mp4 or mkv?

[Octo-puss]

In case this had been discussed before, my apologies.
I am no expert at all and only started to use 264 instead of the dreaded divx(or xvid later) last year. Logically I changed the container as well. But I just have been using mp4.
Now the question is, which one to use and perhaps when? Or the low level lamer question: which one is better?
I saw some technical articles, but not understanding most of the stuff I cannot judge.

[stax76]

Which one is better?

MKV is more popular here, has more features, has better tools and since DivX will use it for DivX 7 hardware support should finally also improve. In most cases it won't make a big difference, they work both just well!

[fibbingbear]

If you've encoded stuff to a specific profile, and you want playback on standalone devices, MP4 is a better choice IMO. However, both formats are nearly identical and you can convert between them without loss of quality (I certainly can't imagine a situation where you can't go from mp4-->mkv, but there may be some where you can't go from mkv-->mp4). MKV is more flexible (MP4 is only supposed to be used with "standard approved" formats like AAC, H.264, etc., whereas MKV can support most anything), but in practice I've never run across anything both couldn't handle.

[Octo-puss]

Well, I just encode movies to be watched on PC, so no problem with standalone players :)
I also noticed that with mp4, I usually get 2fps more over mkv. lol.

Anyway, thanks for clearing stuff up :)

[Lele-brz]

Accorsing to my experience MKV is nice but it's not well supported everywhere (Quicktime...)

I would like to use MKV but there's another thing that prevent me from doing that. The header is always placed at the end of the file, so if you want to stream it you have to fetch the last part of the file. This can be a problem if you're going to stream that file.
I know it's an implementation feature since the specs allow MKV to place the CuePoints at the beginning.

[TheFluff]

I would like to use MKV but there's another thing that prevent me from doing that. The header is always placed at the end of the file, so if you want to stream it you have to fetch the last part of the file. This can be a problem if you're going to stream that file.
I know it's an implementation feature since the specs allow MKV to place the CuePoints at the beginning.
I don't know what you're talking about, most likely it's your splitter that doesn't support reading streamed files. Haali's splitter does and has worked on all files I've tried it on.

[Lele-brz]

I don't know what you're talking about, most likely it's your splitter that doesn't support reading streamed files. Haali's splitter does and has worked on all files I've tried it on.

I was referring to mkvmerge that when multiplex the file always put the CuePoints at the end of the file.
There are no other MKV muxers from command line that move the CuePoints at the beginning of the file.