matroska : what should come next from your point of view ??

[ChristianHJW]

Hi,

as you all know matroska is released in public beta stage now. Cyrius has done an incredible job when making matroska supportfrom VdubMod, meaning the files created with it are spec compliant, stable and free of errors, so anybody wanting to switch to matroska can do so now, and safely.

It was always a part of our strategy to find out what the users want and need when we were designing it, and we want to continue doing so. The next 3 steps are already clear :

1. Implement rough and precise seeking in the DShow parser ( robux4, Blacksun, Toff and myFUN ), improve stability, avoid having to reload the filter each time after stopping a movie.

2. Allow muxing and playback of the new USF subtitle standard in the tools and the parser filter ( Toff, Blacksun, spyder )

3. Connect the DShow parser to the TCMP CDL API for enhanced tagging, etc. ( spyder )

The poll is giving you the next possible steps of how to develop the container further :

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW


2. Allow muxing and playback of the new USF subtitle standard in the tools and the parser filter ( Toff, Blacksun, spyder )

This may be off-topic a bit, but does the USF standard allow advanced features such as those in advanced SSA? And according to the USF webpage there are no tools (except text editors). I understand that USF holds great potential since it is extensible, but it seems premature to use as the first (and only?) subtitle format. Early adopters of the Matroska format would probably want something more robust. Unless there are tools around, i.e. converters, that I do not know about.

[iwod]

is Rv9 in mkv possible for the next step??

[alexnoe]

several languages + subtitles / menus.

I can't even remember when I made my last AVI with only 1 audio stream (except for TV captures).

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by iwod is Rv9 in mkv possible for the next step??

Yes, if Real opens up their codec API so we can use their codecs from VdubMod

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Animaniac This may be off-topic a bit, but does the USF standard allow advanced features such as those in advanced SSA? And according to the USF webpage there are no tools (except text editors). I understand that USF holds great potential since it is extensible, but it seems premature to use as the first (and only?) subtitle format. Early adopters of the Matroska format would probably want something more robust. Unless there are tools around, i.e. converters, that I do not know about.

On Linux we can already mux test subs into matroska and play them on mplayer, either ASCII subs or UTF8 subs. We'll hopefully have this on Windows soon also, Bill Baroud wanted to look at this occasionally.

Next step for us is USF then. We won't do SSA or ASS ourselves, but other people are invited to help here, the codec IDs are already defined for them ( http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/cvs...type=text/html ).

[BoNz1]

Well, I would say enhanced XCD support but unfortunately I can't get XCD to work on either of my computers (stupid combo drives and stupid companies that never upgrade firmware) anyhow I would like AAC support the most. I guess you should already be able to mux it into a mkv but the directshow is what is needed, obviously. Yesterday, I downloaded the source code for borg technologies aac decoder. Now I am no programer but it didn't look that complicated. Maybe it would be possible to modify this filter to not work with mpx and to work with something like matroska or ogm.

EDIT: After doing a little research into this topic, it appears that we will need a aac parser to be able to use the borg tech ds or a modified version of it.

[CaptainCarrot]

I think multilanguage-support is already kind of implemented, though maybe not intentional and really crappy, but I had an mkv with 2 AC3-streams, and was able to switch from one to the other. It worked in so far pretty bad that the player (ZoomPlayer) stopped for a while, then played 1 frame/5sec for a while, but then resumed playing with normal framerate and the 2nd audiotrack.

EDIT: I rechecked, and the above described only works right at the beginning of the movie (3sec). I tried 30 sec into the movie, and it looked like it might restart playing sometime, since there was a new frame occasionally (like every min or so), but it probably takes ages.

[Atamido]

The intent to to be able to switch streams in the DirectShow filter. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Mosu is more skilled programming mplayer than the whole rest of the Matroska team is with programming DirectShow.

If anyone has any experience programming DirectShow, please visit #Matroska and offer your assistance.

[Blueseb]

I often need muxing multiple language, but cannot resist from voting menues & control tracks: such a cool thing!!!

btw, 67 votes in ~20 hours: who said matroska isn't interesting?

[Nic]

@Christian:
Might be a little offtopic but has anyone compiled a Win32 version of mkvmerge by moritz/Mosu ? It looks very good I had a quick go at compiling it (needs a fair few libraries ) and got very close but didn't get time to finish it, might be easier to do in Cygwin rather than VC6, but if someones already done it I won't bother

Take Care,
-Nic

[unmei]

@ Animaniac

USF will be able to do pretty everything you can do with SSA.
like styles / images / karaoke / multiple subs at same time + overlapped

AFAIK the effects are planned but not yet specified

All in all i was that excited at reading the specs that i decided to write a converter/editor for it *hint hint*

It will be written in Delphi and be able to create USFs from scratch, convert from .SRT and .SSA (and maybe micro-DVD .SUB later)

It will take some time to come to a convienent release, but i will publish a preview supporting load/save .USF and basic .SRT import soon
more info and the first preview to come this weekend (i'm at school atm so i can up it right now)

[edit]making the seeking 1st priority is exactly the right thing to do, ppl like me want something to play with it's a important feature to make the user jump on the train. i voted for mpc because i love that format and prefer it over aac but sadly enough it was a no-go in video up to now [/edit]

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Nic
@Christian:
Might be a little offtopic but has anyone compiled a Win32 version of mkvmerge by moritz/Mosu ? It looks very good

A couple of weeks ago someone already tried to port my tools to win32 and sent me a couple of patches. Unfortunately he vanished, and I haven't heard from him since. If you get it to compile then please send me the changes you've made so I can include them with the official sources.

[Nic]

Hi Mosu,

I was getting pretty close, but after installing libmatroska, libebml, vorbis 1.0sdk, iconv, etc (and the intel compiler was moaning, (doesnt like having lots of paths). I gave up
But ill keep going, there shouldnt be any real need for patches, as long as all the libs are installed, it shouldnt be too tricky.

Ill let you know how I get on

-Nic

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by unmei
@ Animaniac

USF will be able to do pretty everything you can do with SSA.
like styles / images / karaoke / multiple subs at same time + overlapped

AFAIK the effects are planned but not yet specified

All in all i was that excited at reading the specs that i decided to write a converter/editor for it *hint hint*

It will be written in Delphi and be able to create USFs from scratch, convert from .SRT and .SSA (and maybe micro-DVD .SUB later)

It will take some time to come to a convienent release, but i will publish a preview supporting load/save .USF and basic .SRT import soon
more info and the first preview to come this weekend (i'm at school atm so i can up it right now)

[edit]making the seeking 1st priority is exactly the right thing to do, ppl like me want something to play with it's a important feature to make the user jump on the train. i voted for mpc because i love that format and prefer it over aac but sadly enough it was a no-go in video up to now [/edit]

Awesome.

[robUx4]

Well, I think the most important feature right now is a working DirectShow filter

[mf]

I vote for renaming the project back to mcf, and implementing MCF's current specification as "MCF Compact" and rebranding Matroska "MCF Extensible" .

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by mf I vote for renaming the project back to mcf, and implementing MCF's current specification as "MCF Compact" and rebranding Matroska "MCF Extensible" .

Hi mf !

Too late now, we have a logo for the russian doll theme ( well, more than one, we have to make a decision ), a working domaine name ( sf.net is down most of the time ) and a established brand .... but its nice to see that the two teams may have a chance to come closer again, this kind of thinking was exactly what robux4 was missing when he decided to split. mf, send my warmest regards to Tronic if you talk to him, we owe him a lot.

Christian

[mf]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Hi mf !

Too late now, we have a logo for the russian doll theme ( well, more than one, we have to make a decision ), a working domaine name ( sf.net is down most of the time ) and a established brand .... but its nice to see that the two teams may have a chance to come closer again, this kind of thinking was exactly what robux4 was missing when he decided to split. mf, send my warmest regards to Tronic if you talk to him, we owe him a lot.

Christian

1) Your marketing is inferior
2) You can always drop a domain (unless you paid in advance for 10 years, which is a BAD thing)
3) As for the established brand, people will only be happy if they hear that MCF and Matroska are back again

[robUx4]

Originally posted by mf
1) Your marketing is inferior
2) You can always drop a domain (unless you paid in advance for 10 years, which is a BAD thing)
3) As for the established brand, people will only be happy if they hear that MCF and Matroska are back again

It's up to you, not us now