nudebomb 1.3.1

Strip unused languages from mkv files en mass

Nudebomb

Nudebomb recursively strips MKV (Matroska) files of unwanted audio and subtitle tracks, keeping only the languages you specify.

Installation

Requirements

• MKVToolNix — provides the mkvmerge binary. Available via Homebrew, apt, or your favorite package manager.

Install

pip install nudebomb

Or with uv:

uv tool install nudebomb

Quick Start

Strip all non-English tracks from a directory tree:

nudebomb -rl eng /mnt/movies

Keep English and French, recurse, and use timestamps to skip already-processed files:

nudebomb -rtl eng,fra /mnt/movies

Dry run on a single file to preview what would be stripped:

nudebomb -dvvl eng movie.mkv

Stripping languages except eng, und.
Searching for MKV files to process:
Checking movie.mkv
    audio: 1 eng
    audio: 2 eng
    audio: 3 eng
    subtitles: 4 eng
    subtitles: 5 eng
    Already stripped movie.mkv
done.

Usage

nudebomb [options] path [path ...]

Paths can be individual MKV files or directories. Use -r to recurse into directories.

Configuration

Nudebomb is configured through three layers, each overriding the previous:

1. YAML config file — ~/.config/nudebomb/config.yaml
2. Environment variables
3. Command-line arguments

Config File

nudebomb:
    languages:
        - eng
        - und
    recurse: true
    timestamps: true
    media_type: movie
    tmdb_api_key: your-api-key-here
    tvdb_api_key: your-api-key-here

All command-line options have config file equivalents. Use -c to specify an alternate config file path.

Environment Variables

Prefix with NUDEBOMB_NUDEBOMB__. List items are enumerated:

export NUDEBOMB_NUDEBOMB__RECURSE=True
export NUDEBOMB_NUDEBOMB__LANGUAGES__0=eng
export NUDEBOMB_NUDEBOMB__LANGUAGES__1=fra
export NUDEBOMB_NUDEBOMB__TMDB_API_KEY=your-api-key-here

Lang Files

Lang files let you specify additional languages to keep on a per-directory basis. This is useful when your collection spans multiple languages — you want most content to keep English, but a specific show to also keep Japanese.

How They Work

Place a file named lang, langs, .lang, or .langs in any directory. The file contains a comma-separated list of ISO 639 language codes:

jpn

Nudebomb walks up the directory tree from each MKV file, collecting languages from every lang file it finds. The final set of languages to keep is the union of --languages, all lang file languages from the current directory up to the top-level path, and any online lookup results.

Example

/mnt/tv/
  .lang          # contains: eng
  GI Robot/
    Season 1/
      episode.mkv    # keeps: eng, und
  Anime Show/
    .lang            # contains: jpn
    Season 1/
      episode.mkv    # keeps: eng, jpn, und

Online Language Lookup

When no lang files contribute additional languages for a file, nudebomb can look up the original language of the media from online databases and add it to the languages to keep. This requires an API key.

TMDB (The Movie Database)

Works for both movies and TV series. Get an API key at themoviedb.org.

nudebomb -rl eng --tmdb-api-key YOUR_KEY --media-type movie /mnt/movies

TVDB (TheTVDB)

Specialized for TV series. Get an API key at thetvdb.com. When both keys are configured and --media-type tv is set, TVDB is tried first for TV content.

nudebomb -rl eng --tvdb-api-key YOUR_KEY --media-type tv /mnt/tv

Filename Parsing

Nudebomb parses media filenames to extract titles, years, and database IDs. For best results, use standard naming conventions:

• Movies: Movie Title (2024).mkv or Movie.Title.2024.BluRay.mkv
• TV: Show Name S01E02.mkv or Show.Name.1x02.mkv

You can embed database IDs in curly braces for exact matching:

• {tmdb-696} — TMDB ID
• {imdb-tt022345} — IMDB ID (looked up via TMDB)
• {tvdb-5780} — TVDB ID

Example: {tvdb-1234} S01E01.mkv

Caching

Lookup results are cached in ~/.cache/nudebomb/ to avoid redundant API calls. Cache entries with a found language never expire. Entries where no language was found expire after --cache-expiry-days (default: 30) and are re-queried.

Dot Color Key

When running at default verbosity, nudebomb prints single characters to indicate progress:

Char	Meaning
.	MKV skipped (ignored, already stripped, or cache hit)
. (green)	Skipped because timestamp unchanged
O	Online lookup succeeded
x	Online lookup returned no result
X	Online lookup error or rate limited

Use -vv for full text descriptions instead of dots.

Development

Source code is hosted at GitHub.

Inspiration

Nudebomb is a radical fork of mkvstrip. It adds recursion, lang files, timestamps, online language lookup, and more configuration options.