Available now for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows

Sep 12, 2016 21:45 GMT  ·  By

On September 11, 2016, MKVToolNix developer Moritz Bunkus released the first maintenance update to the major 9.4 series, version 9.4.1, with various improvements to the mkvmerge component, and several bug fixes.

MKVToolNix 9.4.1 is dubbed "Black Rain," and according to the release notes, it looks like it adds many improvements to the mkvmerge tool, a component that lets users merge MKV files with different audio, video, or subtitle streams. For example, the HEVC parser, MP4 reader, and AAC reader received various fixes.

Moreover, the muxing operation will no longer be aborted when attempting to use –sync values of several minutes with specific container formats, and an invalid memory access was addressed. However, it appears that a bug was present in the MKVToolNix 9.4.1, so the developer was quick to fix it and release a new build.

MKVToolNix 9.4.2 is now the latest version available

Therefore, MKVToolNix 9.4.2 is now the latest stable version available, and it contains a fix for a bug that affected both the HEVC and AVC readers in the mkvmerge component. Here's what Moritz Bunkus has to say about this nasty regression introduced in the MKVToolNix 9.4.1 release.

"v9.4.1 contains a change to both readers so that they will refuse to handle files where the detected pixel width or height is equal to or less than 0. This check was wrong in certain cases causing mkvmerge to reject a file as an unsupported file type. This has been fixed while keeping the constraints on width & height having to be positive."

We recommend users to update to MKVToolNix 9.4.2 directly if they're using MKVToolNix 9.4.0 on their personal computers, and skip the 9.4.1 release. You can download the source and binaries of MKVToolNix 9.4.2 for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now via our website.