Utilities#
This page has a list of helpful software utilities for various purposes.
Technical Analysis#
- MediaInfo
Convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files. There’s also a Python wrapper for programmatic use.
- BDInfo
BDInfo tool to collect video and audio technical specifications from Blu-ray discs.
Muxing/Remuxing#
- MKVToolNix
Set of tools to create, alter and inspect Matroska files.
- MakeMKV
Backup DVDs and Blu-rays as Matroska files. Can also backup Blu-ray discs to HDD.
- PSP-UMD-Remux
Simply Python script to assist in PSP UMD-Video ISO Remuxing.
Demuxing#
- eac3to
Primarily used to demux and/or convert Audio tracks from Blu-rays and DVDs to Matroska files. It can also be used to demux Video tracks, and is a common alternative to MakeMKV.
- Inviska MKV Extract
Batch demux any and all tracks from Matroska files with a simple GUI. Chapters are extracted to XML Matroska format.
- Chapter-Demuxer
Extract Chapters from Matroska files to Simple Matroska format.
- pymplschapters
Extract Chapters from Blu-ray MPLS playlists to XML Matroska format.
Subtitles#
- SubtitleEdit
Incredibly powerful Subtitle Viewer, Editor, and OCR software. Very useful to tweak or fix captions, sync captions, and so much more.
- DVDSubEdit
Old but gold DVD VobSub OCR tool. Generally more consistent and reliable OCR compared to SubtitleEdit.
- BDSup2Sub
Old but gold software for converting between Image-based Subtitle formats of Blu-ray and DVD. This does not OCR.
- ffsubsync
Language-agnostic automatic synchronization of subtitles with video. In some scenarios, this can be extremely powerful.
Frame Serving#
These utilities provide Frame Indexing, Decoding, and Serving to supported NLEs. The only NLEs I know with support for all of these, is VapourSynth and AviSynth.
Both are Script-based NLEs and do not use GUIs but rather Python scripts. GUIs are available, but are more so for previewing the script output. There are GUIs for applying changes, effects, and so on, but are very limited and the only one I’m aware of is Japanese-only.
- DGMpgDec (DGIndex)
MPEG-1/2 Decoder and Frame Server. DGMPGDec is a multi-project containing DGIndex, DGDecode, and DGVfapi.
- L-SMASH
Video Decoder and Frame Server using Libavcodec, allowing support for a very wide range of codecs, all with accurate frame indexing. I highly recommend L-SMASH over FFMS/FFMS2 where possible, it’s generally less buggy. Both FFMS2 and L-SMASH ultimately use Libavcodec, therefore L-SMASH is a great alternative to FFMS2.
- FFMS2 (FFmpegSource2)
Video Decoder and Frame Server using FFmpeg, allowing support for a very wide range of codecs. I’ve encountered bugs and problems usually relating to poor support for x/y/z version of FFmpeg, seeking is a mess sometimes, decoding is unreliable overall. I’ve had a lot more success with L-SMASH over FFMS2.
Filenames and Documentation#
- FileBot ($6, trial)
Automate filenames for Movies, TV, and Music files. Super handy to automatically set a filename based on the Content and it’s Streams.
Take a look at some template’s I’ve made for Movie and TV remuxes: https://gist.github.com/rlaphoenix/06b374c87f27c431c1cd3ae25e5247a9
- nfog
Automate NFO and Description templates using a bit of Python. Supports Artwork files and can be run with a simple CLI call.
Chocolatey packages#
Here’s a list of repositories with Chocolatey packages not added to the official repository.