Pre-Release - always the latest available code

Pre-Release: Release with newest features

• NO stable release - may cause data loss or unexpected behaviour
• contains always the latest available build with the newest features and fixes
• made for testers and all others waiting on a specific feature or bugfix

Install instructions

Docker

docker build . --build-arg M4B_TOOL_DOWNLOAD_LINK=https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/files/15313912/m4b-tool.tar.gz -t m4b-tool

Windows

Just replace the m4b-tool.phar with the one in the latest tar.gz-file.

MacOS / Linux:

• Download and extract the latest pre-release
• Replace m4b-tool with the extracted m4b-tool.phar:

# show m4b-tool install path, e.g. /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool
which m4b-tool

# download latest pre-release
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/files/15313912/m4b-tool.tar.gz
tar xzf m4b-tool.tar.gz

# backup old version
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool.2020-02-29.phar

# install new version
sudo mv m4b-tool.phar /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool

# check version
m4b-tool version

Downloads with build dates

• 2024-05-14: m4b-tool.tar.gz - deprecation warning fix attempt ( #258 )
• 2024-03-10: m4b-tool.tar.gz - musicbrainz fix
• 2023-02-14: m4b-tool.tar.gz - fixes in chapters command
• 2022-10-06: m4b-tool.tar.gz - fixed namespace issues (#199)
• 2022-09-23: m4b-tool.tar.gz - BE CAREFUL - possible breaking changes ahead (better tone integration)
• 2022-08-06: m4b-tool.tar.gz - important tone fixes
• 2022-07-16: m4b-tool.tar.gz - use tone as tagger if available
• 2022-03-18: m4b-tool.tar.gz - BE CAREFUL - switch to enzo1982/mp4v2, the new maintained mp4v2 branch
• 2021-06-04: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2021-06-03: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2021-06-02: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2021-02-09: m4b-tool.tar.gz - BE CAREFUL - build on new system - musicbrainz switch from xml to json
• 2021-01-04: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2021-01-03: m4b-tool.tar.gz - Support for Overdrive chapters (BE CAREFUL - MANY CHANGES)
• 2020-12-12: m4b-tool.tar.gz - BE CAREFUL - MANY CHANGES
• 2020-10-11: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-08-25: m4b-tool.tar.gz - BE CAREFUL - CHANGED BEHAVIOUR AND STRUCTURE
• 2020-07-28: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-06-08: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-05-24: m4b-tool.tar.gz - BE CAREFUL - FULL PARSER REWRITE!
• 2020-05-13: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-05-07: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-05-02: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-02-17: m4b-tool.tar.gz
• 2020-02-16: m4b-tool.tar.gz

v.0.4.2

Small feature and bugfix release

• added experimental cue sheet support for split
• fixed #38 - shifted chapter marks in merge

v.0.4.1

Bugfix release for v.0.4.0

• fixed an annoying bug in auto chapter splitting
• added --no-chapter-reindexing and --use-filenames-as-chapters in merge command, to prevent chapter-magic, if it is unwanted behaviour

v.0.4.0

Important notice
During the development of v.0.4.0 there were A LOT of changes to prepare performance improvements, some of these are breaking changes or experimental changes. It is likely that there will be some issues, so backup before you update.

breaking changes

• By default, m4b-tool is now quiet and provides no output - add -v to restore the old behaviour (-vv and -vvv are also supported for higher verbosity)
• The parameter --convert-charset has been renamed into --platform-charset
• Parameter --debug-filename has been removed in favor of --logfile, which also supports logging of non-debug levels

new features

• The batch-pattern and dry-run parameters allow to load tags from directory names (see README for details)
• The jobs parameter should improve merge performance on systems with multiple cores
• Added an mp4v2 fork to support sortname, sortartist and sortalbum for some players

improvements

• reworked all output and logging (colors are now supported for command line output)
• support for mp3 chapters added
• improved many things in tagging support
• added best practices section in the documentation

v.0.3.3

This release mainly fixes (critical) issues and improves handling of unicode characters in different commands

fixes:

• #27 fixed data loss by deleting or overwriting the wrong files (critical)
• #26 fixed documentation to show the right setup instructions as a result of brew changes

improvements:

• #25 --fix-mime-type changes mimetype (video/mp4 instead of audio/mp4) of files
• Better unicode handling when embedding descriptions (somethings the 255 byte limit was exceeded when using unicode)

v.0.3.2

This release mainly fixes and improves the split command. It includes the following changes:

split

• new Parameter output-dir to specify an output directory for the splitted files
• new Parameter filename-template to specify a twig template for file-naming (see README.md for details)
• fixed issue #22 - use an existing chapters file that has been manually edited

merge

• fixed issue #23 by adding the --no-conversion parameter to merge without the need to re-encode same codec files

v.0.3.1

Release v.0.3.1 comes with new features, improvements and bug fixes.

New:

• added a small homepage based on the readme.md - http://m4b-tool.fynder.de
• merge: added --audio-profile parameter for iTunes compatible high efficiency files
• chapter: added --adjust-by-silence parameter to fix existing chapter shift by silence detection

Improvements:

• Updated README.md for better documentation (especially so far undocumented features)
• Properly set description meta tags (thx @kpumuk)
• Use converted files to detect chapter timestamps (thx @kpumuk)

Fixes:

• Fixed Apple lossless codec alac (#20)
• Fixed an uncaught php error (#15)

v.0.3

Release v.0.3 comes with a bunch of minor improvements and bug fixes.

Improvements:

• Better cover handling - support for png included (cover.jpg is still the preferred cover file)
• Better audio file handling - more file extensions, case insensitive
• Better chapter handling - improved chapter sorting and naming
• Added --auto-split-seconds param to set a max. chapter length in seconds (useful for merging large files)
• Added new metadata params (e.g. --comment)
• Added expert option params --threads and --ffmpeg-param to be more flexible with ffmpeg

Fixes:

• Fixed handling of german umlauts (Windows only)

v.0.3-beta5

• Improved cover support (png)
• Improved audio file detection (extension is now case insensitive)
• Improved auto-chaptering (prefer meta, then filenames, then numeric index - must at least have 4 different titles)

v.0.3-beta4

v.0.3-beta4

Improvements:

• restructured cover extraction
• fixed conversion handling for cover embedding resulting in missing / wrong chapters
• fixed problem with --auto-split-seconds
• added possible workaround for #9
• try to extract cover from input files when merging and no cover is given

Documentation:

• Added a sample shell script (multi-merge.sh) to batch convert a directory on POSIX Systems (tested on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)