GitHub: https://github.com/iwalton3/media-scripts/tree/master/media-discard
This script allows you to delete unwanted audio tracks not in your language to save space on your Plex server. Extra audio tracks can account for a lot of storage space, with some foreign-language surround sound audio taking up over 10 percent of the file size.
This script will automatically repack your mkv files to remove audio and subtitles that are not in your preferred language. The script defaults to English and Japanese (for anime). Please be warned that this script will irrevocably delete content from your library and will cause files to be re-written to disk. Use it wisely.
You need python3 and mkvtoolnix to use this script. The script is intended for Linux, but you may be able to get it to run in cygwin. To adjust the languages to save, change the permitted_locales variable.
Example usage:
find /path/to/Plex -iname "*.mkv" | while read -r line; do PYTHONUNBUFFERED="yes" plex-media-discard.py "$line" 2>&1 | tee -a /var/log/plex-discard-log; done
Script contents:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
import subprocess
import json
import shutil
import os.path
import os
import random
fname = sys.argv[1]
metadata = json.loads(subprocess.check_output(["mkvmerge","-J",fname]).decode())
permitted_locales = {None, 'und', 'eng', 'jpn', 'mis', 'mul', 'zxx'}
saved_audio_tracks = []
saved_subtitle_tracks = []
has_bad_tracks = False
for track in metadata["tracks"]:
props = track["properties"]
if track["type"] == "audio":
if props["language"] in permitted_locales:
saved_audio_tracks.append(str(track["id"]))
else:
has_bad_tracks = True
print("Discard audio: #{0} {1} ({2})".format(track["id"], props.get("track_name"), props.get("language")))
elif track["type"] == "subtitles":
if props["language"] in permitted_locales:
saved_subtitle_tracks.append(str(track["id"]))
else:
has_bad_tracks = True
print("Discard subtitle: #{0} {1} ({2})".format(track["id"], props.get("track_name"), props.get("language")))
if has_bad_tracks:
if len(saved_audio_tracks) == 0:
print("File {0} would have no audio tracks!".format(fname))
sys.exit(1)
tempfile = "_temp_{0}.mkv".format(random.randint(0,1000000))
options = ["mkvmerge","-o",tempfile,
"-a",",".join(saved_audio_tracks)]
if len(saved_subtitle_tracks) == 0:
options.append("-S")
else:
options.extend(["-s", ",".join(saved_subtitle_tracks)])
options.append(fname)
subprocess.check_call(options)
orig_size = os.path.getsize(fname)
new_size = os.path.getsize(tempfile)
if orig_size * 0.50 > new_size:
print("File {0} is too small after conversion.".format(fname))
os.remove(tempfile)
sys.exit(1)
print("Moving file {0}...".format(fname))
shutil.move(fname, fname+".bak")
try:
shutil.move(tempfile, fname)
except Exception:
print("File {0} could not be moved.".format(fname))
shutil.move(fname+".bak", fname)
if os.path.isfile(fname+".bak"):
os.remove(fname+".bak")
print("Size reduced {0} MiB ({1:n}%)".format((orig_size-new_size)//(1024**2), 100-(new_size*100//orig_size)))
else:
print("File {0} is already minified!".format(fname))
