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makemkvcon audio and subtitle track selection

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 6:05 pm
by MickM
I have thousands of VIDEO_TS structure movies on my NAS box that I'm trying to convert to mkv. All of my movies have already been decrypted and are main movie only, however they also contain ALL of the original audio and subtitle tracks. I want to convert everything to mkv and, while I'm at it, keep ONLY the 5.1 version English language audio (where possible) and remove all subtitles (although I do have a few movies where I need a specific subtitle track). Obviously the best way for me to do this is via a script using the command line version of makemkv i.e. makemkvcon.

Inside my script the relevant command is:
/Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/MacOS/makemkvcon mkv file:Path_to_VIDEO_TS_folder all Output_Directory_Name

I can also use the following command to interrogate the movie for it's track information:
/Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/MacOS/makemkvcon info file:Path_to_VIDEO_TS_folder

The first command gets me an mkv file in the output directory (although annoyingly named !ERRtemplate_t00.mkv), however the mkv file still contains ALL audio and subtitle tracks (because of the "all" directive on the command line - the only applicable option I know of). Also an annoyance, when I play that mkv file the subtitles are now *always* displayed.

I've been tearing my hair out trying to find a way to make makemkvcon select ONLY the audio track I want (which is track 1 for over 98% of my library) and no subtitle tracks. It seems curious that the command line has the option "all" to select all tracks, but doesn't appear to have a corresponding way to select less than "all". I clearly must be missing something obvious. Can some kind person please respond and let me know if track selection in makemkvcon is doable. Thanks!