DA Media Browser

I made this for myself, because I have a large collection of blu ray concerts that I've ripped onto my NAS. I also have some as MKVs that have no chapters at all, just one long video. And of course the problem with that, is finding the song you want, in the concert you want, is annoying.

This app uses several methods to find the chapter times and names and let you easily listen to or watch the exact songs you want, create playlists, etc.

Your media files are never modified; the names live in this app's own data directory.

It uses things like checking the blu ray menu and using AI to OCR the chapter names and match them to the times. In the case of single files with chapters but no titles, it can search MusicBrainz to get the titles and match them.

In the case of single files with no chapters and no titles, it can use AI, MusicBrainz and web searches, as well as audio and visual scans and screenshots of the video to determine chapter start and end times and then still work it out.

And there's a simple interface to correct any mistakes by hand, most commonly the start of a song being a few seconds off in tracks entirely worked out using AI tools.

Warning

This is beta software, provided as is, with no warranty or guarantee of any kind (see the licence). It only ever reads your media files, but back up anything you can't afford to lose all the same.

The AI features cost real money, and it can add up. They're optional and off until you give the app an API key, and each one says roughly what it costs before it runs - but a large library identified with the AI is many requests. Use an API key with a spending limit: Nano-GPT lets you set a USD per day cap on each key in its dashboard, and since its credit is prepaid, keeping only a small balance on the account caps it too.

Requirements

External programs, installed with your package manager:

ffmpeg / ffprobe	reading chapters and cover art
mpv	playback
libbluray	Blu-ray disc folders (optional)
GNOME Keyring or KWallet	keeping the AI's API key (optional; any Secret Service provider)

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install ffmpeg mpv libbluray-bin
# Arch/CachyOS
sudo pacman -S ffmpeg mpv libbluray

The app checks for these at startup and tells you what is missing.

Install and run

AppImage

A single file, nothing to install. Download it from the Releases page, or build it from a clone:

git clone https://github.com/DigitalArchon/DAMediaBrowser.git && cd DAMediaBrowser
bash packaging/appimage/build.sh     # -> dist/DAMediaBrowser-<version>-x86_64.AppImage
chmod +x dist/DAMediaBrowser-*.AppImage
./dist/DAMediaBrowser-*.AppImage

The build is reproducible: a given commit always makes the same AppImage, byte for byte, whoever builds it and wherever. Each release's .sha256 can be checked against your own build of its tag:

bash packaging/appimage/verify-reproducible.sh v0.20.0   # builds it twice, compares

It carries its own Python and Qt, and runs on Ubuntu 22.04 / Debian 12 / Fedora 35 / RHEL 9 and newer (glibc 2.34+). It does not carry ffmpeg, mpv or libbluray — those come from your distribution, for the reason in the table above: mpv has to reach your machine's own audio server, GPU and display, and a copy shipped in here would be the wrong one.

It uses your system's CA certificates for the things it fetches over HTTPS (MusicBrainz lookups, cover art, and the AI through Nano-GPT), rather than carrying its own bundle — so your machine's trust decisions apply, and the certificates stay current with your package manager. SSL_CERT_FILE / SSL_CERT_DIR override the search if you need them to.

To put it in your desktop menu:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps
cp packaging/mediabrowser.svg ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/
sed "s|^Exec=.*|Exec=$PWD/dist/$(cd dist && ls DAMediaBrowser-*.AppImage)|; \
     /^#/d; \$aIcon=mediabrowser" mediabrowser.desktop \
  > ~/.local/share/applications/mediabrowser.desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications 2>/dev/null || true

From source

The window is built with Qt (PySide6), which is a Python package, so it lives in a virtualenv rather than being installed system-wide:

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/mediabrowser

.venv/bin/python main.py does the same thing. --library <folder> opens a particular folder on start.

Using it

First, Settings. The first start says so: open File → Settings (Ctrl+,) and choose, under Privacy, what the app may send online — each is off until you tick it:

• Look up tracklists on MusicBrainz — a search, usually the video's file or folder name, and the ids of the releases it finds.
• Fetch cover art from the Cover Art Archive — asks for the sleeve of the release a video was matched to. Without it, covers come from the video's folder, the file itself (for a Blu-ray, the artwork the disc carries for players' menus), or a frame of it; tick it later and the matched videos get their sleeves then.
• Look up setlists on setlist.fm — an artist's name and a date, year or place, usually from the video's name, with your own free API key.
• Send videos to the AI — chapter times, file and folder names, tracklists and frames, to the AI service on the AI tab.
• Let the AI search the web — the AI service searches for the show for the model.

Everything else — scanning, playing, detecting chapters from the audio, reading a disc's own chapters, Manual Edit — works with none of them. A video or library marked Private (below) is never sent anywhere, whatever is ticked.

Add a folder scans it for videos, Blu-ray disc folders and DVD folders (a folder with a VIDEO_TS folder in it, as a rip copies the disc). Everything it finds appears on the shelf; click a cover to see that video's chapters.

DVDs need nothing installed: the app reads a DVD's titles and chapters straight from its IFO files, and mpv plays it. A title is one video, like a Blu-ray's, and gets everything a video does — its frames for the AI, a cover, songs exported. A concert DVD often has a title for each song as well as one that plays them all; only that one is listed, since the songs are its chapters already. A DVD copied as it is, still encrypted, can't be read — a rip has had that removed — and its menus aren't read yet.

Several libraries at once. Tick libraries in the Libraries panel to have them on the shelf together — searched, sorted, queued and identified as one, each video still stored in (and locked, private or hidden by) its own library. Double-click one, or Open, to see it alone. Rescan rescans every library on show, and the next start shows the same ones again.

Libraries inside libraries. A video's titles and chapters belong to the video, not to the library it was named in. Add BABYMETAL as a library, name its concerts, then add the MusicVids folder around it: MusicVids picks up every name BABYMETAL has, and from then on the two share them — name a song in either and it's named in both. It works the other way round too: add a folder inside a library and it shows that library's videos from there, already named. Before either, the app says what it found and that nothing is lost. The Libraries panel shows a nested library as "in MusicVids"; each keeps its own hidden folders, playlists and Locked/Private setting, and a nested library set Locked or Private covers its videos when they're seen through the one around it too.

Forget says first exactly what would go. Forgetting a library inside another loses nothing — the one around it keeps every video, named, and adding it again finds them all there. Forgetting one that holds videos no other library does says how many, and how many of those had work done on them. Either way a copy of the library as it was is kept in libraries/backups/.

Restore… (under the Libraries panel, or File → Restore Library…) lists those backups, newest first — kept whenever a library is forgotten, folded into one around it, moved, or restored into — each saying what it holds and why it was made. Restoring brings its libraries and videos back without losing anything done since: a video that's still here keeps whichever copy is further along, a library that's still here keeps its settings, and the library it goes into is backed up first. A backup you don't want can be deleted there too.

Delete Library Data… (right-click a library) is Forget for good: it permanently deletes every title, chapter and name recorded for that library's videos, its settings and playlists, the libraries inside it, and its part of every backup — so Restore can't bring it back, and adding the folder again starts from scratch. A library inside another shares its videos with it, so they're deleted there too; the one around it shows them again, untitled, on its next rescan. The warning counts what will go, and the button only works once you tick that you understand.

File → Delete All Library Data… does that for every library: it permanently deletes every library's titles, chapters, names, hidden folders, playlists and Identify history, every backup, and the cached covers. Nothing can be restored afterwards, and a folder added again starts from scratch. The warning counts what will go, and Delete Everything only works once you tick that you understand. Your video files are never touched, and Settings (privacy, the AI and its key) are kept.

Renamed, moved, a new NAS. Video files renamed or moved around inside a library are found on the next rescan — by their size and modification time, or name and size, or for a disc its titles — and keep their titles and chapters; the status bar says how many. If the library's own folder was renamed or moved, the NAS has a new IP address, or the library now lives on another NAS, right-click it and choose Locate Moved Folder… (or Locate on Network…) and point at where it is now: it checks the videos are there, says what will move, and moves everything with it. When a library inside another is located and the one around it is at the new place too — a NAS with a new address — the whole share moves together. Simply adding the folder at its new place also finds the old catalog by itself, once the old place is gone. Giving the NAS a fixed address, or connecting to it by name (smb://nas.local/…) rather than by IP, avoids the address ever changing.

Network folders. Add Network Folder lists the shares your file manager is connected to or has bookmarked (or takes an address like smb://nas/media/Concerts), connects if needed, and lets you pick the folder to use. A password typed into the address isn't kept: if the share asks for one, connect to it in your file manager and choose to remember it. The app needs the share presented as an ordinary folder, which is your desktop's job: gvfs-fuse on Cinnamon, GNOME, MATE and Xfce, or kio-fuse on KDE — if neither is installed, it says which to install. The address is kept with the library, so rescanning after the share has dropped reconnects it first. For a big library on a NAS, a kernel mount (cifs in /etc/fstab) is faster than either bridge; add it with plain Add Folder.

Scanning shows a Cancel button in the status bar (also File → Cancel Scan) — for the time you picked a whole drive by mistake. A cancelled scan changes nothing.

Tiles or list. The shelf shows either covers (Ctrl+1) or a list (Ctrl+2). Titles are shown in full in both — tiles grow to fit the longest one rather than cutting it off.

Hiding. A big folder tree often has things you never want on the shelf — trailers, extras, a folder of test rips. Right-click any video in it and Hide Folder; for a video several folders deep you can pick which level to hide. Hide This Video (or Hide This Title on a Blu-ray) hides just the one — for a disc whose extras sit beside the concert, where hiding the disc's folder would take the concert too. Hidden videos are left out of the shelf and of searches, and the status bar counts them. Tick Show hidden to see them again (dimmed), play them, or right-click to Unhide. Nothing is deleted or rescanned differently — it only changes what the shelf shows. Open Containing Folder on the same menu shows the video in your file manager.

What each video is. The list's Type column says what a video is underneath, whatever chapters it has been given since: a Blu-ray title, a DVD title, a File with chapters of its own, or a File, no chapters — which it stays even after you add some. (A library from before this was recorded shows plain File for a video whose chapters the app made, until the next rescan reads the file once to find out.)

Identify from the shelf. Right-click any video and Identify works out its chapters and names in the background, without opening it — the same way Identify Library is set to (which methods, and whether the AI may be used). The status bar says what it found, and Undo Last Identification puts it back.

Locked and private. Right-click a video, or a library in the Libraries panel, to set either:

• Locked — nothing changes it: no renaming, no chapter edits by hand, nothing from Identify, and a rescan keeps it exactly as stored, even when its file has changed or gone. It still plays and queues.
• Private — yours to change as you like, and the local tools work (detecting chapters from the audio, pasting a tracklist, Manual Edit), but nothing about it is ever sent to MusicBrainz or the AI.

Set on a library, either holds for every video in it, whatever a video's own setting says. The list's Protection column shows which apply, with "(library)" when it's the whole library's.

What still needs identifying. The list's Identified column, and a dot on each cover, say how far along a video is: green when every chapter has a real name, amber when some do, red when none do — or when a long video has never been split into songs. Names like "Chapter 01" or "(01)00:00:00:000", which authoring tools write when nobody named anything, don't count. Tick Needs identifying to see only those; the status bar says how many there are, and Sort: Least named puts them first.

Single songs. A video file in one piece that runs under 11 minutes — a music video, a festival clip — is named after its file to begin with, without its track number or [4K 50fps]-style tags, so a search finds it. That name is only provisional, and shows as Unverified (amber) until it's been checked: Mark Name as Checked on the chapter's menu (or renaming it) says it's right, and Identify Library checks it itself — against MusicBrainz's recordings for free (the video's artist, a title its file's name contains, about its length), and with the AI if you allow it. Renaming the video renames its chapter along with it. Longer videos in one piece are Not split, and are named the same way.

Blu-ray extras. Every title on a disc 20 seconds or longer is listed — trailers, behind-the-scenes films and the like, not just the concert — while a disc's second copy of the same video (the feature again without its chapters, say) is left out. Rename… on any video's right-click menu gives an extra a proper name ("Title 5" becomes "Behind the Scenes"), kept across rescans; an empty name goes back to the scanned one. Hide This Title takes away any you don't want. Mark Named says a video is fine as it is — a short music video, or one named by hand with a chapter or two left on purpose: it shows green as Marked named, and Identify Library leaves it alone.

Searching matches video names and chapter names, without minding capitals or accents (cafe finds Café). It switches to the list and puts the chapters that matched underneath their video, so a song you can only half-remember the home of is one double-click from playing — no need to open each disc to look. Ctrl+F goes to the search box and Esc clears it; clearing the search puts back whichever view you were using.

Detect Chapters. Rename a chapter at a time, or open Detect Chapters to do a whole video at once.

Just Figure It Out, at the top, does the whole job for you: it reads the disc's menu if there is one, looks the show up on MusicBrainz (the AI fixing the search when the file's name finds nothing, and picking which release is this show), measures the audio and has the AI look at the video — as many of those as this video turns out to need, the most accurate first. It uses the AI (a few cents), shows everything it found and where each name came from, and changes nothing until Apply. Report… then tells you, step by step, what it searched for, which releases it turned down and why, and what the AI saw in each chapter and how sure it was.

Hints… beside it lets you say what you know, all optional: what the show is known as (searched first), how many songs it has, and the setlist in order. A release must then have those songs, and the AI is told all of it. For a broadcast or a cut of a show - whose setlist isn't the concert's you'd find online - the setlist is what makes the difference.

Or do it yourself. A box at the top says what this video already has, as that decides what a tracklist does for it: chapters that only want names (a disc's or file's own — a tracklist names them where they are, and nothing moves), chapters only estimated from the audio (a tracklist with lengths can place them afresh), or one piece with no chapters at all (they have to be found as well as named). Nothing is proposed until you give a tracklist or choose how; Clear beside the table starts again.

Extract Blu-ray Menu — for a Blu-ray title, this tab (the one it opens on) is the best source there is: the disc's own scene-selection menu, its makers' list of the songs. The app decodes the menu from the disc itself, works out exactly which chapter each button plays by running the disc's navigation commands in a sandbox, draws each button highlighted as a player would, and has the AI read the text off it — so the names are the disc's, on the chapters the disc puts them on, with nothing matched or guessed. Chapters no button plays (the story films between songs, an encore break, the credits) are named by the AI's judgement and marked as such. It needs a Nano-GPT key for the reading, costs a cent or two with Sonnet, and takes about half a minute. Discs whose menus are written in Java (BD-J) can't be read this way yet, nor can a DVD's menus (its chapters are read), and a rip to a single file has left its menus behind — for anything but a Blu-ray the tab is switched off and says so.

Tracklist — three steps:

1. Get a tracklist, any one of four ways: look the show up on MusicBrainz; or on setlist.fm, by the artist and the date (or the year and the venue or city) — what was played on the night, so a bootleg, a broadcast or a festival set MusicBrainz doesn't have; or Paste a Tracklist from anywhere (a sleeve, a web page; durations optional); or go without — a video file in one piece then has its chapters found from the audio as soon as the dialog opens, and a tracklist given later takes over. The search opens pre-filled from the file and folder names and only runs when you press Search, since MusicBrainz rate-limits hard. For a box set, only the discs whose lengths add up to the video are ticked, so songs aren't taken from another night's show. setlist.fm's search opens with the artist and date read from the names — 20260419 Glass Harbor - Copperfield Hall.ts is Glass Harbor on 19 April 2026 — and costs nothing: it needs a free API key of your own, from setlist.fm's API page, pasted under Settings → setlist.fm. A setlist has no lengths, so it names chapters in order rather than placing them; what was played from tape (an intro the band walks on to) is left out unless you tick it in. Choosing one also unticks step 3's web search, which would only have looked for the same setlist.

2. Make the chapters from it. It picks the best way, and says which — you can switch:

   • Name the existing chapters, when the video came with its own (a disc's chapters sit where its author put them). When the tracks are the whole video, each song is named on the chapter where its CD track plays; otherwise by matching durations, falling back to order (marked * — check those). The notes say which chapters start well off their track, and where a missing song should be split.
   • Place chapters by the track lengths, when the lengths cover the whole video: each song starts where the lengths before it add up to — within a second or two, as a live album's CDs are cut from the same master as its video. The audio then splits each song's intro off (a story video, an entrance, an intermission) as "Intro to …", with the song itself starting where the band does.
   • Detect chapters from the audio, when there are no lengths: it listens for the bass dropping out between songs, and checks the stage lighting around each quiet stretch (a quiet moment where the lights come up is a breakdown within a song). A tracklist of titles tells it how many songs to find and names them in order.

   The audio and lighting are only measured when needed — the audio starts in the background while you search — and once per session.

3. Optionally, have the AI check — not needed when the tracklist fits; worth it with no tracklist, names missing or in another script, or to check where chapters start (see below). It sends the proposal, the tracklist and a few frames of the video to a model that can read the song's caption off the screen, recall the setlist, and give the titles as the songs are known in English (see below).

Then Apply. Nothing changes until then, and the whole proposal is shown first. Chapters the app made are stored in its library only, never written into the file. Starts found from the audio are marked ~ until you fix them.

Asking the AI. All of the matching above goes on times and text, and gets things wrong: a chapter named for the song after it, a breakdown taken for a gap, a title left in Japanese where nobody outside Japan would search for it. A model that can look fixes most of that. Ask AI in Detect Chapters sends it what the app knows — the file and folder names, the chapter (or estimated) times, the tracklist if there is one, where the audio thinks the songs stop — plus a frame or two from just after each start, where a concert Blu-ray captions the song. It answers with a name for every chapter, how sure it is (guesses are shown in red), the original title where it romanised one, and, for estimated chapters, corrected starts chosen from the measured candidates. It works with a disc's own chapters (they stay put and get named), with chapters placed by lengths or detected from the audio, and with no tracklist at all. By default it also looks the show up online first (Nano-GPT runs a web search for the model): on a rip whose frames show no captions, that is the difference between guessing a plausible setlist and reading the real one off setlist.fm — untick it for a show no site lists, or to save a little; it's only offered when Settings → Privacy allows the AI's web search. Settings → AI picks who searches: Kagi (the default) or Perplexity find the right page most reliably; LinkUp is Nano-GPT's own and the only one allowed on an account with Zero Data Retention switched on, so the app falls back to it, and says so, when the other is refused.

List Models in Settings → AI shows only models that can look at pictures, which everything here needs, with anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 (the default, and the one this app was tested with) and anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 first. Any other OpenAI-compatible service and vision model can be used — set the endpoint (https, unless it runs on this machine: the key is never sent in the clear, nor handed on by a redirect to another site) and model — but web search is Nano-GPT's own and is switched off elsewhere, and another model may not read menus and video frames as well.

Romanised titles. The name a Japanese song goes by outside Japan is rarely a translation of it: いいね! is released as "Iine!", not "So Good", and メギツネ as "Megitsune". So wherever the AI names songs (the Romanised titles box, on by default) it gives each title as the song is officially released in English-language markets — a romanisation, or the song's official English title where it has one — and never translates the meaning. Romanise Titles with AI in the Chapters menu does just that for names already there. A romanised chapter keeps its original title underneath, so a search in either script finds the song (the dot beside it is purple).

It runs through Nano-GPT, a pay-as-you-go gateway to Claude and other models: make an account, add a few dollars, tick Send videos to the AI under File → Settings → Privacy, then paste an API key on the AI tab and pick a model (anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 is the default and reads captions fine; Opus is more careful and several times the price). A concert's chapters cost a few cents. The key is kept in the system keyring (GNOME Keyring, KWallet), never in a file; without one, set NANOGPT_API_KEY in the environment instead. Nothing is sent until you press Ask AI, and nothing is applied until Apply.

Manual Edit (Ctrl+Shift+K, or the button under the chapter list) is for doing it all by hand — no AI account needed, and the way to name a video nothing else can. The video plays right in the main window, with a timeline of its chapters beneath it and the chapters beside it:

• Get close, then exact: jump ten seconds, five or one (buttons, or ←/→ with Ctrl or Shift for the bigger steps), then a frame at a time (, and .). Page Up/Down go to the previous or next chapter; click the timeline to go anywhere.
• Insert chapter here (or M) starts a chapter at the playhead and puts you straight into its name; Enter goes back to moving through the video.
• Know the setlist? Paste it into Names in order first, and each chapter you insert takes the next name — or name the chapters in order afterwards.
• A chapter a little out is dragged along the timeline, moved to the playhead, or nudged a second; Delete removes one.

Nothing changes until Save Chapters. A chapter whose start and name you left alone keeps where its name came from, and if you only renamed chapters, a disc's or file's own chapters stay its own. The video is drawn into the window on X11 — on a Wayland desktop the app runs under XWayland for this (and so does mpv), unless QT_QPA_PLATFORM is set to wayland alone, in which case it plays in mpv's own window, the editor still drives it, and it says how to bring it in.

Identify Library (Ctrl+I, in the File menu) does all of that for every video that still needs it, unattended — start it and walk away. You choose which methods it may use:

MusicBrainz tracklists	free; only used when a release's tracks add up to the video
setlist.fm setlists	free, with your setlist.fm key; only when the video's name gives the artist and the date. Names the chapters in order when there's one per song, tells the audio how many songs to find, and gives the AI the setlist so it needn't search the web
Split videos in one piece where the music stops	free; the chapters still need names
Read Blu-ray menus	AI; the disc's own names, a cent or two a disc
AI looks at the video and searches the web	AI; a few cents a video. It also corrects a MusicBrainz search the file's name got wrong, and picks which release is the show
Romanise titles	AI; as known in English (Iine!, not "So Good"); a fraction of a cent

and whether the AI is only a last resort (free methods first, AI for what they couldn't name) or most accurate first (a Blu-ray's menu before MusicBrainz), how many AI requests the run may make at most, and whether to leave out names the AI marks as guesses. It shows what the run could cost before it starts; with no AI methods ticked, nothing.

It holds itself to a stricter standard than any method does with you watching: it only fills in what's missing — a chapter that already has a real name keeps it, and chapters are only placed afresh for a video in one piece, or one whose estimated chapters nobody has named. Each video is saved as it's done, so the shelf fills in while it runs and stopping keeps what's finished; the rest of the app stays usable meanwhile (a rescan waits until it's done). Undo Last Identification puts back every video the last run changed.

Edit Tracklist fixes names that came out shifted — shift them up or down rather than retyping; a name pushed off the end waits in "unused". Or drag a name to the chapter it belongs on: the chapters stay where they are and only the names move. Dropped on an unnamed chapter it fills it; dropped on a named one, or between two, the names in between close up. Names can be dragged out to "unused" and back in.

The dot beside each chapter says where its name came from: green for one you typed, teal from the disc's own menu, blue from MusicBrainz, orange from setlist.fm, purple from the AI, grey embedded in the file, and dim for one that is still just a number. A rescan keeps the names you gave and re-reads the embedded ones.

To fix a boundary, play the video, pause where the song really starts, and Split at Playhead (Ctrl+K). Merge with Next (Ctrl+M) undoes a split that shouldn't be there, and −1s / +1s (Ctrl+[ Ctrl+]) nudges one. Reset to the File's Chapters (in the Chapters menu, or a chapter's right-click menu) goes back to the file's own. Chapters made or edited here survive a rescan, as long as the video's length hasn't changed.

Starting over. Reset to Defaults… on a video's right-click menu puts it back as it was first scanned: the names given here, chapters made or edited here, the name you gave it, its MusicBrainz release and its hidden flag are cleared, and its chapters are read from the file or disc again (names the file itself carries come back). The same on a library's right-click menu in the Libraries panel, or File → Reset Library to Defaults…, does that for every video in it and forgets its hidden folders and last Identify run — and, only if you tick the box, its playlists. Each asks first, saying what goes and what stays: locked videos stay whole, every video keeps its locked or private setting, and one whose file can't be read at the moment is left as it was. File → Undo Reset puts the last reset back, even after a restart.

Playing. Playing a chapter queues the rest of its video behind it, and each one rolls into the next. Right-click a cover to add a whole video to the queue, or pick single chapters with Add to Queue — Ctrl- or Shift-click to pick several at once, and chapters found by a search can be queued from the list directly. A double-click on a chapter plays it as audio; Playback → Play by Default → Video makes it video instead, and with it the detail page's main Play button and what Add to Queue starts an empty queue as.

One mpv plays the whole queue, and is always handed the next piece before the one playing ends, so it opens the next file early and goes straight on: chapters of one video that follow each other play as one, with no join at all, and a queue that jumps between videos and discs moves from one to the next as seamlessly as mpv can. The seek bar, transport and queue drive it over mpv's IPC socket. Click anywhere on the seek bar to jump there, or drag it. Playing video, the seek bar marks where each chapter starts; hovering a mark names the chapter.

Video in the app. Video plays in the main area (Playback → Play Video in the App, on by default), with the transport bar below it. Fullscreen (F11, or F with the video focused) fills the screen with the picture alone; the transport bar comes back while the mouse moves, and Esc leaves. Back leaves the video playing out of sight, and Show Video on the transport bar brings it back — so does clicking the cover or title of what's playing, or Playback → Show Video (Ctrl+Shift+V). Double-clicking the playing row in the queue starts it again. With the video focused, some of mpv's own keys work too: S saves a screenshot (to Pictures/DA Media Browser), V shows or hides subtitles, J steps to the next subtitles and # to the next audio track.

Pop Out on the transport bar (Playback → Pop Out to mpv's Window, Ctrl+Shift+P) carries the video playing in the app on in mpv's own window from the same moment — paused or not, with the same volume, subtitles and tracks — where all of mpv's own controls work, and the transport bar still drives it. Into App brings it back the same way. It takes a new mpv, so there's a moment's gap (a few seconds for a Blu-ray, which has to be opened again). The rest of the queue plays where the video went until video is next chosen to play. To play one video in mpv's own window instead, choose Play Video in mpv's Own Window — on every right-click menu, and on the arrow beside the detail page's Play Video — or untick the setting to make that the default (the menus then offer Play Video in the App). mpv's own window stays open from one video to the next. (On a desktop where the app runs on Wayland itself rather than XWayland, video always plays in mpv's own window.)

The queue. The whole queue plays as audio or as video: what starts it says which, and whatever is added after plays the same way. The Audio / Video button above it switches all of it — what's playing too, carrying on from the same moment (video where it plays by default). Double-clicking a row plays it. Ctrl- or Shift-click several rows to Remove them at once (or press Delete), and drag rows — one or several — to reorder. Choosing something to play while paused plays it. Whatever you do to the queue while it plays, what's playing carries on and what comes next follows the change.

Playlists. Playlists → Save Queue as Playlist… in the queue panel (or the Playback menu) saves the queue under a name — chapters from as many videos and discs as you like, and whether it was playing as audio or video. Each saved playlist can then be played that way, or as audio, or as video here or in mpv's own window, or added to the end of the queue (playing as the queue does); and renamed or deleted. Playlists are kept with the library, so they go with its catalog to another device, and an entry whose video's chapters have since been split or merged still finds its song by where it starts.

Chapters for other tools. The app never writes to a video, so the chapters it finds live in its own library. To have them inside your files, right-click a video (or use the Chapters menu) and Export Chapters…, and pick the kind of file by what you'll use:

• Matroska chapters for mkvmerge (.xml) — mkvpropedit concert.mkv --chapters chapters.xml puts them into an MKV in place, or mkvmerge -o out.mkv --chapters chapters.xml concert.mkv into a copy.
• FFmpeg metadata (.txt) — ffmpeg -i concert.mp4 -i chapters.txt -map 0 -map_chapters 1 -c copy out.mp4.
• CUE sheet (.cue) — for audio players and splitters.

An unnamed chapter goes out as its number. A disc title's chapters count from the title's start, which is where a rip of it starts too.

Songs for your phone. Export as Audio… on a chapter's right-click menu (Ctrl- or Shift-click several first), or Export Songs as Audio… on a video's, saves songs as audio files in a folder you choose: FLAC to keep them lossless, or Opus to keep them small (160 kbit/s unless you pick otherwise). Each is cut exactly where its chapter starts and ends, named 03 Northbound.opus, and tagged with its title, the video's name as the album, its track number and the artist you give, with the video's cover inside. Surround sound is mixed down to stereo, and a video with a stereo track as well (a DVD's LPCM, say) gives that one. By default each video's songs go in a folder named after it. Songs already there are asked about: replaced, or kept and skipped.

Space	play / pause, while something plays - wherever you aren't typing (Ctrl+Space too)
Ctrl+← Ctrl+→	back / forward 10s
Ctrl+Shift+← Ctrl+Shift+→	previous / next chapter
Ctrl+.	stop
F11	fullscreen video (in it: Space, ←/→ 10s, F, Esc)
S V J #	with the video in the app focused: screenshot, subtitles on/off, next subtitles, next audio track
Ctrl+Shift+P	pop video out to mpv's window, or bring it back
Ctrl+K	split the chapter at the playhead
Ctrl+Shift+K	Manual Edit (in it: Space, ←/→, , ., M, Page Up/Down)
Ctrl+M	merge the selected chapter with the next
Ctrl+[ Ctrl+]	move the selected chapter's start 1s earlier / later
Ctrl+1 Ctrl+2	tiles / list
Ctrl+F	search
Ctrl+R	rescan
Esc	leave fullscreen, or back to the shelf

Media keys work too, where the keyboard has them.

Another device

A catalog — a library's chapters and names — can go with you. The same NAS is usually mounted somewhere different on each machine (/run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:…/Concerts on one, /mnt/nas/Concerts on the next), so the app doesn't go by that: a catalog belongs to a folder when most of its videos are in it, at the same place relative to it.

• Copy the data folder across (below) and add the folder on the new machine: if it has no catalog there yet, the app finds the copied one whose videos are in it, moves it onto the new path — names, hidden videos, covers and all — and then scans.
• Or File → Export Catalog… on one device and Import Catalog… on the other, pointing it at the folder there. If that device has already scanned the folder, the two are merged: each video keeps whichever copy is further along, and names given by hand come across either way.

Where things are kept

Under $XDG_DATA_HOME/da-media-browser (~/.local/share/... by default):

libraries/<hash>.json   one file per outermost library folder: chapters and their
                        names, with the libraries nested inside it
libraries/backups/      a copy of a library file before it's merged, moved, restored
                        into or forgotten (File → Restore Library…)
artwork/<id>.jpg        cached cover art
settings.json           app preferences

The Nano-GPT and setlist.fm keys are in the system keyring, under da-media-browser.

Nothing is ever written into a library. Every file the app writes, renames or deletes — library records, backups, covers, settings — is checked first to be inside its own data folder, and anything else is refused, so even a bug can't reach a video. Forgetting, restoring, moving or deleting a library's data only ever changes those records. The app opens media files only to read them (ffprobe, ffmpeg, libbluray and mpv all only read), never renames, moves or deletes one, and puts no file of its own beside them: a library on a read-only share works exactly like any other. Export Catalog, Export Chapters and Export Songs as Audio refuse to save into a library folder, and screenshots — S in the app or in mpv's own window — go to Pictures/DA Media Browser. tests/test_read_only.py holds this in place: it lists every place in the code that can write a file, and runs a scan, cover and frame grabs, audio analysis and the exports over a write-protected library, checking every byte and timestamp after; tests/test_dvd.py does the same with a write-protected DVD.

A rescan only re-reads files whose size or modification time changed, so rescanning a large library is quick.

A rescan never forgets a video just because its file isn't there right now. If the library folder itself is unavailable — a network share that has dropped, a drive that's unplugged — the rescan stops and changes nothing. Individual files that are away are kept, names and all, and listed as missing; putting them back and rescanning restores them, and one renamed or moved within the library is found under its new name. A file that couldn't be read this time keeps what was known about it too. To let go of videos that are gone for good, right-click one and Remove from Library, or use File → Remove Missing Videos.

Credits

Tracklists come from MusicBrainz, whose release and recording data is in the public domain (CC0), and covers from the Cover Art Archive; both are run by the MetaBrainz Foundation. Requests are spaced two seconds apart - MusicBrainz asks for no more than one a second - and say which app and version they come from.

Setlists come from setlist.fm, through its API, which is free for non-commercial use with a key of your own. Wherever a setlist is used it's credited, with a link to its page: under the search in Detect Chapters, in the status bar when its names are applied, and in the reports of Just Figure It Out and Identify Library. Nothing from it is kept but the names you apply.

Licence

DA Media Browser is 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 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. It comes with no warranty. Each source file says so in its SPDX-License-Identifier line. Copyright © 2026 Digital Archon.

The AppImage also carries Python, Qt/PySide6 (LGPLv3) and a few X11 helper libraries (MIT), each under its own licence. ffmpeg, mpv and libbluray are not bundled: they are the system's own.

Development

.venv/bin/python -m pytest      # 959 tests; Qt runs offscreen, no display needed
.venv/bin/ruff check .

The split that matters: mediabrowser/core/ never imports a GUI toolkit and holds everything with real logic — chapter/track matching, scanning, storage, the mpv wrapper, the queue. mediabrowser/gui/ is the only package that imports PySide6. tests/test_module_boundaries.py enforces this, and it is what let the app move from Tkinter to Qt by rewriting only the window.

Styling is a single stylesheet, mediabrowser/gui/style.qss, with the palette documented at the top.

packaging/appimage/build.sh builds the AppImage. Downloads are pinned by checksum and cached under build/appimage/cache, so a rebuild after a code change is quick. Before packing it checks two things that have broken such builds before: that nothing inside needs a newer glibc than the floor, and that Qt's xcb plugin can resolve every library it loads.

The build is reproducible. Every download is pinned by sha256 - the Python base, the PySide6 and shiboken6 wheels (requirements.txt, installed with --require-hashes), the setuptools that builds the app's package (build-requirements.txt), the Debian libraries, and tagged releases of appimagetool and the AppImage runtime. Every file's time is the last commit's (SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH), every owner root, .pyc files are hash-checked, and the build fails if anything inside names the folder it ran in. A dirty working tree builds what's in it, stamped with the last commit's time - release from a clean checkout. To bump PySide6, change both wheels' versions and hashes in requirements.txt (PyPI lists the sha256 of each file).