Does the "enabled" flag do anything?

MKV playback, recompression, remuxing, codec packs, players, howtos, etc.
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flojo
Posts: 306
Joined: Thu Jun 22, 2023 4:27 am
Location: El Paso

Does the "enabled" flag do anything?

Post by flojo »

Does the "enabled" flag in the container do anything at all? Has anyone noticed any effect from it?

It's not listed in ffmpeg -dispositions and it's not listed in mediainfo.

Toggling it on and off has no effect in SMPlayer, VLC or Kodi.

I'm asking because I know there was a "Apex" set-top DVD player many, many years ago that did hide the stream, but that was ~20 years ago and it was the only thing I ever saw that observed it.
Mr. Red
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2023 10:19 am

Re: Does the "enabled" flag do anything?

Post by Mr. Red »

If a player is 100% compliant to the Matroska spec, it should handle disabled tracks (enabled = 0) as if they're not present/usable.
But many players ignore the flag completely, others give flags like "forced" and "default" higher priority.


From the spec:
FlagEnabled
Default: 1
"Set to 1 if the track is usable. It is possible to turn a not usable track into a usable track using chapter codecs or control tracks."
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