Bulk Merge SRT into MKV using mkvmerge and PowerShell

Say, you have about 160 mkv files with a 160 seperate subtitles. Matroska is a container format which can hold multiple content such as video, chapters, subtitles and audio tracks. So it's much neater to have a single file for each film or episode.

Doing this manually, even using the mkvmerge job queue, is mind numbing and can take hours. Here's a relatively quick way of automatizing this.

Old situation

New situation

Prerequisite

Download and install MKVToolNix.

Part 1

1. Load the first mkv file and the srt file into mkvmerge GUI.
2. Set the options as desired.
3. Click Muxing.
4. Click Show the command line.
5. Modify the $mkvmergecommand variable in the PowerShell script below to math the parameters in the Current command line.

This is the command line you need to run in bulk with slightly different parameters, being the input and output files.

Part 2

1. Modify the variables at the top of the script to reflect your situation.
2. Run the script.

$directory = "M:\Downloads\Prison Break"

$mkvmergecommand = [String]"""""C:\Program Files\MKVToolNix\mkvmerge.exe"" -o ""%outputfile%""  ""--forced-track"" ""0:no"" ""-s"" ""0"" ""-D"" ""-A"" ""-T"" ""--no-global-tags"" ""--no-chapters"" ""("" ""%srtinputfile%"" "")"" ""--language"" ""0:eng"" ""--default-track"" ""0:yes"" ""--forced-track"" ""0:no"" ""--display-dimensions"" ""0:1280x720"" ""--language"" ""1:eng"" ""--default-track"" ""1:yes"" ""--forced-track"" ""1:no"" ""-a"" ""1"" ""-d"" ""0"" ""-S"" ""-T"" ""--no-global-tags"" ""--no-chapters"" ""("" ""%mkvinputfile%"" "")"" ""--track-order"" ""0:0,1:0,1:1"""""

$files = Get-ChildItem $directory -Filter "*.mkv" | Sort Name

Foreach ($file in $files) {

    $mkvinputfile = ($directory -replace "\\", "\\") + "\\" + ($file.Name)

    $srtinputfile = ($directory -replace "\\", "\\") + "\\" +($file.Name -replace ".mkv", ".srt")

    $outputfile =  ($directory -replace "\\", "\\") + "\\" +($file.Name -replace ".mkv", "Merged.mkv")

    $mergecommand = (($mkvmergecommand -replace "%outputfile%", $outputfile) -replace "%mkvinputfile%", $mkvinputfile) -replace "%srtinputfile%", $srtinputfile

    cmd /c $mergecommand

}

Download MergeMKVSRT.ps1.

Set Automatic Individual Corporate Outlook Web App (OWA) Signatures in Exchange Online / Office 365 with PowerShell

An e-mail signature is part of your corporate branding. Having a professional, uniform e-mail signature across your organization increases recognizability, allows clients to quickly find contact information and allows your business to use it as a spot for advertising.

Requesting employees in a large organization to create and design similar signatures is nearly impossible. Check out this crazy before-picture of the situation in our health care organization. Complete with blue handwriting fonts and Comic Sans. Lovely. Fortunately there are software tools available, such as RES Workspace Manager, to set a default, corporate signature in Outlook, but these tools only support the full version of Outlook. As businesses are moving to the cloud, more and more applications, including Outlook, will be offered web-based only.

Automatic e-mail signature in Outlook 2013 generated by RES Workspace Manager

The larger part of our employees are kiosk users, who have access to Outlook Web App (OWA) only, as a component of Office 365. We would still like to prevent a signature mess like before and preconfigure uniform, corporate signatures.

PowerShell to the rescue! With PowerShell you can connect to Exchange Online using an administrative or service account and set OWA signatures. I've written a script that sets a template signature for everybody and also inputs their individual contact information by replacing specific variables in the HTML code, such as %DisplayName%, %Title%, %Phone% and so on, with the values from the appropriate Active Directory User Attributes.

Note: by design this script only sets automated signatures for users who have never set a signature before or who have cleared their signature. See "Final Remarks" for other options.

Instructions

1. Download and extract SetOWASignatures.zip. Here's a link to view the code.
2. Open SetOWASignatures.ps1 and replace "admin@<company>.onmicrosoft.com" with your Office 365/Exchange Online admin account.
3. Securely save your password in an encrypted format in Password.txt in the root directory of the script. This is required to run the script without user interaction. You can use the following PowerShell command to generate the Password file:
   Read-Host -AsSecureString | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "<path to root of script>\Password.txt"
   Verify that your directory security is set up correctly.
4. Modify Signature.html to reflect your brand. The variables %DisplayName%, %Title%, %Phone% and so on, will be automatically replaced by the script with the appropriate Active Directory User Attributes.
5. Run the script (it will not modify existing signatures as only unset or cleared signatures will be set).

Automatic email signature in Outlook Web App (OWA) in Office 365.

(Optional) Schedule the script to run periodically

You can schedule this script using Task Scheduler to run periodically on any Windows Server in your infrastructure. This way new users and users who have cleared their signature will automatically receive the preconfigured company signature.

Final Remarks

• If you want to use images, such as logo's, in your signature, use absolute URL's which are publically accessible.
• Minor alternations to the Where-Object block of the script can change the way it functions. E.g.: reset all user signatures, even those already set previously, or set signatures in which users entered a specific string, such as <insert_signature>, and so on. If you would like to extend or modify the functionality of the script in such a manner but don't know how, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Dutch Language Pack for Citrix StoreFront 2.5

By default Citrix StoreFront supports 9 languages. Support can be extended to include additional languages. In many cases organizations and end users can benefit from a translated StoreFront environment as StoreFront is the central logon point for access to desktops and applications. The majority of help desk calls result from trouble logging on and/or changing passwords.

Below you will find a Dutch Language Pack for Citrix StoreFront 2.5.

The translation for Citrix StoreFront 2.5 contains more than 20 additional strings in comparison to its predecessor, mostly related to added functionalities such as Single Sign-On (SSO) and the use of smart cards.

Get App-V 5.0 Command Line Hook Switch with PowerShell

The App-V 5.0 Command Line Hook Switch can be used to allow local applications to run inside an App-V Virtual Environment. This way packaged applications, such as a sequenced browser plug-in, can interact with locally installed applications, such as Internet Explorer.

Assembling the Command Line Hook Switch can be tricky because it requires you to retrieve the package GUID and version GUID and concatenate them with an underscore in between. The full format looks like this: /appvve:<PACKAGEGUID_VERSIONGUID>.

To do this quickly, you can copy and run this single line of Powershell code:

$AppName = Read-Host "Enter package name"; If($AppVClientPackage = Get-AppVClientPackage $AppName) { Write-Host ("App-V Command Line Hook Switch:`n/appvve:" + $AppVClientPackage.PackageId + "_" + $AppVClientPackage.VersionId) } Else { Write-Host "Package not found." }

Result

Powershell Script to assemble the App-V Command Line Hook Switch

Copy the last line of the output and add it as a parameter to your application shortcut.

For more information about the App-V Command Line Hook Switch see the following article: How to launch processes inside the App-V 5.0 virtualized environment (KB2848278)

New Tab Page in Internet Explorer displays Black Background

Symptoms

• The page for a new tab ("Frequent") displays a black background.
• On a server you might experience group policy settings related to internet security zones not being applied correctly.
• Zone icons might be displayed with a lock icon in front (prior to Internet Explorer 11).

Internet Explorer New Tab Black Background

Cause

I discovered the cause on our Remote Desktop Server / Citrix XenApp 6.5 environment was that the (mandatory) profile was missing theme related registry settings. This profile was created by copying the default user profile or a new user without enabling a theme for this user first.

Solution

The solution was to configure a Windows Aero / Basic theme for the template user before copying or converting it into a mandatory profile.

Internet Explorer New Tab Regular Background Color

References

Other suggested solutions include:

• Add the missing registry keys related to the Windows theme manually, through a logon script or Group Policy Preferences. [1]
• Change to and fro a different theme. [2]
• Reset Internet Explorer settings to defaults.
• Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) before installing the Desktop Experience Feature of Remote Desktop Services.

Set Mailbox Type to Room, Equipment or Shared in Exchange based on Name with Powershell

Besides regular mailboxes Exchange has the option of flagging mailboxes as a Room or Equipment mailbox. These so called Resource mailboxes can be added to an appointment by which users can use Outlook as a reservation system for conference rooms and video projectors.

To convert regular mailboxes that are used in this manner in an existing environment to Resource mailboxes can be time-consuming. Therefore I wrote a PowerShell script that sets the flag based on the occurence of certain words in the name of the mailbox. This script asumes your shared/resource mailboxes are in their own organizational unit.

Shared mailboxes have the added benefit of not requiring a license in Office 365 as they are represented by a disabled user account. One of the conditions however is that their size remains below 10 gigabytes and it is not possible to use ActiveSync with such accounts.

On to the script. First enable remote PowerShell to your Exchange server for the script session.

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://<FQDN of Exchange Server>/PowerShell/ -Authentication Kerberos
Import-PSSession $Session

Next declare this simple function to search the name for the occurence of a list of search terms.

function inArray([String]$searchTerm, [Array]$searchArray) {
    ForEach($term in $searchArray) {
        if ($searchTerm -match $term) {
            return $true
        }
    }
    return $false
}

Define the search terms (substrings that are part of the mailbox name) that would define it as a Room or Equipment mailbox.

In this case the terms are in Dutch, but you can replace these with for example: "room", "office", "floor" and so on.

$roomSearchTerms = "ruimte", "kamer", "zaal", "kantoor", "lokaal", "cabine"
$equipmentSearchTerms = "projector", "beamer", "laptop"

Define the OU wherein your shared mailboxes reside.

$organizationalUnit = "OU=Mail,OU=Groups,DC=domain,DC=local"

Finally the query and operations for each mailbox happen here.

$mailboxes = Get-Mailbox -OrganizationalUnit $organizationalUnit -ResultSize Unlimited

ForEach ($mailbox in $mailboxes) {
    if (inArray ($mailbox.Name) $roomSearchTerms) {
        Set-Mailbox -Identity $mailbox.WindowsEmailAddress -Type Room
    } elseif (inArray ($mailbox.Name) $equipmentSearchTerms) {
        Set-Mailbox -Identity $mailbox.WindowsEmailAddress -Type Equipment
    } else {
        Set-Mailbox -Identity $mailbox.WindowsEmailAddress -Type Shared
    }
}

The end result in the Address Book after running the script looks something like this:


Outlook 2013 All Rooms

Great succes! Modify and use at your own risk.

Download the script: setResourceMailboxes.ps1