2009 - what's your favorite container ?

[JohnnyMalaria]

hm yes 25mbit/s lossy, fixed resolution, forced interlaced video sure is "versatile"

how exactly is, say, mp4 (or mkv) any less portable than raw DV is?

You miss my point. DV is what I use because my camcorders/video recorders etc are DV (some HDV). Not any other format. I have no need for any other format because my output is back to DV unless I want to put the video on DVD in which case I output DV from my PC directly to my recorder because I can't be arsed to wait to convert to MPEG2 on my PC. I make DVDs purely for the convenience of watching on my main TV which is the limiting factor for quality in my case.

In my case, I prefer the raw DV file format over AVI because it is more versatile.

For HDV, I similarly keep with the native format - m2ts. My editing software handles these as-is so I have no need for containment.

how is containerless video even relevant to this thread at all?

Because the question is "what's your favorite container ?" Favoring no container at all is a perfectly relevant answer.

[BlackSharkfr]

I voted for matroska
Mainly for the high quality muxing tool mkvmerge-GUI.

I never have to edit my videos from matroska source files, i only use matroska for the final file ready for uploading on the internet.

I could basically do everything i need to do with avi or mp4 or mkv, but mkvmerge-gui have the best and easier interface to do the following :
-add files (i love drag and drop)
-set anamorphic ratio via display aspect ratio (so i don't have to bother calculating sar or par ratios, the GUI does this automatically for me)
-subdivide video into multiple files and automatically link them.

[Alex-Kid]

I used to use AVI and DIVX due to hardware compatibility, but I realized that MKV is more flexible and adequate for new formats as H.264 and AAC. So it's my choice for modern codecs.

However, I think there are not enough tools for handling matroska (ie: join/cut files) and that is a must.