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A guide to mkvmerge GUI (mmg)
Moritz Bunkus
Table of contents
1. Introduction
1. What is Matroska?
2. What is mkvmerge? What is mkvmerge GUI?
3. Obtaining the latest version
4. Scope of this guide
2. Setting up mkvmerge GUI
3. Creating Matroska files
1. Basics
2. Options for input files
3. Options for each track
4. Attachments
5. Global options
1. File/segment title
2. Automatic splitting and file linking
3. Manual file/segment linking
4. Chapters
5. Global tags
6. Starting the merge process
7. Saving and loading muxing settings
8. Queueing several jobs
4. The chapter editor
1. Matroska's chapter concept
2. Examples
3. Chapter formats supported by mkvmerge
1. Simple/OGM style chapter files
2. Full-featured XML style chapter files
3. Chapters found in Matroska files
4. Creating chapter files
5. Editing existing chapters
5. The header editor
1. Adding and removing header fields
2. Opening an existing file
3. Editing header fields
4. Validation
5. Saving the file
1. Introduction
1.1. What is Matroska?
(Note: simply copied from www.matroska.org.)
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Matroska aims to become THE Standard of Multimedia Container Formats. It was derived from a
project called MCF, but differentiates from it significantly because it is based on EBML
(Extensible Binary Meta Language), a binary derivative of XML. EBML enables the Matroska
Development Team to gain significant advantages in terms of future format extensibility, without
breaking file support in old parsers.
If you need any more info please head over to Matroska's homepage.
1.2. What is mkvmerge? What is mkvmerge GUI?
mkvmerge and mkvmerge GUI (or just mmg) are two programs created by Moritz Bunkus. They're
part of the mkvtoolnix package. mkvmerge can read a lot of different multimedia files and put their
contents into Matroska files. Unfortunately this is a command line program, and not everyone is
comfortable working on the command line. This is where mkvmerge GUI comes into play. It is a
GUI that provides the user with an intuitive but powerful interface to mkvmerge.
Both programs are available for both Windows and GNU/Linux and other Unix derivatives. The
program is licensed under the GPL, so the source code is available to anyone interested.
1.3. Obtaining the latest version
You can always find the latest version of mkvtoolnix on Moritz Bunkus' website. Windows users
will have to download the runtime DLLs as well as the mkvtoolnix binaries. Linux/Unix users will
probably download the sources and compile mkvtoolnix themselves.
1.4. Scope of this guide
This guide only focuses on the GUI part of these tools. All command line options are explained in
detail in mkvmerge's man page/HTML page.
2. Setting up mkvmerge GUI
(Note: This section does not cover compilation and installation. mkvmerge's own documentation
and the README files that are included in the mkvtoolnix package.)

Figure 1: Use this button to select the path to the mkvmerge program.
The only thing that mmg needs to know is the location of the mkvmerge binary. Under normal
circumstances it will be found automatically. But if not then you can select the binary to use on
the Settings tab.
3. Creating Matroska files
3.1. Basics
mkvmerge strictly differentiates between files and tracks. An input file usually contains one or
more tracks. mkvmerge needs at least one input file and the file name of the Matroska file it
should create before it can do any work. Starting with this minimal set of options the user can add
more input files, select advanced options for each track, apply some more global options etc.
The typical basic steps are:
1. Select some input files,
2. set language options for the tracks,
3. set the movie/file title,
4. select the file to write to and
5. start the muxing process.

Figure 2: Use these buttons to add and remove files.
When mmg starts up it shows the first and probably most important tab: the input tab. Here you
see four different elements. The topmost input box lists all input files. Directly under this box are
options that apply to the currently selected input file.
Figure 2 shows the three buttons to the right of the upper list box that can be used to add files to
the list box with the add and append buttons and to remove the selected entry with the remove
button.
There is a difference between adding and appending a file. Normally, the tracks of all added files
are put into the resulting Matroska file in parallel. This is usually the case if you have e.g. a video
track, one or more audio tracks and one or more subtitle tracks. They all contain material that
belongs to the same timecodes and that has to be played simulatneously.
Appending a file on the other hand will cause all tracks of the second file to be appended to
tracks of a previously added file. That way the contents of those tracks will be played one after
the other. You can only concatenate tracks that are of the same kind (video to video tracks etc),
have the same codec (e.g. MP3 to MP3 but not MP3 to AC3) and the same parameters (e.g. the
sample rate must match).
You can tell an added file from an appended one by looking at its name. Appended files and
tracks start with "++>".

Figure 3: One enabled and one disabled track. The second track will not be copied into the output file.
Once the user has added at least one input file in the upper list box the second list box will
contains all available tracks. Each track is ENabled by default and will be muxed into the
resulting file. However, you can change that by simply clicking on the check box right in front of
the track's name in the second list box. This is shown in figure 3.
For each of these tracks the user can select track specific options with the input boxes and check
boxes below the track listing. These options will be described in the following sections.
To the right of the track list box there are two buttons with which you can control the order of the
tracks in the output file. By hitting the up and down the currently selected track is moved in the
appropriate direction. There are some restrictions to moving appended tracks around (the ones
that start with "++>") like an appended track must not be the first track etc.
3.2. Options for input file
Once the user has added and selected an input file he can set options that apply to this specific
file. At the moment three such options have been implemented, and they all are only available for
Matroska files: No chapters, No attachments and No tags. These options tell mkvmerge not to
copy any chapters / attachments / tags from the current source file.
More information about chapters can be found in the section about the chapter editor in this
document and in mkvmerge's own documentation.
3.3. Options for each track
Depending on the type of the currently selected track (audio, video, subtitles) and even
depending on the contents of the track only a subset of all the track specific options are available.
These options span over two sub-pages. There are general track options and format specific
options.

Figure 4: Options common for all kinds of tracks
Note: Unless overridden by the user mkvmerge will either copy track settings from the input file if
the source format supports such information, or it will use sensitive default values.
The available general options are:
Track name: The user can set a name for the current track. This name is a free-form string.
Practical examples could be 'director's comments' or 'great view of Seattle'. Note that these
names are not meant to contain the movie title!
Language: The user can select the language for each track regardless of its type. This
language is coded in the ISO639-2 language code. The drop-down box contains all
ISO639-2 codes so the user does not have to worry about selecting the wrong language
code.
Cues: The cues are for Matroska what the index is for AVI files. They contain links to the
key frames. Usually this option should be left on the value 'default'. mkvmerge will
automatically chose the best method for any given track type. A full explanation of tracks
can be found in mkvmerge's documentation.
Make default track: Matroska knows a flag which tells the player that a specific track
should be preferred upon playback if the user does not chose another one. Of course each
track type has its own default track - e.g. the default audio track is the English one, and the
default subtitle track is the French one. If no track is set to be the default track then
mkvmerge will promote the first track of each type that it finds to be the default track. This is
consistent with the behavior of various media players.
Tags: For each track you can create a XML tags file. For a full explanation of all tags please
refer to the example file and mkvmerge's own documentation. In probably 99% of all cases
you want to use THIS option and associate tags with a specific track. The tags option on
the global tab is probably not what you need.
Timecodes: Normally mkvmerge will derive the timecodes for each frame from the source
file, but it can also read and use timecodes from an external text file whose name you can
specify here. This feature is a very advanced feature. Almost all users should leave this
entry empty.

Figure 5: Typical options for a video track
The format specific options include:
Aspect ratio: With this option the user can set the aspect ratio that should be used upon
playback. It defaults to the aspect ratio that the movie was encoded with but can be
changed, e.g. for anamorphic encodings. The GUI expects the format to be either a floating
point number (e.g. '2.33') or a fraction (e.g. '16/9').
Another possibility is to set the values for the display width and display height manually.
This can come in handy if you want to adjust the parameters to a specific resolution. If you
specify the aspect ratio then mkvmerge will calculate the display dimensions based on the
size of the video track.
This option is only available for video tracks.
FourCC: Matroska does not normally store the Four-CC which is used in other containers to
identify the codec used. Matroska has its own format, called CodecID, but it also has an AVI
compatibility mode. In this mode the FourCC is also stored. With this option the FourCC
can be forced to a different value. However, you cannot change the CodecID used by
mkvmerge.
Stereo mode: There's a technology of providing pseudo three dimensional images by
playing back two video tracks that have been filmed from slightly different positions
simultaneously. Each eye only sees one of those tracks. This is called stereo mode. Most
users should leave this empty.
FPS: Number of frames per second for AVC/h.264 video tracks. When you add AVC/h.264
elementary streams then mkvmerge must be told which how many frames per second this
video was recorded with because that piece of information is not available in elementary
streams. If you don't select anything then mkvmerge defaults to 25. You can either enter a
floating point number (e.g. 29.97) or a fraction (e.g. 30000/1001).
This option is only available for AVC/h.264 video tracks read from AVC/h.264 elementary
streams.

Figure 6: Typical options for an audio track
Delay (in ms): In some cases audio and video are not synchronized properly. With this
option the user can offset the timecodes of any track by a given amount, either positive or
negative. The number you enter here is the amount in milliseconds that is added to each
timecode after the Stretch by factor has been applied (see below).
This option is available for all track types. However, timecode adjustments work best for
video and subtitle tracks during playback.
Stretch by: In some cases audio and video slowly drift apart during playback. This can be
fixed by supplying a factor of how much the time codes should be stretched by mkvmerge. If
nothing is entered then '1.0' is assumed which does not alter the time codes.
The value you enter can either be a floating point number or a fraction, e.g. "1/2". The factor
is applied before the Delay is added (see above).
This option is available for all track types. However, timecode adjustments work best for
video and subtitle tracks during playback.
Subtitle charset: Some text subtitle formats do not store the charset that they were
created with. This is important because text subtitles are automatically converted to the
UTF-8 charset during muxing. mkvmerge will normally assume that the system's current
charset is the same that the subtitle file was written in. But in case this is not true the user
can select the correct charset.
This option is only available for text subtitle tracks.

Figure 7: Typical options for a text subtitle track
Compression: Matroska features a powerful system for compressing tracks with lossless
compression algorithms. Those compressions can be applied to any given track, but some
players only support this for VobSub tracks. This is where it's most useful. Other tracks,
especially audio and video tracks, are already compressed so that additional compression
will not yield any result. For VobSubs you can achieve an additional gain of about 30% if
you enable zlib compression. That's why it is the default for VobSub tracks.
You should just leave this setting at default .
AAC is SBR/HE-AAC/AAC+: The new technology called 'high efficiency AAC' has some
drawbacks when it is being stored in .AAC files: it is not possible to detect the HE-AAC part
for these files. Therefore the user has to check this option manually if it applies. Please note
that this problem does not exist for HE-AAC stored in .MP4 files.
3.4. Attachments
Matroska files can also contain other files, called attachments. This works basically just like with
your favorite email program. The idea is to provide additional information about the file. Some
examples could be cover photos for a CD rip, additional background information in text form
about the movie or even some compressed fonts for the subtitles.
Every attachment needs two things: the file name (obviously) and the MIME type that should be
associated with the file. The usage is very easy and similar to adding files on the input tab.

Figure 8: Add and remove attachments with these buttons.
On the second tab of the GUI, the attachment tab, you can add a file with the + button and
remove the selected attachment with the - button. Once an attachment has been selected the
other controls on this tab will be available. You do have to select a MIME type for each
attachment, but the description is optional - although it is a good idea to always provide a
description. This makes it easier for others to identify what you've attached to this Matroska file.

Figure 9: Typical options for an attachment
The last option, attachment style, is only evaluated when you also split the output into several
files. (Splitting in general is explained in the following section.) If the option To all files is
selected then the current file will be attached to all output files created. If the option Only to the
first is selected then the file is only attached to the very first output file created.
3.5. Global options
The third tab, Global , is packed full of options that apply to the complete file and not just to one or
more tracks.
3.5.1. File/segment title

Figure 10: Selecting a title for the movie
File/segment title: This title is used for the actual movie title, e.g. 'Vanilla Sky'.
3.5.2. Automatic splitting and file linking
The Split section handles how the output file is split into several smaller files. If no splitting is
selected then only one big file is generated. If splitting is activated then you can tell mkvmerge to
start a new output file after either a specific amount of data has been written to the current file or
after a specific timecode has been reached. The accepted formats are:
For the size: A number optionally followed by the letter 'K', 'M' or 'G' indicating kilobytes
(1024 bytes), megabytes (1024 * 1024 bytes) or gigabytes (1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes).
Examples: '700M' or '100000K'.
For the time: The format is either HH:MM:SS.nnn with up to nine digits for up to nanosecond
precision or a number followed by the letter 's' indicating a number of seconds. Several
timecodes can be entered separated by commas.
Please note that the timecodes refer to the unsplit output stream. Therefore entering
'00:10:00,00:20:00' will result in three files of which the first two will be roughly ten minutes
long. The third piece will contain the rest of the input stream. This is independant of the 'file
linking' feature.
Examples: '01:20:00' (split after 1 hour, 20 minutes) or '1800s' (split after 1800 seconds = 30
minutes).

Figure 11: Typical options for splitting. Create two files which will be approx. 700megs big.
Don't link: This option controls how mkvmerge will handle splitting. A little explanation about
this feature:
Matroska supports file linking which simply says that a specific file is the predecessor or
successor of the current file. To be precise, it's not really the files that are linked but the Matroska
segments. As most files will probably only contain one Matroska segment I simply say 'file
linking' although 'segment linking' would be more appropriate.
Each segment is identified by a unique 128 bit wide segment UID. This UID is automatically
generated by mkvmerge. The linking is done primarily via putting the segment UIDs of the
previous/next file into the segment header information. mkvinfo prints these UIDs if it finds them.
If a file is split into several smaller ones and linking is used then the time codes will not start at 0
again but will continue where the last file has left off. This way the absolute time is kept even if
the previous files are not available (e.g. when streaming). If no linking is used then the time
codes should start at 0 for each file. By default mkvmerge does not use file linking because some
players still don't handle linked files properly. If you want linking that you can turn it on by
enabling this link files check box.
3.5.3. Manual file/segment linking
Regardless of whether splitting is active or not the user can tell mkvmerge to link the produced
files to specific UIDs. This is done by entering a valid segment UID into the two input boxes,
Previous segment UID and Next segment UID. These options accept a segment UID in the format
that mkvinfo outputs: 16 hexadecimal numbers between 0x00 and 0xff prefixed with '0x' each and
separated with spaces, e.g. 0x41 0xda 0x73 0x66 0xd9 0xcf 0xb2 0x1e 0xae 0x78 0xeb 0xb4
0x5e 0xca 0xb3 0x93. Alternatively a shorter form can be used: 16 hexadecimal numbers
between 0x00 and 0xff without the '0x' prefixes and without the spaces, e.g.
41da7366d9cfb21eae78ebb45ecab393.
If splitting is used then the first file is linked to the UID given in the Previous segment UID input
box, and the last file is linked to the UID given in the Next segment UID input box. If splitting is not
used then the one output file will be linked to both of the two UIDs.
3.5.4. Chapters
With the browse button you can select the chapters to add to the output file. A full explanation of
all aspects around chapters can be found in the Chapter editor section.
3.5.5. Global tags
Unlike the tags you can select for each track on the input tab the tags selected here have to
contain the track UIDs. These tags are not assigned to any track automatically. In 99% of all
cases this is NOT the option you want to use!
The full explanation can be found in mkvmerge's documentation.
3.6. Starting the merge process
Once everything has been set up the muxing process can be started. The last thing to do is to
chose where to mux to. With the browse button you can select the output file. After this has been
done hit the Start muxing button or select the same entry from the Muxing menu.
If everything has been set up correctly mmg will show the muxing dialog. The progress is shown
at the top, as is a general description of what mkvmerge is doing at the moment.

Figure 12: The muxing window
mkvmerge knows three different 'severity levels' for its messages: status reports, warnings and
errors. All status report messages are shown in the upper window. These include the track types
encountered and other interesting things.
Warnings are shown in the middle window. mkvmerge will not abort when it issues a warning,
but it might stop muxing the track for which the warning was printed. You should pay close
attention to all warning messages.
Errors are show in the lower window. Errors are always fatal, and mkvmerge will stop muxing
right after it has printed the error message. Such a message might be that the hard disc is full or
that the source file is damaged and cannot be processed any further.
The button Abort sends mkvmerge the signal to stop muxing. Unless mkvmerge is stuck in some
endless loop it will stop soon after you've pressed the button. With Save log you can save the
complete output from mkvmerge into a text file for further study or in case you've encountered a
bug and want to send me some additional information.
3.7. Saving and loading muxing settings
All your hard work of setting options does not have to be lost when you exit the program. You can
save all your muxing settings into text based configuration files with the Save settings option in
the File menu and restore them later with the Load settings option. The default extension is
.mmg and is usually not used by other programs. You can also associate this extension with mmg
so that it automatically loads the settings if it is called with the name of such a settings file.
3.8. Queueing several jobs
For the case that you have several files that you want to mux you don't have to prepare the first
file, wait for it to finish muxing, prepare the second, wait for it to finish muxing etc. mkvmerge GUI
contains a job manager which can queue complete jobs and run them one after another at your
conveniance. The basic steps when using the job manager are:
1. Add all files, set all the options, set the output file name.
2. Hit the Add to job queue button and select a title that this job will be referred under.
3. Repeat as often as wanted.
4. Bring up the job manager window by selecting Manage jobs from the Muxing menu.
5. Hit the Start button.
6. Get something to drink, go shopping or talk to your significant other ;)

Figure 13: The job management dialog
Each job has six attributes: an ID which is automatically chosen my mkvmerge GUI ; its status
(pending - it hasn't been muxed yet, done - muxing has completed successfully, done with
warnings - muxing has completed successfully but there were warnings, failed - the muxing
process failed); the name that you've entered before; the time and date on which the job was
added to the job queue; the time and date when the muxing process was started for this job and
the time and date when the muxing process finished.
The general controls are located at the bottom. The Start button will start the muxing process for
all jobs whose status is pending. The Start selected button will start the muxing process for all
jobs that are currently selected independent of their status.
The buttons on the right manipulate all selected jobs. The Up and Down move the selected jobs up
and down in the list. The Re-enable button sets the jobs' status to pending so that they will be
started the next time the Start button is pressed. The Disable button will set the status to done.
During the muxing process mkvmerge's output will not be shown but saved. If you want to see a
job's output you can hit the View log button. This is useful if a job completed with warnings or if it
failed completely.
4. The chapter editor
One of the new features of mmg is a full-featured chapter editor. It can read text based chapter
files, import chapters from existing Matroska files, write text based chapter files that can be
selected on the global tab and write chapters directly to existing Matroska files.
4.1. Matroska's chapter concept
Unlike a lot of other systems Matroska supports nested chapters. This basically means that you
can define sub chapters for chapters.
A chapter entity in Matroska consists of at least four items: The UID of the track(s) it applies to,
the chapter title/name, it's start time and the language code associated with it. Additional
elements are optional and include the end time, more language codes and country codes.
Usually the user will only need the mandatory elements. Of these he can only specify the name,
the start time and the language code. mkvmerge will then automatically assign all chapters to the
complete file.
4.2. Examples
The first example is a simple one. The movie in question contains four parts: The intro starting at
the beginning, the first act, the second act, and the credits. Note that the end timestamps are
optional.
Intro (from 00:00:00, language English)
Act 1 (from 00:01:00, language English)
Act 2 (from 00:05:30, language English)
Credits (from 00:12:20 until 00;12:55, language English)
A more complex example including sub chapters. Let's take Ludwig van Beethoven's opera
Fidelio. For the sake of brevity I'm only including the first three pieces of the two acts.
The first act contains:
1. Overtre (6:24 long),
2. Arie: 'Jetzt, Schtzchen, jetzt sind wir allein' (4:46 long) and
3. Dialog: 'Armer Jaquino' (0:10 long).
The second act contains:
1. Ouvertre und Arie: 'Gott! welch Dunkel hier!' (10:46 long),
2. Melodrama und Duett: 'Wie kalt ist es' (5:21 long) and
3. Dialog: 'Er erwacht!' (0:59 long).
The first act, which will be our first chapter, has a combined length of 11:20. Our second act has a
length of 17:06. These chapters would look like this:
Erster Akt (from 00:00:00 until 00:11:20, language German, country Germany)
Ouvertre (from 00:00:00 until 00:06:24, language German, country Germany)
Arie: 'Jetzt, Schtzchen, jetzt sind wir allein' (from 00:06:24 until 00:11:10,
language German, country Germany)
Dialog: 'Armer Jaquino' (from 00:11:10 until 00:11:20, language German, country
Germany)
Zweiter Akt (from 00:11:20 until 00:28:26, language German, country Germany)
Ouvertre und Arie: 'Gott! welch Dunkel hier!' (from 00:11:20 until 00:22:06,
language German, country Germany)
Melodrama und Duett: 'Wie kalt ist es' (from 00:22:06 until 00:27:27, language
German, country Germany)
Dialog: 'Er erwacht!' (from 00:27:27 until 00:28:26, language German, country
Germany)
4.3. Chapter formats supported by mkvmerge
mkvmerge and mmg's chapter editor both support different formats for chapter files.
4.3.1. Simple/OGM style chapter files
One of the most basic formats is the format used in OGM files. It is a text based format. Each
chapter entry contains of two lines, the first containing the start time, the second the chapter's
title/name. All lines are numbered.
The first example from above can be expressed in this format:
CHAPTER01=00:00:00.000
CHAPTER01NAME=Intro
CHAPTER02=00:01:00.000
CHAPTER02NAME=Act 1
CHAPTER03=00:05:30.000
CHAPTER03NAME=Act 2
CHAPTER04=00:12:20.000
CHAPTER04NAME=Credits
The second example cannot be expressed in this format because it supports neither language
specifications nor end times or nested chapters. The advantage is that such files are very easy to
create, and there are several tools available for both Windows and Unix/Linux that create such
files directly from DVDs.
Due to its limitations mmg cannot output chapters in this format.
4.3.2. Full-featured XML style chapter files
I've created a XML based chapter format that closely matches the system Matroska uses. With
this format you have the full control over all features. I won't describe this format here in detail.
Please have a look at the example XML chapter files that came with mkvtoolnix.
4.3.3. Chapters found in Matroska files
The chapter editor can read chapters directly from Matroska files. These can be written to XML
chapter files or back to the same Matroska file or another Matroska file. All features are
supported.
4.4. Creating chapter files
The chapter editor consists of three parts: the tree view of all chapters, the four buttons used for
adding and removing chapter entries, and the input boxes which are used for setting the chapter
entry's data.

Figure 14: The chapter editor showing the example from above
In Matroska files one chapter is defined by having a start time, a name and a language that is
associated with that name. You can have several names for one chapter and each associated
with a different language. You may also add an end time, but that is not mandatory.
A new chapter file is started with the New option from the Chapter editor menu. You can add a
new chapter with the Add chapter or Add subchapter buttons. The difference between these two
buttons is that when a chapter has been selected Add chapter will append a new chapter directly
after the selected chapter on the same level, and Add subchapter will add a new chapter as the
last child of the currently selected chapter.
The Remove chapter has to be used with care. It removes the complete subtree without asking for
confirmation, and there is no undo option available at the moment.
After selecting a chapter entry you can change its data. The format for the start and end time are
either HH:MM:SS.mmm or simply HH:MM:SS. One chapter name will already have been added. You
can edit it and select the language that this name is given in. This way you could provide names
in several languages, e.g. 'The hero arrives' with 'eng' as the language and 'Der Held kommt an'
with 'ger' as the language. Just hit the Add name button if you need more entries and Remove name
in order to get rid of one.
Creating many chapters and always changing the language can be quite some work. Therefore
you can select which language and country tags mmg should add by default with the Set
default values menu entry in the Chapters menu. The Set values button does something
similar. With it you can apply a language and/or country to the currently selected entry and all its
children.
Saving chapters to XML files can be done with Save or Save as. Save as cannot be used to write
chapters to an existing Matroska file - you'll have to use Save to Matroska file for that.
4.5. Editing existing chapters
You can load existing chapter files or chapters from Matroska files by selecting the Load option
from the Chapter editor menu. mmg will automatically detect the file type used and read the
chapters.
5. The header editor
mmg features an editor for header fields of existing Matroska files. It can be started from mmg's
"File" menu by chosing the "Header editor".
The header editor allows the user to edit certain fields of the segment information headers and of
the headers of each track without having to remux the whole file. Its usage is simple: load a file,
select the header fields you want to change, change its value, and save the file.
5.1. Adding and removing header fields
The Matroska file format allows for most header fields to be present or absent. mmg's header
editor will show inputs for all header fields it supports even if they're currently not present in the
file. It allows the user to add fields that are currently not present to the file and to remove currently
present fields from the file.
5.2. Opening an existing file
The user can start editing a file by chosing "Open" from the "File" menu. After selecting the
appropriate file the header editor will scan the file for all important elements. This can take some
time depending on the file's size. This is neccessary due to Matroska's flexible file structure.
5.3. Editing header fields
After opening the file the left pane will show one element for the segment headers and one
element for each track that is found in the file. Each node in the tree contains a number of sub-
elements which represent the actual header values. When the user selects such a sub-element
the right pane is updated to show a number of facts about the element:
its type (a number, a string etc),
its name,
a short description of its contents,
whether or not the element is currently present in the file including an option to remove it if it
is or to to add it if it isn't,
the element's original value if it was present when the file was opened and
a control to modify its content.
Most value types are self-explanatory: numbers, strings etc. The binary type however is shown as
a sequence of hex digits. The accepted formats are the same as mkvmerge's various options for
specifying segment UIDs: either a simple sequence of hex digits (e.g. 1857a7fe7d...) or the hex
numbers prefixed with "0x" before each pair (e.g. 0x18 0x57 0xa7 0xfe 0x7d...).
5.4. Validation
The user can validate your changes by chosing "Validate" from the "Headers" menu. Validation
is also run automatically each time the user wants to save the files. Validation makes sure that
the values the user supplied can be stored in the element in question. For example a number
element must not contain characters.
If validation fails then the first element failing validation is selected so that the user can correct
the mistake.
5.5. Saving the file
The user can save the changes by selecting "Save" from the "File" menu. If no changes have
been made then mmg will say so and not modify the file.
Before modifying the file mmg check if the file has been modified by another application since it
has been opened. If this is the case then mmg warns the user, discards all changes and reloads
the file in order to ensure that the file will not be corrupted.
mmg tries very hard to find suitable spots for writing the modified headers. It will overwrite
existing header elements at their original position, EbmlVoid elements and all other instances of
the headers it finds. It will also update the meta seek heads so that the headers can be found
easily by applications reading that file.
After saving the file the header editor will automatically reload and analyze it again. This is done
to ensure that no file corruoption occurs. As it slows down the process of saving the file
considerably this safety feature will be removed in a future release of mmg after enough testing
has been done.

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A guide to mkvmerge GUI (mmg)

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