Which is your Choice of Container in 2006

[NeD tHe OnE]

Which is ur choice of container in 2006?

I Vote for MatRoska!:)

What about u?;)

[chros]

I have voted to mp4 and h.264+aac, because of the standalone player compatibility, beside of that it would be matroska ...

[Eretria-chan]

Matroska is the one and only container allowed to be called a container! :D

[thoralf]

great all-purpose container. mp4 doesn't support ogg nor vobsubs, and standalone-compatibility is a minor issue imho.

[Drachir]

You should write "Moving Picture Experts Group" in front of "MP4" like you do for "MPG"

[Sirber]

MKV for PC and MP4 for iPod :)

[Reino]

Matroska all the way! Too bad there isn't much capatible hardware (yet), that would be great.

[Kurtnoise]

mp4 doesn't support ogg
Wrong...

[Sirber]

Wrong...
Almost any kind of data can be embedded in *.mp4 files through private streams, but those that are recommended (for compatibility reasons) are:

* Video: MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1
* Audio: MPEG-4 AAC, MP3, MP2, MPEG-1 Part 3, MPEG-2 Part 3, CELP (speech), TwinVQ (very low bitrates), SAOL (midi)
* Pictures: JPEG, PNG
* Subtitles: MPEG-4 Timed Text, and/or xmt/bt text format (means that subtitles have to be translated into xmt/bt)
* Systems: Allows animation, interactivity and DVD-like menus

[kurt]

definitely matroska :)

[foxyshadis]

Wrong...
"Doesn't support" is quite correct, whether you can force it in there and make it play is something else entirely. The specs are quite clear in exactly what formats are supported (as sirber listed).

[Kurtnoise]

Guys, correct me if I'm wrong but this poll doesn't speak about standard features. In this case you can remove matroska, avi, etc...

[Atamido]

What "standard features"? Allowing storage of audio, video, and subtitles?

[Liisachan]

I believe the public's choice is MP4, in general.
I am a subber; for me, anything that supports SSA/ASS is good. Hence MKV (or DSM).
Being able to mux Vorbis and AC3 is also a nice thing: OGM too is ok for this tho.
File attachment & Embedded CUE (in MKA)--each music file gets its jacket photo as its icon--I think that's cool too.
WavPack support--nice! Matroska, u maniac!

[Kurtnoise]

What "standard features"?
I mean features standardized by MPEG/ISO/ISMA Committees.

[akupenguin]

Other: NUT (http://www.nut.hu/). All the goodness of Matroska, without the bloat.

[video_magic]

I voted for AVI because I will stick with using it for this year.

MKV when I see how it matures, seems good enough.
MP4 - I should use this more but I might turn to it.

NUT: :) There was not much to see there, maybe soon? :)

[siddharthagandhi]

I chose MPEG-4 because its highly unlikely that Matrosoka will become an industry standard, and MPEG-4 is already well on its way to that goal. And AVC is intended for MPEG-4 so the future of video encoding will be with MPEG-4.

[Shinjite]

I still vote for Matroska :)

[spolja]

Matroska, because you can put everythig in it without any problems.:D

[unskinnyboy]

Still stuck with AVI for the most part because of the standalone compatibility issues with others. Would be great if at least one player manufacturer bent over backwards and provided *some* support for Matroska at least (though I doubt they have any serious incentive to do that).

@siddharthagandhi, Don't refer to MP4 as MPEG-4. That is incorrect and confusing. Either just say MP4 or if you want to be very specific say MPEG-4 Part 14.

@akupenguin, Is it just me or the specs link for NUT in their site doesn't seem to work at all?

[Liisachan]

I'm hosting a few NUT samples (http://www.minkymomo.info/~meroko_deathnote/tmp/) if anyone is interested.

[zambelli]

Sigh. Windows Media Video is not a container. It's a codec. Advanced Systems Format (ASF) is the container. The .wmv extension is used to allow the user to specify different players for audio-only vs audio/video files.

[Liisachan]

How about adding ASF to convince zambelli that it's not popular anyway?

[akupenguin]

Is it just me or the specs link for NUT in their site doesn't seem to work at all?

Works for me. Follow a few links to the spec itself (http://www.nut.hu/book/print/26).
Though that's kinda old, there is a more recent draft (http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/main/DOCS/tech/mpcf.txt).

[killerhex]

MKV rules

[XmSurfer]

Standards, smandards. Standalones, smandalones. I vote Matroska. I have my flings with other containers, out of curiosity, but Matroska is my true love.:)

[chros]

I chose MPEG-4 because its highly unlikely that Matrosoka will become an industry standard, and MPEG-4 is already well on its way to that goal.
That's why I have been chosen this too, but:
And AVC is intended for MPEG-4 so the future of video encoding will be with MPEG-4.
That's a hard topic, so here comes a small speculation:
Who would think (back in the late ninethies) that there will be hardware support for divx ?
As we remember back some years, there were no avi support but DVD, SVCD, etc... support in standalones. Why did the manufacturers implement it ? The answer is (whether we like it or not) the warez groups, otherwise the scene. They provide such a huge amount of files for huge amount of people, that the small companies (eg. Kiss) has realized some advantage against the huge ones if they support these features. Of course, after a while, the huge ones must had catch up with them. The best example is Sony, which (around 2 years ago) replaced the whole managemant crew, and start to support mp3 (the mortal enemy) for their audio product, and avi for their standalones.

Nowdays, Nero has been pushing the mp4 format (without the need of the scene activity), but matroska needs a small company to support it in the beginning (I hardly think that it will happen) or (again) a huge-huge amount of people who is using it . (They don't bother with thousands or ten thousands of people who is using it on PC, they need millions of people. It's all about the money.)
We saw this with ogg vorbis: we can hardly find products which support it (nowdays, of course, there are companies which support it, like MPIO, but so much which doesn't.)

All I want to say, that without YOU and others who implemnted such a nice tools and formats (like NanDub in the beginning), there never won't be a hadrware support for avi files. But it's not enough.
And last, I'm sure, everybody has friends (maybe parents, grandparents) who doesn't want to bother with computers, and we don't want to borrow our precious original media for them ...

[Reino]

I'm hosting a few NUT samples (http://www.minkymomo.info/~meroko_deathnote/tmp/) if anyone is interested.
Does anyone know how NUT compares to MKV for instance? Does it have any advantages? And am I right to say the build-in NUT splitter in MPC isn't mature enough to handle your sample files, Liisachan? Because MPC can't play them.

[Liisachan]

AVC is intended for MPEG-4 so the future of video encoding will be with MPEG-4. There are other possibilities too. I really don't like MS, but we might use WVC1 if it's good. If it plays on Linux, that is.

The answer is (whether we like it or not) the warez groups, otherwise the scene. Speaking of which, DivX3 was...

Nowdays, Nero has been pushing the mp4 format (without the need of the scene activity), but matroska needs a small company to support it in the beginning (I hardly think that it will happen) or... I don't think that will happen either, because Matroska is too flexible, too feature-rich to be supported fully by hw. For one thing, even today, even for Linux, there's nothing that fully supports SSA/ASS--that complicated, messy sub format... How could hw player do? If anything, it'll be a quite limited support. Maybe this Zensonic (http://www.z500series.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=119) thing?

Does anyone know how NUT compares to MKV for instance? Does it have any advantages? And am I right to say the build-in NUT splitter in MPC isn't mature enough to handle your sample files, Liisachan? Because MPC can't play them. MPC's Nutsplitter is based on NUT Open Container Format DRAFT 20030906. I believe it's too old. Gabest himself says "Still very incomplete, if you have or can make test files, please contact me." and actually that's why I posted those samples.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=803973#post803973
I guess NUT is going to be simpler/cleaner than Matroska. I might use it if it happens to support SSF, which is not supported by Matroska now. But I know DSM will be the first to support SSF. My standard is very eccentric (anything that supports sub formats I want to use is good for me), so nvm :)

[castellanos]

Call me old timer, but I still prefer AVI.
Comptibility with my standalone; Compatibility with my Pocket Media Player (Archos Gmini 402); Standard in the net and still a very good quality.
Greetings! :)

[Suchy]

Matroska. I'm fansubber so I think that it's the most useful container for me. MP4 is also good, but not good enough.

[robU*4]

Other: NUT (http://www.nut.hu/). All the goodness of Matroska, without the bloat.

Still needs to prove it (not you, the NUT devs).
I don't think you'll be able to have nested chapters, font or picture attachments, etc.

[BigDid]

AVI for Standalone compatibility and portability with pocket device.

I had to change my previous SAP recently and for a fair price only AVI is really standard today; tomorrow will be another day :)

Did

[gURuBoOleZ]

Matroska:
- AC3 support (no need to reencode, no quality loss, no wasted time)
- lossless support (flac, wavpack): useful for opera backup
- DTS support
- VobSub support (no wasted time in OCR process)

[IgorC]

This is local poll for local people. Members of forum are video/audio advanced users. Globaly for average joe AVI has no rivals.

I personally choose mp4 -> h.264 + aac

[siddharthagandhi]

Matrosoka might be the better container, but thats not what this thread is asking.

[zambelli]

How about adding ASF to convince zambelli that it's not popular anyway?
Hundreds of thousands of porn websites say otherwise. :)

J/K... But honestly, nobody should confuse the results of this poll with real world statistics. Even if Matroska is the overwhelmingly most popular format on Doom9, it's still a long way from even making as much as a scratch in the big pie of multimedia formats.
I am yet to encounter a MKV file anywhere on the Internet outside of Doom9. Most torrent sites I frequent overwhelmingly use AVI, ASF/WMV, MPEG and MP4.

[xyloy]

Matroska 'cause it's free and it's a real russian doll with a small amount of overhead. ^_^

@zambelli:
A lot of .MKV files containing for most of them RV9/RV10 or H.264, with Nero's or CodingTechnologies's HE-AAC or Ogg Vorbis(most of the time with 2 audio tracks) and subs are available on eDonkey/eMule.
An unknwon amount(fell free to estimate :D ) of release teams use Matroska since 4/5 years(that's a lot of time in file sharing)

[stax76]

The last container poll (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=105498&highlight=container) was 3 months ago and since then nothing exciting has happened if you don't count vobsub for MP4 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=110419) which was announced after this poll was started.

[Liisachan]

Hundreds of thousands of porn websites say otherwise. :) Um... you mean, MS container is popular in such websitests for guys? I didn't know that. I'm not a guy and have no interest at all in porn (no discrimination either, I would even support free expression even if I hate the contents), but I'm wondering why? WMV codec is suitable for porn? Or ASF format has some special features...? Maybe you mean streaming?
Well, apparently WMV is popular amongst some anime fans in Japan. I actually don't know why. Maybe they are just noobs, and can't mux things into mp4 or mkv. But I know that this format is generally hated among advanced users. (RV10+Vorbis or AAC+ASS).mkv seems pupular in Chinese-sepaking area. Most users don't have enough space and bw, so RV10, high compression with decent quality, is prefered. But .rmvb is not very usable when subbing hence MKV. WMV codec is high-compression with so-so quality too, and it's much easier to use than RV10, muxable into MKV too, still, Real is loved in China etc. Weird but it's true.

J/K... But honestly, nobody should confuse the results of this poll with real world statistics.
Like IgorC correctly pointed out, this is a poll in doom9 forum, so... that's how it is.

actually I like AVI better than MKV in one point: AVI has dwRate and dwScale in its header. I know that approach is meaningless for VFR, so generally speaking it's not flexible and not a good idea after all, still, it's extremely nice when fps is constant and something like 24000/1001. If you transmux it into OGM, VDM changes the fps into 10000000/417083, messing up frame-accurate timing for subtitles. MKV knows better, tho. I hate everything that messes up subtitles.
Recently, ever since DGIndex changed slightly the way it handles FPS (in the end. 23.976 to 23.9760239760...), I've been very nervous about this pb. This small 3.6ms/hour difference is actually critical for subtitles timing, if mixed carelessly.

I am yet to encounter a MKV file anywhere on the Internet outside of Doom9. Most torrent sites I frequent overwhelmingly use AVI, ASF/WMV, MPEG and MP4. Huh? The poll is asking your fav format. Can't you decide your favorite container without checking what others use? What others prefer has nothing to do. I like what I like because of my own reasons.

[GodofaGap]

I am yet to encounter a MKV file anywhere on the Internet outside of Doom9. Most torrent sites I frequent overwhelmingly use AVI, ASF/WMV, MPEG and MP4.
Hey but at least Matroska has decent tools, which is more than can be said for ASF. :p

It shouldn't be very hard to find a torrent site with anime using mkv.

[ricardo.santos]

I voted for AVI(Divxmediaformat) because of the standalone compatability(multiple audio and subs+menus)

[zambelli]

Um... you mean, MS container is popular in such websitests for guys? I didn't know that. I'm not a guy and have no interest at all in porn (no discrimination either, I would even support free expression even if I hate the contents), but I'm wondering why? WMV codec is suitable for porn? Or ASF format has some special features...? Maybe you mean streaming?
That's the common joke about WMV, that's all. :)
But to answer your questions in general: it's a common format on websites because it's easy to stream, web developers can leverage the WMP ActiveX player, and its commonly used codecs (WMV and WMA) don't require special setup, making it hassle-free for users. Most websites with streaming content - CNN.com, Yahoo, MTV - all feature ASF/WMV content.
Like IgorC correctly pointed out, this is a poll in doom9 forum, so... that's how it is.
I know. I said that, too.
Huh? The poll is asking your fav format. Can't you decide your favorite container without checking what others use? What others prefer has nothing to do. I like what I like because of my own reasons.
I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. I didn't vote for MKV, nor was I looking at the poll to decide on my favorite format.
Personally, my favorite format would be something that I think I could easily play back 10 years from today on contemporary computers and operating systems. I think MKV stands a very slim chance. MP4, ASF, MPEG-TS and AVI are much better candidates.

[zambelli]

Hey but at least Matroska has decent tools, which is more than can be said for ASF. :p
That's somewhat of a "chicken or the egg" story. If more people took the time to study the format and learn its strengths, maybe more tools would be written for it. And if more tools existed for it...

[Liisachan]

web developers can leverage the WMP ActiveX player, and its commonly used codecs (WMV and WMA) don't require special setup, making it hassle-free for users.
Ok, then it's not like they actively choose it. As you know, Firefox users are increasing rapidly, so Activex is a bad idea. For such a purpose, Flash Video is going to be a better choice. Hence FLV.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. Nothing. Since you said some formats were rarely found on the internet, I just thought that had nothing to do with my choice.

Personally, my favorite format would be something that I think I could easily play back 10 years from today on contemporary computers and operating systems. I think MKV stands a very slim chance. MP4, ASF, MPEG-TS and AVI are much better candidates.
I don't think I will be still using any of today's formats 10 years later, just like I'm not using 10-year-old codecs now. Do you often open any file you created 10 years ago anyway? But any file that worked on Windows 95 still works on today's Windows, thanks to Microsoft's great efforts to keep backward compatibility. Yet the ratio of Windows users shall inevitably change, and you don't know what kind of OS you'll be using in 2016 either.

EDIT
I missed one point. If the file is DRMed, that's an exception. Obviously it won't play 10 years later, if the key is gone (after re-installing the OS, for instance).

[siddharthagandhi]

Yes but codecs are different. .Avi container is still being used today and it has been developed for over 10 years I believe. And containers generally last longer because improvements aren't as necessary as codecs.

[thoralf]

hi,


Personally, my favorite format would be something that I think I could easily play back 10 years from today on contemporary computers and operating systems. I think MKV stands a very slim chance.

what? it's open source, so as long as it is being actively used, someone will bother to make builds, even dshow-filters. now, the point is that it is indeed in active use today, since you can put pretty much anything in it.
that's more than can be said about avi ... I don't know if ms went public with the asf specifications (think you mentioned it somewhere), but mkv certainly has a first mover bonus in this field. moreover, it sort of makes sense to put streams created with oss-tools into an oss container.
i'm pretty sure that you'll be able to play back mkv files in 10 years time without much hassle. I'd even put a bet on it - let's say, a crate of beer?

with kind regards,
thoralf.

[siddharthagandhi]

.Avi doesn't have a future. Comparing matrosoka to .avi is like comparing a 2006 Lexus SC-430 to a 1988 Toyota Tercel. The real question here is .mp4 or .mkv. Feature-wise I'm talking, and .avi is good in some ways, but i doubt the future of containers will include .avi

[Liisachan]

What I meant was: You will probably no longer mux things into .mp4 or any of today's formats in 10 years later. Even so, AVI, MKV, MP4...will be still used as non-final formats. Sure they will still play. I bet even OGM will.

OGM is outdated, but outdated means there will be no changes anymore, which is a good thing in a way. The same is true for AVI. AVI is "static" or "dead" therefore it's useful. Dead stable, so to speak. In this sense MKV is too vivid to be used for video editing. There were 3 or so radical changes in the past which broke compatibility with old players.

If the file that plays now doesn't play anymore in the future, the possible reasons include:

(1) Codec-side. Format itself is still supported but for some reason the codec used is no longer supported. Submarine patent is a probable reason. Cf. GIF support pb.
(2) DRM-related. Format itself is still supported but it's DRMed and the company that DRMed it is dead and gone without unlocking the files. This will absolutely happen in a long period of time. Especially an app that needs periodical activation is likely to be "orphaned"