My media is stored as MKV and when originally created, I didn’t set the language so all my media files contained every language audio and subtitles. I recently found mkvtoolnix and used it to remove all the foreign language audio and subtitles to free up significant space on my server. Now most movies have a 7.1 surround track, 5.1 surround track, and at least 1 if not more stereo audio tracks. I’m not that familiar with exactly whats needed for MKV files. Would it be a good idea to remove all the audio tracks except for the surround track or do I need to keep all those audio tracks? What is a good way to determine which tracks to remove and whats the best way to go about getting them stripped out? I’m getting low on space and a little desperate to free up some more space.
None of it is needed! Initially “movies” didn’t have audio at all! Charlie Chaplin made the most of silence …
My first reaction is that this sounds like potentially a lot of work to reclaim a small amount of space.
Keep what you enjoy. If you have equipment to play back 7.1 audio and feel it is a worthwhile improvement, that’s a personal decision. It’s huge and only incrementally better, and it would be on the chopping block if I was trying to conserve space. It’s quite possible that you aren’t using the 7.1 audio at all anyway.
If you ever watch on mobile devices or TV speakers, you may wish to keep the 2.0 tracks. Plex will downmix for you, and audio transcoding is relatively easy, but the 2.0 dialog is often clearer than a downmix from 5.1.
Be careful before deleting both 7.1 and 5.1 and keeping only 2.0. It may not be the same audio at all - it could be a commentary track.
You can choose between them when you’re playing in Plex. See if you care about 7.1. See if the 2.0 is a commentary track, and if you wish to keep it or not.
Thanks for the input! Charlie Chaplin certainly was good at making the most of silence, but they don’t make movies that good anymore If any of the tracks are commentary tracks, I would like to remove those. Do you know any application that I could preview the audio before I remove it? The idea of playing the video in the plex app and changing the track doesn’t seem like it would easily translate into which track I’m deleting. I really liked using mkvtoolnix to remove the foreign language tracks, but it doesn’t allow to play the audio inside the application.
be careful as some of those tracks will be commentary tracks. I only ever keep one track, DD 5.1 or reg DTS for an average movie, and only keep the really big Dolby true HD audio tracks for action type movies. keep using the same tool.
I usually use a combination of VLC/mpc-hc, Mediainfo, and MKVtoolnix for this kind of thing.
These players let you select the audio track to listen to, and they list them in the same order as they appear in the file. So if you’ve identified the 3rd audio track as the commentary, you can disable the 3rd listed audio track in MKVtoolnix and then remux the file.
I run windows, so I use mpv.net to play them for similar reasons. maintains the audio and subtitle track in the same order, they display language tags, and labels. It is quite safe.
Thank you all for the input. Your help is greatly appreciated. I’ve decided to keep all audio tracks except for commentary tracks. Hopefully that will reduce the space a bit. I’ll also look at adding more drives to my array in the upcoming months.
If any of the tracks are commentary tracks, I would like to remove those. Do you know any application that I could preview the audio before I remove it? The idea of playing the video in the plex app and changing the track doesn’t seem like it would easily translate into which track I’m deleting. I really liked using mkvtoolnix to remove the foreign language tracks, but it doesn’t allow to play the audio inside the application.