New Matroska release bundle (Liisachan release)

[robUx4]

Hi everyone,

As there is an article planned about our project in the German PC magazine 'CHIP' ( to come out beginning of September ) and we had to hand our software over to them today, 4th august, we take the opportunity to release all the software that was being developed for this release here :

This release makes a long list of additional features in matroska files possible, such as

- chapters
- matroska tags
- attachement files
- CRC32 EDC elements
- file splitting with indexing
- RV9 video in MKV ( Realmedia )
- RA audio in MKV ( RealAudio )
- SSA/ASS subtitles muxing into MKV files


The released tools/programs are :

1. libmatroska/libebml 0.5.0 : the latest basic libraries, necessary for programmers who are planning to support matroska in their tools, or for Linux users who want to compile latest mplayer from CVS against the very latest library version. They can be downloaded from the official download page (http://matroska.free.fr/downloads), direct links are here (http://matroska.free.fr/downloads/libebml/libebml-0.5.0.tar.gz) and here (http://matroska.free.fr/downloads/libmatroska/libmatroska-0.5.0.tar.gz)

2. VirtualdubMod 1.5.4.1 : This version is not only fixing a couple of minor bugs, its also adding a couple of very important new features such as
- chapter writing support
- basic tagging support
- writing of CRC32 EDC elements
- editing of non VCM-codec video streams, such as RealVide 9 ( only CFR ) and 'native' MPEG4 ISO MKV files ( to come soon )
Get it from the usual project page (http://sf.net/projects/virtualdubmod)

3. MKVtoolnix 0.6.0 : Compiled against latest library, Mosu's package offers the following new features :
- file splitting
- chapter file import and chapter writing
- RealVideo ( rv 10, 20, 30, 40 = RV9 ) and RealAudio muxing ( Cook, ATRAC, RALF, SIPRO, etc. )
- SSA subtitle muxing, only UTF8 ( no UTF16 yet )
- CRC32
Its for download at the usual MKVtoolnix homepage (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/), including win32 binaries (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/mkvtoolnix-0.6.0.zip) based on mingw .

4. New matroska playback pack (http://matroska.free.fr/downloads/Matroska_Playback_Pack_0.5.exe) for Windows : It does include
- Gabest' latest matroskasplitter filter, with chapter support via COM ( only certain player like MPC and TCMP RC4 will suupport that for now )
- CoreVorbis
- Timestamp manager from DaveEL ( for native MPEG4 ISO MKV files, to come soon )
- MatrixMixer filter
- Gabest' latest matroskamuxer filter, for file creation on DShow ( optional )
- Gabest' subtitle playback filter DVobSub 2.27 ( optional )
- Gabest' subtitle source filter, for SSA muxing ( optional )
- Gabest' Realmedia splitter/wrapper filters ( optional )
Get the latest version always from the official matroska download page on http://www.matroska.org

5. TCMP RC4 ( The Core Media Player ) with matroska CDL 1.3 :
The team around Blacksun and Toff have greatly improved the player in many details, highlights are
- a new media library
- many many bug fixes
- new skins
- new matroska CDL ( by jcsston ) with matroska tags reading/writing from the player
- new CDL API
- chapter support for matroska
etc.
Get it from the official homepage (http://corecoded.com)

6. MPC 6.4.5.9 : This player has found a lot of friends in very short time, it doesnt offer a lot of fancy stuff like various skins or the like, but is working rock solid and with a very good performance, as its coded in C++ . Latest version has improved Realmedia and matroska support, both with included parsers. Additional features to previous versions are
- chapter support in MKV
- RealVideo playback from MKV
- Subtitle syncing from the player
- Capturing into MKV ( from WDM drivers )
From the Guliverkli (http://sf.net/projects/guliverkli) page

7. Matroska Shell extension v 1.3 : Jory 'jcsston' Stone created this great Windows tool, after installation it will tell you anything you want to know about your files, and even allow you to read/write all existing matroska tags, or to change the display size of a file. Get it here (http://matroska.free.fr/downloads/cdl/matroskapropv1.3.exe)

8. mmg : A new developer and a new tool for the project, Florian 'SirElvis' Wagner created an excellent GUI for Mosu's mkvmerge win32 binaries, so that those users who dont like CLI programs too much can use it very comfortably. There are 2 versions of it, one with an installer (https://corecodec.org/download.php/13/mmg_installer_0.6.0-r3.exe) that is including mkvtoolnix 0.6.0, and one without ( just the GUI (http://corecodec.org/download.php/15/mmg_installer_0.6.0-r3.exe) ).

9. Gabest's RealMedia splitter filter : The wizzard programmer and well known author of 'VobSub' took the challenge and created a DirectShow Realmedia splitter filter, as well as some wrapper filter around the Real DLLs, so that playback of Realmedia Files on every DirectShow player is possible. This is the basis of a working 'Realmedia from MKV' playback, as before these filters existed it was impossible to call the REAL DLLs from any matroska parser/splitter filter. They need the 'RealOne' player to be installed on the same PC, as only then the DLLs will be existent to be called from the wrapper filters. Also from the Guliverkli (http://sf.net/projects/guliverkli) page.

10. VirtualVCR_matroska : A modification to this well known DirectShow based capturing application, using matroskamuxer.ax to capture any content from a WDM capture card into MKV files. To be downloaded here (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdubmod/VirtualVCR-matroska.tar.bz2?download).

11. VLC : the videolan guys have added matroska playback support to their great player, based on 0.4.4 version of the library, so it will play all matroska files fine, but not be able to use tags or chapters in the files. The player is available for Linux, Win32, MaxOSX and BeOS and can be obtained from the Videolan Homepage (http://www.videolan.org).

12. Gstreamer-Plugin : Ronald 'BBB' Bultje, the Gstreamer developer, has not only made a closed source implementation for the company he works for, so that they can capture video material into MKV files, but also created an opensource Gstreamer playback plugin, find it on http://www.gstreamer.net .

13. Dark-Cracker has made a DirectShow based muxing GUI (http://www.eclipsedvd.firstream.net/autodub/MatroskaMuxer.zip) for Gabest's matroskamuxer filter, its very convenient to handle and currently the easiest way to mux SSA or ASS subtitles into MKV files, until Mosu can add UTF 16 SSA compatibility to mkvmerge.


Other matroska releated news :

Matroska has now a feature list to be found here (http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/matroska/doc/website/features.html) , the intention behind is to keep people informed about what we are actually working on, and what is to come next.

With this release there also a number of sample files to be released, which you can load soon from the samples page on http://matroska.free.fr/samples/index.html

Written with the help of ChristianHJW ;)

[robUx4]

Oh, I forgot to mention we have an official bug report page (for libmatroska/libebml/mkxds/mkxtoolnix/Shell Extension/TCMP CDL/LemAPI) on CoreCodec.org.

http://corecodec.org/tracker/?atid=141&group_id=15&func=browse

[ssjkakaroto]

that's great! :D
thx a lot matroska team and all the other devs helping it out!!

edit: can you guys pack msvcr71.dll with mmg? you can find it easily on google but i think most users won't like to search for dlls :p

[Eric B]

Thanks a lot for this release. I will test it soon...

[JagPanzer]

That's really, really GREAT! Thanks to all Matroska team. :D

[HomiE FR]

Hats off to the Matroska team! :)
I'm gonna test everything right now. But I'm already convinced that this article in CHIP is only the first of a huge list in the next months. ;)

[SirElvis]

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
edit: can you guys pack msvcr71.dll with mmg? you can find it easily on google but i think most users won't like to search for dlls :pIt's included in the installer.

Also the correct download link for the latest version is http://corecodec.org/download.php/15/mmg_installer_0.6.0-r3.exe.

[sillKotscha]

wOOt :D

really nice - good work!!

a minor thing... mmg (installer/ plain gui) is r2_NOT_r3 ;)

cheers Sill

[MarkCoolio]

@Matroska team:

thanks for all! Just one question: what is the reason for substituting your own matroska splitter with gabest's one? I just wonder because on matroska.org I saw a 0.50beta5 release of your own one and now TCMP comes bundled with Gabest's...

Nevertheless it works great... so... THANKS again! (although you could include version 1.0.1.5 as the most actual one..

@The Edge:

Will you make a new installer for Matroska too? With CoreAAC and ac3filter included? Really appreciated! :)

Markus

[DKDIB]

There is a small bug in mmG release 2 (I can' t download release 3 :confused: ).
When I choose a radio button in "Meta seek" box the other one will not be deselected. This bug is only graphical related, infact there are no errors into Commandline box.

EDIT:
Screenshot erased.

[ssjkakaroto]

correct link for the mmg gui only
https://corecodec.org/download.php/14/mmg_0.6.0-r3.zip

[bond]

goodie :)

let the testing begin!

[ssjkakaroto]

i got one small error with mkvmerge with this command line (created with mmg):

mkvmerge.exe --fourcc XVID --aspect-ratio 4/3 --split 58m --dont-link --meta-seek-size 15000 -o "D:\vobs\test\woohoo.mkv" --chapters "D:\vobs\test\chapters.txt" --cues 0:iframes --default-track 0 --language 0:eng -A -d 0 -S "D:\vobs\test\video.avi" --cues 0:none --default-track 0 --language 0:jpn -a 0 -D -S "D:\vobs\test\audioaac.aac" --cues 0:none --language 0:jpn --sync 0:-37 -a 0 -D -S "D:\vobs\test\audioAC3.AC3" --cues 0:none --language 0:eng -A -D -s 0 "D:\vobs\test\subs\subssrt.srt" --cues 0:none --default-track 0 --language 0:eng -A -D -s 0 "D:\vobs\test\subs\subsssa.ssa"

.
.
.
Writing cue entries (the index)...
off: 405071
Assertion failed: CheckMandatory(), file ../../src/EbmlMaster.cpp, line 128

abnormal program termination

this error doesnt happen if i remove the --chapters switch but the good thing is that the files work just fine

one question about file splitting, are Next UID and Last UID fields mandatory or can i leave them blank? cuz if i enable file linking and leave them blank only the first file works and all the others just freeze on the first frame but if i disable file linking all the other files work fine

tia

[HomiE FR]

Here is something really interesting about attachements into Matroska files (taken from latest mkvmerge readme file):
Maybe you also want to keep some photos along with your Matroska file, or you’re using SSA subtitles and need a special TrueType font that’s really rare. In these cases you can attach those files to the Matroska file. They will not be just appended to the file but embedded in it. A player can then show those files (the ’photos’ case) or use them to render the subtitles (the ’TrueType fonts’ case).

I'd really like to be able to attach TrueType fonts to Matroska files, and then be able to use "transparently" those fonts when reading the file, just like this part says. :)

However, I don't think any player can currently use those attachements (at least I tried MPC 6.4.5.9), which is quite sad.

1. If I read right, the Matroska team has done its job, and now the player developers (like gabest for instance ;) ) have to use these attachements (for TrueType fonts copy the attachement into the \Windows\Fonts directory during playback) so that it works. Am I right here?

2. Would it be "hard" to do such a thing? (I'm no great coder)

Thanks in advance!
I'm looking forward to using attachements in Matroska, which seems better than the previous UUE (?) encoding used to embed fonts inside SSA/ASS scripts. At least it's easier. :)

[Latexxx]

Originally posted by HomiE FR

I'd really like to be able to attach TrueType fonts to Matroska files

That will definately cause copyright problems.

[robUx4]

Originally posted by MarkCoolio
@Matroska team:

thanks for all! Just one question: what is the reason for substituting your own matroska splitter with gabest's one? I just wonder because on matroska.org I saw a 0.50beta5 release of your own one and now TCMP comes bundled with Gabest's...

The official reason is that I suck at coding DirectShow... The real reason is that our filter is inferior to the one of Gabest as it is now. We support the same things but we have memory leaks and still some seeking problems. But there is a 0.5.0 version that was uploaded and removed accidently. The big advantage of mkxds will be (as of now) the support for CRC reading/checking (which already works).

Stay tuned.

edit: the latest MkxDs can be found in our download directory (http://matroska.free.fr/downloads/) (both NT and W98 builds).

[robUx4]

For the font attached and the link to the Sub stream. Well it would be quite easy for a player to request this font (file) from the splitter/demuxer. But it's also the subs filter that has to request it to the player when a font is not installed. So almost all is in Gabest's hand which does the sub decoders and a player. We need to define a COM interface to request files and we're done.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
this error doesnt happen if i remove the --chapters switch but the good thing is that the files work just fine

Could you please send me that chapter file via email to moritz@bunkus.org? Thanks.

one question about file splitting, are Next UID and Last UID fields mandatory or can i leave them blank? cuz if i enable file linking and leave them blank only the first file works and all the others just freeze on the first frame but if i disable file linking all the other files work fine

Read the mkvmerge documentation about file linking. At the moment no player supports them, and appearently the DShow guys aren't very good at supporting linked files anyway... So just leave them blank. They're definitely NOT mandatory.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Latexxx
That will definately cause copyright problems.

Only if you distribute fonts that are copyrighted. There are a lot of free high quality fonts as well. Not everything on this planet is owned by MS or Adobe.

[avih]

that's an amazing release. chears for the team work guys. nice work chris ;)

VERY very nice. congrats.

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by avih
that's an amazing release. chears for the team work guys. nice work chris ;)

VERY very nice. congrats.

Ditto

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by Latexxx
That will definately cause copyright problems.

As if everything else here can't be used to break copyrights... I'd like to see this embedded font feature...

Awesome work guys. Matroska has come so far in such a short time.

[zedude]

great work !! matroska is on his way to the top ...
I still have problems with muxing my french subs : line stop when it should display a character like à,é,û...etc...that's too bad because everything else is just fine !
I also have some problems in using mmg ( maybe because i don't really understand how mkvmerge works ...)
I stay tuned :)

[Ghim]

Originally posted by zedude
great work !! matroska is on his way to the top ...
I still have problems with muxing my french subs : line stop when it should display a character like à,é,û...etc...that's too bad because everything else is just fine !
I also have some problems in using mmg ( maybe because i don't really understand how mkvmerge works ...)
I stay tuned :)

I'm using french subs too and I don't have this problem at all...

What soft are you using to create subs and mux files ? And what filter have you for mkv and subtitle playback ?

[zedude]

What soft are you using to create subs and mux files ? And what filter have you for mkv and subtitle playback ? [/B]
i create my subs with subrip and mux the files (rv9) with mmg.I use latest gabest's filters for playback

[jcsston]

A few things about the Matroska Shell extension not mentioned.

Currently the tags can only be written if there where pre-existing Tags (same for the Display Size). You can tell if the file has a Tag element by looking beside track selection in the Tag Tab. Hopefully the next version will not need an existing Tag element. :)

The Matroska Shell extension also has support for the display of attachments :)
For text files it will display them inside a new window.
Images of the types BMP, GIF, ICO, TGA, PCX, WBMP, WMF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, JBIG, PNM, PPM, PGM, RAS, and JPEG-2000 will be decoded (thanks to CxImage) and shown inside the attachment tab.

The Matroska Shell extension handles thumbnails in Windows Explorer for MKV, MKA, and MKS files. If the file has attached images the first one starting with the name of cover*.* will be used as a thumbnail. If there are no attachment named cover*.* it will use the last attached image.
And if the file doesn't have any attached images, DShow will be used to extract a frame of the video located a customizable time (ex. 0 seconds into the movie, or 10 seconds into the movie).

Finally the tooltips can be long and have very basic info about each track or short with only the count of each track type.

I should put all this in a readme :cool:

[Eric B]

This new version is great.
The chapters and others tags are well read by TCMP RC4.
mplayerc doesn't recognize chapters yet for a test file written by VirtualDubMod. -> edit: wrong, with jump to as said follow.
A word about the overhead:
elements: avi dvix5 + 2*ogg = 1511Mo
all in ogm: 1521Mo
all in mkv: 1510Mo < sum(stream) !!!

Moreover is mkv superior as ogm for multichannel file (1 ac3 + 2 ogg without problems)

The only bemol I observe is the "high" time needed for loading the mkv file. Is it due to the format or to the multiple tag I mux with?

About the tags, it there a rule for their order ?
I've tried 2 mkv file, TCMP read the date of the first but not of the second.

[robUx4]

I'd say because there is a lot of meta data. But it shouldn't be too long. What CPU power do you have ?
Also I suppose you use the filter of Gabest which apparently cache more data than MkxDs. That may be another reason.

[Eric B]

25sec on my xp1600+ with TCMP
The tags are not all recocgnized
I've re open my mkv file in virtualdubmod.
There are still 6 tags (Stream/Video Comments) as I filled it in. BUT the second and the third one are overwritten by
2: Software: VirtualDubMod 1.5.4.1 (build 2066/release)
3: Software: libebml-0.5.0 & libmatroska-0.5.0

[ssjkakaroto]

@eric b: about the chapter thing with mplayerc, you just have to click on Navigate->Jump To... and your chapter list will be there, just tested it with files created with mkvmerge and vdubmod

[jcsston]

Even with full blown tags on a 700MB it takes less than 15 seconds to start playing in TCMP on my slow 650Mhz system.

[DaveQB]

WOW!! great job there by the entire Matroska Team!

wish i knew how to program better etc to try and help
Great work, keep it up!

i am trying to find out if Matroska has improved enough to allow the use of multiplexing and demulitplexing of 2 or more MKV files?

i know this was a problem before, should it be fixed now ??
my quick testing now says it hasnt improved.

info ?


thanx team, great job!

EDIT: worked second time throuhg, must of been a 'my bad'
Great now no reason all my files cant be .MKV/.MKA

[superdump]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT !!!!

DONT USE HE-AAC IN MKV FILES UNTIL WE COULD UPDATE THE TOOLS !!!!


It was decided today that, different to first opinions, it will be
necessary to tag HE-AAC audio tracks in matroska files separately. This
became necessary due to a specific 'feature' of M$ DirectShow, still the
most used playback platform for all kinds of media files, but mainly for
video files.

DirectShow requires that the actual output sampling rate of an audio
track is known before building/creating the playback graph.
Unfortunately, a HE-AAC ( AAC SBR ) track is marked as half sampling
rate only, to allow playback on non-SBR capable decoders/players. The
track will be played, but with high frequency information being
completey cut off, as the SBR info in the track will be skipped.

For DirectShow playback of matroska files this is giving us a lot of
problems, because you actually learn if an AAC track is SBR or not, once
you have decoded the first channel element ( IIRC from what menno told
us ). This is impossible to do before you have actually built the
playback graph, and then with an already incorrect sampling rate,
preventing you from using the high frequency sound information. A
possible workaround here is to assume all AAC is HE-AAC, and to set
output sampling rate from the parser filter always by factor 2 higher (
if its set as 22.050 KHz, you output 44.1 KHz ). Once you decoded the
first element, and you find its NOT SBR AAC, you then have to
artificially upsample the output sampling rate. While this is a good
solution at first sight, it will turn into a major problem if in future
96 KHz input was feed into HE AAC encoders, resulting in a 48 KHz
sampling rate reported in the AAC header. In this case you will also
have to double the sampling rate always, up to 96 KHz, and thus leave
the files unplayable on most systems when soundcards dont support this
input sampling rates, or again all the SBR information was lost during
playback.

For this reason, we decided to NOT follow the recommendation from
memebrs of the Ahead team for using the same codec ID for all AAC
tracks, and leave SBR detection to the decoder, but now we will try to
find out for every track if it actually contains SBR or not. To indicate
in the MKV file that AAC is SBR, we will add a new EBML element called
KaxOutputSamplingRate , and this will become a mandatory element to read
before building DirectShow graphs ( it can be used the very same with
MP3Pro and other, future SBR implementations ). To find out about SBR we
have 2 ways :

1. If AAC is coming from MP4 container, its easy, as there are 5 bytes
in the mp4 AudioSpecificConfig element that will tell us

2. If source is an AAC track, we will allow the user to set the HE AAC
flag manually, or scan the file for SBR specific patterns in the bitstream

Conclusion :

There will be a new way to use HE-AAC in matroska, please dont create
those files with released tools now !

...from Christian HJW

[Herske]

Muxing HE-AAC in mkv is perfectly easy and doable using Graphedit, playbacks works perfectly.

IMHO, Mp4creator60, mp4ui, nero do not create a corect HE-AAC when _demuxing_ from mp4.

[Eric B]

About the load speed, if 15s for 700Mb file is normal, it can be also normal that it takes 25s on my system cause the file is about 1500MB

Is the tag "date" incorrect in mkv ? Since VirtualDubMod eats it, I would like to use mmg, which can import a tag file. But this file has to be an XML one. Is there anywhere a tool/guide for that tag file ?

Thanks.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Herske
Muxing HE-AAC in mkv is perfectly easy and doable using Graphedit, playbacks works perfectly.

IMHO, Mp4creator60, mp4ui, nero do not create a corect HE-AAC when _demuxing_ from mp4.

Our point is that the current status of HE-AAC is that it works more or less accidentally and is more of a hack than proper support. It will change in the coming week(s), so don't expect the current files to work later.

e.g. mkvmerge is able to read HE-AAC and produce valid Matroska files. But it's not officially supported. Because of the technical issues that Chris mentioned.

So the bottom line is: wait a week or two. Then you the final version of HE-AAC support will be available.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Eric B
I would like to use mmg, which can import a tag file. But this file has to be an XML one. Is there anywhere a tool/guide for that tag file ?

Read mkvmerge.html and matroska-tags.xml from my mkvtoolnix 0.6.0 ZIP. The first contains the extensive documentation, the second contains all possible tags and can be used as a template (just delete a lot of stuff from it, read the official Matroska tags page and experiment a bit).

[raistlin2k]

Really nice release.

Just one question: Will there be a splitter supporting chapters that can be used with any DShow-Player, perhaps with an additional tray-icon like VSFilter or OggDS?

Thanks
Raist

[gabest]

I wouldn't like to see another tray icon, but players can use a new interface designed only for getting the chapters. TCMP and MPC already uses it, while you should mail to the author of other players if you want support in their players too.

[raistlin2k]

Thanks for reply!

Just one more question: Will it be possible in the future to write both vobsub-files (idx&sub) into the mkv, that would be a real advantage over OGM.

SSA is text-based sub again, like SRT? :(

Raist

[Mosu]

Originally posted by raistlin2k
Just one more question: Will it be possible in the future to write both vobsub-files (idx&sub) into the mkv, that would be a real advantage over OGM.

Yes, of course it will be possible. We plan to have both uncompressed VobSub and compressed VobSub (compression with LZO, a very small very fast and rather good GPLed compression library) support for Matroska, hopefully in August. It won't have any advantages over OGM as what we do will be easily doable with OGM as well if nic decides to implement it.

[mothman]

does this new version do menus yet
thats all im waiting for
damn damn damn
i want this so bad

[Gaia]

No menus.

[RathO]

Hey guys keep up the good work!
Im following all your moves!

Im now doing my anime with matroska :D

[faxmactor]

It's an amazing progress, even since Matroska first published in May! Thanks Matroska Team and other developers :) I hope it will get generally accepted by the public at least (but way faster) like OGM (and beyond!) when the press writes about it. (It was a good idea to release it (May 1st) even if it was uncompleted that time (and so is now).

--

My problem is that Matroska Shell Extension is extremely unstable when checking the "Context menu option"(at least, under Win98SE, Hungarian - other than my system as well). Explorer keeps quitting (the rude way).

[jcsston]

Originally posted by faxmactor
My problem is that Matroska Shell Extension is extremely unstable when checking the "Context menu option"(at least, under Win98SE, Hungarian - other than my system as well). Explorer keeps quitting (the rude way).
;) That's why it's disabled by default. Win98SE supplies some invalid values which causes it to crash and I couldn't fix it.

[DaveQB]

get rid of Win98SE :D

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by DaveQB
get rid of Win98SE :D

Serious Question to all Programers.

Is there any reason to actually support Operating Systems that the publisher's themselves dont' support? (NT4, 95... soon 98)

[jcsston]

Originally posted by Hiro2k
Serious Question to all Programers.

Is there any reason to actually support Operating Systems that the publisher's themselves dont' support? (NT4, 95... soon 98)
Yes, for people like me who have older boxes that cannot run anything higher than Win98SE. I've tested and debugged the Shell Extension under Win98 and the properties pages and tooltips work, the Context Menu crashes and the others are simply not supported by Win98.

I would really like any reports about Win95 ;)

[DaveQB]

off topic,
but i have found WinXP can run on many an 'old' PC as long as it has the RAM there.

eg at work the PC we work off for formatting, imaging, virus scanning, sending images of customers PC's through the network to and connecting to the net is a PII 350
run XP no worries

i have also ran, quite well, XP on older systems, as long as i was able to add at least 64mb of ram to it.

just my experience.
and my point of view is the sooner the 9x kernal is fazed out the better.

but just my experience and point of view
:)

[Gaia]

Is there any reason to actually support Operating Systems that the publisher's themselves dont' support? (NT4, 95... soon 98)

So many people use still Win98se/ME. WinXP is far too expensive for me because i use Windows only for some gaming(mainly older classics), encoding and watching my movies. I use Linux for everything else.

I could get some nice hardware with the money WinXP(pro version) costs atleast in my country. Far too much for stuff i really don't need and use.

Win2K would be ofcourse cheaper but some old games i still like doesn't work with Win2K.

It would be extremly stupid to stop supporting older OS's just because lazyness or whatever. Just think how many people would use Matroska if you could play files only with Win2K/XP?

[gabest]

I don't want to start a flame or anything, but would you use or support a linux kernel/distribution from 1998 when today we write 2003? It doesn't make sense, does it? Should the programmer of a free software add all sorts of extra code and workaround to overcome the bugs and limitations of an older version of Windows just because it is not free to upgrade to the latest?

[kastro68]

I think Win4Lin only works with win98 and not XP.

But then again, who would want to watch an mkv on an emulated windows.

Just for the record, some mainboards are not compatible with WinXP, I believe you need an acpi compliant board-->bios update, if one is available of course.

[Gaia]

Ofcourse developer can decide whatever OS he/she wants to support. All i wanted to say that some people doesn't seem to have a clue how many people still use Win98/ME. Anyway i shouldn't have used word "lazy". I made mistake.

Still most of the software companies take care that their software works with older OS's if it is possible, alltought it is changing fast. Why open source developers should stop supporting them?

Anyway like you said let's not make this to stupid flame war.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Gaia
Still most of the software companies take care that their software works with older OS's if it is possible, alltought it is changing fast. Why open source developers should stop supporting them?

Generally speaking: There maybe some things which are missing in older versions which are pretty essential or at least hard to circumvent/reimplement. One such thing is e.g. Unicode support which totally lacks on Win98/Win95. Another such case is Unicode support on gcc 2.95 (two totally unrelated cases, mind you!) - the developpers made SUCH a stupid bug that you can either NOT use the wstring class or reimplement it completely. Yes, completely.

What I want to say is sometimes developpers don't see the benefit of spending many hours on fixing a small thing so that they might decide to not support it at all or to only support a subset of features.

(Nothing here is intended as a flame. From my perspective as a developper I just want to make clear that I find it absolutely valid to support only a limited set of features on older software, especially if the software in questions is more than five years old.)

[Hiro2k]

Well thanks for everyones opinions, I saw many end user's opinions and a lot of developer's opinions. I am not a software developer, but I agree with what Gabest said.

If we let older OS's be the deciding factor in whether or not to implement something new, then the developer's have a serious problem on their hands.

[faxmactor]

Yay, what a roar around OSs ;)
Pity that it's impossible to fix Matroska Shellex under W98. Oh, well, it is still very useful (and usable) as it is.

My (not really serious) idea is that I don't use any Microsoft OS, that hasn't reached the second service pack or edition :D

[MarkCoolio]

I would like 2 see an update (who else? :) )...

Could u include:

Matroska Splitter 1.0.1.6
Matroska Muxer 1.0.0.7
VSFilter 2.28?

Thanks in advance!

Both of the playback packs are just great for newbees... so keep up the good work!