PlexCleaner

Utility to optimize media files for Direct Play in Plex, Emby, Jellyfin.

License

Licensed under the MIT License

Build Status

Code and Pipeline is on GitHub.
Binary releases are published on GitHub Releases.
Docker images are published on Docker Hub and GitHub Container Registry.

Releases

Release Notes

Version 3.0:
- Switched docker base image from ubuntu:latest to archlinux:latest.
  - The always up to date FFmpeg and HandBrake PPA installations provided by Rob Savoury are no longer generally available, a big historic thank you to Rob.
  - Switched to Arch Linux with up to date media tools found in the Arch Linux Package Repository.
- Switched from .NET 6 to .NET 7.
  - Utilizing some new capabilities, e.g. GeneratedRegex and LibraryImport.
- Added support for custom FFmpeg and HandBrake command line arguments.
  - See the Custom FFmpeg and HandBrake CLI Parameters section for usage details.
  - Custom options allows for e.g. AV1 video codec, Intel QuickSync encoding, NVidia NVENC encoding, custom profiles, etc.
  - Removed the ConvertOptions:EnableH265Encoder, ConvertOptions:VideoEncodeQuality and ConvertOptions:AudioEncodeCodec options.
  - Replaced with ConvertOptions:FfMpegOptions and ConvertOptions:HandBrakeOptions options.
  - On v3 schema upgrade old ConvertOptions settings will be upgrade to equivalent settings.
- Added support for IETF / RFC 5646 / BCP 47 language tag formats.
  - See the Language Matching section usage for details.
  - IETF language tags allows for greater flexibility in Matroska player language matching.
    - E.g. pt-BR for Brazilian Portuguese vs. por for Portuguese.
    - E.g. zh-Hans for simplified Chinese vs. chi for Chinese.
  - Update ProcessOptions:DefaultLanguage and ProcessOptions:KeepLanguages from ISO 639-2B to RFC 5646 format, e.g. eng to en.
    - On v3 schema upgrade old ISO 639-2B 3 letter tags will be replaced with generic RFC 5646 tags.
  - Added ProcessOptions.SetIetfLanguageTags to conditionally remux files using MkvMerge to apply IETF language tags when not set.
    - When enabled all files without IETF tags will be remuxed in order to set IETF language tags, this could be time consuming on large collections of older media that lack the now common IETF tags.
  - FFmpeg and HandBrake removes IETF language tags.
    - Files are remuxed using MkvMerge, and IETF tags are restored using MkvPropEdit, after any FFmpeg or HandBrake operation.
    - If you care and can, please do communicate the need for IETF language support to the FFmpeg and HandBrake development teams.
  - Added warnings and attempt to repair when the Language and LanguageIetf are set and are invalid or do not match.
  - MkvMerge --identify added the --normalize-language-ietf extlang option to reported e.g. zh-cmn-Hant vs. the normalized cmn-Hant.
- Added ProcessOptions:KeepOriginalLanguage to keep tracks marked as original language.
- Added ProcessOptions:RemoveClosedCaptions to conditionally vs. always remove closed captions.
- Added ProcessOptions:SetTrackFlags to set track flags based on track title keywords, e.g. SDH -> HearingImpaired.
- Added createschema command to create the settings JSON schema file, no longer need to use Sandbox project to create the schema file.
- Added warnings when multiple tracks of the same kind have a Default flag set.
- Added --logwarning commandline option to filter log file output to warnings and errors, console still gets all output.
- Fixed bitrate calculation packet filter logic to exclude negative timestamps leading to out of bounds exceptions, see FFmpeg avoid_negative_ts.
- Fixed sidecar media file hash calculation logic to open media file read only and share read, avoiding file access or sharing violations.
- Updated DeleteInvalidFiles logic to delete any file that fails processing, not just files that fail verification.
- Updated RemoveDuplicateLanguages logic to use MkvMerge IETF language tags.
- Updated RemoveDuplicateTracks logic to account for Matroska track flags.
- Refactored JSON schema versioning logic to use record instead of class allowing for derived classes to inherited attributes vs. needing to duplicate all attributes.
- Refactored track selection logic to simplify containment and use with lambda filters.
- Refactored verify and repair logic, became too complicated.
- Removed forced file flush and waiting for IO to flush logic, unnecessarily slows down processing and is ineffective.
- Settings JSON schema updated from v2 to v3 to account for new and modified settings.
  - Older settings schemas will automatically be upgraded with compatible settings to v3 on first run.
- Breaking Change Removed the reprocess commandline option, logic was very complex with limited value, use reverify instead.
- Breaking Change Refactored commandline arguments to only add relevant options to commands that use them vs. adding global options to all commands.
  - Maintaining commandline backwards compatibility was complicated, and the change is unfortunately a breaking change.
  - The following global options have been removed and added to their respective commands:
    - --settingsfile used by several commands.
    - --parallel used by the process command.
    - --threadcount used by the process command.
  - Move the option from the global options to follow the specific command, e.g.:
    - From: PlexCleaner --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json defaultsettings ...
    - To: PlexCleaner defaultsettings --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json ...
    - From: PlexCleaner --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json --parallel --threadcount 2 process ...
    - To: PlexCleaner process --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json --parallel --threadcount 2 ...
See Release History for older Release Notes.

Questions or Issues

Use the Discussions forum for general questions.
Report bugs in the Issues tracker.

Use Cases

The objective of PlexCleaner is to modify media content such that it will always Direct Play in Plex, Emby, Jellyfin.

Below are examples of issues that can be resolved using the primary process command:

Container file formats other than MKV are not supported by all platforms, re-multiplex to MKV.
Licensing for some codecs like MPEG-2 prevents hardware decoding, re-encode to H.264.
Some video codecs like MPEG-4 or VC-1 cause playback issues, re-encode to H.264.
Some H.264 video profiles like Constrained Baseline@30 cause playback issues, re-encode to H.264 High@40.
On some displays interlaced video cause playback issues, deinterlace using HandBrake and the --comb-detect --decomb options.
Some audio codecs like Vorbis or WMAPro are not supported by the client platform, re-encode to AC3.
Some subtitle tracks like VOBsub cause hangs when the MuxingMode attribute is not set, re-multiplex to set the correct MuxingMode.
Automatic audio and subtitle track selection requires the track language to be set, set the language for unknown tracks.
Duplicate audio or subtitle tracks of the same language cause issues with player track selection, delete duplicate tracks, and keep the best quality audio tracks.
Corrupt media streams cause playback issues, verify stream integrity, and try to automatically repair by re-encoding.
Some WiFi or 100Mbps Ethernet connected devices with small read buffers hang when playing high bitrate content, warn when media bitrate exceeds the network bitrate.
Dolby Vision is only supported on DV capable displays, warn when the HDR profile is Dolby Vision (profile 5) vs. Dolby Vision / SMPTE ST 2086 (profile 7) that supports DV and HDR10 displays.
EIA-608 Closed Captions embedded in video streams can't be disable or managed from the player, remove embedded closed captions from video streams.

Performance Considerations

To improve processing performance of large media collections, the media file attributes and processing state is stored in sidecar files. (filename.mkv -> filename.PlexCleaner)
Sidecar files allow re-processing of the same files to be very fast as the state will be read from the sidecar vs. re-computed from the media file.
The sidecar maintains a hash of small parts of the media file (timestamps are unreliable), and the media file will be reprocessed when a change in the media file is detected.
Re-multiplexing is an IO intensive operation and re-encoding is a CPU intensive operation.
On systems with high core counts the --parallel option can be used to process files concurrently.
Parallel processing is useful when a single instance of FFmpeg or HandBrake does not saturate the CPU resources of the system.
When parallel processing is enabled, the default thread count is half the number of system cores, and can be changed using the --threadcount option.
The initial process run on a large collection can take a long time to complete.
Processing can be interrupted using Ctl-C, re-running the same command will resume processing.
Processing very large media collections on docker may result in a very large docker log file, set appropriate docker logging options.

Installation

Docker builds are the easiest and most up to date way to run, and can be used on any platform that supports x86-64 images.
Alternatively, install directly on Windows or Linux following the provided instructions.

Docker

Builds are published on Docker Hub and GitHub Container Registry.
Images are tagged with specific build numbers, or latest for current, or develop for beta or pre-release builds.
- E.g. docker pull ptr727/plexcleaner:latest
- E.g. docker pull ptr727/plexcleaner:develop
- E.g. docker pull ptr727/plexcleaner:2.10.17
Images are updated weekly with the latest upstream updates.
The container has all the prerequisite 3rd party tools pre-installed.
Map your host volumes, and make sure the user has permission to access and modify media files.
The container is intended to be used in interactive mode, for long running operations run in a screen session.
See examples below for instructions on getting started.

Example, run in an interactive shell:

# The host "/data/media" directory is mapped to the container "/media" directory
# Replace the volume mappings to suit your needs

# Run the bash shell in an interactive session
docker run \
  -it \
  --rm \
  --pull always \
  --name PlexCleaner \
  --volume /data/media:/media:rw \
  ptr727/plexcleaner \
  /bin/bash

# Create default settings file
# Edit the settings file to suit your needs
/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner \
  defaultsettings \
  --settingsfile /media/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner.json

# Process media files
/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner \
  --logfile /media/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner.log \
  process \
  --settingsfile /media/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner.json \
  --mediafiles /media/Movies \
  --mediafiles /media/Series

# Exit the interactive session
exit

Example, run in a screen session:

# Start a new screen session
screen

# Or attach to an existing screen session
screen -r

# Make sure the media file permissions allow writing
sudo chown -R nobody:users /data/media
sudo chmod -R u=rwx,g=rwx+s,o=rx /data/media

# Run the process command in an interactive session
docker run \
  -it \
  --rm \
  --pull always
  --log-driver json-file --log-opt max-size=10m \
  --name PlexCleaner \
  --user nobody:users \
  --env TZ=America/Los_Angeles \
  --volume /data/media:/media:rw \
  ptr727/plexcleaner \
  /PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner \
    --logfile /media/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner.log \
    --logwarning \
    process \
    --settingsfile /media/PlexCleaner/PlexCleaner.json \
    --parallel \
    --mediafiles /media/Movies \
    --mediafiles /media/Series

Windows

Install the .NET Runtime.
Download PlexCleaner and extract the pre-compiled binaries.
Or compile from code using Visual Studio or VSCode or the .NET SDK.
Create a default JSON settings file using the defaultsettings command:
- PlexCleaner defaultsettings --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json
- Modify the settings to suit your needs.
Download the required 3rd party tools using the checkfornewtools command:
- PlexCleaner checkfornewtools --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json
- The default Tools folder will be created in the same folder as the PlexCleaner binary file.
- The tool version information will be stored in Tools\Tools.json.
- Keep the 3rd party tools updated by periodically running the checkfornewtools command, or enabling the ToolsOptions:AutoUpdate setting.

Linux

Automatic downloading of Linux 3rd party tools are not supported, consider using the Docker build instead.
Manually install the 3rd party tools, e.g. following steps similar to the Docker file commands.
Download PlexCleaner and extract the pre-compiled binaries.
Or compile from code using the .NET SDK.
Create a default JSON settings file using the defaultsettings command:
- ./PlexCleaner defaultsettings --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json
- Modify the settings to suit your needs.

Configuration

Create a default JSON configuration file by running:
PlexCleaner defaultsettings --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json

Following is the default JSON settings with usage comments:

{
  // JSON Schema
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ptr727/PlexCleaner/main/PlexCleaner.schema.json",
  // JSON Schema version
  "SchemaVersion": 3,
  // Tools options
  "ToolsOptions": {
    // Use system installed tools
    // Default true on Linux
    "UseSystem": false,
    // Tools folder, ignored when UseSystem is true
    "RootPath": ".\\Tools\\",
    // Tools directory relative to binary location
    "RootRelative": true,
    // Automatically check for and update new tool versions
    "AutoUpdate": false
  },
  // Convert options
  "ConvertOptions": {
    // FFmpeg commandline options
    "FfMpegOptions": {
      // Video encoding option following -c:v
      "Video": "libx264 -crf 22 -preset medium",
      // Audio encoding option following -c:a
      "Audio": "ac3",
      // Global options
      "Global": "-analyzeduration 2147483647 -probesize 2147483647",
      // Output options
      "Output": "-max_muxing_queue_size 1024 -abort_on empty_output"
    },
    // HandBrake commandline options
    "HandBrakeOptions": {
      // Video encoding options following --encode
      "Video": "x264 --quality 22 --encoder-preset medium",
      // Audio encoding option following --aencode
      "Audio": "copy --audio-fallback ac3"
    }
  },
  // Process options
  "ProcessOptions": {
    // Delete empty folders
    "DeleteEmptyFolders": true,
    // Delete non-media files
    // Any file that is not in KeepExtensions or in ReMuxExtensions or MKV will be deleted
    "DeleteUnwantedExtensions": true,
    // File extensions to keep but not process, e.g. subtitles, cover art, info, partial, etc.
    "KeepExtensions": [
      ".partial~",
      ".nfo",
      ".jpg",
      ".srt",
      ".smi",
      ".ssa",
      ".ass",
      ".vtt"
    ],
    // Enable re-mux non-MKV files to MKV
    "ReMux": true,
    // File extensions to remux to MKV
    "ReMuxExtensions": [
      ".avi",
      ".m2ts",
      ".ts",
      ".vob",
      ".mp4",
      ".m4v",
      ".asf",
      ".wmv",
      ".dv"
    ],
    // Enable deinterlace of interlaced media
    // Interlace detection is not absolute and uses interlaced frame counting
    "DeInterlace": true,
    // Enable re-encode of audio or video tracks as specified in ReEncodeVideo and ReEncodeAudioFormats
    "ReEncode": true,
    // Re-encode the video if the Format, Codec, and Profile values match
    // Empty fields will match with any value
    // Use FfProbe attribute naming, and the `printmediainfo` command to get media info
    "ReEncodeVideo": [
      {
        "Format": "mpeg2video"
      },
      {
        "Format": "mpeg4",
        "Codec": "dx50"
      },
      {
        "Format": "msmpeg4v3",
        "Codec": "div3"
      },
      {
        "Format": "msmpeg4v2",
        "Codec": "mp42"
      },
      {
        "Format": "vc1"
      },
      {
        "Format": "h264",
        "Profile": "Constrained Baseline@30"
      },
      {
        "Format": "wmv3"
      },
      {
        "Format": "msrle"
      },
      {
        "Format": "rawvideo"
      },
      {
        "Format": "indeo5"
      }
    ],
    // Re-encode matching audio codecs
    // Use FfProbe attribute naming, and the `printmediainfo` command to get media info
    "ReEncodeAudioFormats": [
      "flac",
      "mp2",
      "vorbis",
      "wmapro",
      "pcm_s16le",
      "opus",
      "wmav2",
      "pcm_u8",
      "adpcm_ms"
    ],
    // Set default language if tracks have an undefined language
    "SetUnknownLanguage": true,
    // Default track language in RFC-5646 format
    "DefaultLanguage": "en",
    // Enable removing of unwanted language tracks
    "RemoveUnwantedLanguageTracks": false,
    // Track language tags to keep in RFC-5646 format
    "KeepLanguages": [
      "en",
      "af",
      "zh",
      "id"
    ],
    // Keep all tracks flagged as original language
    "KeepOriginalLanguage": true,
    // Enable removing of duplicate tracks of the same type and language
    "RemoveDuplicateTracks": false,
    // Prioritized audio tracks by by codec type
    // Use MkvMerge attribute naming, and the `printmediainfo` command to get media info
    "PreferredAudioFormats": [
      "truehd atmos",
      "truehd",
      "dts-hd master audio",
      "dts-hd high resolution audio",
      "dts",
      "e-ac-3",
      "ac-3"
    ],
    // Enable removing of tags, titles, attachments, etc. from the media file
    "RemoveTags": true,
    // Enable removing of EIA-608 Closed Captions embedded in video streams
    "RemoveClosedCaptions": true,
    // Set track flags based on track title keywords
    "SetTrackFlags": true,
    // Set IETF language tags when not present
    "SetIetfLanguageTags": true,
    // Speedup media re-processing by saving media info and processed state in sidecar files
    "UseSidecarFiles": true,
    // Invalidate sidecar files when tool versions change
    "SidecarUpdateOnToolChange": false,
    // Enable verification of media stream content
    "Verify": true,
    // Restore media file modified timestamp to original pre-processed value
    "RestoreFileTimestamp": false,
    // List of files to skip during processing
    // Files that previously failed verify or repair will automatically be skipped
    // Non-ascii characters must be JSON escaped, e.g. "Fiancé" into "Fianc\u00e9"
    "FileIgnoreList": [
      "\\\\server\\share1\\path1\\file1.mkv",
      "\\\\server\\share2\\path2\\file2.mkv"
    ]
  },
  // Monitor options
  "MonitorOptions": {
    // Time to wait after detecting a file change
    "MonitorWaitTime": 60,
    // Time to wait between file retry operations
    "FileRetryWaitTime": 5,
    // Number of times to retry a file operation
    "FileRetryCount": 2
  },
  // Verify options
  "VerifyOptions": {
    // Attempt to repair media files that fail verification
    "AutoRepair": true,
    // Delete media files that fail processing
    "DeleteInvalidFiles": false,
    // Add media files that fail processing to the FileIgnoreList setting
    // Not required when using sidecar files
    "RegisterInvalidFiles": false,
    // Minimum required playback duration in seconds
    "MinimumDuration": 300,
    // Time in seconds to verify media streams, 0 will verify entire file
    "VerifyDuration": 0,
    // Time in seconds to find interlaced frames, 0 will process entire file
    "IdetDuration": 0,
    // Maximum bitrate in bits per second, 0 will skip computation
    "MaximumBitrate": 100000000,
    // Skip files older than the minimum file age in days, 0 will process all files
    "MinimumFileAge": 0
  }
}

Custom FFmpeg and HandBrake CLI Parameters

The ConvertOptions:FfMpegOptions and ConvertOptions:HandBrakeOptions settings allows for custom CLI parameters to be used during processing.

Note that hardware assisted encoding options are operating system, hardware, and tool version specific, for example configurations see the Jellyfin documentation.
The listed example configurations are from documentation and based on minimal testing with Intel QuickSync on Windows only, please discuss and post working configurations in Discussions.

FFmpeg Options

See the FFmpeg documentation for complete commandline option details.
The typical FFmpeg commandline is ffmpeg [global_options] {[input_file_options] -i input_url} ... {[output_file_options] output_url}.
E.g. ffmpeg "-analyzeduration 2147483647 -probesize 2147483647 -i "/media/foo.mkv" -max_muxing_queue_size 1024 -abort_on empty_output -hide_banner -nostats -map 0 -c:v libx265 -crf 20 -preset medium -c:a ac3 -c:s copy -f matroska "/media/bar.mkv"

Settings allows for custom configuration of:

FfMpegOptions:Global: Global options, e.g. -analyzeduration 2147483647 -probesize 2147483647
FfMpegOptions:Output: Output options, e.g. -max_muxing_queue_size 1024 -abort_on empty_output
FfMpegOptions:Video: Video encoder options following the -c:v parameter, e.g. libx264 -crf 22 -preset medium
FfMpegOptions:Audio: Audio encoder options following the -c:a parameter, e.g. ac3

Get encoder options:

List all supported encoders: ffmpeg -encoders
List options supported by an encoder: ffmpeg -h encoder=libsvtav1

Example video encoder options:

H.264: libx264 -crf 22 -preset medium
H.265: libx265 -crf 26 -preset medium
AV1: libsvtav1 -crf 30 -preset 5

Example hardware assisted video encoding options:

NVidia NVENC:
- See NVidia and FFmpeg documentation.
- NVENC encoder options: ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_nvenc
- FfMpegOptions:Global: Add -hwaccel cuda -hwaccel_output_format cuda to the defaults.
- FfMpegOptions:Video: h264_nvenc
Intel QuickSync:
- See FFmpeg documentation.
- QuickSync encoder options: ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_qsv
- FfMpegOptions:Global: Add -hwaccel qsv -hwaccel_output_format qsv to the defaults.
- FfMpegOptions:Video: h264_qsv

HandBrake Options

See the HandBrake documentation for complete commandline option details.
The typical HandBrake commandline is HandBrakeCLI [options] -i <source> -o <destination>.
E.g. HandBrakeCLI --input "/media/foo.mkv" --output "/media/bar.mkv" --format av_mkv --encoder x265 --quality 20 --encoder-preset medium --comb-detect --decomb --all-audio --aencoder copy --audio-fallback ac3

Settings allows for custom configuration of:

HandBrakeOptions:Video: Video encoder options following the --encode parameter, e.g. x264 --quality 22 --encoder-preset medium
HandBrakeOptions:Audio: Audio encoder options following the --aencode parameter, e.g. copy --audio-fallback ac3

Get encoder options:

List all supported encoders: HandBrakeCLI.exe --help
List presets supported by an encoder: HandBrakeCLI --encoder-preset-list svt_av1

Example video encoder options:

H.264: x264 --quality 22 --encoder-preset medium
H.265: x265 --quality 26 --encoder-preset medium
AV1: svt_av1 --quality 30 --encoder-preset 5

Example hardware assisted video encoding options:

NVidia NVENC:
- See HandBrake documentation.
- HandBrakeOptions:Video: nvenc_h264
Intel QuickSync:
- See HandBrake documentation.
- HandBrakeOptions:Video: qsv_h264

Note that HandBrake is primarily used for video deinterlacing, and only as backup encoder when FFmpeg fails.
The default HandBrakeOptions:Audio configuration is set to copy --audio-fallback ac3 that will copy all supported audio tracks as is, and only encode to ac3 if the audio codec is not natively supported.

Language Matching

Language tag matching now supports IETF / RFC 5646 / BCP 47 tag formats as implemented by MkvMerge.
During processing the absence of IETF language tags will treated as a track warning, and an IETF language will be assigned from the ISO639-3-2 tag.
If ProcessOptions.SetIetfLanguageTags is enabled MkvMerge will be used to remux the file using the --normalize-language-ietf extlang option, see the MkvMerge docs for more details.

Tags are in the form of language-extlang-script-region-variant-extension-privateuse, and matching happens left to right.
E.g. pt will match pt Portuguese, or pt-BR Brazilian Portuguese, or pt-BR Portugal Portuguese.
E.g. pt-BR will only match only pt-BR Brazilian Portuguese.
E.g. zh will match zh Chinese, or zh-Hans simplified Chinese, or zh-Hant for traditional Chinese, and other variants.
E.g. zh-Hans will only match zh-Hans simplified Chinese.

See the W3C Language tags in HTML and XML and BCP47 language subtag lookup for more details.

Usage

Use the PlexCleaner --help commandline option to get a list of commands and options.
One of the commands must be specified, and some commands have additional required options.
To get more help for a specific command run PlexCleaner <command> --help.

> ./PlexCleaner --help
Description:
  Utility to optimize media files for Direct Play in Plex, Emby, Jellyfin

Usage:
  PlexCleaner [command] [options]

Options:
  --logfile <logfile>  Path to log file
  --logappend          Append to log file vs. overwrite
  --logwarning         Log only warnings and errors to log file
  --debug              Wait for debugger to attach
  --version            Show version information
  -?, -h, --help       Show help and usage information

Commands:
  defaultsettings   Write default values to settings file
  checkfornewtools  Check for and download new tools
  process           Process media files
  monitor           Monitor and process media file changes in folders
  remux             Re-Multiplex media files
  reencode          Re-Encode media files
  deinterlace       De-Interlace media files
  createsidecar     Create new sidecar files
  getsidecarinfo    Print sidecar file attribute information
  gettagmap         Print attribute tag-map created from media files
  getmediainfo      Print media file attribute information
  gettoolinfo       Print tool file attribute information
  removesubtitles   Remove all subtitles
  createschema      Write settings JSON schema to file

Process Media Files

The process command will process the media content using options as defined in the settings file and the optional commandline arguments:

Delete files with extensions not in the KeepExtensions list.
Re-multiplex containers in the ReMuxExtensions list to MKV container format.
Remove all tags, titles, thumbnails, and attachments from the media file.
Set the language to DefaultLanguage for any track with an undefined language.
If multiple audio tracks of the same language but different encoding formats are present, set the default track based on PreferredAudioFormats.
Remove tracks with languages not in the KeepLanguages list.
Remove duplicate tracks, where duplicates are tracks of the same type and language.
Re-multiplex the media file if required.
Deinterlace the video track if interlaced.
Remove EIA-608 Closed Captions from video streams.
Re-encode video if video format matches ReEncodeVideo.
Re-encode audio if audio matches the ReEncodeAudioFormats list.
Verify the media container and stream integrity, if corrupt try to automatically repair, else conditionally delete the file.

The --mediafiles option can include multiple files or directories, e.g. --mediafiles path1 --mediafiles "path with space" --mediafiles file1 --mediafiles file2.
Paths with spaces should be double quoted.

The --reverify option is used to re-verify and repair media files that are in the VerifyFailed state, and by default would be skipped due to processing optimization logic.

Add the --parallel option to process multiple files concurrently. When parallel processing is enabled, the default thread count is half the number of cores, override the thread count using the --threadcount option.

Example:
PlexCleaner --logfile PlexCleaner.log process --settingsfile PlexCleaner.json --parallel --mediafiles "C:\Foo With Space\Test.mkv" --mediafiles D:\Media

Run PlexCleaner process --help for a list of all commandline options.

> ./PlexCleaner process --help
Description:
  Process media files

Usage:
  PlexCleaner process [options]

Options:
  --settingsfile <settingsfile> (REQUIRED)  Path to settings file
  --mediafiles <mediafiles> (REQUIRED)      Media file or folder to process, repeat for multiples
  --parallel                                Enable parallel processing
  --threadcount <threadcount>               Number of threads to use for parallel processing
  --testsnippets                            Create short video clips, useful during testing
  --testnomodify                            Do not make any modifications, useful during testing
  --reverify                                Re-verify and repair media in VerifyFailed state
  --logfile <logfile>                       Path to log file
  --logappend                               Append to log file vs. overwrite
  --logwarning                              Log only warnings and errors to log file
  --debug                                   Wait for debugger to attach
  -?, -h, --help                            Show help and usage information

Re-Multiplex, Re-Encode, De-Interlace

The remux command will re-multiplex the media files using MkvMerge.

The reencode command will re-encode the media files using FFmpeg and the ConvertOptions:FfMpegOptions settings.

The deinterlace command will re-encode and de-interlace interlaced media files using HandBrake and the ConvertOptions:HandBrakeOptions settings with --comb-detect --decomb enabled.

Monitor

The monitor command will watch the specified folders for changes, and process the directories with changes.

Note that the FileSystemWatcher is not always reliable on Linux or NAS Samba shares.
Also note that changes made directly to the underlying filesystem will not trigger when watching the SMB shares, e.g. when a Docker container writes to a mapped volume, the SMB view of that volume will not trigger.

Create Sidecar

The createsidecar command will create or re-create sidecar files.
All existing state attributes will be deleted.

GetTagMap, GetMediaInfo, GetToolInfo, GetSidecarInfo

The gettagmap command will calculate and print attribute mappings between between different media information tools.

The getmediainfo command will print media attribute information.

The gettoolinfo command will print tool attribute information.

The getsidecarinfo command will print sidecar attribute information.

Remove Subtitles

The removesubtitles command will remove all subtitle tracks from the media files.
This is useful when the subtitles are forced or contains offensive language or advertising.

3rd Party Tools

7-Zip
MediaInfo
HandBrake
MKVToolNix
FFmpeg
ISO language codes
Xml2CSharp
quicktype
regex101.com
HtmlAgilityPack
Newtonsoft.Json
System.CommandLine
Serilog
Nerdbank.GitVersioning
Docker Login
Docker Setup Buildx
Setup .NET Core SDK
Build and push Docker images
Rob Savoury PPA
Arch Linux

Sample Media Files

Kodi
JellyFish
DemoWorld
MPlayer

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

README.md

README.md

PlexCleaner

License

Build Status

Releases

Release Notes

Questions or Issues

Use Cases

Performance Considerations

Installation

Docker

Windows

Linux

Configuration

Custom FFmpeg and HandBrake CLI Parameters

FFmpeg Options

HandBrake Options

Language Matching

Usage

Process Media Files

Re-Multiplex, Re-Encode, De-Interlace

Monitor

Create Sidecar

GetTagMap, GetMediaInfo, GetToolInfo, GetSidecarInfo

Remove Subtitles

3rd Party Tools

Sample Media Files

Files

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

PlexCleaner

License

Build Status

Releases

Release Notes

Questions or Issues

Use Cases

Performance Considerations

Installation

Docker

Windows

Linux

Configuration

Custom FFmpeg and HandBrake CLI Parameters

FFmpeg Options

HandBrake Options

Language Matching

Usage

Process Media Files

Re-Multiplex, Re-Encode, De-Interlace

Monitor

Create Sidecar

GetTagMap, GetMediaInfo, GetToolInfo, GetSidecarInfo

Remove Subtitles

3rd Party Tools

Sample Media Files