MKVINFO(1) User Commands MKVINFO(1)NAMEmkvinfo - Print information about elements in Matroska(TM) files
SYNOPSISmkvinfo [options] {source-filename}
DESCRIPTION
This program lists all elements contained in a Matroska(TM). The output
can be limited to a list of tracks in the file including information
about the codecs used.
-g, --gui
Start the GUI. This option is only available if mkvinfo was
compiled with GUI support.
-c, --checksums
Calculates and display the Adler32 checksum for each frame. Useful
for debugging only.
-s, --summary
Only show a terse summary of what mkvinfo(1) finds and not each
element.
-t, --track-info
Show statistics for each track in verbose mode. Also sets verbosity
to 1 if it was at level 0 before.
-x, --hexdump
Show the first 16 bytes of each frame as a hex dump.
-X, --full-hexdump
Show all bytes of each frame as a hex dump.
-z, --size
Show the size of each element including its header.
--command-line-charset character-set
Sets the character set to convert strings given on the command line
from. It defaults to the character set given by system's current
locale.
--output-charset character-set
Sets the character set to which strings are converted that are to
be output. It defaults to the character set given by system's
current locale.
-r, --redirect-output file-name
Writes all messages to the file file-name instead of to the
console. While this can be done easily with output redirection
there are cases in which this option is needed: when the terminal
reinterprets the output before writing it to a file. The character
set set with --output-charset is honored.
--ui-language code
Forces the translations for the language code to be used (e.g.
'de_DE' for the German translations). It is preferable to use the
environment variables LANG, LC_MESSAGES and LC_ALL though. Entering
'list' as the code will cause mkvinfo(1) to output a list of
available translations.
--debug topic
Turn on debugging for a specific feature. This option is only
useful for developers.
--engage feature
Turn on experimental features. A list of available features can be
requested with mkvinfo--engage list. These features are not meant
to be used in normal situations.
--gui-mode
Turns on GUI mode. In this mode specially-formatted lines may be
output that can tell a controlling GUI what's happening. These
messages follow the format '#GUI#message'. The message may be
followed by key/value pairs as in
'#GUI#message#key1=value1#key2=value2...'. Neither the messages nor
the keys are ever translated and always output in English.
This switch has nothing to do with the --gui parameter which causes
mkvinfo to display its own GUI.
-v, --verbose
Be more verbose. See the section about verbosity levels for a
description which information will be output at which level.
-h, --help
Show usage information and exit.
-V, --version
Show version information and exit.
--check-for-updates
Checks online for new releases by downloading the URL
http://mkvtoolnix-releases.bunkus.org/latest-release.xml. Four
lines will be output in key=value style: the URL from where the
information was retrieved (key version_check_url), the currently
running version (key running_version), the latest release's version
(key available_version) and the download URL (key download_url).
Afterwards the program exists with an exit code of 0 if no newer
release is available, with 1 if a newer release is available and
with 2 if an error occured (e.g. if the update information could
not be retrieved).
This option is only available if the program was built with support
for libcurl.
@options-file
Reads additional command line arguments from the file options-file.
Lines whose first non-whitespace character is a hash mark ('#') are
treated as comments and ignored. White spaces at the start and end
of a line will be stripped. Each line must contain exactly one
option.
Several chars can be escaped, e.g. if you need to start a
non-comment line with '#'. The rules are described in the section
about escaping text.
The command line 'mkvinfo -v -v input.mkv --redirect-output
info.txt' could be converted into the following option file:
# Be more verbose
-v
-v
# Parse input.mkv
input.mkv
# and write the output to info.txt
--redirect-output
info.txt
VERBOSITY LEVELS
The -v option can be used to increase mkvinfo(1)'s verbosity level and
print more information about the current file.
At level 0 mkvinfo(1) will print only the track headers it finds and
their types. mkvinfo(1) will exit as soon as the headers are parsed
completely (more technical: as soon as the first cluster is
encountered). In this level the seek head entries and the cues will not
be displayed -- even if they're located in front of the track
information.
At level 1 mkvinfo(1) will also print all Matroska(TM) elements
encountered for the complete file but the seek head entries and the cue
entries. If the summary mode is enabled then mkvinfo(1) will output the
frame position as well.
At level 2 mkvinfo(1) will also print the seek head entries, the cue
entries and the file position at which each Matroska(TM) element can be
found at.
At level 3 and above mkvinfo(1) will print some information that is not
directly connected to a Matroska(TM) element. All other elements only
print stuff about the elements that were just found. Level 3 adds meta
information to ease debugging (read: it's intended for developers
only). All lines written by level 3 are enclosed in square brackets to
make filtering them out easy.
TEXT FILES AND CHARACTER SET CONVERSIONS
For an in-depth discussion about how all tools in the MKVToolNix suite
handle character set conversions, input/output encoding, command line
encoding and console encoding please see the identically-named section
in the mkvmerge(1) man page.
EXIT CODESmkvinfo(1) exits with one of three exit codes:
· 0 -- This exit codes means that the run has completed successfully.
· 1 -- In this case mkvinfo(1) has output at least one warning, but
the run did continue. A warning is prefixed with the text
'Warning:'.
· 2 -- This exit code is used after an error occurred. mkvinfo(1)
aborts right after outputting the error message. Error messages
range from wrong command line arguments over read/write errors to
broken files.
ESCAPING SPECIAL CHARS IN TEXT
There are a few places in which special characters in text must or
should be escaped. The rules for escaping are simple: each character
that needs escaping is replaced with a backslash followed by another
character.
The rules are: ' ' (a space) becomes '\s', '"' (double quotes) becomes
'\2', ':' becomes '\c', '#' becomes '\h' and '\' (a single backslash)
itself becomes '\\'.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLESmkvinfo(1) uses the default variables that determine the system's
locale (e.g. LANG and the LC_* family). Additional variables:
MKVINFO_DEBUG, MKVTOOLNIX_DEBUG and its short form MTX_DEBUG
The content is treated as if it had been passed via the --debug
option.
MKVINFO_ENGAGE, MKVTOOLNIX_ENGAGE and its short form MTX_ENGAGE
The content is treated as if it had been passed via the --engage
option.
MKVINFO_OPTIONS, MKVTOOLNIX_OPTIONS and its short form MTX_OPTIONS
The content is split on white space. The resulting partial strings
are treated as if it had been passed as command line options. If
you need to pass special characters (e.g. spaces) then you have to
escape them (see the section about escaping special characters in
text).
SEE ALSOmkvmerge(1), mkvextract(1), mkvpropedit(1), mkvtoolnix-gui(1)WWW
The latest version can always be found at the MKVToolNix homepage[1].
AUTHOR
Moritz Bunkus <moritz@bunkus.org>
Developer
NOTES
1. the MKVToolNix homepage
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
MKVToolNix 8.8.0 2016-01-10 MKVINFO(1)
