41 the specification.
42 --title title
44 Sets the general title for the output file, e.g. the movie name.
45 --default-language language-code
47 Sets the default language code that will be used for tracks for
48 which no language is set with the --language option and for which
49 the source container doesn't provide a language.
50 The default language code is 'und' for 'undefined'.
52 Segment info handling (global options)
54 --segmentinfo filename.xml
55 Read segment information from a XML file. This file can contain the
56 segment family UID, segment UID, previous and next segment UID
57 elements. An example file and a DTD are included in the MKVToolNix
58 distribution.
59 See the section about segment info XML files below for details.
61 --segment-uid SID1,SID2,...
63 Sets the segment UIDs to use. This is a comma-separated list of
64 128-bit segment UIDs in the usual UID form: hex numbers with or
65 without the "0x" prefix, with or without spaces, exactly 32 digits.
66 If SID starts with = then its rest is interpreted as the name of a
68 Matroska file whose segment UID is read and used.
69 Each file created contains one segment, and each segment has one
71 segment UID. If more segment UIDs are specified than segments are
72 created then the surplus UIDs are ignored. If fewer UIDs are
73 specified than segments are created then random UIDs will be
74 created for them.
75 Chapter and tag handling (global options)
77 --chapter-language language-code
78 Sets the ISO 639-2 language code that is written for each chapter
79 entry. Defaults to 'eng'. See the section about chapters below for
80 details.
81 This option can be used both for simple chapter files and for
83 source files that contain chapters but no information about the
84 chapters' language, e.g. MP4 and OGM files.
85 The language set with this option is also used when chapters are
87 generated with the --generate-chapters option.
88 --chapter-charset character-set
90 Sets the character set that is used for the conversion to UTF-8 for
91 simple chapter files. See the section about text files and
92 character sets for an explanation how mkvmerge(1) converts between
93 character sets.
94 This switch does also apply to chapters that are copied from
96 certain container types, e.g. Ogg/OGM and MP4 files. See the
97 section about chapters below for details.
98 --chapter-sync d[,o[/p]]
100 Adjust the timestamps of the chapters in the following source file
101 by d ms. Alternatively you can use the --sync option with the
102 special track ID -2 (see section special track IDs).
103 o/p: adjust the timestamps by o/p to fix linear drifts. p defaults
105 to 1 if omitted. Both o and p can be floating point numbers.
106 Defaults: no manual sync correction (which is the same as d = 0 and
108 o/p = 1.0).
109 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
111 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
112 --generate-chapters mode
114 mkvmerge(1) can create chapters automatically. The following two
115 modes are currently supported:
116 • 'when-appending' – This mode creates one chapter at the start
118 and one chapter whenever a file is appended.
119 This mode also works with split modes 'parts:' and
121 'parts-frames:'. For these modes one chapter will be generated
122 for each appended timestamp range (those whose start timestamps
123 are prefixed with '+').
124 Note
126 mkvmerge(1) requires a video or an audio track to be
127 present in order to be able to determine when a new file is
128 appended. If one or more video tracks are muxed the first
129 one is used. Otherwise the first audio track is used.
130 • 'interval:time-spec' – This mode creates one chapter at fixed
132 intervals given by time-spec. The format is either the form
133 HH:MM:SS.nnnnnnnnn or a number followed by one of the units
134 's', 'ms' or 'us'.
135 Example: --generate-chapters interval:45s
137 The names for the new chapters are controlled by the option
139 --generate-chapters-name-template. The language is set with
140 --chapter-language which must occur before --generate-chapters.
141 --generate-chapters-name-template template
143 This sets the name template for chapter names generated by the
144 option --generate-chapters. If the option is not used then default
145 'Chapter <NUM:2>' will be used.
146 There are several variables that can be used in the template that
148 are replaced by their actual values when a chapter is generated.
149 The string '<NUM>' will be replaced by the chapter number. The
150 string '<START>' will be replaced by the chapter's start timestamp.
151 The strings '<FILE_NAME>' and '<FILE_NAME_WITH_EXT>' are only
153 filled when generating chapters for appended files. They will be
154 replaced by the appended file's name wihtout respectively with its
155 extension. Note that only the file's base name and extension are
156 inserted, not its directory or drive components.
157 You can specify a minimum number of places for the chapter number
159 with '<NUM:places>', e.g. '<NUM:3>'. The resulting number will be
160 padded with leading zeroes if the number of places is less than
161 specified.
162 You can control the format used by the start timestamp with
164 <START:format>. The format defaults to '%H:%M:%S' if none is given.
165 Valid format codes are:
166 • %h – hours
168 • %H – hours zero-padded to two places
170 • %m – minutes
172 • %M – minutes zero-padded to two places
174 • %s – seconds
176 • %S – seconds zero-padded to two places
178 • %n – nanoseconds with nine places
180 • %<1-9>n – nanoseconds with up to nine places (e.g. three places
182 with %3n)
183 --cue-chapter-name-format format
185 mkvmerge(1) supports reading CUE sheets for audio files as the
186 input for chapters. CUE sheets usually contain the entries
187 PERFORMER and TITLE for each index entry. mkvmerge(1) uses these
188 two strings in order to construct the chapter name. With this
189 option the format used for this name can be set.
190 If this option is not given then mkvmerge(1) defaults to the format
192 '%p - %t' (the performer, followed by a space, a dash, another
193 space and the title).
194 If the format is given then everything except the following meta
196 characters is copied as-is, and the meta characters are replaced
197 like this:
198 • %p is replaced by the current entry's PERFORMER string,
200 • %t is replaced by the current entry's TITLE string,
202 • %n is replaced by the current track number and
204 • %N is replaced by the current track number padded with a
206 leading zero if it is < 10.
207 --chapters file-name
209 Read chapter information from the file file-name. See the section
210 about chapters below for details.
211 --global-tags file-name
213 Read global tags from the file file-name. See the section about
214 tags below for details.
215 General output control (advanced global options)
217 --track-order FID1:TID1,FID2:TID2,...
218 This option changes the order in which the tracks for an input file
219 are created. The argument is a comma separated list of pairs IDs.
220 Each pair contains first the file ID (FID1) which is simply the
221 number of the file on the command line starting at 0. The second is
222 a track ID (TID1) from that file. If some track IDs are omitted
223 then those tracks are created after the ones given with this option
224 have been created.
225 --cluster-length spec
227 Limit the number of data blocks or the duration of data in each
228 cluster. The spec parameter can either be a number n without a unit
229 or a number d postfixed with 'ms'.
230 If no unit is used then mkvmerge(1) will put at most n data blocks
232 into each cluster. The maximum number of blocks is 65535.
233 If the number d is postfixed with 'ms' then mkvmerge(1) puts at
235 most d milliseconds of data into each cluster. The minimum for d is
236 '100ms', and the maximum is '32000ms'.
237 mkvmerge(1) defaults to putting at most 65535 data blocks and
239 5000ms of data into a cluster.
240 Programs trying to find a certain frame can only seek directly to a
242 cluster and have to read the whole cluster afterwards. Therefore
243 creating larger clusters may lead to imprecise or slow seeking.
244 --clusters-in-meta-seek
246 Tells mkvmerge(1) to create a meta seek element at the end of the
247 file containing all clusters. See also the section about the
248 Matroska(TM) file layout.
249 --timestamp-scale factor
251 Forces the timestamp scale factor to factor. Valid values are in
252 the range 1000..10000000 or the special value -1.
253 Normally mkvmerge(1) will use a value of 1000000 which means that
255 timestamps and durations will have a precision of 1ms. For files
256 that will not contain a video track but at least one audio track
257 mkvmerge(1) will automatically chose a timestamp scale factor so
258 that all timestamps and durations have a precision of one audio
259 sample. This causes bigger overhead but allows precise seeking and
260 extraction.
261 If the special value -1 is used then mkvmerge(1) will use sample
263 precision even if a video track is present.
264 --enable-durations
266 Write durations for all blocks. This will increase file size and
267 does not offer any additional value for players at the moment.
268 --no-cues
270 Tells mkvmerge(1) not to create and write the cue data which can be
271 compared to an index in an AVI. Matroska(TM) files can be played
272 back without the cue data, but seeking will probably be imprecise
273 and slower. Use this only if you're really desperate for space or
274 for testing purposes. See also option --cues which can be specified
275 for each input file.
276 --no-date
278 By default mkvmerge(1) sets the "date" segment information field to
279 the time & date when multiplexing started. With this option that
280 field is not written at all.
281 --disable-lacing
283 Disables lacing for all tracks. This will increase the file's size,
284 especially if there are many audio tracks. This option is not
285 intended for everyday use.
286 --disable-track-statistics-tags
288 Normally mkvmerge(1) will write certain tags with statistics for
289 each track. If such tags are already present then they will be
290 overwritten. The tags are BPS, DURATION, NUMBER_OF_BYTES and
291 NUMBER_OF_FRAMES.
292 Enabling this option prevents mkvmerge(1) from writing those tags
294 and from touching any existing tags with same names.
295 --disable-language-ietf
297 Normally mkvmerge(1) will write the new IETF BCP 47 language
298 elements in addition to the legacy language elements in track
299 headers, chapters and tags. If this option is used, only the legacy
300 elements are written.
301 File splitting, linking, appending and concatenation (more global options)
303 --split specification
304 Splits the output file after a given size or a given time. Please
305 note that tracks can only be split right before a key frame.
306 Therefore the split point may be a bit off from what the user has
307 specified.
308 At the moment mkvmerge(1) supports the following modes:
310 1. Splitting by size.
312 Syntax: --split [size:]d[k|m|g]
314 Examples: --split size:700m or --split 150000000
316 The parameter d may end with 'k', 'm' or 'g' to indicate that
318 the size is in KB, MB or GB respectively. Otherwise a size in
319 bytes is assumed. After the current output file has reached
320 this size limit a new one will be started.
321 The 'size:' prefix may be omitted for compatibility reasons.
323 2. Splitting after a duration.
325 Syntax: --split [duration:]HH:MM:SS.nnnnnnnnn|ds
327 Examples: --split duration:00:60:00.000 or --split 3600s
329 The parameter must either have the form HH:MM:SS.nnnnnnnnn for
331 specifying the duration in up to nano-second precision or be a
332 number d followed by the letter 's' for the duration in
333 seconds. HH is the number of hours, MM the number of minutes,
334 SS the number of seconds and nnnnnnnnn the number of
335 nanoseconds. Both the number of hours and the number of
336 nanoseconds can be omitted. There can be up to nine digits
337 after the decimal point. After the duration of the contents in
338 the current output has reached this limit a new output file
339 will be started.
340 The 'duration:' prefix may be omitted for compatibility
342 reasons.
343 3. Splitting after specific timestamps.
345 Syntax: --split timestamps:A[,B[,C...]]
347 Example: --split timestamps:00:45:00.000,01:20:00.250,6300s
349 The parameters A, B, C etc must all have the same format as the
351 ones used for the duration (see above). The list of timestamps
352 is separated by commas. After the input stream has reached the
353 current split point's timestamp a new file is created. Then the
354 next split point given in this list is used.
355 The 'timestamps:' prefix must not be omitted.
357 4. Keeping specific parts by specifying timestamp ranges while
359 discarding others.
360 Syntax: --split
362 parts:start1-end1[,[+]start2-end2[,[+]start3-end3...]]
363 Examples:
365 1. --split parts:00:01:20-00:02:45,00:05:50-00:10:30
367 2. --split parts:00:01:20-00:02:45,+00:05:50-00:10:30
369 3. --split parts:-00:02:45,00:05:50-
371 The parts mode tells mkvmerge(1) to keep certain ranges of
373 timestamps while discarding others. The ranges to keep have to
374 be listed after the parts: keyword and be separated by commas.
375 A range itself consists of a start and an end timestamp in the
376 same format the other variations of --split accept (e.g. both
377 00:01:20 and 80s refer to the same timestamp).
378 If a start timestamp is left out then it defaults to the
380 previous range's end timestamp. If there was no previous range
381 then it defaults to the start of the file (see example 3).
382 If an end timestamp is left out then it defaults to the end of
384 the source files which basically tells mkvmerge(1) to keep the
385 rest (see example 3).
386 Normally each range will be written to a new file. This can be
388 changed so that consecutive ranges are written to the same
389 file. For that the user has to prefix the start timestamp with
390 a +. This tells mkvmerge(1) not to create a new file and
391 instead append the range to the same file the previous range
392 was written to. Timestamps will be adjusted so that there will
393 be no gap in the output file even if there was a gap in the two
394 ranges in the input file.
395 In example 1 mkvmerge(1) will create two files. The first will
397 contain the content starting from 00:01:20 until 00:02:45. The
398 second file will contain the content starting from 00:05:50
399 until 00:10:30.
400 In example 2 mkvmerge(1) will create only one file. This file
402 will contain both the content starting from 00:01:20 until
403 00:02:45 and the content starting from 00:05:50 until 00:10:30.
404 In example 3 mkvmerge(1) will create two files. The first will
406 contain the content from the start of the source files until
407 00:02:45. The second file will contain the content starting
408 from 00:05:50 until the end of the source files.
409 Note
411 Note that mkvmerge(1) only makes decisions about splitting
412 at key frame positions. This applies to both the start and
413 the end of each range. So even if an end timestamp is
414 between two key frames mkvmerge(1) will continue outputting
415 the frames up to but excluding the following key frame.
416 5. Keeping specific parts by specifying frame/field number ranges
418 while discarding others.
419 Syntax: --split
421 parts-frames:start1-end1[,[+]start2-end2[,[+]start3-end3...]]
422 Examples:
424 1. --split parts-frames:137-258,548-1211
426 2. --split parts-frames:733-912,+1592-2730
428 3. --split parts-frames:-430,2512-
430 The parts-frames mode tells mkvmerge(1) to keep certain ranges
432 of frame/field numbers while discarding others. The ranges to
433 keep have to be listed after the parts-frames: keyword and be
434 separated by commas. A range itself consists of a start and an
435 end frame/field number. Numbering starts at 1.
436 If a start number is left out then it defaults to the previous
438 range's end number. If there was no previous range then it
439 defaults to the start of the file (see example 3).
440 If an end number is left out then it defaults to the end of the
442 source files which basically tells mkvmerge(1) to keep the rest
443 (see example 3).
444 Normally each range will be written to a new file. This can be
446 changed so that consecutive ranges are written to the same
447 file. For that the user has to prefix the start number with a
448 +. This tells mkvmerge(1) not to create a new file and instead
449 append the range to the same file the previous range was
450 written to. Timestamps will be adjusted so that there will be
451 no gap in the output file even if there was a gap in the two
452 ranges in the input file.
453 Note
455 Note that mkvmerge(1) only makes decisions about splitting
456 at key frame positions. This applies to both the start and
457 the end of each range. So even if an end frame/field number
458 is between two key frames mkvmerge(1) will continue
459 outputting the frames up to but excluding the following key
460 frame.
461 In example 1 mkvmerge(1) will create two files. The first will
462 contain the content starting from the first key frame at or
463 after 137 up to but excluding the first key frame at or after
464 258. The second file will contain the content starting from 548
465 until 1211.
466 In example 2 mkvmerge(1) will create only one file. This file
468 will contain both the content starting from 733 until 912 and
469 the content starting from 1592 until 2730.
470 In example 3 mkvmerge(1) will create two files. The first will
472 contain the content from the start of the source files until
473 430. The second file will contain the content starting from
474 2512 until the end of the source files.
475 This mode considers only the first video track that is output.
477 If no video track is output no splitting will occur.
478 Note
480 The numbers given with this argument are interpreted based
481 on the number of Matroska(TM) blocks that are output. A
482 single Matroska(TM) block contains either a full frame (for
483 progressive content) or a single field (for interlaced
484 content). mkvmerge does not distinguish between those two
485 and simply counts the number of blocks. For example: If one
486 wanted to split after the 25th full frame with interlaced
487 content one would have to use 50 (two fields per full
488 frame) as the split point.
489 6. Splitting after specific frames/fields.
491 Syntax: --split frames:A[,B[,C...]]
493 Example: --split frames:120,237,891
495 The parameters A, B, C etc must all be positive integers.
497 Numbering starts at 1. The list of frame/field numbers is
498 separated by commas. After the input stream has reached the
499 current split point's frame/field number a new file is created.
500 Then the next split point given in this list is used.
501 The 'frames:' prefix must not be omitted.
503 This mode considers only the first video track that is output.
505 If no video track is output no splitting will occur.
506 Note
508 The numbers given with this argument are interpreted based
509 on the number of Matroska(TM) blocks that are output. A
510 single Matroska(TM) block contains either a full frame (for
511 progressive content) or a single field (for interlaced
512 content). mkvmerge does not distinguish between those two
513 and simply counts the number of blocks. For example: If one
514 wanted to split after the 25th full frame with interlaced
515 content one would have to use 50 (two fields per full
516 frame) as the split point.
517 7. Splitting before specific chapters.
519 Syntax: --split chapters:all or --split chapters:A[,B[,C...]]
521 Example: --split chapters:5,8
523 The parameters A, B, C etc must all be positive integers.
525 Numbering starts at 1. The list of chapter numbers is separated
526 by commas. Splitting will occur right before the first key
527 frame whose timestamp is equal to or bigger than the start
528 timestamp for the chapters whose numbers are listed. A chapter
529 starting at 0s is never considered for splitting and discarded
530 silently.
531 The keyword all can be used instead of listing all chapter
533 numbers manually.
534 The 'chapters:' prefix must not be omitted.
536 Note
538 The Matroska(TM) file format supports arbitrary deeply
539 nested chapter structures called 'edition entries' and
540 'chapter atoms'. However, this mode only considers the
541 top-most level of chapters across all edition entries.
542 For this splitting mode the output filename is treated differently
544 than for the normal operation. It may contain a printf like
545 expression '%d' including an optional field width, e.g. '%02d'. If
546 it does then the current file number will be formatted
547 appropriately and inserted at that point in the filename. If there
548 is no such pattern then a pattern of '-%03d' is assumed right
549 before the file's extension: '-o output.mkv' would result in
550 'output-001.mkv' and so on. If there's no extension then '-%03d'
551 will be appended to the name.
552 Another possible pattern is '%c' which will be replaced by the name
554 of the first chapter in the file. Note that when '%c' is present,
555 the pattern '-%03d' will not be added automatically.
556 --link
558 Link files to one another when splitting the output file. See the
559 section on file linking below for details.
560 --link-to-previous segment-UID
562 Links the first output file to the segment with the segment UID
563 given by the segment-UID parameter. See the section on file linking
564 below for details.
565 If SID starts with = then its rest is interpreted as the name of a
567 Matroska file whose segment UID is read and used.
568 --link-to-next segment-UID
570 Links the last output file to the segment with the segment UID
571 given by the segment-UID parameter. See the section on file linking
572 below for details.
573 If SID starts with = then its rest is interpreted as the name of a
575 Matroska file whose segment UID is read and used.
576 --append-mode mode
578 Determines how timestamps are calculated when appending files. The
579 parameter mode can have two values: 'file' which is also the
580 default and 'track'.
581 When mkvmerge appends a track (called 'track2_1' from now on) from
583 a second file (called 'file2') to a track (called 'track1_1') from
584 the first file (called 'file1') then it has to offset all
585 timestamps for 'track2_1' by an amount. For 'file' mode this amount
586 is the highest timestamp encountered in 'file1' even if that
587 timestamp was from a different track than 'track1_1'. In track mode
588 the offset is the highest timestamp of 'track1_1'.
589 Unfortunately mkvmerge cannot detect which mode to use reliably.
591 Therefore it defaults to 'file' mode. 'file' mode usually works
592 better for files that have been created independently of each
593 other; e.g. when appending AVI or MP4 files. 'track' mode may work
594 better for sources that are essentially just parts of one big file,
595 e.g. for VOB and EVO files.
596 Subtitle tracks are always treated as if 'file' mode were active
598 even if 'track' mode actually is.
599 --append-to SFID1:STID1:DFID1:DTID1[,...]
601 This option controls to which track another track is appended. Each
602 spec contains four IDs: a file ID, a track ID, a second file ID and
603 a second track ID. The first pair, "source file ID" and "source
604 track ID", identifies the track that is to be appended. The second
605 pair, "destination file ID" and "destination track ID", identifies
606 the track the first one is appended to.
607 If this option has been omitted then a standard mapping is used.
609 This standard mapping appends each track from the current file to a
610 track from the previous file with the same track ID. This allows
611 for easy appending if a movie has been split into two parts and
612 both file have the same number of tracks and track IDs with the
613 command mkvmerge -o output.mkv part1.mkv +part2.mkv.
614 +
616 A single '+' causes the next file to be appended instead of added.
617 The '+' can also be put in front of the next file name. Therefore
618 the following two commands are equivalent:
619 $ mkvmerge -o full.mkv file1.mkv + file2.mkv
621 $ mkvmerge -o full.mkv file1.mkv +file2.mkv
622 [ file1 file2 ]
624 If multiple file names are contained in a pair of square brackets
625 then the second and all following files will be appended to the
626 first file named within the brackets.
627 This is an alternative syntax to using '+' between the file names.
629 Therefore the following two commands are equivalent:
630 $ mkvmerge -o full.mkv file1.mkv + file2.mkv
632 $ mkvmerge -o full.mkv '[' file1.mkv file2.mkv ']'
633 =
635 Normally mkvmerge(1) looks for files in the same directory as an
636 input file that have the same base name and only differ in their
637 running number (e.g. 'VTS_01_1.VOB', 'VTS_01_2.VOB', 'VTS_01_3.VOB'
638 etc) and treats all of those files as if they were concatenated
639 into a single big file. This option, a single '=', causes mkvmerge
640 not to look for those additional files.
641 The '=' can also be put in front of the next file name. Therefore
643 the following two commands are equivalent:
644 $ mkvmerge -o full.mkv = file1.mkv
646 $ mkvmerge -o full.mkv =file1.mkv
647 ( file1 file2 )
649 If multiple file names are contained in a pair of parenthesis then
650 those files will be treated as if they were concatenated into a
651 single big file consisting of the content of each of the files one
652 after the other.
653 This can be used for e.g. VOB files coming from a DVD or MPEG
655 transport streams. It cannot be used if each file contains its own
656 set of headers which is usually the case with stand-alone files
657 like AVI or MP4.
658 Putting a file name into parenthesis also prevents mkvmerge(1) from
660 looking for additional files with the same base name as described
661 in option =. Therefore these two command lines are equivalent:
662 $ mkvmerge -o out.mkv = file.mkv
664 $ mkvmerge -o out.mkv '(' file.mkv ')'
665 Several things should be noted:
667 1. There must be spaces both after the opening and before the
669 closing parenthesis.
670 2. Every parameter between parenthesis is interpreted as a file
672 name. Therefore all options applying to this logical file must
673 be listed before the opening parenthesis.
674 3. Some shells treat parenthesis as special characters. Hence you
676 must escape or quote them as shown in the example above.
677 Attachment support (more global options)
679 --attachment-description description
680 Plain text description of the following attachment. Applies to the
681 next --attach-file or --attach-file-once option.
682 --attachment-mime-type MIME type
684 MIME type of the following attachment. Applies to the next
685 --attach-file or --attach-file-once option. A list of officially
686 recognized MIME types can be found e.g. at the IANA homepage[2].
687 The MIME type is mandatory for an attachment.
688 --attachment-name name
690 Sets the name that will be stored in the output file for this
691 attachment. If this option is not given then the name will be
692 derived from the file name of the attachment as given with the
693 --attach-file or the --attach-file-once option.
694 --attach-file file-name, --attach-file-once file-name
696 Creates a file attachment inside the Matroska(TM) file. The MIME
697 type must have been set before this option can used. The difference
698 between the two forms is that during splitting the files attached
699 with --attach-file are attached to all output files while the ones
700 attached with --attach-file-once are only attached to the first
701 file created. If splitting is not used then both do the same.
702 mkvextract(1) can be used to extract attached files from a
704 Matroska(TM) file.
705 Options that can be used for each input file
707 -a, --audio-tracks [!]n,m,...
708 Copy the audio tracks n, m etc. The numbers are track IDs which can
709 be obtained with the --identify switch. They're not simply the
710 track numbers (see section track IDs). Default: copy all audio
711 tracks.
712 Instead of track IDs you can also provide ISO 639-2 language codes.
714 This will only work for source files that provide language tags for
715 their tracks.
716 Default: copy all tracks of this kind.
718 If the IDs are prefixed with ! then the meaning is reversed: copy
720 all tracks of this kind but the ones listed after the !.
721 -d, --video-tracks [!]n,m,...
723 Copy the video tracks n, m etc. The numbers are track IDs which can
724 be obtained with the --identify switch. They're not simply the
725 track numbers (see section track IDs). Default: copy all video
726 tracks.
727 Instead of track IDs you can also provide ISO 639-2 language codes.
729 This will only work for source files that provide language tags for
730 their tracks.
731 If the IDs are prefixed with ! then the meaning is reversed: copy
733 all tracks of this kind but the ones listed after the !.
734 -s, --subtitle-tracks [!]n,m,...
736 Copy the subtitle tracks n, m etc. The numbers are track IDs which
737 can be obtained with the --identify switch. They're not simply the
738 track numbers (see section track IDs). Default: copy all subtitle
739 tracks.
740 Instead of track IDs you can also provide ISO 639-2 language codes.
742 This will only work for source files that provide language tags for
743 their tracks.
744 If the IDs are prefixed with ! then the meaning is reversed: copy
746 all tracks of this kind but the ones listed after the !.
747 -b, --button-tracks [!]n,m,...
749 Copy the button tracks n, m etc. The numbers are track IDs which
750 can be obtained with the --identify switch. They're not simply the
751 track numbers (see section track IDs). Default: copy all button
752 tracks.
753 Instead of track IDs you can also provide ISO 639-2 language codes.
755 This will only work for source files that provide language tags for
756 their tracks.
757 If the IDs are prefixed with ! then the meaning is reversed: copy
759 all tracks of this kind but the ones listed after the !.
760 --track-tags [!]n,m,...
762 Copy the tags for tracks n, m etc. The numbers are track IDs which
763 can be obtained with the --identify switch (see section track IDs).
764 They're not simply the track numbers. Default: copy tags for all
765 tracks.
766 If the IDs are prefixed with ! then the meaning is reversed: copy
768 everything but the IDs listed after the !.
769 -m, --attachments [!]n[:all|first],m[:all|first],...
771 Copy the attachments with the IDs n, m etc to all or only the first
772 output file. Each ID can be followed by either ':all' (which is the
773 default if neither is entered) or ':first'. If splitting is active
774 then those attachments whose IDs are specified with ':all' are
775 copied to all of the resulting output files while the others are
776 only copied into the first output file. If splitting is not active
777 then both variants have the same effect.
778 The default is to copy all attachments to all output files.
780 If the IDs are prefixed with ! then the meaning is reversed: copy
782 everything but the IDs listed after the !.
783 -A, --no-audio
785 Don't copy any audio track from this file.
786 -D, --no-video
788 Don't copy any video track from this file.
789 -S, --no-subtitles
791 Don't copy any subtitle track from this file.
792 -B, --no-buttons
794 Don't copy any button track from this file.
795 -T, --no-track-tags
797 Don't copy any track specific tags from this file.
798 --no-chapters
800 Don't copy chapters from this file.
801 -M, --no-attachments
803 Don't copy attachments from this file.
804 --no-global-tags
806 Don't copy global tags from this file.
807 -y, --sync TID:d[,o[/p]]
809 Adjust the timestamps of the track with the id TID by d ms. The
810 track IDs are the same as the ones given with --identify (see
811 section track IDs).
812 o/p: adjust the timestamps by o/p to fix linear drifts. p defaults
814 to 1 if omitted. Both o and p can be floating point numbers.
815 Defaults: no manual sync correction (which is the same as d = 0 and
817 o/p = 1.0).
818 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
820 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
821 --cues TID:none|iframes|all
823 Controls for which tracks cue (index) entries are created for the
824 given track (see section track IDs). 'none' inhibits the creation
825 of cue entries. For 'iframes' only blocks with no backward or
826 forward references ( = I frames in video tracks) are put into the
827 cue sheet. 'all' causes mkvmerge(1) to create cue entries for all
828 blocks which will make the file very big.
829 The default is 'iframes' for video and subtitle tracks and 'none'
831 for audio tracks. See also option --no-cues which inhibits the
832 creation of cue entries regardless of the --cues options used.
833 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
835 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
836 --default-track TID[:bool]
838 Sets the &default track& flag for the given track (see section
839 track IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
840 present. If the user does not explicitly select a track, the player
841 should prefer the track that has his &default track& flag set. Only
842 one track of each kind (audio, video, subtitles, buttons) can have
843 his &default track& flag set. If the user wants no track to have
844 the default track flag set then he has to set bool to 0 for all
845 tracks.
846 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
848 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
849 --forced-track TID[:bool]
851 Sets the &forced display& flag for the given track (see section
852 track IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
853 present. Use this for tracks containing onscreen text or
854 foreign-language dialogue.
855 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
857 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
858 --hearing-impaired-flag TID[:bool]
860 Sets the &hearing impaired& flag for the given track (see section
861 track IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
862 present. This flag can be set if the track is suitable for users
863 with hearing impairments.
864 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
866 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
867 --visual-impaired-flag TID[:bool]
869 Sets the &visual impaired& flag for the given track (see section
870 track IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
871 present. This flag can be set if the track is suitable for users
872 with visual impairments.
873 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
875 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
876 --text-descriptions-flag TID[:bool]
878 Sets the &text descriptions& flag for the given track (see section
879 track IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
880 present. This flag can be set if the track contains textual
881 descriptions of video content suitable for playback via a
882 text-to-speech system for a visually-impaired user.
883 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
885 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
886 --original-flag TID[:bool]
888 Sets the &original language& flag for the given track (see section
889 track IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
890 present. This flag can be set if the track is in the content's
891 original language (not a translation).
892 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
894 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
895 --commentary-flag TID[:bool]
897 Sets the &commentary& flag for the given track (see section track
898 IDs) if the optional argument bool is set to 1 or if it isn't
899 present. This flag can be set if the track contains commentary.
900 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
902 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
903 --blockadd TID:level
905 Keep only the BlockAdditions up to the level level for the given
906 track. The default is to keep all levels. This option only affects
907 certain kinds of codecs like WAVPACK4.
908 --track-name TID:name
910 Sets the track name for the given track (see section track IDs) to
911 name.
912 --language TID:language
914 Sets the language for the given track (see section track IDs). Both
915 ISO 639-2 language codes and ISO 639-1 country codes are allowed.
916 The country codes will be converted to language codes
917 automatically. All languages including their ISO 639-2 codes can be
918 listed with the --list-languages option.
919 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
921 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
922 -t, --tags TID:file-name
924 Read tags for the track with the number TID from the file
925 file-name. See the section about tags below for details.
926 --aac-is-sbr TID[:0|1]
928 Tells mkvmerge(1) that the track with the ID TID is SBR AAC (also
929 known as HE-AAC or AAC+). This options is needed if a) the source
930 file is an AAC file (not for a Matroska(TM) file) and b) the AAC
931 file contains SBR AAC data. The reason for this switch is that it
932 is technically impossible to automatically tell normal AAC data
933 from SBR AAC data without decoding a complete AAC frame. As there
934 are several patent issues with AAC decoders mkvmerge(1) will never
935 contain this decoding stage. So for SBR AAC files this switch is
936 mandatory. The resulting file might not play back correctly or even
937 not at all if the switch was omitted.
938 If the source file is a Matroska(TM) file then the CodecID should
940 be enough to detect SBR AAC. However, if the CodecID is wrong then
941 this switch can be used to correct that.
942 If mkvmerge wrongfully detects that an AAC file is SBR then you can
944 add ':0' to the track ID.
945 --reduce-to-core TID
947 Some audio codecs have a lossy core and optional extensions that
948 implement lossless decoding. This option tells mkvmerge(1) to only
949 copy the core but not the extensions. By default mkvmerge(1) copies
950 both the core and the extensions.
951 Currently only DTS tracks are affected by this option. TrueHD
953 tracks that contain an embedded AC-3 core are instead presented as
954 two separate tracks for which the user can select which track to
955 copy. For DTS such a scheme would not work as the HD extensions
956 cannot be decoded by themselves – unlike the TrueHD data.
957 --remove-dialog-normalization-gain TID
959 Some audio codecs contain header fields that tell the decoder or
960 player to apply a (usually negative) gain for dialog normalization.
961 This option tells mkvmerge(1) to remove or minimize that gain by
962 modifying the corresponding header fields.
963 Currently only AC-3, DTS and TrueHD tracks are affected by this
965 option.
966 --timestamps TID:file-name
968 Read the timestamps to be used for the specific track ID from
969 file-name. These timestamps forcefully override the timestamps that
970 mkvmerge(1) normally calculates. Read the section about external
971 timestamp files.
972 --default-duration TID:x
974 Forces the default duration of a given track to the specified
975 value. Also modifies the track's timestamps to match the default
976 duration. The argument x must be postfixed with 's', 'ms', 'us',
977 'ns', 'fps', 'p' or 'i' to specify the default duration in seconds,
978 milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds, 'frames per second',
979 'progressive frames per second' or 'interlaced frames per second'
980 respectively. The number x itself can be a floating point number or
981 a fraction.
982 If the default duration is not forced then mkvmerge will try to
984 derive the track's default duration from the container and/or the
985 encoded bitstream for certain track types, e.g. AVC/H.264 or
986 MPEG-2.
987 This option can also be used to change the FPS of video tracks
989 without having to use an external timestamp file.
990 --fix-bitstream-timing-information TID[:0|1]
992 Normally mkvmerge(1) does not change the timing information
993 (frame/field rate) stored in the video bitstream. With this option
994 that information is adjusted to match the container timing
995 information. The container timing information can come from various
996 sources: from the command line (see option --default-duration), the
997 source container or derived from the bitstream.
998 Note
1000 This has only been implemented for AVC/H.264 video tracks so
1001 far.
1002 --compression TID:n
1004 Selects the compression method to be used for the track. Note that
1005 the player also has to support this method. Valid values are
1006 'none', 'zlib' and 'mpeg4_p2'/'mpeg4p2'.
1007 The compression method 'mpeg4_p2'/'mpeg4p2' is a special
1009 compression method called 'header removal' that is only available
1010 for MPEG4 part 2 video tracks.
1011 The default for some subtitle types is 'zlib' compression. This
1013 compression method is also the one that most if not all playback
1014 applications support. Support for other compression methods other
1015 than 'none' is not assured.
1016 Options that only apply to video tracks
1018 -f, --fourcc TID:FourCC
1019 Forces the FourCC to the specified value. Works only for video
1020 tracks in the 'MS compatibility mode'.
1021 --display-dimensions TID:widthxheight
1023 Matroska(TM) files contain two values that set the display
1024 properties that a player should scale the image on playback to:
1025 display width and display height. These values can be set with this
1026 option, e.g. '1:640x480'.
1027 Another way to specify the values is to use the --aspect-ratio or
1029 the --aspect-ratio-factor option (see below). These options are
1030 mutually exclusive.
1031 --aspect-ratio TID:ratio|width/height
1033 Matroska(TM) files contain two values that set the display
1034 properties that a player should scale the image on playback to:
1035 display width and display height. With this option mkvmerge(1) will
1036 automatically calculate the display width and display height based
1037 on the image's original width and height and the aspect ratio given
1038 with this option. The ratio can be given either as a floating point
1039 number ratio or as a fraction 'width/height', e.g. '16/9'.
1040 Another way to specify the values is to use the
1042 --aspect-ratio-factor or --display-dimensions options (see above
1043 and below). These options are mutually exclusive.
1044 --aspect-ratio-factor TID:factor|n/d
1046 Another way to set the aspect ratio is to specify a factor. The
1047 original aspect ratio is first multiplied with this factor and used
1048 as the target aspect ratio afterwards.
1049 Another way to specify the values is to use the --aspect-ratio or
1051 --display-dimensions options (see above). These options are
1052 mutually exclusive.
1053 --cropping TID:left,top,right,bottom
1055 Sets the pixel cropping parameters of a video track to the given
1056 values.
1057 --colour-matrix-coefficients TID:n
1059 Sets the matrix coefficients of the video used to derive luma and
1060 chroma values from red, green and blue color primaries. The
1061 parameter n is an integer rangeing from 0 and 10.
1062 Valid values and their meaning are:
1064 0: GBR, 1: BT709, 2: unspecified, 3: reserved, 4: FCC, 5: BT470BG,
1066 6: SMPTE 170M, 7: SMPTE 240M, 8: YCOCG, 9: BT2020 non-constant
1067 luminance, 10: BT2020 constant luminance
1068 --colour-bits-per-channel TID:n
1070 Sets the number of coded bits for a colour channel. A value of 0
1071 indicates that the number of bits is unspecified.
1072 --chroma-subsample TID:hori,vert
1074 The amount of pixels to remove in the Cr and Cb channels for every
1075 pixel not removed horizontally/vertically.
1076 Example: For video with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, the parameter
1078 should be set to TID:1,1.
1079 --cb-subsample TID:hori,vert
1081 The amount of pixels to remove in the Cb channel for every pixel
1082 not removed horizontally/vertically. This is additive with
1083 --chroma-subsample.
1084 Example: For video with 4:2:1 chroma subsampling, the parameter
1086 --chroma-subsample should be set to TID:1,0 and Cb-subsample should
1087 be set to TID:1,0.
1088 --chroma-siting TID:hori,vert
1090 Sets how chroma is sited horizontally/vertically (0: unspecified,
1091 1: top collocated, 2: half).
1092 --colour-range TID:n
1094 Sets the clipping of the color ranges (0: unspecified, 1: broadcast
1095 range, 2: full range (no clipping), 3: defined by
1096 MatrixCoefficients/TransferCharacteristics).
1097 --colour-transfer-characteristics TID:n
1099 The transfer characteristics of the video.
1100 Valid values and their meaning are:
1102 0: reserved, 1: ITU-R BT.709, 2: unspecified, 3: reserved, 4: gamma
1104 2.2 curve, 5: gamma 2.8 curve, 6: SMPTE 170M, 7: SMPTE 240M, 8:
1105 linear, 9: log, 10: log sqrt, 11: IEC 61966-2-4, 12: ITU-R BT.1361
1106 extended colour gamut, 13: IEC 61966-2-1, 14: ITU-R BT.2020 10 bit,
1107 15: ITU-R BT.2020 12 bit, 16: SMPTE ST 2084, 17: SMPTE ST 428-1;
1108 18: ARIB STD-B67 (HLG)
1109 --colour-primaries TID:n
1111 Sets the colour primaries of the video.
1112 Valid values and their meaning are:
1114 0: reserved, 1: ITU-R BT.709, 2: unspecified, 3: reserved, 4: ITU-R
1116 BT.470M, 5: ITU-R BT.470BG, 6: SMPTE 170M, 7: SMPTE 240M, 8: FILM,
1117 9: ITU-R BT.2020, 10: SMPTE ST 428-1, 22: JEDEC P22 phosphors
1118 --max-content-light TID:n
1120 Sets the maximum brightness of a single pixel (Maximum Content
1121 Light Level) in candelas per square meter (cd/m²). The value of n
1122 should be a non-negtive integer.
1123 --max-frame-light TID:n
1125 Sets the maximum brightness of a single full frame (Maximum
1126 Frame-Average Light Level) in candelas per square meter (cd/m²).
1127 The value of n should be a non-negtive integer.
1128 --chromaticity-coordinates
1130 TID:red-x,red-y,green-x,green-y,blue-x,blue-y
1131 Sets the red/green/blue chromaticity coordinates as defined by CIE
1132 1931.
1133 --white-colour-coordinates TID:x,y
1135 Sets the white colour chromaticity coordinates as defined by CIE
1136 1931.
1137 --max-luminance TID:float
1139 Sets the maximum luminance in candelas per square meter (cd/m²).
1140 The value should be less than 9999.99.
1141 --min-luminance TID:float
1143 Sets the minimum luminance in candelas per square meter (cd/m²).
1144 The value should be less than 999.9999.
1145 --projection-type TID:method
1147 Sets the video projection method used. Valid values are 0
1148 (rectangular projection), 1 (equirectangular projection), 2
1149 (cubemap projection) and 3 (mesh projection).
1150 --projection-private TID:data
1152 Sets private data that only applies to a specific projection. Data
1153 must be given as hex numbers with or without the "0x" prefix, with
1154 or without spaces.
1155 --projection-pose-yaw TID:float
1157 Specifies a yaw rotation to the projection.
1158 --projection-pose-pitch TID:float
1160 Specifies a pitch rotation to the projection.
1161 --projection-pose-roll TID:float
1163 Specifies a roll rotation to the projection.
1164 --field-order TID:n
1166 Sets the field order for the video track with the track ID TID. The
1167 order must be one of the following numbers:
1168 0: progressive; 1: interlaced with top field displayed first and
1170 top field stored first; 2: undetermined field order; 6: interlaced
1171 with bottom field displayed first and bottom field stored first; 9:
1172 interlaced with bottom field displayed first and top field stored
1173 first; 14: interlaced with top field displayed first and bottom
1174 field stored first
1175 --stereo-mode TID:n|keyword
1177 Sets the stereo mode for the video track with the track ID TID. The
1178 mode can either be a number n between 0 and 14 or one of these
1179 keywords:
1180 'mono', 'side_by_side_left_first', 'top_bottom_right_first',
1182 'top_bottom_left_first', 'checkerboard_right_first',
1183 'checkerboard_left_first', 'row_interleaved_right_first',
1184 'row_interleaved_left_first', 'column_interleaved_right_first',
1185 'column_interleaved_left_first', 'anaglyph_cyan_red',
1186 'side_by_side_right_first', 'anaglyph_green_magenta',
1187 'both_eyes_laced_left_first', 'both_eyes_laced_right_first'.
1188 Options that only apply to text subtitle tracks
1190 --sub-charset TID:character-set
1191 Sets the character set for the conversion to UTF-8 for UTF-8
1192 subtitles for the given track ID. If not specified the charset will
1193 be derived from the current locale settings. Note that a charset is
1194 not needed for subtitles read from Matroska(TM) files or from Kate
1195 streams, as these are always stored in UTF-8. See the section about
1196 text files and character sets for an explanation how mkvmerge(1)
1197 converts between character sets.
1198 This option can be used multiple times for an input file applying
1200 to several tracks by selecting different track IDs each time.
1201 Other options
1203 -i, --identify file-name
1204 Will let mkvmerge(1) probe the single file and report its type, the
1205 tracks contained in the file and their track IDs. If this option is
1206 used then the only other option allowed is the filename.
1207 The output format used for the result can be changed with the
1209 option --identification-format.
1210 -J file-name
1212 This is a convenient alias for "--identification-format json
1213 --identify file-name".
1214 -F, --identification-format format
1216 Determines the output format used by the --identify option. The
1217 following formats are supported: text (the default if this option
1218 isn't used) and json.
1219 1. The text format is short and human-readable. It consists of one
1221 line per item found (container, tracks, attachments etc.).
1222 This format is not meant to be parsed. The output will be
1224 translated into the language mkvmerge(1) uses (see also
1225 --ui-language).
1226 2. The json format outputs a machine-readable JSON representation.
1228 This format follows the JSON schema described in the following
1229 file:
1230 mkvmerge-identification-output-schema-v14.json[3]
1232 All versions of the JSON schema are available both online and
1234 in the released source code archives.
1235 --probe-range-percentage percentage
1237 File types such as MPEG program and transport streams (.vob, .m2ts)
1238 require parsing a certain amount of data in order to detect all
1239 tracks contained in the file. This amount is 0.3% of the source
1240 file's size or 10 MB, whichever is higher.
1241 If tracks are known to be present but not found then the percentage
1243 to probe can be changed with this option. The minimum of 10 MB is
1244 built-in and cannot be changed.
1245 -l, --list-types
1247 Lists supported input file types.
1248 --list-languages
1250 Lists all languages and their ISO 639-2 code which can be used with
1251 the --language option.
1252 --priority priority
1254 Sets the process priority that mkvmerge(1) runs with. Valid values
1255 are 'lowest', 'lower', 'normal', 'higher' and 'highest'. If nothing
1256 is given then 'normal' is used. On Unix like systems mkvmerge(1)
1257 will use the nice(2) function. Therefore only the super user can
1258 use 'higher' and 'highest'. On Windows all values are useable for
1259 every user.
1260 Selecting 'lowest' also causes mkvmerge(1) to select idle I/O
1262 priority in addition to the lowest possible process priority.
1263 --command-line-charset character-set
1265 Sets the character set to convert strings given on the command line
1266 from. It defaults to the character set given by system's current
1267 locale. This settings applies to arguments of the following
1268 options: --title, --track-name and --attachment-description.
1269 --output-charset character-set
1271 Sets the character set to which strings are converted that are to
1272 be output. It defaults to the character set given by system's
1273 current locale.
1274 -r, --redirect-output file-name
1276 Writes all messages to the file file-name instead of to the
1277 console. While this can be done easily with output redirection
1278 there are cases in which this option is needed: when the terminal
1279 reinterprets the output before writing it to a file. The character
1280 set set with --output-charset is honored.
1281 --flush-on-close
1283 Tells the program to flush all data cached in memory to storage
1284 when closing files opened for writing. This can be used to prevent
1285 data loss on power outages or to circumvent certain problems in the
1286 operating system or drivers. The downside is that multiplexing will
1287 take longer as mkvmerge will wait until all data has been written
1288 to the storage before exiting. See issues #2469 and #2480 on the
1289 MKVToolNix bug tracker for in-depth discussions on the pros and
1290 cons.
1291 --ui-language code
1293 Forces the translations for the language code to be used (e.g.
1294 'de_DE' for the German translations). Entering 'list' as the code
1295 will cause the program to output a list of available translations.
1296 --abort-on-warnings
1298 Tells the program to abort after the first warning is emitted. The
1299 program's exit code will be 1.
1300 --deterministic seed
1302 Enables the creation of byte-identical files if the same version of
1303 mkvmerge(1) is used with the same source files, the same set of
1304 options and the same seed. Note that the "date" segment information
1305 field is not written in this mode.
1306 The seed can be an arbitrary string and does not have to be a
1308 number.
1309 The result of byte-identical files is only guaranteed under the
1311 following conditions:
1312 1. The same version of mkvmerge(1) built with the same versions of
1314 libEBML and libMatroska is used.
1315 2. The source files used are byte-identical.
1317 3. The same command line options are used in the same order (with
1319 the notable exception of --output ...).
1320 Using other versions of mkvmerge(1) or other command-line options
1322 may result in the same byte-identical file but is not guaranteed to
1323 do so.
1324 --debug topic
1326 Turn on debugging for a specific feature. This option is only
1327 useful for developers.
1328 --engage feature
1330 Turn on experimental features. A list of available features can be
1331 requested with mkvmerge --engage list. These features are not meant
1332 to be used in normal situations.
1333 --gui-mode
1335 Turns on GUI mode. In this mode specially-formatted lines may be
1336 output that can tell a controlling GUI what's happening. These
1337 messages follow the format '#GUI#message'. The message may be
1338 followed by key/value pairs as in
1339 '#GUI#message#key1=value1#key2=value2...'. Neither the messages nor
1340 the keys are ever translated and always output in English.
1341 @options-file.json
1343 Reads additional command line arguments from the file options-file.
1344 See the section about option files for further information.
1345 --capabilities
1347 Lists information about optional features that have been compiled
1348 in and exit. The first line output will be the version information.
1349 All following lines contain exactly one word whose presence
1350 indicates that the feature has been compiled in. These features
1351 are:
1352 • 'FLAC' -- reading raw FLAC files and handling FLAC tracks in
1354 other containers, e.g. Ogg(TM) or Matroska(TM).
1355 -h, --help
1357 Show usage information and exit.
1358 -V, --version
1360 Show version information and exit.
1361
1363 For each file the user can select which tracks mkvmerge(1) should take.
1364 They are all put into the file specified with -o. A list of known (and
1365 supported) source formats can be obtained with the -l option.
1366 Important
1368 The order of command line options is important. Please read the
1369 section "Option order" if you're new to the program.
1370
1372 The order in which options are entered is important for some options.
1373 Options fall into two categories:
1374 1. Options that affect the whole program and are not tied to any input
1376 file. These include but are not limited to --command-line-charset,
1377 --output or --title. These can appear anywhere on the command line.
1378 2. Options that affect a single input file or a single track in an
1380 input file. These options all apply to the following input file on
1381 the command line. All options applying to the same input (or to
1382 tracks from the same input file) file can be written in any order
1383 as long as they all appear before that input file's name. Examples
1384 for options applying to an input file are --no-chapters or
1385 --chapter-charset. Examples for options applying to a single track
1386 are --default-duration or --language.
1387 The options are processed from left to right. If an option appears
1389 multiple times within the same scope then the last occurrence will be
1390 used. Therefore the title will be set to "Something else" in the
1391 following example:
1392 $ mkvmerge -o output.mkv --title 'This and that' input.avi --title 'Something else'
1394 The following example shows that using the --language option twice is
1396 OK because they're used in different scopes. Even though they apply to
1397 the same track ID they apply to different input files and therefore
1398 have different scopes:
1399 $ mkvmerge -o output.mkv --language 0:fre français.ogg --language 0:deu deutsch.ogg
1401
1403 Let's assume you have a file called MyMovie.avi and the audio track in
1404 a separate file, e.g. 'MyMovie.wav'. First you want to encode the audio
1405 to OggVorbis(TM):
1406 $ oggenc -q4 -oMyMovie.ogg MyMovie.wav
1408 After a couple of minutes you can join video and audio:
1410 $ mkvmerge -o MyMovie-with-sound.mkv MyMovie.avi MyMovie.ogg
1412 If your AVI already contains an audio track then it will be copied as
1414 well (if mkvmerge(1) supports the audio format). To avoid that simply
1415 do
1416 $ mkvmerge -o MyMovie-with-sound.mkv -A MyMovie.avi MyMovie.ogg
1418 After some minutes of consideration you rip another audio track, e.g.
1420 the director's comments or another language to 'MyMovie-add-audio.wav'.
1421 Encode it again and join it up with the other file:
1422 $ oggenc -q4 -oMyMovie-add-audio.ogg MyMovie-add-audio.wav
1424 $ mkvmerge -o MM-complete.mkv MyMovie-with-sound.mkv MyMovie-add-audio.ogg
1425 The same result can be achieved with
1427 $ mkvmerge -o MM-complete.mkv -A MyMovie.avi MyMovie.ogg MyMovie-add-audio.ogg
1429 Now fire up mplayer(TM) and enjoy. If you have multiple audio tracks
1431 (or even video tracks) then you can tell mplayer(TM) which track to
1432 play with the '-vid' and '-aid' options. These are 0-based and do not
1433 distinguish between video and audio.
1434 If you need an audio track synchronized you can do that easily. First
1436 find out which track ID the Vorbis track has with
1437 $ mkvmerge --identify outofsync.ogg
1439 Now you can use that ID in the following command line:
1441 $ mkvmerge -o goodsync.mkv -A source.avi -y 12345:200 outofsync.ogg
1443 This would add 200ms of silence at the beginning of the audio track
1445 with the ID 12345 taken from 'outofsync.ogg'.
1446 Some movies start synced correctly but slowly drift out of sync. For
1448 these kind of movies you can specify a delay factor that is applied to
1449 all timestamps -- no data is added or removed. So if you make that
1450 factor too big or too small you'll get bad results. An example is that
1451 an episode I transcoded was 0.2 seconds out of sync at the end of the
1452 movie which was 77340 frames long. At 29.97fps 0.2 seconds correspond
1453 to approx. 6 frames. So I did
1454 $ mkvmerge -o goodsync.mkv -y 23456:0,77346/77340 outofsync.mkv
1456 The result was fine.
1458 The sync options can also be used for subtitles in the same manner.
1460 For text subtitles you can either use some Windows software (like
1462 SubRipper(TM)) or the subrip(TM) package found in transcode(1)'s
1463 sources in the 'contrib/subrip' directory. The general process is:
1464 1. extract a raw subtitle stream from the source:
1466 $ tccat -i /path/to/copied/dvd/ -T 1 -L | tcextract -x ps1 -t vob -a 0x20 | subtitle2pgm -o mymovie
1468 2. convert the resulting PGM images to text with gocr:
1470 $ pgm2txt mymovie
1472 3. spell-check the resulting text files:
1474 $ ispell -d american *txt
1476 4. convert the text files to a SRT file:
1478 $ srttool -s -w -i mymovie.srtx -o mymovie.srt
1480 The resulting file can be used as another input file for mkvmerge(1):
1482 $ mkvmerge -o mymovie.mkv mymovie.avi mymovie.srt
1484 If you want to specify the language for a given track then this is
1486 easily done. First find out the ISO 639-2 code for your language.
1487 mkvmerge(1) can list all of those codes for you:
1488 $ mkvmerge --list-languages
1490 Search the list for the languages you need. Let's assume you have put
1492 two audio tracks into a Matroska(TM) file and want to set their
1493 language codes and that their track IDs are 2 and 3. This can be done
1494 with
1495 $ mkvmerge -o with-lang-codes.mkv --language 2:ger --language 3:dut without-lang-codes.mkv
1497 As you can see you can use the --language switch multiple times.
1499 Maybe you'd also like to have the player use the Dutch language as the
1501 default language. You also have extra subtitles, e.g. in English and
1502 French, and want to have the player display the French ones by default.
1503 This can be done with
1504 $ mkvmerge -o with-lang-codes.mkv --language 2:ger --language 3:dut --default-track 3 without-lang-codes.mkv --language 0:eng english.srt --default-track 0 --language 0:fre french.srt
1506 If you do not see the language or default track flags that you've
1508 specified in mkvinfo(1)'s output then please read the section about
1509 default values.
1510 Turn off the compression for an input file.
1512 $ mkvmerge -o no-compression.mkv --compression -1:none MyMovie.avi --compression -1:none mymovie.srt
1514
1516 Regular track IDs
1517 Some of the options for mkvmerge(1) need a track ID to specify which
1518 track they should be applied to. Those track IDs are printed by the
1519 readers when demuxing the current input file, or if mkvmerge(1) is
1520 called with the --identify option. An example for such output:
1521 $ mkvmerge -i v.mkv
1523 File 'v.mkv': container: Matroska(TM)
1524 Track ID 0: video (V_MS/VFW/FOURCC, DIV3)
1525 Track ID 1: audio (A_MPEG/L3)
1526 Do not confuse the track IDs that are assigned to the tracks that are
1528 placed in the output MKV file with the track IDs of the input files.
1529 Only the input file track IDs are used for options needing these
1530 values.
1531 Also note that each input file has its own set of track IDs. Therefore
1533 the track IDs for file 'file1.ext' as reported by 'mkvmerge --identify'
1534 do not change no matter how many other input files are there or in
1535 which position 'file1.ext' is used.
1536 Track IDs are assigned like this:
1538 • AVI files: The video track has the ID 0. The audio tracks get IDs
1540 in ascending order starting at 1.
1541 • AAC, AC-3, MP3, SRT and WAV files: The one 'track' in that file
1543 gets the ID 0.
1544 • Most other files: The track IDs are assigned in order the tracks
1546 are found in the file starting at 0.
1547 The options that use the track IDs are the ones whose description
1549 contains 'TID'. The following options use track IDs as well:
1550 --audio-tracks, --video-tracks, --subtitle-tracks, --button-tracks and
1551 --track-tags.
1552 Special track IDs
1554 There are several IDs that have special meaning and do not occur in the
1555 identification output.
1556 The special track ID '-1' is a wild card and applies the given switch
1558 to all tracks that are read from an input file.
1559 The special track ID '-2' refers to the chapters in a source file.
1561 Currently only the --sync option uses this special ID. As an
1562 alternative to --sync -2:... the option --chapter-sync ... can be
1563 used.
1564
1566 Note
1567 This section applies to all programs in MKVToolNix even if it only
1568 mentions mkvmerge(1).
1569 Introduction
1571 All text in a Matroska(TM) file is encoded in UTF-8. This means that
1572 mkvmerge(1) has to convert every text file it reads as well as every
1573 text given on the command line from one character set into UTF-8. In
1574 return this also means that mkvmerge(1)'s output has to be converted
1575 back to that character set from UTF-8, e.g. if a non-English
1576 translation is used with --ui-language or for text originating from a
1577 Matroska(TM) file.
1578 mkvmerge(1) does this conversion automatically based on the presence of
1580 a byte order marker (short: BOM) or the system's current locale. How
1581 the character set is inferred from the locale depends on the operating
1582 system that mkvmerge(1) is run on.
1583 Byte order markers (BOM)
1585 Text files that start with a BOM are already encoded in one
1586 representation of UTF. mkvmerge(1) supports the following five modes:
1587 UTF-8, UTF-16 Little and Big Endian, UTF-32 Little and Big Endian. Text
1588 files with a BOM are automatically converted to UTF-8. Any of the
1589 parameters that would otherwise set the character set for such a file
1590 (e.g. --sub-charset) is silently ignored.
1591 Linux and Unix-like systems including macOS
1593 On Unix-like systems mkvmerge(1) uses the setlocale(3) system call
1594 which in turn uses the environment variables LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CYPE.
1595 The resulting character set is often one of UTF-8 or the ISO-8859-*
1596 family and is used for all text file operations and for encoding
1597 strings on the command line and for output to the console.
1598 Windows
1600 On Windows the default character set used for converting text files is
1601 determined by a call to the GetACP() system call.
1602 Reading the command line is done with the GetCommandLineW() function
1604 which already returns a Unicode string. Therefore the option
1605 --command-line-charset is ignored on Windows.
1606 Output to the console consists of three scenarios:
1608 1. If the output is redirected with the option --redirect-output then
1610 the default charset is UTF-8. This can be changed with
1611 --output-charset.
1612 If the output is redirected with cmd.exe itself, e.g. with mkvinfo
1614 file.mkv > info.txt, then the charset is always UTF-8 and cannot be
1615 changed.
1616 Otherwise (when writing directly to the console) the Windows
1618 function WriteConsoleW() is used and the option --output-charset is
1619 ignored. The console should be able to output all Unicode
1620 characters for which the corresponding language support is
1621 installed (e.g. Chinese characters might not be displayed on
1622 English Windows versions).
1623 Command line options
1625 The following options exist that allow specifying the character sets:
1626 • --sub-charset for text subtitle files and for text subtitle tracks
1628 stored in container formats for which the character set cannot be
1629 determined unambiguously (e.g. Ogg files),
1630 • --chapter-charset for chapter text files and for chapters and file
1632 titles stored in container formats for which the character set
1633 cannot be determined unambiguously (e.g. Ogg files for chapter
1634 information, track and file titles etc; MP4 files for chapter
1635 information),
1636 • --command-line-charset for all strings on the command line,
1638 • --output-charset for all strings written to the console or to a
1640 file if the output has been redirected with the --redirect-output
1641 option. On non-Windows systems the default for the output charset
1642 is the system's current charset. On Windows it defaults to UTF-8
1643 both for redirecting with --redirect-output and with cmd.exe
1644 itself, e.g. mkvinfo file.mkv > info.txt.
1645
1647 An option file is a file mkvmerge(1) can read additional command line
1648 arguments from. This can be used in order to circumvent certain
1649 limitations of the shell or the operating system when executing
1650 external programs like a limited command line length.
1651 An option file contains JSON-formatted data. Its content must be a
1653 valid JSON array consisting solely of JSON strings. The file's encoding
1654 must be UTF-8. The file should not start with a byte order marker
1655 (BOM), but if one exists, it will be skipped.
1656 The rules for escaping special characters inside JSON are the ones in
1658 the official JSON specification, RFC 7159[4].
1659 The command line 'mkvmerge -o "my file.mkv" -A "a movie.avi" sound.ogg'
1661 could be converted into the following JSON option file called e.g.
1662 'options.json':
1663 [
1665 "-o",
1666 "c:\\Matroska\\my file.mkv",
1667 "--title",
1668 "#65",
1669 "-A",
1670 "a movie.avi",
1671 "sound.ogg"
1672 ]
1673
1675 Matroska(TM) supports file linking which simply says that a specific
1676 file is the predecessor or successor of the current file. To be
1677 precise, it's not really the files that are linked but the Matroska(TM)
1678 segments. As most files will probably only contain one Matroska(TM)
1679 segment the following explanations use the term 'file linking' although
1680 'segment linking' would be more appropriate.
1681 Each segment is identified by a unique 128 bit wide segment UID. This
1683 UID is automatically generated by mkvmerge(1). The linking is done
1684 primarily via putting the segment UIDs (short: SID) of the
1685 previous/next file into the segment header information. mkvinfo(1)
1686 prints these SIDs if it finds them.
1687 If a file is split into several smaller ones and linking is used then
1689 the timestamps will not start at 0 again but will continue where the
1690 last file has left off. This way the absolute time is kept even if the
1691 previous files are not available (e.g. when streaming). If no linking
1692 is used then the timestamps should start at 0 for each file. By default
1693 mkvmerge(1) does not use file linking. If you want that you can turn it
1694 on with the --link option. This option is only useful if splitting is
1695 activated as well.
1696 Regardless of whether splitting is active or not the user can tell
1698 mkvmerge(1) to link the produced files to specific SIDs. This is
1699 achieved with the options --link-to-previous and --link-to-next. These
1700 options accept a segment SID in the format that mkvinfo(1) outputs: 16
1701 hexadecimal numbers between 0x00 and 0xff prefixed with '0x' each, e.g.
1702 '0x41 0xda 0x73 0x66 0xd9 0xcf 0xb2 0x1e 0xae 0x78 0xeb 0xb4 0x5e 0xca
1703 0xb3 0x93'. Alternatively a shorter form can be used: 16 hexadecimal
1704 numbers between 0x00 and 0xff without the '0x' prefixes and without the
1705 spaces, e.g. '41da7366d9cfb21eae78ebb45ecab393'.
1706 If splitting is used then the first file is linked to the SID given
1708 with --link-to-previous and the last file is linked to the SID given
1709 with --link-to-next. If splitting is not used then the one output file
1710 will be linked to both of the two SIDs.
1711
1713 The Matroska(TM) specification states that some elements have a default
1714 value. Usually an element is not written to the file if its value is
1715 equal to its default value in order to save space. The elements that
1716 the user might miss in mkvinfo(1)'s output are the language and the
1717 default track flag elements. The default value for the language is
1718 English ('eng'), and the default value for the default track flag is
1719 true. Therefore if you used --language 0:eng for a track then it will
1720 not show up in mkvinfo(1)'s output.
1721
1723 Maybe you also want to keep some photos along with your Matroska(TM)
1724 file, or you're using SSA subtitles and need a special TrueType(TM)
1725 font that's really rare. In these cases you can attach those files to
1726 the Matroska(TM) file. They will not be just appended to the file but
1727 embedded in it. A player can then show those files (the 'photos' case)
1728 or use them to render the subtitles (the 'TrueType(TM) fonts' case).
1729 Here's an example how to attach a photo and a TrueType(TM) font to the
1731 output file:
1732 $ mkvmerge -o output.mkv -A video.avi sound.ogg \
1734 --attachment-description "Me and the band behind the stage in a small get-together" \
1735 --attachment-mime-type image/jpeg \
1736 --attach-file me_and_the_band.jpg \
1737 --attachment-description "The real rare and unbelievably good looking font" \
1738 --attachment-mime-type application/octet-stream \
1739 --attach-file really_cool_font.ttf
1740 If a Matroska(TM) containing attachments file is used as an input file
1742 then mkvmerge(1) will copy the attachments into the new file. The
1743 selection which attachments are copied and which are not can be changed
1744 with the options --attachments and --no-attachments.
1745
1747 The Matroska(TM) chapter system is more powerful than the old known
1748 system used by OGM files. The full specifications can be found at the
1749 Matroska(TM) website[1].
1750 mkvmerge(1) supports two kinds of chapter files as its input. The first
1752 format, called 'simple chapter format', is the same format that the OGM
1753 tools expect. The second format is a XML based chapter format which
1754 supports all of Matroska(TM)'s chapter functionality.
1755 Apart from dedicated chapter files mkvmerge(1) can also read chapters
1757 from other file formats (e.g. MP4, Ogg, Blu-rays or DVDs).
1758 The simple chapter format
1760 This format consists of pairs of lines that start with 'CHAPTERxx=' and
1761 'CHAPTERxxNAME=' respectively. The first one contains the start
1762 timestamp while the second one contains the title. Here's an example:
1763 CHAPTER01=00:00:00.000
1765 CHAPTER01NAME=Intro
1766 CHAPTER02=00:02:30.000
1767 CHAPTER02NAME=Baby prepares to rock
1768 CHAPTER03=00:02:42.300
1769 CHAPTER03NAME=Baby rocks the house
1770 mkvmerge(1) will transform every pair or lines into one Matroska(TM)
1772 ChapterAtom. It does not set any ChapterTrackNumber which means that
1773 the chapters all apply to all tracks in the file.
1774 As this is a text file character set conversion may need to be done.
1776 See the section about text files and character sets for an explanation
1777 how mkvmerge(1) converts between character sets.
1778 The XML based chapter format
1780 The XML based chapter format looks like this example:
1781 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
1783 <!DOCTYPE Chapters SYSTEM "matroskachapters.dtd">
1784 <Chapters>
1785 <EditionEntry>
1786 <ChapterAtom>
1787 <ChapterTimeStart>00:00:30.000</ChapterTimeStart>
1788 <ChapterTimeEnd>00:01:20.000</ChapterTimeEnd>
1789 <ChapterDisplay>
1790 <ChapterString>A short chapter</ChapterString>
1791 <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
1792 </ChapterDisplay>
1793 <ChapterAtom>
1794 <ChapterTimeStart>00:00:46.000</ChapterTimeStart>
1795 <ChapterTimeEnd>00:01:10.000</ChapterTimeEnd>
1796 <ChapterDisplay>
1797 <ChapterString>A part of that short chapter</ChapterString>
1798 <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
1799 </ChapterDisplay>
1800 </ChapterAtom>
1801 </ChapterAtom>
1802 </EditionEntry>
1803 </Chapters>
1804 With this format three things are possible that are not possible with
1806 the simple chapter format:
1807 1. The timestamp for the end of the chapter can be set,
1809 2. chapters can be nested,
1811 3. the language and country can be set.
1813 The mkvtoolnix distribution contains some sample files in the doc
1815 subdirectory which can be used as a basis.
1816 The following lists the supported XML tags, their data types and, where
1818 appropriate, the valid range for their values:
1819 Chapters (master)
1821 EditionEntry (master)
1822 EditionUID (unsigned integer, valid range: 1 <= value)
1823 EditionFlagHidden (unsigned integer, valid range: 0 <= value <= 1)
1824 EditionFlagDefault (unsigned integer, valid range: 0 <= value <= 1)
1825 EditionFlagOrdered (unsigned integer, valid range: 0 <= value <= 1)
1826 ChapterAtom (master)
1827 ChapterAtom (master)
1828 ChapterUID (unsigned integer, valid range: 1 <= value)
1829 ChapterTimeStart (unsigned integer)
1830 ChapterTimeEnd (unsigned integer)
1831 ChapterFlagHidden (unsigned integer, valid range: 0 <= value <= 1)
1832 ChapterFlagEnabled (unsigned integer, valid range: 0 <= value <= 1)
1833 ChapterSegmentUID (binary, valid range: 1 <= length in bytes)
1834 ChapterSegmentEditionUID (unsigned integer, valid range: 1 <= value)
1835 ChapterPhysicalEquiv (unsigned integer)
1836 ChapterTrack (master)
1837 ChapterTrackNumber (unsigned integer, valid range: 1 <= value)
1838 ChapterDisplay (master)
1839 ChapterString (UTF-8 string)
1840 ChapterLanguage (UTF-8 string)
1841 ChapterCountry (UTF-8 string)
1842 ChapterProcess (master)
1843 ChapterProcessCodecID (unsigned integer)
1844 ChapterProcessPrivate (binary)
1845 ChapterProcessCommand (master)
1846 ChapterProcessTime (unsigned integer)
1847 ChapterProcessData (binary)
1848 Reading chapters from Blu-rays
1850 mkvmerge(1) can read chapters from unencrypted Blu-rays. For that you
1851 can use the path to one of the MPLS play lists with the --chapters
1852 parameter.
1853 Example: --chapters /srv/blurays/BigBuckBunny/BDMV/PLAYLIST/00001.mpls
1855 Reading chapters from DVDs
1857 When MKVToolNix is compiled with the libdvdread(TM) library,
1858 mkvmerge(1) can read chapters from DVDs. For that you can use the path
1859 to one of the folders or files on the DVD with the --chapters
1860 parameter. As DVDs can contain more than one title and each title has
1861 its own set of chapters, you can append a colon and the desired title
1862 number to the end of the file name argument. The title number defaults
1863 to 1.
1864 Example: --chapters /srv/dvds/BigBuckBunny/VIDEO_TS:2
1866 General notes
1868 When splitting files mkvmerge(1) will correctly adjust the chapters as
1869 well. This means that each file only includes the chapter entries that
1870 apply to it, and that the timestamps will be offset to match the new
1871 timestamps of each output file.
1872 mkvmerge(1) is able to copy chapters from Matroska(TM) source files
1874 unless this is explicitly disabled with the --no-chapters option. The
1875 chapters from all sources (Matroska(TM) files, Ogg files, MP4 files,
1876 chapter text files) are usually not merged but end up in separate
1877 ChapterEditions. Only if chapters are read from several Matroska(TM) or
1878 XML files that share the same edition UIDs will chapters be merged into
1879 a single ChapterEdition. If such a merge is desired in other situations
1880 as well then the user has to extract the chapters from all sources with
1881 mkvextract(1) first, merge the XML files manually and mux them
1882 afterwards.
1883
1885 Introduction
1886 Matroska(TM)'s tag system is similar to that of other containers: a set
1887 of KEY=VALUE pairs. However, in Matroska(TM) these tags can also be
1888 nested, and both the KEY and the VALUE are elements of their own. The
1889 example file example-tags-2.xml shows how to use this system.
1890 Scope of the tags
1892 Matroska(TM) tags do not automatically apply to the complete file. They
1893 can, but they also may apply to different parts of the file: to one or
1894 more tracks, to one or more chapters, or even to a combination of both.
1895 The Matroska(TM) specification[5] gives more details about this fact.
1896 One important fact is that tags are linked to tracks or chapters with
1898 the Targets Matroska(TM) tag element, and that the UIDs used for this
1899 linking are not the track IDs mkvmerge(1) uses everywhere. Instead the
1900 numbers used are the UIDs which mkvmerge(1) calculates automatically
1901 (if the track is taken from a file format other than Matroska(TM)) or
1902 which are copied from the source file if the track's source file is a
1903 Matroska(TM) file. Therefore it is difficult to know which UIDs to use
1904 in the tag file before the file is handed over to mkvmerge(1).
1905 mkvmerge(1) knows two options with which you can add tags to
1907 Matroska(TM) files: The --global-tags and the --tags options. The
1908 difference is that the former option, --global-tags, will make the tags
1909 apply to the complete file by removing any of those Targets elements
1910 mentioned above. The latter option, --tags, automatically inserts the
1911 UID that mkvmerge(1) generates for the tag specified with the TID part
1912 of the --tags option.
1913 Example
1915 Let's say that you want to add tags to a video track read from an AVI.
1916 mkvmerge --identify file.avi tells you that the video track's ID (do
1917 not mix this ID with the UID!) is 0. So you create your tag file, leave
1918 out all Targets elements and call mkvmerge(1):
1919 $ mkvmerge -o file.mkv --tags 0:tags.xml file.avi
1921 Tag file format
1923 mkvmerge(1) supports a XML based tag file format. The format is very
1924 closely modeled after the Matroska(TM) specification[5]. Both the
1925 binary and the source distributions of MKVToolNix come with a sample
1926 file called example-tags-2.xml which simply lists all known tags and
1927 which can be used as a basis for real life tag files.
1928 The basics are:
1930 • The outermost element must be <Tags>.
1932 • One logical tag is contained inside one pair of <Tag> XML tags.
1934 • White spaces directly before and after tag contents are ignored.
1936 Data types
1938 The new Matroska(TM) tagging system only knows two data types, a UTF-8
1939 string and a binary type. The first is used for the tag's name and the
1940 <String> element while the binary type is used for the <Binary>
1941 element.
1942 As binary data itself would not fit into a XML file mkvmerge(1)
1944 supports two other methods of storing binary data. If the contents of a
1945 XML tag starts with '@' then the following text is treated as a file
1946 name. The corresponding file's content is copied into the Matroska(TM)
1947 element.
1948 Otherwise the data is expected to be Base64 encoded. This is an
1950 encoding that transforms binary data into a limited set of ASCII
1951 characters and is used e.g. in email programs. mkvextract(1) will
1952 output Base64 encoded data for binary elements.
1953 The deprecated tagging system knows some more data types which can be
1955 found in the official Matroska(TM) tag specs. As mkvmerge(1) does not
1956 support this system anymore these types aren't described here.
1957 Known tags for the XML file format
1959 The following lists the supported XML tags, their data types and, where
1960 appropriate, the valid range for their values:
1961 Tags (master)
1963 Tag (master)
1964 Targets (master)
1965 TargetTypeValue (unsigned integer)
1966 TargetType (UTF-8 string)
1967 TrackUID (unsigned integer)
1968 EditionUID (unsigned integer)
1969 ChapterUID (unsigned integer)
1970 AttachmentUID (unsigned integer)
1971 Simple (master)
1972 Simple (master)
1973 Name (UTF-8 string)
1974 TagLanguage (UTF-8 string)
1975 DefaultLanguage (unsigned integer)
1976 String (UTF-8 string)
1977 Binary (binary)
1978
1980 With a segment info XML file it is possible to set certain values in
1981 the "segment information" header field of a Matroska(TM) file. All of
1982 these values cannot be set via other command line options.
1983 Other "segment information" header fields can be set via command line
1985 options but not via the XML file. This includes e.g. the --title and
1986 the --timestamp-scale options.
1987 There are other elements that can be set neither via command line
1989 options nor via the XML files. These include the following elements:
1990 DateUTC (also known as the "muxing date"), MuxingApp, WritingApp and
1991 Duration. They're always set by mkvmerge(1) itself.
1992 The following lists the supported XML tags, their data types and, where
1994 appropriate, the valid range for their values:
1995 Info (master)
1997 SegmentUID (binary, valid range: length in bytes == 16)
1998 SegmentFilename (UTF-8 string)
1999 PreviousSegmentUID (binary, valid range: length in bytes == 16)
2000 PreviousSegmentFilename (UTF-8 string)
2001 NextSegmentUID (binary, valid range: length in bytes == 16)
2002 NextSegmentFilename (UTF-8 string)
2003 SegmentFamily (binary, valid range: length in bytes == 16)
2004 ChapterTranslate (master)
2005 ChapterTranslateEditionUID (unsigned integer)
2006 ChapterTranslateCodec (unsigned integer)
2007 ChapterTranslateID (binary)
2008
2010 The Matroska(TM) file layout is quite flexible. mkvmerge(1) will
2011 render a file in a predefined way. The resulting file looks like this:
2012 [EBML head] [segment {meta seek #1} [segment information] [track
2014 information] {attachments} {chapters} [cluster 1] {cluster 2} ...
2015 {cluster n} {cues} {meta seek #2} {tags}]
2016 The elements in curly braces are optional and depend on the contents
2018 and options used. A couple of notes:
2019 • meta seek #1 includes only a small number of level 1 elements, and
2021 only if they actually exist: attachments, chapters, cues, tags,
2022 meta seek #2. Older versions of mkvmerge(1) used to put the
2023 clusters into this meta seek element as well. Therefore some
2024 imprecise guessing was necessary to reserve enough space. It often
2025 failed. Now only the clusters are stored in meta seek #2, and meta
2026 seek #1 refers to the meta seek element #2.
2027 • Attachment, chapter and tag elements are only present if they were
2029 added.
2030 The shortest possible Matroska(TM) file would look like this:
2032 [EBML head] [segment [segment information] [track information] [cluster
2034 1]]
2035 This might be the case for audio-only files.
2037
2039 mkvmerge(1) allows the user to chose the timestamps for a specific
2040 track himself. This can be used in order to create files with variable
2041 frame rate video or include gaps in audio. A frame in this case is the
2042 unit that mkvmerge(1) creates separately per Matroska(TM) block. For
2043 video this is exactly one frame, for audio this is one packet of the
2044 specific audio type. E.g. for AC-3 this would be a packet containing
2045 1536 samples.
2046 Timestamp files that are used when tracks are appended to each other
2048 must only be specified for the first part in a chain of tracks. For
2049 example if you append two files, v1.avi and v2.avi, and want to use
2050 timestamps then your command line must look something like this:
2051 $ mkvmerge ... --timestamps 0:my_timestamps.txt v1.avi +v2.avi
2053 There are four formats that are recognized by mkvmerge(1). The first
2055 line always contains the version number. Empty lines, lines containing
2056 only whitespace and lines beginning with '#' are ignored.
2057 Timestamp file format v1
2059 This format starts with the version line. The second line declares the
2060 default number of frames per second. All following lines contain three
2061 numbers separated by commas: the start frame (0 is the first frame),
2062 the end frame and the number of frames in this range. The FPS is a
2063 floating point number with the dot '.' as the decimal point. The ranges
2064 can contain gaps for which the default FPS is used. An example:
2065 # timestamp format v1
2067 assume 27.930
2068 800,1000,25
2069 1500,1700,30
2070 Timestamp file format v2
2072 In this format each line contains a timestamp for the corresponding
2073 frame. This timestamp must be given in millisecond precision. It can be
2074 a floating point number, but it doesn't have to be. You have to give at
2075 least as many timestamp lines as there are frames in the track. The
2076 timestamps in this file must be sorted. Example for 25fps:
2077 # timestamp format v2
2079 0
2080 40
2081 80
2082 Timestamp file format v3
2084 In this format each line contains a duration in seconds followed by an
2085 optional number of frames per second. Both can be floating point
2086 numbers. If the number of frames per second is not present the default
2087 one is used. For audio you should let the codec calculate the frame
2088 timestamps itself. For that you should be using 0.0 as the number of
2089 frames per second. You can also create gaps in the stream by using the
2090 'gap' keyword followed by the duration of the gap. Example for an audio
2091 file:
2092 # timestamp format v3
2094 assume 0.0
2095 25.325
2096 7.530,38.236
2097 gap, 10.050
2098 2.000,38.236
2099 Timestamp file format v4
2101 This format is identical to the v2 format. The only difference is that
2102 the timestamps do not have to be sorted. This format should almost
2103 never be used.
2104
2106 mkvmerge(1) exits with one of three exit codes:
2107 • 0 -- This exit code means that muxing has completed successfully.
2109 • 1 -- In this case mkvmerge(1) has output at least one warning, but
2111 muxing did continue. A warning is prefixed with the text
2112 'Warning:'. Depending on the issues involved the resulting file
2113 might be ok or not. The user is urged to check both the warning and
2114 the resulting file.
2115 • 2 -- This exit code is used after an error occurred. mkvmerge(1)
2117 aborts right after outputting the error message. Error messages
2118 range from wrong command line arguments over read/write errors to
2119 broken files.
2120
2122 mkvmerge(1) uses the default variables that determine the system's
2123 locale (e.g. LANG and the LC_* family). Additional variables:
2124 MKVMERGE_DEBUG, MKVTOOLNIX_DEBUG and its short form MTX_DEBUG
2126 The content is treated as if it had been passed via the --debug
2127 option.
2128 MKVMERGE_ENGAGE, MKVTOOLNIX_ENGAGE and its short form MTX_ENGAGE
2130 The content is treated as if it had been passed via the --engage
2131 option.
2132
2134 mkvinfo(1), mkvextract(1), mkvpropedit(1), mkvtoolnix-gui(1)
2135
2137 The latest version can always be found at the MKVToolNix homepage[6].
2138
2140 Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
2141 Developer
2142
2144 1. the Matroska(TM) website
2145 https://www.matroska.org/
2146 2. the IANA homepage
2148 https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/
2149 3. mkvmerge-identification-output-schema-v14.json
2151 https://mkvtoolnix.download/doc/mkvmerge-identification-output-schema-v14.json
2152 4. RFC 7159
2154 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159
2155 5. Matroska(TM) specification
2157 https://www.matroska.org/technical/specs/index.html
2158 6. the MKVToolNix homepage
2160 https://mkvtoolnix.download/
2161MKVToolNix 57.0.0 2021-05-22 MKVMERGE(1)