You would first list all the audio streams:

ffmpeg -i VIDEO.mkv

and then based on the output you can compile the command to extract the audio tracks individually.

Using some shell script you can then potentially automate this in a script file so that you can do it generically for any mkv file.

Subtitles are pretty much the same. The subtitles will be printed in the info and then you can extract them, similar to:

ffmpeg -threads 4 -i VIDEO.mkv -vn -an -codec:s:0.2 srt myLangSubtitle.srt

0.2 is the identifier that you have to read from the info.

If someone steps in this question with a modern version of ffmpeg, it looks like they added the option there. I needed to convert a file by maintaining all tracks:

ffmpeg -i "${input_file}" -vcodec hevc -crf 28 -map 0 "${output_file}"

To achieve what the original question asked, probably this could be used:

mappings="`ffmpeg -i \"${filein}\" |& awk 'BEGIN { i = 1 }; /Stream.*Audio/ {gsub(/^ *Stream #/, \"-map \"); gsub(/\(.*$/, \" -acodec mp3 audio\"i\".mp3\"); print; i +=1}'`"
ffmpeg -i "${input_file}" ${mappings}

The 1st line (mappings=...) extracts the existing audio streams and converts them in "-map X:Y -acodec mp3 FILENAME", while the 2nd one executes the extraction

There is no option yet in ffmpeg to automatically extract all streams into an appropriate container, but it is certainly possible to do manually.

You only need to know the appropriate containers for the formats you want to extract.

Default stream selection only chooses one stream per stream type, so you have to manually map each stream with the -map option.

1. Get input info

Using ffmpeg or ffprobe you can get the info in each individual stream, and there is a wide variety of formats (xml, json, cvs, etc) available to fit your needs.

ffmpeg example

ffmpeg -i input.mkv

The resulting output (I cut out some extra stuff, the stream numbers and format info are what is important):

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'input.mkv':
  Metadata:
  Duration: 00:00:05.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 106 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High 4:4:4 Predictive), yuv444p, 320x240 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 50 tbc (default)
    Stream #0:1: Audio: vorbis, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp (default)
    Stream #0:2: Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp (default)
    Stream #0:3: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp (default)
    Stream #0:4: Subtitle: ass (default)

ffprobe example

ffprobe -v error -show_entries stream=index,codec_name,codec_type input.mkv

The resulting output:

[STREAM]
index=0
codec_name=h264
codec_type=video
[/STREAM]
[STREAM]
index=1
codec_name=vorbis
codec_type=audio
[/STREAM]
[STREAM]
index=2
codec_name=aac
codec_type=audio
[/STREAM]
[STREAM]
index=3
codec_name=flac
codec_type=audio
[/STREAM]
[STREAM]
index=4
codec_name=ass
codec_type=subtitle
[/STREAM]

2. Extract the streams

Using the info from one of the commands above:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv \
-map 0:v -c copy video_h264.mkv \
-map 0:a:0 -c copy audio0_vorbis.oga \
-map 0:a:1 -c copy audio1_aac.m4a \
-map 0:a:2 -c copy audio2.flac \
-map 0:s -c copy subtitles.ass

In this case, the example above is the same as:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv \
-map 0:0 -c copy video_h264.mkv \
-map 0:1 -c copy audio0_vorbis.oga \
-map 0:2 -c copy audio1_aac.m4a \
-map 0:3 -c copy audio2.flac \
-map 0:4 -c copy subtitles.ass

• I prefer the first example because the input file index:stream specifier:stream index is more flexible and efficient; it is also less prone to incorrect mapping.

• See documentation on stream specifiers and the -map option to fully understand the syntax. Additional info is in the answer to FFmpeg mux video and audio (from another video) - mapping issue.

• These examples will stream copy (re-mux) so no re-encoding will occur.

Container formats

A partial list to match the stream with the output extension for some common formats:

I solved it like this:

ffprobe -show_entries stream=index,codec_type:stream_tags=language -of compact $video1 2>&1 | { while read line; do if $(echo "$line" | grep -q -i "stream #"); then echo "$line"; fi; done; while read -d $'\x0D' line; do if $(echo "$line" | grep -q "time="); then echo "$line" | awk '{ printf "%s\r", $8 }'; fi; done; }

Output:

Only set $video1 var before command.

Enjoy it!.