Version 74.0.0 "You Oughta Know" 2023-02-12

New features and enhancements

• mkvmerge: SRT handling: added a hack called --engage keep_whitespaces_in_text_subtitles which disables stripping whitespaces from the start & end of each line of SRT entries during muxing. Part of the implementation of #3470.

Bug fixes

• all: Windows: UNC paths of type \\?\C:\… are supported again by switching back to Boost's file system library instead of using C++17's file system library. Fixes #3058.
• mkvmerge: AVC/H.264 & HEVC/H.265 packetizers: when appending tracks the pixel dimensions will be checked & muxing will be aborted if they don't match. Fixes #3480.
• mkvmerge: file type detection: file types that can be detected unambiguously by their content (e.g. Matroska, MP4, WAV…) will now preferred in the detection order over file types based on their extension. Prevents certain cases of mis-detection, e.g. DTS in WAV but with a file name extension of .dts being detected as the wrong type of DTS. Fixes #3462.
• mkvmerge: SRT handling: whitespaces will now be stripped from the start & the end of each line of each entry, not just from the end of the last line. Part of the fix of #3470.
• mkvextract: SRT extraction: whitespaces will not be stripped from the start & end of the whole entry anymore. Part of the fix of #3470.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding multiple files that include certain file types (chapters, segment info and tag files) and when the choice where to add them is "all files to a single new tab", these certain file types will now be added in the newly added tab as well instead of the current tab that had already been open. Fixes #3469.
• build system: fixed compatibility with Ruby 3.2.0 by using FileTest.exist? instead of File.exists?, Dir.exists? & FileTest.exists? which were removed in that release.

Build system changes

• MKVToolNix is now using & requiring Boost's "file system" and "system" libraries again instead of C++17's file system library. This is due to gcc's library not supporting UNC paths of types \\?\C:\dir\file.ext.