MKV Optimizer - Save disk space by eliminating unneeded audio tracks

Here's why I created this. Lately, it seems like I've been coming across more and more .mkv files with multiple audio tracks and since I only want English, these extra tracks are just taking up space. Also, some movies have the default audio track in another language and my wife can never figure out how to get it to play in English. Removing the extra audio tracks of course solves this. I've slowly begun removing the extra audio with mkvmerge, but the problem was finding the files that needed to be edited.

After looking around and not finding anything to accomplish what I wanted, I finally decided to just create my own little app to do this... So here it is.

Note: I created this in a couple hours, so there are bound to be bugs. If you find one, please post here. I know this application isn't the most elegant solution, but it was a quick way to accomplish what I needed and I'm sure others will find it useful. If you do, please let me know that as well.

Instructions:

1. You will need to first install MKVtoolnix (includes mkvmerge w/ a nice GUI), which you can get from here: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVtoolnix
2. Use the download link below to download my app (and download .Net Framework if needed from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/de...laylang=en)
3. Put the path you installed MKVtoolnix to in the first box
4. Put the path to your Movie Folder in the 2nd box (recursive searches now work - beta 1.06+)
5. Check the options you want to search for and click the Search button to find all matching files.
6. Double-Click on any of the matches in the listview to launch MKVtoolnix to edit that file.
   

Removing Extra Audio Tracks w/ MKVtoolnix:

1. Uncheck the unwanted tracks & subtitles (the language will be shown in the General Track Options tab).
2. Change the Output Filename to something different (I usually just add a "1" to the end of the original filename) and click Start Muxing.
3. When the process is complete, delete the original file and rename the edited file if needed.
   

Screenshot:


Download Link:
http://www.audio-matic.com/MKV%20Optimiz...201.19.exe

RELEASE NOTES:

Current Version:
beta 1.19

• Bug Fix: Hopefully fixed bug where items could show up twice in the search results.
• Added a button to preview videos using your default video player.
• Bug Fix: Fixed issue where clicking "Cancel" sometimes required two clicks (focus problem).
  

Previous Versions:
beta 1.18

• Added an option to export the search results to a .csv file (can be opened in Excel).
  

beta 1.17(a)

• Bug Fix: Should now properly scan files in the root folder.
• Minor tweaks to UI and more detailed search statistics.
  

beta 1.16

• Bug Fix: Hidden & System files & folders are now correctly ignored... Hopefully this will finally fix the bug with the System Volume Information folder.
  

beta 1.15

• Attempted (but failed) to fix a bug caused by scanning hidden/system folders.
• Added the current folder being scanned to the Searching window.
• Added an "Edit in MKVmerge" button to make that feature more obvious.
• More detailed error messages.
  

beta 1.14

• Bug Fix: You should now be able to Ctrl-Click multiple items and clicking Ignore Selected should work properly.
• Bug Fix: Access Denied errors should be handled gracefully and prevent the scan from ending abruptly.
• Added an option for Detailed Search Logging and removed some details from the normal log to speed up searches.
• Language options are now remembered settings.
  

beta 1.13

• First attempt at mkvinfo foreign language fix... and apparently it works!
  

beta 1.12

• Added a field for the forced subtitle language if found
• Added a button to view the complete MKV info
  

beta 1.11

• Now grabbing track details and including default audio codec, default audio language, and default subtitle language in search results.
• Added option to search for files based on default audio track language and added option to ignore unknown default audio languages for this option.
• Bug fix: Fixed a bug where scanning a folder containing .mkv files without subfolders produced 0 search results.
• Bug fix: Made progress bar more accurate (still could use improvement).
  

beta 1.07

• Updated the search window to show a log of files scanned.
  

beta 1.06

• Fixed recursive search so it will scan correctly (infinite folder depth will work.. may take a long time to search though)
  

beta 1.05

• minor updates & bug fixes
  

beta 1.04

• Added option to add selected movies to an Ignored List to prevent them from appearing in future search results.
  

beta 1.03

• minor bug fixes
• Added option to ignore Vorbis & AAC tracks (usually commentary)
  

beta 1.02

• Added basic error handling... Should crash gracefully now.
• Added more useful error messages (still room for improvement here).
• Saves last path used to settings.ini file.
  

Top job! Really need this.

Another annoyance with MKV's is the subtitle track. Either Full English all the way through. Turn off the Subtitle and the Foreign parts are not displayed either.

Know of a way to fix this? Would make sense to add it to your program if possible?

Thanks.

I too am annoyed by the problem you describe. I usually just download an .srt file (from someplace like http://www.subscene.com or http://www.opensubtitles.org) that only displays english subtitles for the foreign language scenes. This could then be embedded into the mkv using mkvmerge if you wanted.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to determine if a subtitle embedded into an .mkv is just for foreign language speaking parts or for the full video.

I tried the app but it does not find any of the 35 MKVs I have.

My movies are each in separate folders. Example...

root = F:\Movies
sub = <movie name>

Pertaining to the subtitles I i recall correctly upon encoding there is an option for forced only. Which when I tested it only showed the subtitles during the foreign language parts. I have no idea how to do it after encoding.

Overall nice tool although I'm using it to mark all the files I have with commentary. Recursion Would be nice at some point. I think 3 levels would be good. The largest I see it is.
TV -> Show Name -> Season # -> file.mkv.

Nice tool...

Looks better than my batch files

Would be nice if it could display the audio language when available.

I only remove dubbed tracks (usually german)

I am one that believes you should always watch the movies in the original language but i do keep tracks dubbed in english or french for other family members... But german dubbing has got to go

-Pr.

Thanks for all the feedback. I will try to get recursive folder scanning working properly in the next release. --> EDIT: Done in beta 1.06. Let me know how this works... since scan times may be long, I'll work on adding a better progress bar.

Livin: Are you sure those files have more than 1 audio track? If not, they will not be listed. I'll add more debugging functionality in a future release as well.

compcentral Wrote:Thanks for all the feedback. I will try to get recursive folder scanning working properly in the next release.

Livin: Are you sure those files have more than 1 audio track? If not, they will not be listed. I'll add more debugging functionality in a future release as well.

not sure... I was wanting to check (and possibly fix) using your app

Maybe you can add a function to list all MKVs and have a marker on ones with multiple tracks... this way we know the apps sees (and we can see onscreen) each item it is testing.

thx!

This is a cool idea!

Too bad it's Windows only, I'd have liked that.