ogm or mkv

[OmegaMaster]

hi!

i'm wondering which of the two containers you use/prefer/suggest;
what will be supported on dvd-players in the (near) future. currently i'm using ogm, 'cause of the support for multiple audio-streams, multiple subtitles and chapters but afaik it only supports ogg-vorbis for sound. so it is a little bit restricted for future technologie; and mkv also supports all these, or. i use dvdtoogm for the whole conversation, 'cause its a nice prog where you can make your settings and then let the whole thing run without you over night. is such a tool for matroska available?

so, what are the pros and cons of ogm and mkv?

cu thomas

[P0l1m0rph1c]

There is a "DVDtoMKV" program (although in beta state), you can see that here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72090) .

As for the preferred container, I would advice you to make your own choice, as it's a personal matter.

Personaly, i use Matroska (mkv), as it has the same capabilities of ogm, plus some more (like HE-AAC and vobsubs), and it's being developed, so, new features could appear soon. ogm is pretty stalled right now.

[frodoontop]

My simple vision is:
If you want to have the format with the earliest hardware support choose ogm.

If this doesn't matter to you or is of second interest use matroska. Matroska supports more formats and above all is still being developed further and supported by the developers. It also got the lowest overhead of the two. And personally I found to have less trouble playing the files.

[OmegaMaster]

so ogm would be earlier supported by hardware-players it's an advantage, but it's not my final goal. just want to know if mkv files, which i create know would be play-able in future on hardware-players, 'cause it's still under development and the ogm is in a rather final state.
i guess i'll give dvdtomkv a try; are there any other tools like this?

cu thomas

[ssjkakaroto]

why would ogm have any hardware support at all?
wasn't xiph going to release it's own container format to use it with theora+vorbis?

[Neo Neko]

I don't know where people are getting the idea that OGM will be supported first in hardware. If it is it will be rather isolated for many reasons. First it is forked from the OGG framework. Second the OGG framework is still being developed while OGM is not. Not to mention that OGG is officially supported and OGM has no support official or otherwise. And don't take the fact that OGM is no longer being developed to mean that it is finalised or stable. All that means is that Tobias Waldvolgel stopped development of it and gave it to xiphophorus to do with as they wish.

[bond]

hm ogm or mkv?

i choose mp4 ;)

[alexnoe]

If you want to have the format with the earliest hardware support choose ogm. That would mean that not one single 'new' format will be supported by any hardware player ever...

[OmegaMaster]

so you think mkv would rather be supported than ogm. but what's about mp4. what is the dis/adventage compared to mkv and ogm. i'm just interested, 'cause i want use a container wich is supported in the future. i'm wondering which container has more features and would be "the future"...

[alexnoe]

so you think mkv would rather be supported than ogmI'd say, the chances that OGM is ever supported by hardware are 10^-x for a large x, and for mkv, 10^-y for a y slightly below x :D

Honestly, I would rather like to see players that support AVI first. Currently, you only have some pseudo-avi-support, like 1 audio stream only, no opendml, no rec lists etc...

[P0l1m0rph1c]

Yeah, chances of OGM and/or MKV being introduced in hardware players are very scarce right now.

PS: alexnoe, you'd better update your sig :D

[alexnoe]

You mean because of avi-mux gui 1.16.3?

Reading MKV files with 3 times more subtitles than the sum of audio + video stream is b0rked...i'll update it after releasing 1.16.4 (which will include unbuffered reading and unbuffered+asynch writing) :D

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by bond
hm ogm or mkv?

i choose mp4 ;)

Bond is correct as usual :P

My bet is that MP4 will have hardware support long before any of the other formats do, simply because it is backed by big companies and not just intelectuals.

As a sidenote, ChristianHJW had a thread last year about mkv hardware profiles for when they finished the specs on matroska.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63599
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58250

[Sharktooth]

I bet my 2 cents on the OGG container.
It is patent free (as vorbis and theora) and soon will support video streams.

[ChristianHJW]

my 2 cents : with more and more nice looking barebones coming to market, we will soon have to rethink our limited point of view about PCs in the living room, making all the currently existing 'pseudo MPEG4 players', with all their crappy limitations and zillions of bugs in their firmware ( which is sometimes based on stolen GPL code as we all had to learn ) simply obsolete ..... giving the user the full rights about the choice of his preferred multimedia format .....

[Hiro2k]

Thats an interesting point Christian.

My PC sits in my upstairs den and is connected to my TV with an S-Viedo cable. Now with ATI's All in Wonder and remote, it wouldn't be a long leap for computers to start acting as dedicated players. All you do is switch your TV/Video and grab your ATI control, pick an AVI file or even a software DVD Plyaer.

[robUx4]

Originally posted by bond
hm ogm or mkv?

i choose mp4 ;)

But you're the only one trying to push it for video...

OK, and your multi-billion dollars pals.
;)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by robUx4 But you're the only one trying to push it for video...

bond's main motivation for doing that is basically the same as mine, he cant accept AVI's limitations anymore and wants it to be replaced by a new standard ( IMO ;) ).

The big difference between him and us is, he is still into the classical 'DVD standalone player' thinking and expects that the industry will provide wide gain support for MP4 in this kind of devices soon, and he doesnt believe a free standard like matroska could get similar support, so he favours MP4.

I am convinced that within latest 4 - 5 years from now, the HiFi/Video industry have to do a radical change of their thinking to be able to still compete with PCs, which are slowly making their way into the living rooms, and are offering functionalities which a classical standalone device will never be able to deliver.

If this process is completed, there is no necessity for a video playback standard like MP4 anymore, people get all choices then, they can use RealMedia, WMV, matroska, whatever, depending on their needs and preferences. I know its a long way until then, but IMO the process has already started, and with both SONY and PANASONIC announcing devices based on Linux, we will soon be able to buy the first devices following the basic idea which is driving the process forward, i.e. to make sure the gap between PCs and standalone units doesnt get bigger than it is already today .....

[bond]

yep, chris already covered a small part of my motivation behind .mp4

as i also often discussed with him i dont see matroska as a competitor to .mp4 (which isnt meant in a bad way of course):

for me its that way:
if you want to combine wma9 and wmv9, the way to go should be .wmv
if you combine ogg vorbis and ogg theora, the way to go should be .ogg
if you combine mpeg-4 video with mpeg-4 audio, its .mp4

see the point is if you combine two formats, from one source, they should be used in the way the inventors of the formats wanted them to be used, as only this ensures that the formats are used in a way, they are 100% compatible with each other!
imo 100% compatibility/interoperability is a very nice and important thing and imo it should be considered far more as it is the case till now
all these avi hacks, damn its ugly, it hurts interoperability in a way, it cant be worse
simply look at the current mess with all these mpeg-4 standalone players! its horrible (some cant handle the avi hacks, like packed bitstream, some need them... only divx5 and xvid can be used because of the 4ccs, excluding 3ivx or any other mpeg-4 content, aso...)
if .mp4 would have been used form the start (even with mp3) we could play all files, no matter from what codec aso in all players aso, man its a dream ;)


on the other side matroska is definitely something totally different for me!
matroska is for combining different formats together, so to say where the "standard" container ensure interoperability, matroska ensures competition between different formats (even more but in a different way than interoperability does)
it makes it easy for people to always use the format which suites them best, which provides the best quality (not really possible with standard formats) - a very important point imo!
if people want vorbis with realvideo: matroska does it, without the constraints the 100% standard solutions have, therefore i always recommended that the matroska devs should really care to support as much formats as possible (even if as good as noone uses them), for example what about combining a speech codec (ie speex) with video?, simply to be THE container which handles them and let you combine them all, thats the strenght of matroska imo...
but therefore matroska's biggest plus, the "openness", can also be seen as its biggest downside (it hurts interoperability, as, for example on standalones, you will never be able to play all matroska files)
therefore matroska will imo also "rise and fall" with the diversity of available encoding formats, like if vorbis is the best audio codec and realvideo9 is the best video format, matroska will surely profit from that situation too, on the other side if everyone uses wma9 and wmv9 matroska will not be used that much also...


see these are two totally different container types for me, with totally different goals, and totally different pros and contras


and another reason is of course: mp4 is a damn f*ing great container (and license free)!
i just found another example of what great things can be done with it: have a look here (http://studwww.ugent.be/~bmollet/taken/scene.mp4) (play it with the osmo4 player)

[KpeX]

Interesting thread......I agree with Bond, I don't think MP4 is a direct competitor to MKV or vice versa. I agree with Christian that PC based players are the future, I hope to build one soon, and have been using the TV out/spdif on my current PC for the majority of my movie playing for quite some time now.

Reiterating what bond mentioned, when I do most of my AV conversions, I find that in many cases my preferred video codec is XviD and my preferred audio codec is FAAC - using AAC + MP4 video (sometimes anamorphic), the MP4 container is the logical choice.

I do find use for Matroska quite frequently as well however, it works great for many combinations of formats, and extras, such as vobsub subtitles, chapters, multiple audio tracks, etc.

I also agree that the current mess of standalone players will push more and more consumers to media based PCs. I see more and more posts every day about players unable to play gmc, qpel, or choking on many other random issues such as AVI interleaving. It is much simpler to build a media PC for $200-$800, install VLC, and be able to play anything and everything.

[bond]

Originally posted by KpeX
I agree with Christian that PC based players are the future, I hope to build one soon, and have been using the TV out/spdif on my current PC for the majority of my movie playing for quite some time now.i dont think so

imo the future with a broad user base will be hd-dvd and nothing else

things like "mpeg-4 standalones" (or supporting whatever format) will be for freaks only

[Hiro2k]

Like AVI players are now ;)

[unmei]

imo, standalones with mp4 support are as sure to come as the next election (at least in switzerland), for the reason Hiro2k mentioned. Not quite a law of nature, but history strongly hints in that direction. But _when_ they will come is another topic..

As much as i like matroska, i'm not very convinced its place is in standalones. Well, there is nothing against, but it would probably mean to limit it to such a small set of supported formats (in that profile) that it would lose that advantage over mpeg-4...

For media-PCs, it matroska is great tho. Around me, more and more ppl have something you could call like that, and i exclusively watch on PC (no TV, thus obviously no standalone), but then again they will not actually replace cheap, portable, simply to operate standalones.

btw
"if you want to combine wma9 and wmv9, the way to go should be .wmv"
shouldn't that read:
>if you want to combine wma9 and wmv9, the way to go should be to see a doctor
(well except you work in m$'s wm department of course :) ?