Welcome to the August 2026 release of Video Commander. This version is mostly about what a file is actually carrying: color, subtitles, captions, ad markers, and encryption. Here are the highlights:
- Color tab - classifies HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision, and shows the evidence.
- Subtitles tab - decodes tx3g, WebVTT, and TTML/IMSC cues, and finds CEA-608/708 captions inside the video.
- Events tab - lists event messages and decodes SCTE-35 ad markers.
- DRM tab - encryption scheme, key IDs, and pssh boxes per track, cross-checked for mismatches.
- Tools tab - a standalone PSSH decoder for blobs pasted from a manifest or a license log.
- Your own presets - save, export, and import Convert presets, and enter custom codecs and containers.
- Pick your FFmpeg - system, app-managed, or any path you point at, with live verification and capability listing.
- Inspect on the web - container and manifest analysis running in your browser, nothing to install.
Version 2026.10.0 is available now from the download page.
Inspect
Color and HDR
Inspect has a new Color tab that classifies the color and HDR characteristics of a track: SDR, HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, or Dolby Vision.
It shows the reasoning rather than just the verdict. Primaries, transfer characteristics, and matrix coefficients are listed with their signalled values, alongside the mastering display metadata, content light levels, and the Dolby Vision profile and level where present. When the container signalling and the bitstream disagree, both are shown.
Subtitles and captions
The new Subtitles tab decodes cue text out of subtitle tracks instead of only reporting that they exist. tx3g, WebVTT, and TTML/IMSC are supported, and you can read the actual cues with their timings.
It also finds CEA-608/708 captions carried inside the video bitstream, which nothing in the container announces.
Each track is checked for the problems that usually surface late: tracks with no cues at all, overlapping or zero-duration timings, cues that run past the end of the video, and missing language tags.
Events and SCTE-35
The Events tab lists every event message in a file and decodes SCTE-35 ad markers. For each marker you get the splice point, the break duration, and whether it starts a break or returns from one.
DRM
The DRM tab reports the encryption scheme, key IDs, and pssh boxes for every track in the file, then cross-checks them against each other. Key ID mismatches between tracks and pssh boxes, and systems present in one place but not another, are called out directly. These are the packaging mistakes that make protected content fail quietly in a player rather than raise a useful error.
Tools
A new Tools section holds utilities that do not need a file loaded. The first is a PSSH decoder: paste a base64 blob from a manifest, a license request, or a log, and read the system ID, key IDs, and system-specific data out of it.
Boxes, bytes, and GOPs
Selecting a box now shows its decoded fields inline in the tree, and the matching bytes are highlighted in the hex viewer so you can see where each field came from. Attributes are decoded when you select a box rather than up front, which keeps large files responsive.
The GOP table pages through every frame in the file. It previously stopped at 200.
Convert
Custom presets
You can save your own Convert presets, and export and import them as files. Sharing a house encoding ladder across machines, or with the rest of a team, is now a matter of sending a file.
Preset picker
The preset list is searchable, grouped, and filterable, which makes a long list of presets usable.
Custom codecs and containers
The container and codec fields now have a Custom… option. Choose it and type any FFmpeg encoder name or file extension, and the encode runs with that instead of a value from the built-in list. This covers combinations the app has no entry for, such as PNG video in an MKV, or DV in a .dv file.
For a custom container the app leaves -f off the command and lets FFmpeg infer the muxer from the extension. For a custom codec it drops the x264-specific flags, since those do not apply to an arbitrary encoder.
Settings
Choosing an FFmpeg build
Settings now has an FFmpeg source picker. Use the build already on your system, let the app download and manage a verified one, or point it at any path you like.
Each source is verified as you select it, and the app lists what that build actually supports: encoders, decoders, hardware acceleration, and the flags it was compiled with. If two builds behave differently, you can see why before running a job.
The app-managed build can be deleted from Settings. If it was the active source, the app falls back to your system PATH.
Automatic FFmpeg install on Windows
Automatic FFmpeg installation now works on Windows. It was disabled there in 2026.7.3 while a packaging problem was sorted out, and macOS was the only supported platform in the meantime.
Remote storage
Remote storage works with AWS SSO and login-session profiles. Connection failures now explain what went wrong instead of failing generically.
Inspect in the browser
Container and manifest inspection has been compiled to WebAssembly and runs in your browser. Open the playground, load a file or a stream URL, and get the same box tree, track details, and manifest analysis without installing anything. The file stays on your machine.
Engineering
- The file parsers are now fuzzed in CI and hardened against malformed and untrusted input. Several crashes found that way are fixed in this release.
- Dependency advisories now gate the build, and the advisories present in bundled dependencies are resolved.
- The conformance suite runs against a pinned fixture release covering SCTE-35, subtitles, and HDR.
- The project keeps a
CHANGELOG.md, and published GitHub release notes are extracted from it. - The test-build channel is renamed from canary to preview. Pre-release tags are marked as such on GitHub, and the updater does not offer them to stable users.
Fixes
- The
aaccontainer no longer passes-f aac. The muxer isadts, and the wrong value made those encodes fail. - pssh box details no longer render twice.
- The GOP table no longer caps at 200 frames.
- Clearer wording in the Tools tab and the PSSH decoder.
Download
Get 2026.10.0 from the download page, or use the in-app updater. The full release history is on the changelog.