Music Media Helper (Tools for Multichannel Audio & Music Videos)

[ted_b]

Garry,
Thanks. Well, I tried a few things, and all failed. The Zidoo Z9X accepts (i.e reads) M4A and MP4 formats, but does nothing with them, apparently. I extracted my Abbey Road and 10k Hz Legand (Air) mkvs to both formats and split them, tagged them, etc. All went well until tonight when I tried to play them. Nothing. In one case (I think the M4A but not sure) the player GUI would serially go throughe ach song as if it were 1 second long, then go to the next.

Anyway......when I asked the AVS Z9X thread about this same question the best response was to tag/name the chapters.. I tried to do that, but MMH won't let me save them. I am on a Windows 7 computer and MMH did all the extracting described above without one error or message, but when it came to the Chapter Editor, whether I tried to choose a new default audio stream or whether I brought over Abbey Roads chapter names, when I tried to save (or simply pick default audio) I'd get this error message

and then nothing was saved (evident by either bringing the MKV back in or noticing the file modified date/time never changed). I'm running 6.3.8

 

[AYanguas]

... The Zidoo Z9X accepts (i.e reads) M4A and MP4 formats, but does nothing with them, apparently. I extracted my Abbey Road and 10k Hz Legand (Air) mkvs to both formats and split them, tagged them, etc. All went well until tonight when I tried to play them. Nothing. In one case (I think the M4A but not sure) the player GUI would serially go throughe ach song as if it were 1 second long, then go to the next.

No answer to this, I've not Zidoo.

This is exactly what my Oppo does with M4A files, when it has only an audio track (no video). It reads the file but does not recognize the track inside that container. Does nothing and goes to next file.
But if I rename the same file to MP4 (same file) the Oppo can play it.

Alternatively my DUNE's are able to play the file either with M4A or MP4 extension.

It looks that Media Players can have issues to decode some known tracks from known mpeg containers.

 

[ted_b]

As an update, the two mkv files (Abbey Road and Air 10k Hz Legend) were on my Zidoo local drive, accessed via the network. This morning I tried the copy of those files sitting on my Synology NAS, also accessible from the network. In the case of Abbey Road MMH Chapter Editor wouldn't let me change default audio (nothing happened, no error, but nothing happened; in the Air mkv I didn't need to change default) and in both cases it accepted MusicBrainz track lists in the chapters, and said it saved them....but the files never changed and bringing them back in show tagless chapters. I even tried copying an mkv to my local C drive and doing the editing, still no errors and still no saving. ?

When I went back and tried Abbey Road again on the Zidoo (Samba'd) local drive it behaved like it did last night, giving me the MKVPropedit error when I tried to change default audio, and again when I tried to save chapter edits. And then went on to say my save was confirmed. (which it wasn't).

 

[HomerJAU]

@ted_b I will check the MMH Chapter Editor this morning and get a fix to you today.

 

[HomerJAU]

When I went back and tried Abbey Road again on the Zidoo (Samba'd) local drive it behaved like it did last night, giving me the MKVPropedit error

Please download and install this beta update that resolved this issue:
https://reva.blob.core.windows.net/mmh/Beta/MMHInstaller.msi

 

[HomerJAU]

@ted_b

I couldn’t replicate the issue of failing to save chapter names. Is there any song titles with strange characters in the title?

 

[ted_b]

@ted_b

I couldn’t replicate the issue of failing to save chapter names. Is there any song titles with strange characters in the title?

Garry, it doesn't save ANY chapter names. And it's Abbey Road were talking about here, nothing like foreign characters. You think it's Windows 7? Maybe I should run it in some sort of compatibility mode?

Edit: Also I will report back after installing your beta, even though it likley has nothing to do with saving chapters. Thx

 

[HomerJAU]

Here's a MMH beta version with some recent fixes:

https://reva.blob.core.windows.net/mmh/Beta/MMHInstaller.msi
Version 6.3.9 Beta 2 (December 4 2022)
-------------
Changes:
Added a few new WXI Office skins (Windows 11 style rounded corners). Removed non-vector skins: Office 2016 Black, Office 2016 Dark, Windows Dark & Light

Fixes:
Chapter Editor: Changing Default Audio Stream failed - fixed (6.3.3 regression)
Extract Audio from MKV tool: Fix for Quad .m4a to FLAC conversions
Atmos Helper tool: Fix for copying tags between source and output files

 

[HomerJAU]

Music Media Helper and WINDOWS 7 (Support ended)
MKVToolNix no longer supports Windows 7 (Microsoft has discontinued support for Windows 7).

I suspect other 3rd party s/w used by MMH will not be supported on Win7. Apologies, but I cannot continue to support MMH on Windows 7. Impossible if core tools are unsupported.

(The issue reported above by @ted_b was caused by MKVToolnix and Windows 7 - Works fine on Windows 10)

 

[ted_b]

Garry,
Thanks, yes now that I do MMH on my Win 10 laptop all is well.

 

[ted_b]

Can MMH take existing MKVs and remove excess audio tracks (assume one downloaded the MKVs as I realize this can be done in MakeMKV when starting with a fresh BDMV)? I've downloaded a few that have like 6 different language audio tracks and want to remove bloat.

Edit: Himey reminds me that MKVtoolnix can do this, but my understanding (especially based on Garry's message above about MKVtoolnix and Win 7) is that some MKVtoolnix capabilities are in the MMH toolkit, so wondered if that functionality is there in MMH.

 

[HomerJAU]

There is no MMH user interface to manipulate individual MKVs like you want (remove streams) but if you convert your existing MKVs to MP4 you will have just a single audio stream.

Using MKVToolnix is pretty easy but manual process time that’s consuming.

Many of those other language audio tracks are ac3 and use very little space compared to lossless mch streams and video. Try a few and you may decide it’s not worth the effort for the file size reduction.

When I rip my discs I only select english lossless mch stream(s). Never foreign language, lossy and stereo since I will never listen to them.

 

[Sylfest]

MakeMKV can load MKV files and remove audiostreams. But then again it is manual and one by one.

 

[ted_b]

I've done 5 MKVs with MKVtoolnix and they saved me about 20% (i.e a free MKV every five). I won't do many more, but at least these worst ones have their NUMEROUS foreign language audio tracks out of the way (some had 8 or 9). Anyway, thanks all.

 

[ted_b]

Stupid, somewhat non-MMH question, but while we're at it with MKVtoolnix.....since I am not altering the video at all in these MKV projects (just removing audio tracks) is it even theoretically possible that the video, being remux'd again, will suffer even a little (picture quality). I ask cuz they end up on a 120" screen.

I apologize for going video here, on a purely audio thread and forum.

 

[HomerJAU]

No the video and audio is not re-encoded. Remuxing is just copying the encoded video/audio to a new container. So no change in video/audio from the original disc to original MKV and to remuxed MKV, or even another remuxed file. 1:1 copy of all streams.

 

[impetigo]

One humble suggestion: when I used the join flac/wav feature I found it very difficult to get them in the right order because there is no column for track # so no way to auto sort the files that way, and also no way to drag a file up/down (or to use arrow functions to move them up/down) to manually sort them. If something like that could be added it would be so helpful. Of course, I may just be using it wrong too!

 

[HomerJAU]

From memory the join tool sorts by file name but it would be fairly straight forward to add manual sorting as you suggest.

I envisioned this would be used to join album tracks into a single FLAC and therefore the files would already be numbered (in track running order).

 

[himey]

From memory the join tool sorts by file name but it would be fairly straight forward to add manual sorting as you suggest.

I envisioned this would be used to join album tracks into a single FLAC and therefore the files would already be numbered (in track running order).

I have been using it a lot lately along with the cue generator with no sorting issues, but like you said, I am just joining album tracks which are numbered.

 

[HomerJAU]

Here's another MMH beta version with some recent fixes:

https://reva.blob.core.windows.net/mmh/Beta/MMHInstaller.msi
Change log: Bold added since last beta

Version 6.3.9 Beta 5 (December 8 2022)
-------------
Changes:
Added new WXI Office skins (Windows 11 style rounded corners). Removed non-vector skins: Office 2016 Black, Office 2016 Dark, Windows Dark & Light
Added additional checks and warnings for long folder/file names exceeding Windows Max_Path length
Join or Split Audio tool: Now supports adding files by drag & drop from Windows explorer - new
Join or Split Audio tool: When merging multiple files users can now drag and drop rows (files) to re-order - new @impetigo
Updated 3rd party UI controls to latest

Fixes:
Chapter Editor: Changing Default Audio Stream failed - fixed (6.3.3 regression)
Extract Audio from MKV tool: Fix for Quad .m4a to FLAC conversions
Extract Audio from MKV tool: Users cannot drag multiple .mp4 files from Windows Explorer - fixed
Atmos Helper tool: Fix for copying tags between source and output files