Matroska open source A/V container format officially released

[ChristianHJW]

Hi,

i have the big pleasure to officially announce that the matroska multimedia container project has finally left alpha status and turned into public beta status last night. By following the links below you will be able to obtain various tools to create, edit and play matroska audio and video files on your computers. Supported Operating Systems are currently Windows and Linux, but it seems at least playback is working for Mac OSX and OpenBeOS also.

The beta release of these tools is the last and maybe most important of the three initial steps to make matroska a living reality in the opensource community. After almost 18 months of development, always in contact with developers from various other opensource projects in the multimedia environment, we were able to come up with a working specification for the container end of 2002. From this spec our chief developer and project administrator, Steve 'robux4' Lhomme, could code a working basic I/O library called libmatroska, which was released in alpha version to interested OSS developers beginning of this year. Since then all efforts were undertaken to make file creation and playback possible, and in the meantime the main library was steadily developed further to its actual status.

The matroska container is mainly aiming to replace the good old AVI , but it is also ment to be a powerful and open alternative to other, mainly proprietary, containers such as ASF, MP4, MOV, RM, MPX and even MPEG. It uses the extensions .mkv for video and .mka for audio only files .

Here the main features of matroska :

- opensource, open standard, GPL and QPL licensed main library
- supports arbitrary file sizes, ideal for PCM audio and prepared for HDTV
- allows arbitrary number of audio, video and subtitles streams in one file
- attempting to support every existing audio and video codec under the sun
- extensible by using EBML as underlying framework, a binary structure based on XML
- enhanced container features such as menues, chapters, tags, file attachements
- perfect sync thanks to timestamps for data blocks
- x-platform design approach right from the start
etc.


Links :

The release page ( constantly updated ) : !!!! http://www.matroska.org/announce.html !!!!
matroska's homepage : http://www.matroska.org
The project page : http://corecodec.org/projects/matroska
CVS tree : https://corecodec.org/scm/?group_id=20


Here a listing of the tools that are released today :

LINUX :

All existing tools, as well for matroska file creation as well as for playback, were made by Moritz 'mosu' Bunkus, the author of the well known 'Ogmtools' . He was implementing playback support into mplayer for Linux, and the matroska support code was commited to mplayer CVS a few hours ago. His file creation tools, and this includes the sources, can be found here : http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ . The program, in its current status, will allow you to transmux every AVI, OGM or matroska file into a new matroska file, plus to add several external audio streams from either WAV or Ogg sources ( Vorbis ) as well as AC3 and MP3 audio, and SRT subtitles.

Currently Supported codecs :

Video : all VfW/VCM codecs ( DivX, XviD, etc. ) ; Audio : Vorbis, MP2, MP3, AC3, PCM ; Subtitles : SRT


WINDOWS :

File creation : The VirtualdubMod Team around Julien 'Cyrius' Coloos and Tobias 'Belgabor' Minnich have implemented matroska reading, editing and writing support in such a professional way that Windows users will not have to suffer from any major drawbacks compared to the well established AVI format. The program is released from its usual place on http://sf.net/projects/virtualdubmod .
Supported codecs are all : VfW/VCM codecs ( DivX, XviD, WMV9 VCM, ON2VP3, HuffYuf, H.264, 3ivx, MPEG4V3/2, etc. ) ; Audio : all ACM codecs , Vorbis, MP2, MP3, AC3, PCM

Playback, DirectShow parser : Our core developer Jan 'myFUN' Schlenker created the basis, and the great development team from 'The Core Media Player' , mainly Ludovic 'BlackSun' Vialle and Christophe 'Toff' Paris, were pushing it to the actual release status. Please note that there is currently work done on the implementation of seeking as well as subtitle support ( to follow soon ). Occasionally the player may freeze if the pause/stop button is pressed. The file can be downloaded here : http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/kaxdemux-v0.3.0.zip ; unzip it into any directory and run regsvr32 x:\path\kaxdemux.dll from a command line .

Playback : The Core Media Player Team have made a special release of their feature pumped DirectShow player, the TCMP RC4 'matroska release edition' , to be downloaded here : http://www.corecoded.com . Its coming with the latest parser filter and will install it automatically, plus it can easily be registered to playback matroska files.

MPA2MKA and WAV2MKA : Both programs allow the user to transmux PCM or MP2/3 audio file into matroska audio files and were developed by John 'spyder' Cannon and Jory 'jcsston' Stone . Link : http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mpa2mka.zip and http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/wav2mka.zip .


Future Features/Codecs ( still to come ):

- Menues
- Chapters
- MPEG 1/2 video support
- special mode 2 form 2 burning with ECC/EDC
- Image Subtitles ( BMP and PNG )
- Gstreamer plugin
- Vegas video plugin
- Xine playback patch
- AAC audio support
- Theora support
- streaming server ( UDP and HTTP )
- file attachements ( lyrics, cover images, etc. )
- p2p plugins including file ID
- Nero plugin
- winamp plugin
etc.


We hope you will find the container useful and are looking forward to your feedback. Please adress all feedback either to the mailing list matroska-general at freelists dot org , join us on IRC.CORECODEC.COM #matroska or turn to the new A/V formats section here.

Thank you very much for your interest and my apologies to those who may feel bothered by the long postl

Christian Wiesner

[avih]

congrats ;)

[robUx4]

thanx :)
It took a lot of time but now it's here (to stay) and working :D

[Ookami]

Thanks.

:)

[BlackSun]

big thanks to the matroska team, who worked as a team and was so nice with their PC while debugging :D (yeah I lost my motherboard, cdburner and soundcard) Moo.

[Doobie]

There you have it from a reliable source. Using matroska can destroy your motherboard, CD burner, and sound card.

[Rasi]

1st file i muxed sadly stopped playing instantly... only 1st frame i can see.. slide of player not moving... mplayer 6.4 this was

i muxed an avi with its mp3 audio track, dunno if this is possible by now at all :P

will try without audio and a few different players also....

appreciating this work! matty will kick avi's ass, i am sure about that!

so going testing now :)

[BoNz1]

Wow, congrads. I just muxed my first matroska file with vorbis audio and it works perfectly. Thanks very much. It is pretty easy to see that this really has the potential to be the next standard. Keep up the good work, hopefully soon you guys will get seeking working and then I can dump ogm and avi for good. :)

[Joe999]

Yes! I'm heading off immediately to get that new mplayer source code a'compilin away! Big thanks to everyone involved, and especially Moritz for letting us Linux users join in the fun right at the beginning!

[Malow]

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

Movie RoseRed, xvid+mp3 (ogg works too for me) in 3 XCD... with Media Player Classic...

very good, just wait for more apps to play with it...

Malow

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Joe999
Big thanks to everyone involved, and especially Moritz for letting us Linux users join in the fun right at the beginning!

You're welcome :) A request: if anyone finds bugs with the MPlayer demuxer please join us on irc.corecodec.org, channel #matroska - that way I'll be able to fix those bugs pretty fast.

[Liisachan]

MKV is awesome! :cool:

I tested more than 10 patterns.
For instance, I transmuxed a 175.00MB AVI (XviD+MP3 CBR) into MKV, with direct stream copy; the result is -- 174.09MB!
Yes, in this case MKV is smaller by almost 1.0MB in 175MB.
And it plays decently w TCMP RC3 Matroska, and almost perfectly w WMP.
This is only one example among many!

TCMP RC3 Matroska edition is also nice.
It has KaxDemux.dll which it will register by itself,
so you dont have to use regsvr32,
just install TCMP, then MKV MKA playback support will be ready.
You can even associate the extensions .mkv and .mka.
After that, an MKV file plays by just clicking its icon.

http://www.corecoded.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=79&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

In my env, there will be always jitter for first 2-3 seconds,
when I try to replay MKVs w TCMP. ( After this 2-3 sec period,
everything is cool.) Windows Media Player doesnt have this prob.
Media Player Classic doesnt work for MKV, in my env,
tho it does play MKA audio nicely.

All in all, I d say this is really promising:
filesize compactness (smaller than AVI/ogm), Unicode-based subs (I heard it already works on Linux), wide variety of Codecs it can accept, etc. etc...

For the time being, OGM is much more stable, so I think I m going to go on using OGM at least for a while.
But seeminly MKV can do everything that OGM can do, and more...
Plus, unlike OGM, it is open-source. It is really promising, I think :)


Correction:
Media Player Classic worked too for MKV

[Babeinternational]

Champagne again !!!
Works for me too (DivX 5.0.5 with MP3 CBR 160:"Hi, Mr Anderson. Surprised to see me ?":-D).
Let's get our hands dirty...there are things to do.
Btw, the new design of VDubMod is pretty cool (I always wondered why OGM and AVI were separated), it is so simple with this Stream List and Save As all together.
Now we can use Matroska, and still wait for something (chapter ans subs support); I love waiting for something (masochism ?).

[killingspree]

Congrats!
just succesfully did a avi - mkv conversation with vdubmod 1.5.1.1a.
video: divx 5.02
audio: 5.1 ac3
playback in BSPlayer works flawlessly. only thing: loading takes pretty long. should it?

thanks for this great new container. i see a bright future for it!

steVe

[Teegedeck]

Finally a clean solution for B-frames and VBR-MP3! Thanks to all of the matroska-team!:)

It works fine with BSPlayer. I'm gonna use matroska from now on, confident that this great project will flourish and attract more developers to code features yet missing.

Celebration time!

[alky]

nice... ogm vs mkv:
709.343KB vs 706.584KB

but since searching does not work during playback on windows not useable for me...

[BlackSun]

Originally posted by alky
nice... ogm vs mkv:
709.343KB vs 706.584KB

but since searching does not work during playback on windows not useable for me...

we're working on that atm !

[Mosu]

Please remember, guys, that we've called it a beta release, and that's what it still is. You might want to wait a bit before converting your big illegal movie archive ;)

And yes, the DirectShow filter has the highest priority at the moment. It won't take long until seeking has been implemented.

[oddball]

Question: Apart from filesizes and being open source, what other advantages does this have over OGM?

Also when used in conjunction with XCD does it offer any extra error protection?

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball Question: Apart from filesizes and being open source, what other advantages does this have over OGM? Also when used in conjunction with XCD does it offer any extra error protection?

You might want to read here : http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=304910#post304910 . This will certainly answer a lot of your questions ....

[oddball]

The following works and does not work for me.

Divx4.x and AC3 audio plays fine although the video and audio initially judder and jerk for the first few seconds of playback. Occurs in all players.

Xvid and OGG do not playback at all in any players including The Core Media Player (Tried BSPlayer, Zoom Player, WMP etc).

Can provide sample video and audio file from problem movie for you to mux and test for yourself.

I hope these issues get resolved soon.

EDIT: OK it's definitely something to do with OGG. I tried the same video file but muxed in the AC3 audio from the other video that works fine and it played back the MKV fine even with the AC3 being from an entirely different movie file.

I've tried a few other movies that use OGG audio and they have the same problem. MKV's load up but display a black screen and will not play at all. I am using OggDS0995 and OGM's playback perfectly.

About to try an MP3 audio movie.

P.S. I also use ffdshow latest (24/4) as playback for the vide portion although this should not have an effect. Will disable it just in case though.

EDIT: EDIT:

OK MP3 plays fine but also has the slow startup and jerky video/audio in the first few seconds of playback.

OGG audio is a no go. Absolutely refuses to play any MKV's with OGG audio in them. Bummer.

[Animaniac]

I remuxed an OGM with XviD video and Ogg Vorbis audio to MKV and it works fine...

[alky]

Originally posted by Mosu
Please remember, guys, that we've called it a beta release, and that's what it still is. You might want to wait a bit before converting your big illegal movie archive ;)



uhh the "i" word ... :P
i make my own tv rips with my hauppauge pvr...

[Perplx]

I can't get ffvfw version of huffyuv to work, but thats not really important.

[Atamido]

I noticed that it seems to cut off the last second of audio, and maybe the video. I have a clip that is maybe 30 seconds long that is DIV3, and vbr MP3 that I use to test all sorts of things. The very last thing in it is Peter Gibbons saying "Yeah, I guess it was." That is cut off when playing the MKV in mplayer2.

[outlyer]

It's great to see this. Congratulations guys!!

I'm eager to start beta-testing (after some time of alpha-testing ;))

[robUx4]

Yes there is some data missing at the beggining and the end with the DSF. We are working on the spaghetti code of the DSF to improve it. We have already corrected the jerky beggining.

[oddball]

Any idea why I cannot play any MKV's with OGG audio in them?

[Atamido]

Originally posted by oddball
Any idea why I cannot play any MKV's with OGG audio in them?
The OggDS filter is only marginaly better than the current Matroska filter, aka not very good. The problem is that the OggDS filters were thrown together by one guy who didn't release source or documentation, and has disappeared from the face of the earth. (I think Emmett has him locked in his basement) There has also not been an update to this code in a very long time. This wouldn't be an issue at all if Xiph would just put out an Ogg and Vorbis DirectShow filter. But that is a whole different issue that you don't want to get me started on.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball
Any idea why I cannot play any MKV's with OGG audio in them?
Hum ... did we tell you that you need Tobias' OggDS filter to play Vorbis with matroska ? You have it installed ?

[nikthebak]

I'm having similar problems with XviD video + Vorbis audio in them. The players just freeze up when loading the Matroska file.

I have installed OggDS0995.

Edit:

It's definetely an Ogg issue. The same video file with VBR MP3 audio works flawlessly. Using recent VDubMod to mux the files.

[ChristianHJW]

Nik, is it possible that you could upload a sample file somewhere, so we can have a look whats wrong ?

[nexus]

I have the same as
nikthebak: I muxed a xvid video and two ogg audio streams. File plays fine until I seek or change to the other audio stream. Then it freezes and if I hit pause and then play again the player crashes. Its MediaPlayerClassic v6.4.4.2
I can upload a sample file on monday if it helps.

The good news: the file 3MBs smaller than the ogm (698 instead of 701MB)

--
nexus

[Gooop]

xvid + 2 ogg files on 1 XCD works fine for me in mplayerc 6.442, bsplayer and TCMP. As nexus I can't switch the audio streams, but the file plays fine (video and first audio stream) if I don't try to switch.
thanks for your great work !
I can't wait for the new direct show filter :)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Gooop I can't wait for the new direct show filter :) .. we will maybe release a new, better version today :) ...

[murattttt]

I have tried matroska just with small audio clips with VBR mp3 for consideration.
It is true that it is space efficient even to ignore an interleaving factor before encoding files.
I had the clip of 1:30 minutes long with
929.480 bytes of VBR mp3 audio
8.966.144 bytes of avi divx 4.11 ( I know it's old )
And the final size is 9.876.517 bytes
In the windows explorer normally the sum of those two files is 11.040.456 bytes
I found this vert promising. I had such a small file and I can still take advantage of space efficiency, plus the scurity that I won't have headaches with lip movements ( desynchronisation ).

I may even start encoding straightly to matroska after now. Though would I get into trouble with my recent mkv files with the forthcoming directshow filters, or is it guaranteed that they are past compatible?
( Are these words sufficient to express my problem? )
And do I run into severe problems if I just make them as XCD with *.dat file extension and burn as usual?
Edit: I have already done an XCD with 810 MBs of video+audio with divx 504 and ogg. It just plays good except the jerkiness in the beginning and of course the file seeking problem ( with MPC - didn't test with other players except WMP 6.4.09 )

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by murattttt Though would I get into trouble with my recent mkv files with the forthcoming directshow filters, or is it guaranteed that they are past compatible?

You can safely use all MKV creation tools to make your movies. All files are 100% spec compliant, the current problems are only DirectShow filter related. A good proof for that is that all files created with VdubMod play fine and with perfect seeking under Linux, using Mosu's excellent mplayer patch ;) ....

[robUx4]

Actually there is a problem with the mpa2mka tool and maybe wav2mka too (not spec compliant). But for video the tools are spec compliant. So it's just a matter of developping the DSF and they will always play.

[spyder]

WARNING!

I thought you should all know that the mpa2mka tool and all related tools like mpa2mka-gui and the wav counterparts are NOT spec compliant. We are working to fix this. Please be patient.

Meanwhile, I have a first version of the CDL for TCMP working. It currently just displays a blank tab in the media properties and calls says that the title of every file opened is "MOOOOO! - Matroska Rocks." :)

Spyder

[oddball]

As stated. I am using Tobias OggDS0995.exe and no MKV's will play with OGG audio in them.

I really would like to see this issue resolved somehow or it will be pointless for me to use Matroska.

[spyder]

Vorbis works fine here. Can you tell us a bit more about the file. Like resolution and codec for video, and bitrate, samplerate, and channels for the audio.

[Animaniac]

Maybe other filters like SubtitDS are hijacking the filter graph. Vorbis audio works fine here as well.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball As stated. I am using Tobias OggDS0995.exe and no MKV's will play with OGG audio in them. I really would like to see this issue resolved somehow or it will be pointless for me to use Matroska. ... how is your filter graph in Graphedit looking ??

[nexus]

Thanx for the new DSFilter (v0.3.1). It works fine (xViD + ogg). However seeking doesn't work and if I switch to the second audio stream there is no sound. After all the player doesn't crash any more. Get seeking and multiple audio streams work in DSFilter and this is my new standard container. :-)

--
nexus

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by nexus Get seeking and multiple audio streams work in DSFilter and this is my new standard container. :-)--
nexus .. i take your word, this is exactly our plan :) ! We had a file with 20 audio streams working fine in DirectShow today, but unfortunately all 20 were playing same time :D .. LOL .

What we need now is a powerfull stream switcher, else we will have the same problems as OGM, being it cant play different audio stream types. Blacksun found out that maybe the Morgan Stream Switcher sources will be relased soon, that would be an ideal basis i guess.

[Liisachan]

i tried DSF 0.3.1.

I experienced some jitter w 0.3.0 esp, for the first 2-3 secs,
but this problem is fixed in 0.3.1
Playback is really smooth now.

There should be still a long way to go (seeking ability, subs suport etc.) but this is really promising...

Honestly I didnt expect Matroska would be this nice at this stage--the first public beta. This is already practical, save seeking.

[Gooop]

just a small tip for audio stream switching : on my computer if I play an mkv file (xvid + 2ogg) in media player classic it plays the first audio stream. If I load the same file in bsplayer, it plays the second audio stream...
It's ok guys you can stop working right now, everything's fine :D

[zyrill]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
What we need now is a powerfull stream switcher, else we will have the same problems as OGM, being it cant play different audio stream types.
sorry for interrupting but OGM actually CAN contain 2 audio-streams and you'll be able to switch between them without any difficulties using DSfilter...
hm... forget it - i know now what you mean by different streams...

[oddball]

OK here is a screencap of my Graphedit filters when trying to play an MKV file with OGG audio in it.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/graph.jpg

Also here is a test clip that is 5.78MB in size made from an OGM I have. I have tried several different OGM's and just muxing an avi and ogg file too with the same results. If it plays for you then it has to be something in my setup. But what?

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/test.mkv

[zyrill]

your setup seems to be erratic - i'll post a screenie of what a graphedit-graph looks like on my system. i just converted an ogm including divx, ogg and chapters to mkv (divx 5.0.4 with OGG vorbis - is about 6mb smaller than the original ogm-file).
http://mitglied.lycos.de/zyrill/graph.gif

[shitowax]

I did a small test with a 3 min 34 sec sample in 3ivx (100KB/s) + uncompressed 16 bits sound in different containers. Here are the results :

3ivx.avi : 65 128 KB
3ivx.ogm : 65 440 KB
3ivx.mkv : 64 992 KB
3ivx.mov : 64 902 KB

Important thing : I didn't even use compressed headers for the quicktime file... It's not that I'm a big fan of quicktime but, I'd like your comments about this test.

Btw, could matroska support something like compressed headers ???

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by shitowax
[B]I did a small test with a 3 min 34 sec sample in 3ivx (100KB/s) + uncompressed 16 bits sound in different containers. Here are the results :
3ivx.avi : 65 128 KB
3ivx.ogm : 65 440 KB
3ivx.mkv : 64 992 KB
3ivx.mov : 64 902 KB
Important thing : I didn't even use compressed headers for the quicktime file... It's not that I'm a big fan of quicktime but, I'd like your comments about this test.

matroska's overhaed gets better and better the bigger the individual video frames are. Can you try again with a higher ( normal ) bitrate like 700 - 1000 kbps ?

Btw, could matroska support something like compressed headers ???

Yes it could, EBML would certainly allow us to introduce new elements here, but this is not at all on our priority list now, as the effect for a complete movie of 700 MB will be close to zero ( in % of the whole file ) and its subject to introducing errors and can also prevent the whole movie from playing if only a few bytes are missing ...

[bb]

Just saved a captured movie using VirtualDubMod 1.5.1a. Video was DivX 5.0.5, audio Ogg Vorbis. The Matroska file came out smaller than the corresponding OGM.

Congratulations, it worked right from the beginning! I'd like to recommend to add a readme to the Matroska dll. Ok, you just have to right-click and register, but newbies may have problems when watching the plain dll without knowing what to do with it.

I'll soon switch to Matroska (using OGM currently). The two things I'm missing most:

1. Seeking
2. Overhead calculation in GordianKnot

bb

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball OK here is a screencap of my Graphedit filters when trying to play an MKV file with OGG audio in it.

Oddball,

delete the 'default Waveout device' in the filter chain and insert 'DirectSound device' like in Zyrill's graph manually, and see if it works.

It should work with Waveout also, maybe we have a problem with your soundcard here ? What model do you have ? The strange thing is that the correct Vorbis decoder gets inserted, so normally this shouldnt be the problem of matroska anymore, but they ways of DirectShow are long and winded ;) ....

[robUx4]

Originally posted by bb
Congratulations, it worked right from the beginning! I'd like to recommend to add a readme to the Matroska dll. Ok, you just have to right-click and register, but newbies may have problems when watching the plain dll without knowing what to do with it.

This is somehow intentional. Because the DSF is not ready for newbies yet. Once we feel anyone can use it normally (play, pause, stop, seek) we'll make it user friendly :)

[robUx4]

Originally posted by shitowax
I did a small test with a 3 min 34 sec sample in 3ivx (100KB/s) + uncompressed 16 bits sound in different containers. Here are the results :

3ivx.avi : 65 128 KB
3ivx.ogm : 65 440 KB
3ivx.mkv : 64 992 KB
3ivx.mov : 64 902 KB

I think the pb here might be that the chunck of PCM data are cut too small and therefore produce a lot of overhead. For PCM like this, the size of a "frame" should be the same duration as a video frame (40ms). I don't know wether VirtualDubMod already does this.

edit : I dind't notice the 64 vs 65... So we are smaller anyway :D

Originally posted by shitowax
Important thing : I didn't even use compressed headers for the quicktime file... It's not that I'm a big fan of quicktime but, I'd like your comments about this test.

Btw, could matroska support something like compressed headers ???

What do you call compressed headers ? The EBML headers can be considered as compressed already.

[shitowax]

What do you call compressed headers ? The EBML headers can be considered as compressed already.

I dunno the equivalent in the "matroska world", but in qt, everything is stored in "atoms", every timestamps, chunks and frame sizes, each media info, ... Compress headers introduces a new high level atom using zlib (for example) to compress all the atoms of a non-compressed header. On a 700 MB movie, you can easily gain around 10 MB using that method ...

[robUx4]

Well, EBML elements are really like Quicktime atoms, but should take less space. So yes we could apply the same system to gain space.

Other than that, your size difference may be explained by the way we store frame references (allow infinite references in the past and future, allowing to cut a movie and preserve all references).

It may also be that you included a whole index of frames that may not exist in your Quicktime file.

[oddball]

If I render audio to DirectSound in Graphedit it displays the first frame (Unlike with wave out which just displays a blank video window) but still does not play. If I then click on stop or pause I get the following error in Graphedit.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg

This is beginning to annoy.

I have a Creative SoundBlaster Live! Original with latest drivers in XP SP1 DirectX9. Tried various players.

By the way. I have to enable DirectSound for OGG playback in OGM's or the sound is jerky.

Next suggestion?

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball If I render audio to DirectSound in Graphedit it displays the first frame (Unlike with wave out which just displays a blank video window) but still does not play. If I then click on stop or pause I get the following error in Graphedit.
http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg
This is beginning to annoy.
I have a Creative SoundBlaster Live! Original with latest drivers in XP SP1 DirectX9. Tried various players.
By the way. I have to enable DirectSound for OGG playback in OGM's or the sound is jerky. Next suggestion?

oddballl,

i downloaded your test file and it doesnt play for me either. Please note that subtitles are only supported for playback on Linux via mplayer right now, its likely that the filter hangs because of this.

Can you try to make a matroska file without subs ? Alternatively load one of the sample files from here http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/index.html#samples without subs and see if they play for you .....

Sorry about the missing subs for now, but we first have to fix this stupid deadlock in our filter before we can add more features :( ...

EDIT :

Toff was pointing out that subs are playing when inserting dvobsub into the graph manually !! I did this with your movie and it was playing fine, even showing the subs !!

No idea why dvobsub is not called automatically, but this should be a minor issue i guess ...


EDIT 2 :

In dvobsub setup, set it to 'load always' and it will play fine in WMP and TCMP ;) ...

[oddball]

OK I reinstalled the latest SBLive! drivers and DirectX9 and I can playback Matroska files with OGG audio. But *ONLY* with 1 audio stream. If I add a second OGG stream it just gives me a blank video window again and does not go any further. If I add a .srt subtitle stream it gives me the first frame of the video and stops.

Clearly Matroska has a lot to live up to. I have absolutely no problems playing any other container format with multiple streams of any format. Just Matroska. But it's early days yet and needs lots of work no doubt.

[ChristianHJW]

oddball, read my last comments before your very last posting ...

[midi]

Neat. I just did a quick vdubmod conversion from an ogm file (xvid, ogg, and softsubs) to mkv and everything played fine in the core media player (on windows 2k here, dvobsub for subs). Nice to see mkv up and going.

Blasted vdubmod won't let me mux .ssa/.ass in though. So I guess the support for that is lacking somewhere, even though dvobsub supports it. The second I saw subs working in mkv I tried that, heh. Looks like mkv is another cool format I'll never get to use for a long time if ever. T.T

[Aboo]

Can anyone tell me, how can i switch audio streams in mkv?
There's also a problem with cyrillic fonts in subtiters: when i start mkv file, the subtiter characters are corrupted, even if i choose cyrillic fonts in BSPlayer.

[oddball]

Subs do not work for me in The Core Media Player neither.

Dual OGG does not work at all. No subs the test save whatsoever. I muxed an AVI with two OGG audio files and it will not play. Blank video window as usual. Nothing moves.

Also tried in Graphedit to see if I could get VobSub to load and play MKV with subs. But it went to play it then crashed.

.srt format subs BTW. Dunno if that makes any difference.

Anyhow dual audio and subs are a no go for now.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball Subs do not work for me in The Core Media Player neither.

Works perfectly here if you setup dvobsub such that it will load automatically each time. 'start' 'program files' 'vobsub' 'dvobsub setup' .

Dual OGG does not work at all. No subs the test save whatsoever. I muxed an AVI with two OGG audio files and it will not play. Blank video window as usual. Nothing moves.

Do you have Morgan stream switcher installed ? This filter was standard before the OGM times, only since Tobias OggDS' filters haven been widely used, most people recommended to deinstall it as it will interfere.

If you install Morgan you will be able to listen to matroska multi audio files fine, and be able to switch audio streams.

Also tried in Graphedit to see if I could get VobSub to load and play MKV with subs. But it went to play it then crashed. .srt format subs BTW. Dunno if that makes any difference. Anyhow dual audio and subs are a no go for now.

The file you were uploading as a test file here ( link above ) plays fine on my machine, with dvobsub set to be loaded automatically, morgan stream switcher installed and TCMP set to use DirectSound instaed of Waveout. :confused:

[robUx4]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
EDIT :

Toff was pointing out that subs are playing when inserting dvobsub into the graph manually !! I did this with your movie and it was playing fine, even showing the subs !!

No idea why dvobsub is not called automatically, but this should be a minor issue i guess ...

For a simle reason I think, the subtitle codecs are not mapped to the correct DirectShow UIDs yet (as it is for ACM, VCM, MP3 and a few other codecs).

[fatso485]

idea worth considering.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=52520

[JimiK]

well, generally I would say you should take care, because that is cross posting. But in this case I can perfectly understand that? Can't we discuss matroska in either General Discussion or New A/V Formats? I don't see that the posts would have a different kind of quality. On May 1st, the first thing I did was to check the New A/V Forum and was a bit disappointed that there was so little to read, until I found out there is also a General Discussion.
Best regards,
JimiK

[dvd2svcd]

@fatso485:

Don't you mean this thread?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52642

[filewalker]

It would really be a good idea to discuss all Matroska stuff in the "New A/V Formats". So it would be much easier to follow the development instead of serching around in different subforums.

BTW. great thanks for your hard work...Matroska rocks the house...:cool:

Cu filewalker :)

[oddball]

Nope. The Core Media Player is set to DirectSound and Morgan Stream switcher latest is installed (I initially installed this thinking this was why I could not get MKV files with OGG to play in the first place).

As stated. OGG MKV's now play back fine. But only for single OGG stream MKV's. MKV's with two OGG streams or more or MKV's with subtitles fail to play whatsoever.

My system spec is thus.

Intel PIII 800
Matrox G400 with latest drivers
SBLive! original with latest drivers
Windows XP SP1
DirectX9

For playback I use ffdshow latest build and Zoom Player 3, BSplayer and WMP Classic or The Core Media Player. Noe will play dual OGG MKV.

Tobias OggDS0995.exe is used as well as Morgan Stream Switcher and DirectVobSub 2.23

OGM's playback perfect with DirectSound enabled as do all other video codec formats.

[Animaniac]

It works fine for me without needing to install Morgan Stream Switcher.

[oddball]

Well the fact that it's hit and miss that some people can play them and some can't must mean there is something more to it. I have no problems playing any other format. So I doub't it's anything unusual in my config. Have the developers tried it with XP/SP1/DX9 and a number of different filter configurations?

[stax76]

dl seem to be broke:(, I will need to dl the core player now:rolleyes:

[Atamido]

The DirectShow filter is being rewritten from scratch and will probably have seeking working this weekend. At that point it will likely be released as a replacement to the previous one.

[filewalker]

@Dolemite
if you mean downloading the kaxdemux.dll...Download link (http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/)

Cu filewalker :)

[stax76]

@filewalker

thanks, I got it already by dl tcmp, I just added mkv support to DVX and needed the filter to see if it works, works good

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Dolemite thanks, I got it already by dl tcmp, I just added mkv support to DVX and needed the filter to see if it works, works good

We were handling the download of the DirectShow filter via the old sourceforge site, and it seems the admins there have been running a script to remove all .zip and .rar files from their servers ( i admit this was only a contemporary, quick solution ), so all the DShow filter download links were ( are ) invalid.

ZThis weekend we will relase the new version with seeking and many bugs squashed, and we will use the corecodec mirror system for this.

@Dolemite :

Just out of curoiosity :

Are you using VirtualdubMod for DVX ? There will be another alternative for makers of encoding programs that want to use a CLI muxer, as we hope we have someone porting Mosu's mkvmerger code from Linux to win32 soon ...

[stax76]

Are you using VirtualdubMod for DVX ? There will be another alternative for makers of encoding programs that want to use a CLI muxer, as we hope we have someone porting Mosu's mkvmerger code from Linux to win32 soon ...


I suggest toolmakers to work with VDMod, it's a awesome program

[ChristianHJW]

New DirectShow parser and TCMP CDL plugin are available in the 'Iris release' now :

http://www.matroska.org/announce.html

List of new features :

- seeking
- stop/play/pause is working
- Aspect ratio flag support ( via CDL plugin from TCMP )
- win32 binaries of mkvmerger

Important notes :

- The new filter cant connect to the XCD Dshow filter for now ( will be fixed son )
- seeking is not to keyframes yet
- Filter will not work on Win98 yet ( will also be fixed soon )

Happy using of matroska :)

[oddball]

I can finally playback MKV's with dual audio using the latest version. But cannot switch streams. I can see what you mean about no keyframe seek. Interesting speedup effect :)

I would put support for keyframe search, audio switching and sub stream support above XCD support for the moment.

[Mefisto]

I can't download wav2mka. The links are broken!

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Mefisto I can't download wav2mka. The links are broken! ... this is an interims solution as we had reports that the output of both WAV2MKA and MPA2MKA may be broken :( ... we'll investigate and report here ..

EDIT : Neither VirtualdubMod nor mkvmerger are affected by this !! Actually, both tools were developed more as a proof of concept, and also to be the basis for new tools like AAC2MKA or DTS2MKA, so we didnt touch them for a while before the big release .... maybe we didnt update them to match with the latest specs, we'll fix that quickly !

[killingspree]

thanks
seeking is working well here...

@ dev team:
is there a site where i can see some kind of timeline for future features? or does any plan on what features will be released when? specifically i'm interested in menus, AAC audio and sub muxing (:

thanks again
steVe

[ChristianHJW]

New filter is out : http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=315391#post315391

@Doom9 : worth a news entry :) ? It will fix the jerky playback for most users ....

[robUx4]

An even newer filter is now available which seem to fix most of the jerkiness problem. It is also more stable on the memory side.

Finally AAC is now officially supported... We also think there is a problem in the Vorbis decoder which doesn't handle correctly the DirectShow timestamps. We'll investigate this further.

The usual download place (http://www.matroska.org/announce.html).

[oddball]

Here are my results thus far with new filter.

Clip is Xvid with 3 OGG audio streams. Tried in 1 stream 2 stream and 3 stream (also 4 streams with sub but it made no difference really).

The only player that would playback smoothly with a single OGG audio stream was Zoom Player 3. I tried with BSPlayer and despite it being set to DirectSound output the video jerked around like crazy. OGM's playback perfectly in BSPlayer. Might be an issue specific to BSPlayer then.

With 2 OGG audio streams Zoom Player 3 had a tougher time. It tries to playback both audio streams at the same time (No means of switching it would seem) and the video jerks about.

With 3 OGG audio streams something strange occurs. It will play for a few seconds then totally stop playing (No audio or video). It just sticks. You can select the second audio track while it does play (The first and third audio tracks are actually marked as playing in the Zoom Player audio track menu but the second is not marked) but it will still stop playing.

You appear to have almost got a single OGG audio track working with very little jerking (Although it is still there to a degree).

Getting there.

[robUx4]

Originally posted by oddball
You appear to have almost got a single OGG audio track working with very little jerking (Although it is still there to a degree).

Getting there.

OK, I think what you call OGG audio is Vorbis... ;) As you can see above, we think there is another jerkyness source due to the Vorbis DS filter. And there's nothing we can really do about it ! (instead of hacks, which we firmly refuse to do).

Can you try this very same file but with another audio codec ? I think you will experience less problem... Please let us know.

[ChristianHJW]

Believe it or not, the best playback results from matroska currently, especially with respect to more than one audio track, seems to be achieved with AAC audio ... LOL !

I am sure we will find a solution for Vorbis, and it it means we will have to rewrite a new Vorbis DShow decoder filter ( NOT an Ogg/OGM parser/splitter filter for sure ) ...

@ oddball : Would you care trying to install good old Morgan audio Stream switcher filter and see if it does anything, maybe if you insert it manually into the playback graph in Graphedit ? It went opensource recently and is hosted on corecodec.org now ( http://corecodec.org/projects/mmswitch ), and we plan to build our audio stream switching solution based on it, maybe with a specific version that wont load for AVI/OGM, but only for MKV ....

[oddball]

I installed Morgan Stream Switcher (I hate it. It's *ALWAYS* given me trouble).

Immediately tried to play a dual 'Vorbis' audio sample in Zoom Player 3 and got this error message.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg

Consistently does it with dual 'Vorbis' and Zoom Player 3. BSPlayer plays it but still jerky and no means to switch audio streams still it would seem.

Uninstalled Morgan Stream Switcher and the dual 'Vorbis' sample plays back fine (With the problems noted in the previous message).

Single 'Vorbis' plays back fine.

[BlackSun]

Originally posted by oddball
I installed Morgan Stream Switcher (I hate it. It's *ALWAYS* given me trouble).

Immediately tried to play a dual 'Vorbis' audio sample in Zoom Player 3 and got this error message.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg

Consistently does it with dual 'Vorbis' and Zoom Player 3. BSPlayer plays it but still jerky and no means to switch audio streams still it would seem.

Uninstalled Morgan Stream Switcher and the dual 'Vorbis' sample plays back fine (With the problems noted in the previous message).

Single 'Vorbis' plays back fine.

Could you test with the latest version of mmswitch (doom9 offer an old one) from http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/mmswitch/index.htm
Also make sure you use the latest version of mkds:
http://www.matroska.org/announce.html

Do you have the TMF audio filter installed ? If yes, uninstall it.

[Animaniac]

Yeah... Morgan Stream Switcher breaks MP3 (in MPEG-1 container and AVI), AAC (using 3vix and CoreAAC), Ogg Vorbis (using OggDS), and I can't find any audio that actually plays. I am VERY unhappy with the Matroska teams decision to use Morgan Stream Switcher. I am sure many agree with my point of view. I would feel much more comfortable if the Matroska team came up with their own stream switching mechanism (built into the parser a la OggDS).

[oddball]

It is the latest version I used. I've been down this road before.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Animaniac I am VERY unhappy with the Matroska teams decision to use Morgan Stream Switcher. I am sure many agree with my point of view.

Dont forget, its opensource now .. so only the sky is the limit ;) ...

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Dont forget, its opensource now .. so only the sky is the limit ;) ...

I hope it's the limit for improvement of functionality rather than problems... :)

[multicone]

matroska's 4th birthday today !!

Congratulations !

[Awatef]

I wanna congratulate the Matroska team too.
Who would have thought that ME (a big conservative!) who defended the AVI format aggressively back in the days would switch completely to MKV!!

The main reasons I switched to MKV were that:
- after all, it is practical to have VobSub subtitles within the same file (instead of having them outside with the same -unconclusive- name)
- my favourite stereo encoding format, Vorbis, wouldn't work in AVI, and I don't like to use OGM because of its bad subtitle support.
- the most efficient video encoding format, AVC, is not ment for the AVI container, and then MP4 is too limited a container (no Vorbis, no VobSub, etc)
- I can encode anamorphic and specify the AR in mkvmerge (functional GUI btw!)
- there is a possibility to name the different tracks and specify the languages and all

I wish the best for the Matroska team, and may we see standalone support in the near future!

:thanks:

[robU*4]

Happy birthday to ourselves. And a big thanks to all the users and early adopters who helped us making matroska a useful reality (a great technology but unused is not worth anything).

A special mention to some Doom9 mods who had a hard time dealing with us while the wind was changing...

[vlada]

My congratulation too. As far as I've seen, MKV is really dominating the HD video world. But still there are some limitations:

1) No menu support
2) No standalone players support
3) No NLE or VD-like editor with MKV support (at least in Windows)

Are there any news regarding these 3 points?

Point 2) I already announced here the Cowon A3, which should have Matroska support. But it isn't released yet and it becomes unsure if it will be released at all.

[zambelli]

My congratulation too. As far as I've seen, MKV is really dominating the HD video world.
Dominating? :)
I must've missed it in the HD-DVD, BluRay, ATSC, DVB-C, ISDB-T DVB-T, DVB-S, and every other high def video standard known to man. :rolleyes:

[vlada]

zambelli
I meant as a format for file sharing. This is where the most popular formats come from (MP3, AVI, MPEG-4 etc.)

[multicone]

Dominating? :)
I must've missed it in the HD-DVD, BluRay, ATSC, DVB-C, ISDB-T DVB-T, DVB-S, and every other high def video standard known to man. :rolleyes:

Of course, only M$ has enough money to set and push international standards today. I really dont wonna know homw many 'money presents' they have to give, and worldwide, to buy everybody.

How can a poor, non-profit opensource project compete against that ?

Still, you will find more MKV than WMV files in the net :p

[Shinigami-Sama]

Grats Matroska Team

Personally I see its use as more of a home user one. As companies are paranoid of implementing new technologies over old dieing ones. But thats not saying you wont make it big one day

[zambelli]

I meant as a format for file sharing. This is where the most popular formats come from (MP3, AVI, MPEG-4 etc.)
That's simply not true.
Just a simple search on Mininova yields these results:
"MKV": 1091 hits
"WMV": 1183 hits
"AVI": 2000 hits (and I have a feeling that's the max the search engine will report)

I'm sure a more elaborate and accurate search would show that AVI files vastly outnumber MKV files on general file-sharing sites.

If MKV dominates anywhere, I'd say that's an exception more than a rule.

Of course, only M$ has enough money to set and push international standards today. I really dont wonna know homw many 'money presents' they have to give, and worldwide, to buy everybody.
Only MS? Then who standardized all the other formats?

How can a poor, non-profit opensource project compete against that ?
Is it trying to compete against that? Are any Matroska team members MPEG, SMPTE or ISO members? Formats don't just automagically get standardized. Somebody has to actually initiate the process.

Still, you will find more MKV than WMV files in the net :p
You do realize that every website offering Windows Media streaming is using WMV, right? And you do realize there are quite a few of those around, right? What next, are you gonna tell us there is more MKV content than FLV/SWF content online?


To be clear, I'm not trying to discredit MKV. I'm just saying it's not nearly as common as some people claim it to be.

[celtic_druid]

All 720p scene releases I have seen recently have been in a mkv container due to the use of AC3 together with AVC. Before that all scene releases were avi's. As more and more content is HD, then more and more scene releases will be using mkv.

Look at the popularity of DivX SAP's. You can't tell me that it isn't mostly due to downloaded avi's. People used to ask (not here) about converting avi's to DVD video. Now they ask about converting mkv's to avi's.

[LigH]

blowing away the dust...

Is there any resurrection of the projects which died together with the corecodec.org server? Or will such long expected projects like the USF editor, or even the Matroska (Video) Editor, never get released?