AppleScript app for removing tracks from Quicktime files

[Maxr Hopeless]

Donwload link’s broken, would you be as kind as to share that script again?
=) thanks

[Drew Lahat]

Indeed, the website has been redesigned just recently so my little section is no more… For now, you can download the application and source code here:
https://www.drewlahat.com/misc/DeleteQTTracks.zip
https://www.drewlahat.com/misc/DeleteQTTracks.txt

The original page (with brief documentation) can be found at the https://www.precisionpost.com/channels/videovillage/2012/10/delete-tracks-from-quicktime-files—applescripting-qt.html“>Wayback machine…

It also appears that Mac Informer stores a copy of the app, although it hasn’t been validated by me.
https://macdownload.informer.com/delete-qt-tracks/download/

[Luke Sloma]

This is great! Is there a way to delete the Timecode tracks as well?

[Drew Lahat]

There is… just open a QT file (in QT Player 7), hit Cmd+J, choose the timecode track and delete it…

This of course does it one file at a time, not automated. Also note that if you need more QT manipulation capabilities, I recommend VideoToolShed’s QTChange utility. More powerful and useful that my script 🙂

[Luke Sloma]

Thanks for the reply! I got this far, I was just curious if your script could be altered to batch remove the timecode tracks for, say, 282 clips.

For whatever reason, QTC won’t strip TC tracks from my ProRes source. However, my version may be out of date.

luke

[Drew Lahat]

Let me start with an “Avid question”… why would you need to do that?

[Bouke Vahl]

Eeh Luke,
You’re referring to QTchange?
If so, it ‘should’ work. But do note, deleting tracks DISABLES them.
(since there is no new clip generated, there is only a small change in the metadata of the file.)

It can’t be a version problem afaik (but you can always download the latest demo, and that’s probably a free upgrade).

One thing to check, you do have read/write persmissions on the files?

hth,

Bouke

https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros

[Maxr Hopeless]

A bit delayed but wanna say thanks =)
For those formats that QT doesn’t handle (i.e. hevc) I found using this ffmpeg’s code quite useful – ffmpeg -i [input_file] -vcodec copy -an [output_file]
A good for y’all

[Fede Barberan]

Hi there!
I was trying to use ‘Delete QT Tracks’ but saving the file in the same folder instead of duplicating the file on another one. Is there any workaround for this action?
Also deleting the ‘Metadata’ will be great too. Or Audio & Metadata for example. Is that hard to accomplish that? Sorry I have no programmer skills.

OSX Sierra 10.12
QT Player 7.6.6 (1709)

[Drew Lahat]

Phew, it’s been a while (6 years, to be exact). ☺ Glad to see this tool is still being useful to some, unfortunately my AppleScripting is a bit rusty and I’m in the midst of several projects, so can’t dive into the code right now.
For changing the save path, it was a safety feature to prevent you from damaging your precious video if something goes awry. You can always delete the source files… Alternatively, can you just choose the same path to overwrite?

The place to affect that in the code will be set saveAsFileNamePath to (savePath as text) & outFileName

As far as deleting metadata, you can’t have a QT file without any metadata – might as well delete the file altogether. So the question is what metadata are you trying to remove. Quicktime can be quite serpentine about its elements, some are easier to access, some are nearly impossible to decipher. (For example, vendors like Sony/Panasonic/etc. can insert their own metadata which is utterly cryptic, and they don’t publish how to read it yourself.)