Version 47.0.0 "Black Flag" 2020-05-30

New features and enhancements

• mkvmerge: chapters: mkvmerge can now read chapters from DVDs if the user specifies the path to a DVD folder structure via the --chapters … parameter. By default chapters from the first title will be imported. This can be changed by append :<title number> to the file/directory name in the --chapters … argument, e.g. --chapters /srv/dvds/BigBuckBunny/VIDEO_TS:3 This feature requires mkvmerge to have been built with the libdvdread library. Part of the implementation of #2808.
• mkvmerge: added --engage append_and_split_flac that enables mkvmerge to append and split FLAC tracks, restoring pre-v45 behavior. The resulting tracks will be broken: the official FLAC tools will not be able to decode them and seeking will not work as expected.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: added support for mkvmerge's new support for reading chapters from DVDs if both have been built with the libdvdread library. Part of the implementation of #2808.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when deriving languages from file names the GUI will now look for simplified language names instead of the full ones (e.g. instead of looking for "Greek, Modern (1453-)" it would simply look for "Greek").
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: the options in the "additional command-line options" dialog are now sorted alphabetically. Additionally the --append-mode option has been added as one of the only missing global options.
• MKVToolNix GUI: chapter editor: the chapter editor can now read chapters from DVDs if MKVToolNix has been build with the libdvdread library. Part of the implementation of #2808.
• MKVToolNix GUI: header editor: added an option in the preferences for displaying all date & time values in UTC instead of the local time zone. Implements #2814.

Bug fixes

• all: fixed a crash when using the MTX_LOGGER=file syntax for logging debug messages without specifying a file name to log to. It will now log to a file called mkvtoolnix-debug.log in the system's default temporary directory, as initially intended.

Build system changes

• The libdvdread library will be used if found via pkg-config. If it is found, support for reading chapters from DVDs will be enabled in mkvmerge and the MKVToolNix GUI. Part of the implementation of #2808.
• Boost's Date/Time, Lexical Cast, Range, Range Adaptors, Tri-Bool, Variant libraries are not used anymore.
• MKVToolNix now requires a C++ compiler & standard library that support the following features of the C++17 standard: "std::variant", "std::gcd". For the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) this means v7 or newer; for clang it means v4 or newer — the same versions required by earlier MKVToolNix versions.
• MKVToolNix now requires version 6.1.0 of fmtlib or later for the fmt::to_string function and bugfixes to the formatting of floating point numbers. If a system-wide version is installed that's older, the bundled copy will be used.