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Old 27th May 2003, 13:06   #1  |  Link
ChristianHJW
Matroska Team
 
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Bavaria - Germany
Posts: 1,341
Matroska FAQ

1) What is matroska? I have heard it is a "container format"? What's that?
A container format allows you to combine different multimedia streams (most of the time audio and video) into one single file.
Multimedia containers are for example the well known AVI (.avi), MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg), OGM (.ogm), MP4 (.mp4) or Realmedia (.rm, .rmvb)

The matroska project is a free, opensource container format, aiming to be able to offer a lot of advanced features, which older formats like AVI can't handle, on an extensible basis.
Matroska supports for example the storage of Variable Bitrate audio content (VBR) without any hassles, Variable Framerates (VFR), Chapters, attachment of files, Error Detection (EDC) and modern A/V Codecs like "Advanced Audio Coding" (AAC), "Ogg Vorbis" or "Realvideo 9" (RV9), next to nothing handled by AVI

2) What extensions is matroska using?
- .mkv: generally video files (with or without audio)
- .mka: audio only files, can contain any supported audio format, such as MP2, MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AC3, DTS...
- .mks: a so called "elementary" matroska stream, containing any subtitles stream

3) How can i create matroska files?
with the following tools you can create or edit matroska files (for example transmux from exisiting AVI files):
- MKVtoolnix includes the mkvmerge commandline tool (+ gui), can mux vobsub subtitles!
- VirtualDubMod, choose .mkv as output file type in the "save as" dialog. VDM allows editing of matroska files too (Doom9 Guide)
- AVI-Mux GUI
- Graphedit, advanced users can also use gabest's matroska muxer filter

4) Does transmuxing to matroska reencode the content?
No, this is a lossless process, only taking out the media streams from one container and putting them into matroska

5) After appending/joining two matroska files in virtualdubmod, the output seems to have some failures?
this is a known issue in virtualdubmod. Use AVI-Mux GUI for appending/joining matroska files!

6) Are my now created matroska files going to be compatible with future matroska implementations?
Yes, files being created now are fully spec compliant. in fact matroska is based on a very flexible underlying framework called EBML, which allows to add more functionalities to the container format in the future (for example new A/V codecs, DVD-like menues) without breaking backwards compatibility with older software and files.

7) How can i play matroska files on Windows?
easy answer: the matroska team already prepared an install pack for you, which will enable you to play back nearly any matroska file on all directshow based players (for example media player classic, bsplayer, zoomplayer or the crappy windows media player). get it from here

detailed answer: two things are needed for playback in any directshow based player:
- a splitter filter, which splits up the container file into the included streams (audio, video, subtitles) during playback
- a decoder filter, which decodes the encoded streams (for example with XviD, MP3...)
so to say the only thing you need to playback a matroska file is the matroska splitter filter (there are three available, from gabest, Haali and mkxds) and of course the specific decoder filter (for example Vorbis, AAC, Realmedia, AC3 or VSFilter)
btw. the only reason why you don't have to install a splitter for AVI is that it is already installed on windows by default (the same as the MP3 decoder)

small HOWTO install/register such DirectShow Filters

as alternative there is also The Core Media Player with the matroska plugin

8) How can i play matroska files on Linux, MacOS and X-Box?
you have to get the newest version of mplayer, for file creation/editing you find everything you need on Mosu's site. There is also a nice Gstreamer plugin by Ronald 'BBB' Bultje, which you can find in the GStreamer CVS

9) Does Matroska need more Processor Power than AVI?
No, you can't tell a difference while reading back AVI or Matroska content on today's processors. Writing currently takes more, but that is mostly because time is needed to refine the writing apps for MKV.

10) What subtitle types can be muxed into matroska? How can i play them?
currently SRT, SSA, ASS and Vobsub
use gabest's VSFilter to play subs on dshow based players

11) Why are some matroska files created from AVI smaller than the source itself?
because matroska needs less overhead than the AVI container (especially with vbr-mp3)
you can find a nice overhead comparison by alexnoe here

12) Is it possible to create variable frame rate (VFR) content in matroska?
Yes, for how to do it check out the following threads: 1 2 3
AVI-Mux GUI can also join AVI files with different framerates into a matroska file.
There also was a project working on vfr-encoding, called Variable Framerate Encoder. they released an app which lets you join vfr AVIs

13) Does Matroska support "anamorphic resize"?
Yes, you can set the display size of your matroska files for example in mkvmerge, AVI-Mux GUI or in your windows explorer by using the matroska shell extension
To playback anamorphic content with the right display size you need ffdshow installed with the "overlay mixer" option ticked

14) What is the advantage of putting audio only into .mka?
read more about what can be possible at matroska.org.
currently it is already possible to store a whole CD as 1 track in mka, each song seperately choosable and tagged and you can already play it in any dshow based player or in foobar2000 with the plugin from jcsston

15) Does Matroska support multi-angle video files (multiple video streams in one matroska file)?
yes, you can create such files with gabest's mkv muxer in graphedit or mkvmerge. playback works with Haali's mkv splitter in directshow

16) How can i create Chapter files in the Matroska XML format?
You can use Toff's ChapterXtractor for that, read more here

17) How can i convert from Matroska to another format? for example to AVI/MPEG?
thanks to Avalon for writing a nice small guide on how to do this! find it here
beaware that you can't put Vorbis and RV9, which are often used in Matroska, into AVI without reencoding

18) I want to read more about matroska! Where can i find more info?
feel free to visit the official matroska homepage at matroska.org, there you'll find much more information, as this sticky is only meant as a starting point for newbies to handle matroska
(or you just search the doom9 forum, as most of the matroska guys are around here too )

cheers,
bond

Last edited by Hiro2k; 19th April 2007 at 22:34.
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