MKV killing OGM?

[aabxx]

Most of the MKV and OGM out in distribution is from the anime community so it is likely that it is the anime community that primarily keeps these formats "alive". Which of course is great, as the anime community is big and can almost singlehandedly ensure the survival of any format.

However, even though it used to be close between OGM and MKV in the anime community, it seems that MKV has won the battle of the formats [between MKV, OGM and MP4] for the anime community. Which is not so strange IMO considering the specifications and tools available.

These days, according to my quick research on the most popular anime titles in recent years 30 to 40% of the encodes were released in the matroska format. In the high end (big file sizes), MKV is almost as common as AVI now in the high end while AVI is very dominant in the low end. Typically, only 0-5% are either OGM or MP4.

Am I putting too much importance on the anime community, or is OGM really "getting murdered"?

[Ð.Sp!dér]

The header for the MKV container takes up 7.5 KB. The AVI container takes... what ? 1 MB ? MP4 is somewhere between 300-450 KB. (I'm not sure)

I donno about OGM. The point is that MKV container is smaller then the rest. It's also faster and more "open" to more formats then the rest.

[buzzqw]

for me MKV had already killed OGM

BHH

[Milvus]

AFAIK, OGM lack several usefull features included in MKV :

Unicode support
SSA/ASS and VobSub subtitles
AVC Native Support
Variable Frame Rate

So it's not reallty surprising to see it dying. And worse, it's just a hack of the ogg container, not supported by Xiph.org. It was created by Tobias, who is no longer active, and it even seems some source code of his DirectShow filter was lost, so some specs had to be rediscovered...

Conclusion : OGM is a dead format. I suppose the sticky in this thread should be updated...

[aabxx]

Part of my purpose with this thread was to give people considering OGM a warning. If it is indeed true [like I claim] that the anime community has chosen MKV over OGM instead of supporting OGM or both, than I would say OGM is in some serious trouble. All the better for matroska though and since matroska is open source and flexible I think most of us can be happy with one alternative instead of two [on top of avi and mp4 of course]).

And as the previous poster said, matroska having been/being better in their support for advanced subtitling (including embedded fonts), unicode, b-frames, AVC and VFR meant that OGM was bound to lose in the end if you ask me. OGM has had PR problems being perceived more as a hack rather than a new, elegant solution.

[Milvus]

Yes, it's true people should be warned OGM is a dead container format. To resume the situation :

You want true open standard, patent-free ?
=> Choose OGG+theora+vorbis

You want ISO standards ?
=> Choose MP4

You want maximum flexibility ?
=> Choose Matroska

[bond]

The header for the MKV container takes up 7.5 KB. The AVI container takes... what ? 1 MB ? MP4 is somewhere between 300-450 KB. (I'm not sure)

I donno about OGM. The point is that MKV container is smaller then the rest. It's also faster and more "open" to more formats then the rest.while i doubt this matters a lot it has to be said that mp4 generally has lower overhead than standard mkv. mkv v2 (not backward compatible to standard mkv) has lower overheads than mp4

avi with vbr mp3 can have overheads of a few mbs, not just one

[unskinnyboy]

OGM is dead, and this isn't breaking news either. I used to use OGM way back in time, but it's been years since I've touched it. For the technical details on the drawbacks of OGM and how it compares to others, see this (http://alexander-noe.com/video/documentation/containers.pdf), this (http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/amg/en_overhead_comparison.html) & this (http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/amg/en_estimate_overhead.html).

[foxyshadis]

Do the sorts of folks who visit this forum need to be informed of OGM's demise? For that matter, does anyone else? I just visited one of the popular fansub aggregators to check, scanned all the recent releases and associated trackers, and saw nothing but avi, mkv, and mp4. Not one ogm. I haven't scouted movie trackers in ages, but I remember avi as far as the eye can see and the occasional mp4. Box is probably the only place you'll find ogm anymore, if they haven't taken everything down by now.

I did find this hurrah (http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/media/2006/02/26/ogm-video-taking-on-divx/) though. lollin'.

[obieobieobie]

I did find this hurrah (http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/media/2006/02/26/ogm-video-taking-on-divx/) though. lollin'.
Haha, OGM = Ogg Vorbis Media? Hilarious! :D

Also, DivX is apparently an AVI wrapper format.

[HeadBangeR77]

The header for the MKV container takes up 7.5 KB. The AVI container takes... what ? 1 MB ? MP4 is somewhere between 300-450 KB. (I'm not sure)

I donno about OGM. The point is that MKV container is smaller then the rest. It's also faster and more "open" to more formats then the rest.
I would be very carefull with those overheads, if you don't know precisely. ;)

See the links given by unskinnyboy, especially this one:
http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/amg/en_overhead_comparison.html

[Mosu]

You want true open standard, patent-free ?
=> Choose OGG+theora+vorbis

Why not Matroska + Theora + Vorbis? ;) No, I don't really need an answer ;)

while i doubt this matters a lot it has to be said that mp4 generally has lower overhead than standard mkv. mkv v2 (not backward compatible to standard mkv) has lower overheads than mp4

That's true. As a matter of fact we were quite surprised how low Matroska's overhead turned out in the end because low overhead was not one of our primary goals when designing Matroska. I would consider both containers to have compareable overhead so that this should not figure into someone's decision about which container to chose. Other facts (supported formats, compliance with ISO standards, hardware compatibility etc etc) are much more important.