Tools

MP4tools is an application that acts as a graphical user interface for various UNIX commandline programs. These are the tools that do all the video and audio processing. MP4tools just supplies a pretty face to simplify the process of using these tools. Without the hard work of numerous programmers and their willingness to release their work as open source, the applications on this web site would not be available to you. The following is a list of the open source applications used by MP4tools and links to their web sites where you can learn more about them.

  • Ffmpeg and ffprobe do the brunt of the processing and media info work in MP4tools.
  • Ffplay is used to playback video.
  • MKVToolnix is a set of tools used by MP4tools to manipulate MKV files. 
  • Mp4box is the tool used by MP4tools to split MP4 videos.
  • Atomicparsley is the tool used by MP4tools to edit metadata in MP4 videos.

Click on the above links to get more details on any of the above tools.

Updating the Tools

You can also use the above links to easily update the tools used by MP4tools. For example, perhaps you have found a better build of ffmpeg. Here are the steps:

  1. Control click on the MP4tools icon and select "Show Package Contents". A new Finder window should appear.
  2. Open the Contents folder in this new window and then open the Resources folder. You should see the four tools listed above. 
  3. Replace the tool of interest with the updated version making sure that their names are the same. Just in case, you might want to keep the old version(s) of the file.
  4. Close the folder and run MP4tools as usual.

GNU General Public License

The above applications are free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA