MKVtag

This is a slimmed down wrapper script for the mkvpropedit tool of the mkvtoolnix package. It is meant to operate on multiple files at once.

Imagine you have a nas full of your favourit series and movies, all backed up from your Bluray and DVD collection using eg. MakeMKV and HandBrake to get a reasonable sized MKV.

a folder structure of the kind:

multimedia/
├── movies/
│   ├── ...
│   ├── The Boondock Saints.mkv
│   └── ...
└── series/
    ├── ...
    ├── Silicon Valley/
    │   ├── Season 1/
    │   │   ├── Silicon Valley - S01E01 - Minimum Viable Product.mkv
    │   │   ├── ...
    │   │   └── Silicon Valley - S01E08 - Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency.mkv
    │   └── ...
    └── Westworld/
        └── ...

A call of ./mkvtag -T "multimedia/**/*" will set the filename (without its extension) as the title for each .mkv file in the subtree of the multimedia directory. Note the double quotes surrounding the path argument. I am using the zsh as preferred shell, but it has also an automatic filename expansion feature. The quotation marks make sure that the python script does the job of filename expansion, which turns out to be much more efficient in terms of performance.

It does not make much sense to use it for editing a single file. In cases you just want to edit a single file or files that have distinct properties which cannot be set in a single call, I would recommend taking a look at the underlying mkvpropedit tool.

Requirements

• Python 3
• mkvpropedit (this is part of the mkvtoolnix package)

How to use

Just clone the repo or download the mkvtag.py, check that it's executable and you are ready to go. Wait! One thing... As mentoined in the previous section: You have to have the mkvtoolnix package installed. On most systems it should be available through the package manager.

Filename to title

The following example will check all files in your Movies directory for a .mkv file extension and prints out the command, which would be used for each file to set its title meta property to its filename (except the file extension). Actually it is the dry-run mode (-n/--dry-run) combined with the verbose flag (-v/--verbose) and the filename-to-title function (-T/--filename2title).

$ ./mkvtag.py -nvT ~/Movies/*

When you omit the n in -nvT the tool will actually process the files using exact the command printed in the call above.

$ ./mkvtag.py -vT ~/Movies/*

More advanced titles

I added a more advanced naming scheme for my series. Regarding the naming of the Silicon Valley episodes in the file system tree example above, the default pattern would match.

$ ./mkvtag.py -s "multimedia/series/Silicon Valley/**"

This will set the title of the episodes to "<episode number> <episode title> (<series title> - Season <season number>)". In the case of the episodes above this would be:

1. Minimum Viable Product (Silicon Valley - Season 1) ...
2. Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency (Silicon Valley - Season 1)

This is done by a regular expression substitution. More precise: It is done by the default values of the -P and -R options. You can alter the applied search pattern (-P/--pattern) as well as the replacement string (-R/--repl).
Eg. the filename Torchwood - S04E01 - Miracle Day - The New World.mkv can be turned into the title Miracle Day - Chapter 1: The New World (Torchwood, Season 4) using the following parameters:

$ ./mkvtag.py -s -P '(.*) - S0*(\d+)E0*(\d+) - (.*) - (.*).mkv' -R '\4 - Chapter \3: \5 (\1, Season \2)' "*"

See the Python 3 documentation on the regular expression module (re) for details on how to work with groups or named groups.

Basically simply use the -h switch to get help:

Usage: ./mkvtag [options] <filename> ...

This tool is meant to ease MKV tagging. It's primary purpose is to set the
filename (without extension) as video title. Use common filename patterns to
edit multiple files at once.

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -q, --quiet           Be quiet and do your work.
  -v, --verbose         Verbose output.
  -n, --dry-run         Do not actually touch anything.
  -t <tag>=<value>, --tag=<tag>=<value>
                        Set custom tag.
  -T, --filename2title  Set filename (without extension) as title.
  -s, --use-pattern     Use the pattern to parse filename and set title.
  -P <subst-pattern>, --pattern=<subst-pattern>
                        Substitution pattern.
  -R <subst-repl>, --repl=<subst-repl>
                        Substitution replacement string (`repl` argument).
  -E <path-to-executable>, --executable=<path-to-executable>
                        name or path of `mkvpropedit` (default: mkvpropedit).

Author: Yannic Labonte <yannic.labonte@gmail.com>