Matroska open source A/V container format officially released

[shitowax]

I did a small test with a 3 min 34 sec sample in 3ivx (100KB/s) + uncompressed 16 bits sound in different containers. Here are the results :

3ivx.avi : 65 128 KB
3ivx.ogm : 65 440 KB
3ivx.mkv : 64 992 KB
3ivx.mov : 64 902 KB

Important thing : I didn't even use compressed headers for the quicktime file... It's not that I'm a big fan of quicktime but, I'd like your comments about this test.

Btw, could matroska support something like compressed headers ???

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by shitowax
[B]I did a small test with a 3 min 34 sec sample in 3ivx (100KB/s) + uncompressed 16 bits sound in different containers. Here are the results :
3ivx.avi : 65 128 KB
3ivx.ogm : 65 440 KB
3ivx.mkv : 64 992 KB
3ivx.mov : 64 902 KB
Important thing : I didn't even use compressed headers for the quicktime file... It's not that I'm a big fan of quicktime but, I'd like your comments about this test.

matroska's overhaed gets better and better the bigger the individual video frames are. Can you try again with a higher ( normal ) bitrate like 700 - 1000 kbps ?

Btw, could matroska support something like compressed headers ???

Yes it could, EBML would certainly allow us to introduce new elements here, but this is not at all on our priority list now, as the effect for a complete movie of 700 MB will be close to zero ( in % of the whole file ) and its subject to introducing errors and can also prevent the whole movie from playing if only a few bytes are missing ...

[bb]

Just saved a captured movie using VirtualDubMod 1.5.1a. Video was DivX 5.0.5, audio Ogg Vorbis. The Matroska file came out smaller than the corresponding OGM.

Congratulations, it worked right from the beginning! I'd like to recommend to add a readme to the Matroska dll. Ok, you just have to right-click and register, but newbies may have problems when watching the plain dll without knowing what to do with it.

I'll soon switch to Matroska (using OGM currently). The two things I'm missing most:

1. Seeking
2. Overhead calculation in GordianKnot

bb

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball OK here is a screencap of my Graphedit filters when trying to play an MKV file with OGG audio in it.

Oddball,

delete the 'default Waveout device' in the filter chain and insert 'DirectSound device' like in Zyrill's graph manually, and see if it works.

It should work with Waveout also, maybe we have a problem with your soundcard here ? What model do you have ? The strange thing is that the correct Vorbis decoder gets inserted, so normally this shouldnt be the problem of matroska anymore, but they ways of DirectShow are long and winded ;) ....

[robUx4]

Originally posted by bb
Congratulations, it worked right from the beginning! I'd like to recommend to add a readme to the Matroska dll. Ok, you just have to right-click and register, but newbies may have problems when watching the plain dll without knowing what to do with it.

This is somehow intentional. Because the DSF is not ready for newbies yet. Once we feel anyone can use it normally (play, pause, stop, seek) we'll make it user friendly :)

[robUx4]

Originally posted by shitowax
I did a small test with a 3 min 34 sec sample in 3ivx (100KB/s) + uncompressed 16 bits sound in different containers. Here are the results :

3ivx.avi : 65 128 KB
3ivx.ogm : 65 440 KB
3ivx.mkv : 64 992 KB
3ivx.mov : 64 902 KB

I think the pb here might be that the chunck of PCM data are cut too small and therefore produce a lot of overhead. For PCM like this, the size of a "frame" should be the same duration as a video frame (40ms). I don't know wether VirtualDubMod already does this.

edit : I dind't notice the 64 vs 65... So we are smaller anyway :D

Originally posted by shitowax
Important thing : I didn't even use compressed headers for the quicktime file... It's not that I'm a big fan of quicktime but, I'd like your comments about this test.

Btw, could matroska support something like compressed headers ???

What do you call compressed headers ? The EBML headers can be considered as compressed already.

[shitowax]

What do you call compressed headers ? The EBML headers can be considered as compressed already.

I dunno the equivalent in the "matroska world", but in qt, everything is stored in "atoms", every timestamps, chunks and frame sizes, each media info, ... Compress headers introduces a new high level atom using zlib (for example) to compress all the atoms of a non-compressed header. On a 700 MB movie, you can easily gain around 10 MB using that method ...

[robUx4]

Well, EBML elements are really like Quicktime atoms, but should take less space. So yes we could apply the same system to gain space.

Other than that, your size difference may be explained by the way we store frame references (allow infinite references in the past and future, allowing to cut a movie and preserve all references).

It may also be that you included a whole index of frames that may not exist in your Quicktime file.

[oddball]

If I render audio to DirectSound in Graphedit it displays the first frame (Unlike with wave out which just displays a blank video window) but still does not play. If I then click on stop or pause I get the following error in Graphedit.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg

This is beginning to annoy.

I have a Creative SoundBlaster Live! Original with latest drivers in XP SP1 DirectX9. Tried various players.

By the way. I have to enable DirectSound for OGG playback in OGM's or the sound is jerky.

Next suggestion?

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball If I render audio to DirectSound in Graphedit it displays the first frame (Unlike with wave out which just displays a blank video window) but still does not play. If I then click on stop or pause I get the following error in Graphedit.
http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg
This is beginning to annoy.
I have a Creative SoundBlaster Live! Original with latest drivers in XP SP1 DirectX9. Tried various players.
By the way. I have to enable DirectSound for OGG playback in OGM's or the sound is jerky. Next suggestion?

oddballl,

i downloaded your test file and it doesnt play for me either. Please note that subtitles are only supported for playback on Linux via mplayer right now, its likely that the filter hangs because of this.

Can you try to make a matroska file without subs ? Alternatively load one of the sample files from here http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/index.html#samples without subs and see if they play for you .....

Sorry about the missing subs for now, but we first have to fix this stupid deadlock in our filter before we can add more features :( ...

EDIT :

Toff was pointing out that subs are playing when inserting dvobsub into the graph manually !! I did this with your movie and it was playing fine, even showing the subs !!

No idea why dvobsub is not called automatically, but this should be a minor issue i guess ...


EDIT 2 :

In dvobsub setup, set it to 'load always' and it will play fine in WMP and TCMP ;) ...

[oddball]

OK I reinstalled the latest SBLive! drivers and DirectX9 and I can playback Matroska files with OGG audio. But *ONLY* with 1 audio stream. If I add a second OGG stream it just gives me a blank video window again and does not go any further. If I add a .srt subtitle stream it gives me the first frame of the video and stops.

Clearly Matroska has a lot to live up to. I have absolutely no problems playing any other container format with multiple streams of any format. Just Matroska. But it's early days yet and needs lots of work no doubt.

[ChristianHJW]

oddball, read my last comments before your very last posting ...

[midi]

Neat. I just did a quick vdubmod conversion from an ogm file (xvid, ogg, and softsubs) to mkv and everything played fine in the core media player (on windows 2k here, dvobsub for subs). Nice to see mkv up and going.

Blasted vdubmod won't let me mux .ssa/.ass in though. So I guess the support for that is lacking somewhere, even though dvobsub supports it. The second I saw subs working in mkv I tried that, heh. Looks like mkv is another cool format I'll never get to use for a long time if ever. T.T

[Aboo]

Can anyone tell me, how can i switch audio streams in mkv?
There's also a problem with cyrillic fonts in subtiters: when i start mkv file, the subtiter characters are corrupted, even if i choose cyrillic fonts in BSPlayer.

[oddball]

Subs do not work for me in The Core Media Player neither.

Dual OGG does not work at all. No subs the test save whatsoever. I muxed an AVI with two OGG audio files and it will not play. Blank video window as usual. Nothing moves.

Also tried in Graphedit to see if I could get VobSub to load and play MKV with subs. But it went to play it then crashed.

.srt format subs BTW. Dunno if that makes any difference.

Anyhow dual audio and subs are a no go for now.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by oddball Subs do not work for me in The Core Media Player neither.

Works perfectly here if you setup dvobsub such that it will load automatically each time. 'start' 'program files' 'vobsub' 'dvobsub setup' .

Dual OGG does not work at all. No subs the test save whatsoever. I muxed an AVI with two OGG audio files and it will not play. Blank video window as usual. Nothing moves.

Do you have Morgan stream switcher installed ? This filter was standard before the OGM times, only since Tobias OggDS' filters haven been widely used, most people recommended to deinstall it as it will interfere.

If you install Morgan you will be able to listen to matroska multi audio files fine, and be able to switch audio streams.

Also tried in Graphedit to see if I could get VobSub to load and play MKV with subs. But it went to play it then crashed. .srt format subs BTW. Dunno if that makes any difference. Anyhow dual audio and subs are a no go for now.

The file you were uploading as a test file here ( link above ) plays fine on my machine, with dvobsub set to be loaded automatically, morgan stream switcher installed and TCMP set to use DirectSound instaed of Waveout. :confused:

[robUx4]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
EDIT :

Toff was pointing out that subs are playing when inserting dvobsub into the graph manually !! I did this with your movie and it was playing fine, even showing the subs !!

No idea why dvobsub is not called automatically, but this should be a minor issue i guess ...

For a simle reason I think, the subtitle codecs are not mapped to the correct DirectShow UIDs yet (as it is for ACM, VCM, MP3 and a few other codecs).

[fatso485]

idea worth considering.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=52520

[JimiK]

well, generally I would say you should take care, because that is cross posting. But in this case I can perfectly understand that? Can't we discuss matroska in either General Discussion or New A/V Formats? I don't see that the posts would have a different kind of quality. On May 1st, the first thing I did was to check the New A/V Forum and was a bit disappointed that there was so little to read, until I found out there is also a General Discussion.
Best regards,
JimiK

[dvd2svcd]

@fatso485:

Don't you mean this thread?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52642

[filewalker]

It would really be a good idea to discuss all Matroska stuff in the "New A/V Formats". So it would be much easier to follow the development instead of serching around in different subforums.

BTW. great thanks for your hard work...Matroska rocks the house...:cool:

Cu filewalker :)

[oddball]

Nope. The Core Media Player is set to DirectSound and Morgan Stream switcher latest is installed (I initially installed this thinking this was why I could not get MKV files with OGG to play in the first place).

As stated. OGG MKV's now play back fine. But only for single OGG stream MKV's. MKV's with two OGG streams or more or MKV's with subtitles fail to play whatsoever.

My system spec is thus.

Intel PIII 800
Matrox G400 with latest drivers
SBLive! original with latest drivers
Windows XP SP1
DirectX9

For playback I use ffdshow latest build and Zoom Player 3, BSplayer and WMP Classic or The Core Media Player. Noe will play dual OGG MKV.

Tobias OggDS0995.exe is used as well as Morgan Stream Switcher and DirectVobSub 2.23

OGM's playback perfect with DirectSound enabled as do all other video codec formats.

[Animaniac]

It works fine for me without needing to install Morgan Stream Switcher.

[oddball]

Well the fact that it's hit and miss that some people can play them and some can't must mean there is something more to it. I have no problems playing any other format. So I doub't it's anything unusual in my config. Have the developers tried it with XP/SP1/DX9 and a number of different filter configurations?

[stax76]

dl seem to be broke:(, I will need to dl the core player now:rolleyes:

[Atamido]

The DirectShow filter is being rewritten from scratch and will probably have seeking working this weekend. At that point it will likely be released as a replacement to the previous one.

[filewalker]

@Dolemite
if you mean downloading the kaxdemux.dll...Download link (http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/)

Cu filewalker :)

[stax76]

@filewalker

thanks, I got it already by dl tcmp, I just added mkv support to DVX and needed the filter to see if it works, works good

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Dolemite thanks, I got it already by dl tcmp, I just added mkv support to DVX and needed the filter to see if it works, works good

We were handling the download of the DirectShow filter via the old sourceforge site, and it seems the admins there have been running a script to remove all .zip and .rar files from their servers ( i admit this was only a contemporary, quick solution ), so all the DShow filter download links were ( are ) invalid.

ZThis weekend we will relase the new version with seeking and many bugs squashed, and we will use the corecodec mirror system for this.

@Dolemite :

Just out of curoiosity :

Are you using VirtualdubMod for DVX ? There will be another alternative for makers of encoding programs that want to use a CLI muxer, as we hope we have someone porting Mosu's mkvmerger code from Linux to win32 soon ...

[stax76]

Are you using VirtualdubMod for DVX ? There will be another alternative for makers of encoding programs that want to use a CLI muxer, as we hope we have someone porting Mosu's mkvmerger code from Linux to win32 soon ...


I suggest toolmakers to work with VDMod, it's a awesome program

[ChristianHJW]

New DirectShow parser and TCMP CDL plugin are available in the 'Iris release' now :

http://www.matroska.org/announce.html

List of new features :

- seeking
- stop/play/pause is working
- Aspect ratio flag support ( via CDL plugin from TCMP )
- win32 binaries of mkvmerger

Important notes :

- The new filter cant connect to the XCD Dshow filter for now ( will be fixed son )
- seeking is not to keyframes yet
- Filter will not work on Win98 yet ( will also be fixed soon )

Happy using of matroska :)

[oddball]

I can finally playback MKV's with dual audio using the latest version. But cannot switch streams. I can see what you mean about no keyframe seek. Interesting speedup effect :)

I would put support for keyframe search, audio switching and sub stream support above XCD support for the moment.

[Mefisto]

I can't download wav2mka. The links are broken!

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Mefisto I can't download wav2mka. The links are broken! ... this is an interims solution as we had reports that the output of both WAV2MKA and MPA2MKA may be broken :( ... we'll investigate and report here ..

EDIT : Neither VirtualdubMod nor mkvmerger are affected by this !! Actually, both tools were developed more as a proof of concept, and also to be the basis for new tools like AAC2MKA or DTS2MKA, so we didnt touch them for a while before the big release .... maybe we didnt update them to match with the latest specs, we'll fix that quickly !

[killingspree]

thanks
seeking is working well here...

@ dev team:
is there a site where i can see some kind of timeline for future features? or does any plan on what features will be released when? specifically i'm interested in menus, AAC audio and sub muxing (:

thanks again
steVe

[ChristianHJW]

New filter is out : http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=315391#post315391

@Doom9 : worth a news entry :) ? It will fix the jerky playback for most users ....

[robUx4]

An even newer filter is now available which seem to fix most of the jerkiness problem. It is also more stable on the memory side.

Finally AAC is now officially supported... We also think there is a problem in the Vorbis decoder which doesn't handle correctly the DirectShow timestamps. We'll investigate this further.

The usual download place (http://www.matroska.org/announce.html).

[oddball]

Here are my results thus far with new filter.

Clip is Xvid with 3 OGG audio streams. Tried in 1 stream 2 stream and 3 stream (also 4 streams with sub but it made no difference really).

The only player that would playback smoothly with a single OGG audio stream was Zoom Player 3. I tried with BSPlayer and despite it being set to DirectSound output the video jerked around like crazy. OGM's playback perfectly in BSPlayer. Might be an issue specific to BSPlayer then.

With 2 OGG audio streams Zoom Player 3 had a tougher time. It tries to playback both audio streams at the same time (No means of switching it would seem) and the video jerks about.

With 3 OGG audio streams something strange occurs. It will play for a few seconds then totally stop playing (No audio or video). It just sticks. You can select the second audio track while it does play (The first and third audio tracks are actually marked as playing in the Zoom Player audio track menu but the second is not marked) but it will still stop playing.

You appear to have almost got a single OGG audio track working with very little jerking (Although it is still there to a degree).

Getting there.

[robUx4]

Originally posted by oddball
You appear to have almost got a single OGG audio track working with very little jerking (Although it is still there to a degree).

Getting there.

OK, I think what you call OGG audio is Vorbis... ;) As you can see above, we think there is another jerkyness source due to the Vorbis DS filter. And there's nothing we can really do about it ! (instead of hacks, which we firmly refuse to do).

Can you try this very same file but with another audio codec ? I think you will experience less problem... Please let us know.

[ChristianHJW]

Believe it or not, the best playback results from matroska currently, especially with respect to more than one audio track, seems to be achieved with AAC audio ... LOL !

I am sure we will find a solution for Vorbis, and it it means we will have to rewrite a new Vorbis DShow decoder filter ( NOT an Ogg/OGM parser/splitter filter for sure ) ...

@ oddball : Would you care trying to install good old Morgan audio Stream switcher filter and see if it does anything, maybe if you insert it manually into the playback graph in Graphedit ? It went opensource recently and is hosted on corecodec.org now ( http://corecodec.org/projects/mmswitch ), and we plan to build our audio stream switching solution based on it, maybe with a specific version that wont load for AVI/OGM, but only for MKV ....

[oddball]

I installed Morgan Stream Switcher (I hate it. It's *ALWAYS* given me trouble).

Immediately tried to play a dual 'Vorbis' audio sample in Zoom Player 3 and got this error message.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg

Consistently does it with dual 'Vorbis' and Zoom Player 3. BSPlayer plays it but still jerky and no means to switch audio streams still it would seem.

Uninstalled Morgan Stream Switcher and the dual 'Vorbis' sample plays back fine (With the problems noted in the previous message).

Single 'Vorbis' plays back fine.

[BlackSun]

Originally posted by oddball
I installed Morgan Stream Switcher (I hate it. It's *ALWAYS* given me trouble).

Immediately tried to play a dual 'Vorbis' audio sample in Zoom Player 3 and got this error message.

http://www.oddball.nildram.co.uk/error.jpg

Consistently does it with dual 'Vorbis' and Zoom Player 3. BSPlayer plays it but still jerky and no means to switch audio streams still it would seem.

Uninstalled Morgan Stream Switcher and the dual 'Vorbis' sample plays back fine (With the problems noted in the previous message).

Single 'Vorbis' plays back fine.

Could you test with the latest version of mmswitch (doom9 offer an old one) from http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/mmswitch/index.htm
Also make sure you use the latest version of mkds:
http://www.matroska.org/announce.html

Do you have the TMF audio filter installed ? If yes, uninstall it.

[Animaniac]

Yeah... Morgan Stream Switcher breaks MP3 (in MPEG-1 container and AVI), AAC (using 3vix and CoreAAC), Ogg Vorbis (using OggDS), and I can't find any audio that actually plays. I am VERY unhappy with the Matroska teams decision to use Morgan Stream Switcher. I am sure many agree with my point of view. I would feel much more comfortable if the Matroska team came up with their own stream switching mechanism (built into the parser a la OggDS).

[oddball]

It is the latest version I used. I've been down this road before.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Animaniac I am VERY unhappy with the Matroska teams decision to use Morgan Stream Switcher. I am sure many agree with my point of view.

Dont forget, its opensource now .. so only the sky is the limit ;) ...

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Dont forget, its opensource now .. so only the sky is the limit ;) ...

I hope it's the limit for improvement of functionality rather than problems... :)

[multicone]

matroska's 4th birthday today !!

Congratulations !

[Awatef]

I wanna congratulate the Matroska team too.
Who would have thought that ME (a big conservative!) who defended the AVI format aggressively back in the days would switch completely to MKV!!

The main reasons I switched to MKV were that:
- after all, it is practical to have VobSub subtitles within the same file (instead of having them outside with the same -unconclusive- name)
- my favourite stereo encoding format, Vorbis, wouldn't work in AVI, and I don't like to use OGM because of its bad subtitle support.
- the most efficient video encoding format, AVC, is not ment for the AVI container, and then MP4 is too limited a container (no Vorbis, no VobSub, etc)
- I can encode anamorphic and specify the AR in mkvmerge (functional GUI btw!)
- there is a possibility to name the different tracks and specify the languages and all

I wish the best for the Matroska team, and may we see standalone support in the near future!

:thanks:

[robU*4]

Happy birthday to ourselves. And a big thanks to all the users and early adopters who helped us making matroska a useful reality (a great technology but unused is not worth anything).

A special mention to some Doom9 mods who had a hard time dealing with us while the wind was changing...

[vlada]

My congratulation too. As far as I've seen, MKV is really dominating the HD video world. But still there are some limitations:

1) No menu support
2) No standalone players support
3) No NLE or VD-like editor with MKV support (at least in Windows)

Are there any news regarding these 3 points?

Point 2) I already announced here the Cowon A3, which should have Matroska support. But it isn't released yet and it becomes unsure if it will be released at all.