Is it time we had a separate Matroska section?

[ooops!]

Would it be a good idea to have a separate Matroska section in the MPEG-4 and Co. area?

Personally I would really like to learn more about this container and it would be useful to have all the up to date info in one place!

Just a thought.

[robUx4]

Good idea :D

I think some of us already talked to Doom9 about this but I'm not sure.

If you want all informations in one place, there is the website :) Otherwise the IRC channel where you'll find answers nearly 24/7.

[ChristianHJW]

I dont think so. OGM never had one, nor MP4, RV9, etc. . The matroska project belongs into this very section, and its not widely used still IMHO. We could start a poll in the General Section ( not here, people here are more experimenting ! ) to find out, but i won`t as i can predict the outcome i guess :

80% AVI ( still, i know that for sure )
17% OGM
1% MP4
1% RV9
1% MKV

;) ......

[mikeson]

I'm definitely for it! Although Matroska isn't widely used yet, it is our future IMHO. :)

[Sirber]

Is you search a little, Doom9 didn't wanted for RV9, so I don't think he will accept for Matroska.

[CaptainCarrot]

Well, there isn't a seperate avi-forum either, so i'd say there's really no need for a container-format-forum. Matroska is basically meant to just be there and get used, you just take your stuff and put in in there.
It might be different as soon as matroska actually offers menues and all that other funky stuff, but even then... it's a container, if you need to discuss a lot of stuff about it (after it's finished, off course) it probably won't be a good container.

[ooops!]

> CaptainCarrot

I hear what you are saying. But just look how many Matroska treads there are and how may views they get. It's by far the most popular topic at the moment!

[avih]

there are few matroska threads, and as chris noted, they all belong here, that's what it's for: new a/v formats.

[robUx4]

And we only support 10% of all the features planned ;)

[mf]

Well actually, as someone else said (don't remember who), it would actually be better if there was a central place to discuss matroska, since its project members like to taint just about every possible thread with matroska adverts/recommendations/ideas. I agree with that. If there's a central place for info ppl can just find it themselves.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by mf If there's a central place for info ppl can just find it themselves.

:P .... mf, as discussed on IRC only a couple of minutes ago, we got advice from Doom9 to take things much easier, or he wouldnt know how to keep his mods calm about all the matroska spamming. We will respet that and 'take' it easier now. No way we want to get 'isolated' in a little sector, where only MKV fans come to see what we are doing ;) ...

[Atamido]

I would be inclined to think that a forum specific to containers would be good. Then you could isolate talk specific to OGM, ASF, MKV, AVI, etc. But, as Doom9 pointed out, adding a new forum requires an incredible amount of resources. So, you would have to weigh that against the amount of usage it would get, and I'm afraid that it simply wouldn't get that much usage.

@mf: Chill, my non-lactating friend.

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by ooops!

I hear what you are saying. But just look how many Matroska treads there are and how may views they get. It's by far the most popular topic at the moment!


That's how OGM was when it first started and Koepi was updating OggMux on a daily basis, and Suircy was making his commandline muxing utilities. And we didn't need a new Forum for that. Instead all the updates where posted in the New A/V Forum. I personaly think it's doing a good job at what it was meant to do. Allow people to talk about any new and hot formats (OGM,MKV,RM9,WM9)

Plus the stickies at the top of the forum are a great place to find info on the format your looking for. So I don't see the need for a new thread. And lets not forget the usefull search function.

[Barker]

I, for one, would like to see a new thread / topic on new containers. Here were my initial reasonings:

When I started using OGM, it was a search to find the positives and negatives of this format. The A/V forum did a good job, but when I was getting really interested, someone posted this:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=39913

Got me thinking...

We are only working with a handfull of formats: AVI, OGG, MP4, MKV, RV9, WMV, (sorry if i left anyone out). My problem is when its broken up into different forums, without the +/-'s of each, and an area to comment on each, I find it hard to consider which format suits me. I know from Doom9's perspective, it is going to be a mess to designate which questions go into a forum such as "containers" and which mods are up to it, but I think it would be a better way to help newbies (or even non-newbies willing to explore other options) understand the alternative formats and what they include in their proposed containers. This will also help (as long as the authors of such containers can get along) a nice common ground for devs to see what is popular atm.

Lets face it, all of the conversions that are on Doom9 still have to end up in a container at some point (even if starts at avi and moves to another). It would be nice to have a section defining them.

Enough of my rant, just thought I'd post my opinion on this, as I've often though about it.

Thank you all, devs, mods and members, I've learned a lot of sh*t from this forum.

Regards,
Barker

[Doom9]

the terms RV9 and WMV are not only used for containers, but also for video and audio compression codecs... there you have your first predicament. and where to you differ between avi as a container, and as as in divx/xvid video with mp3 audio?

The main reason this has come up now is basically what mf said, though I'd have used other words. And too much PR is no reason for its own forum.

[robUx4]

More than half of the threads about matroska since the 1st of May (1st public release) were not created by the matroska team. So I don't think it's just about doing PR when we answer questions about our work.

We have decided to release some stuff instead of taking the long "research" road because we wanted more user feedback and needs. That's why we try to discuss about the format as much as possible. So we had to release stuff because would not care about a possible new vapourware. We even have our own big forum elsewhere but noone care to go there... So what do we have to do ? Work in a corner, release stuff and not talk about it ?

[Atamido]

I have only started a handful of Matroska specific threads.

2 in January explaining theoretical (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42483) implementations. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42489)
1 in January asking people to look over the specs (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45777) for issues, and they were quite helpful in pointing out gramaticaly issues.

1 poll in April which was used to decide the extension (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44379) Matroska would use. It recieved 69 replies, 129 votes and 2912 views. Not a bad response, and quite useful to us all.

1 in January asking people to look over the diagram (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52840) I was making. The input they offered was quite valuable to getting to a readable state.

In addition to this, I have mentioned Matroska in 15, no wait...16, threads this past month, most in New A/V, and about half in Matroska specific threads started by about 50% ChristianHJW. The rest I only posted about because I felt that it would be useful to the subject matter of the thread. Considering that I am probably the second most common Matroska poster, I wouldn't call that number a bad thing.

But it is by no means enough to sustain a formum by itself. But combined with OGM, it probably would be.

Doom9 poses the issue of where the line would be drawn for codec/container specific issues. I think it should be easy to draw the line. For instance, "How would I store b-frames in AVI?" would be in the container section, as opposed to "How does DivX store b-frames in AVI?" would go in the codec section.

However, it would be difficult to get many users, mainly new ones, to understand the difference. I could just imagine the living hell that would develop for those poor mods assigned to that forum. Maybe just make ChristianHJW a mod over it and then pretend it doesn't exist? It would fulfill his dream, and remove the pains from the other mods. :D

lol, I crack me up sometimes. But seriously, I agree completely with Doom9 on this.

[outlyer]

I agree with people saying that Matroska shouldn't have its own section, but I would suggest changing the section name "MPEG-4 and Co." to something like "Codecs and Containers" as today rippers are using more and more codecs non-MPEG4 and there's a lot of talk about conatiners, at least in the New A/V section

[ooops!]

Codecs and Containers.

Very catchy. I like that!

[ooops!]

So under the heading "MPEG-4 and Co." we currently have:-

01: DivX3/4 Encoding

02: DivX5 Encoding

03: Gordian Knot

04: Gordian Knot Development

05: XviD

06: New A/V Formats

So is it really too much to have, say:-

06: To be re-named to: New Codecs

07: To be: Containers

How about amalgamating, DivX3/4 with DivX5

Ooops! hang on a sec! My wooden spoon has just fallen off my desk!
Ah! don't panic........ I've found it!

[Koepi]

Erm.

Just because I like y'all.

[ooops!]

> Koepi

Just because Xvid has got its own section does'nt mean you can bug in on this one. Ha!

[Neo Neko]

It's up to Doom9. It's his forum and it is going to take quite a bit of work to organise. It is a dilema. ASF which is what WM is stored in is only for Microsoft codecs. Not that any other codec could not be stored in there. Microsoft just would not like that I suppose. But I digress as no one would want to use it for anything other than MS codecs really. Real again has a container only for their codecs. AVI is so old and limited who would want to talk about it. OGM is unfortuantly a now abandoned(For the most part) bastard format. No worries though. You can still get your video out of it. MPEG well that is only for MPEG. Nuff said. MP4/Quicktime well the MP4 varriant is for MPEG only again. And Quicktime....... well no one has ever been interested much in it. Most players for it are not so good. OGG well it is not fully working or even as close as Matroska is ATM. Have I missed any? Oh wait! Matroska. It is more than just an A/V container. Course we all knew that. But It is not exactly doing alot that has never been done before. But it is doing it in a very open and user oriented way. Not locked to any one codec or player.

So I don't see how a general containers section would be viable as most of the containers don't want to play and would rather choose to stay in the back outa sight. Matroska being the exception. But I don't think there needs to be a section special for it here. This section is the right place here. But perhaps corecodec.com is the right place for an official discussion forum.

[Koepi]

Neo,

sorry that i have to corect you:

OGM isn't abandoned. Tobias will release his sources. He's still alive and kickin', but has no time anymore.

Still this doesn't justify a matroska and/or container forum. The decision is set, there's nothing more to discuss.

Regards
Koepi

[Atamido]

Well, I still disagree about other containers being discussed in a general Container forum. People still have questions about AVI, but aren't sure where to ask them. OGM is not dead yet. Hopefully Xiph will hurry up and release an official OGM 1.1 version with their blessing. There is still much discussion to be made about MP4, specifically the audio side of it. There is also the different types of MPEG2 containers. And of course Matroska.

But, I do not think that it would consistently recieve enough traffic to warrant all of the extra time for mods, etc.

However, I think that everyone could agree that it would be loads of fun :devil: if they created a OGM/Matroska forum.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Koepi
Neo,

sorry that i have to corect you:

OGM isn't abandoned. Tobias will release his sources. He's still alive and kickin', but has no time anymore.

Still this doesn't justify a matroska and/or container forum. The decision is set, there's nothing more to discuss.

Regards
Koepi

No worries. Feal free to correct me when the need arises. I am the last person that wants to go around spreading false info. Last bit of news I had heard was that tobias was co-operating with Xiph then he fell off the face of the earth for lack of better words. Even if OGM will be continued I still have question as to its future status. Anyhow I hope we see something soon.

[outlyer]

@Neo / Koepi:
O.K. I was just brainstorming :)

@Koepi:
Although OGM is not dead it will be transformed into something similar but different, AFAIK, and I'd say as a user that we, OGM users, are a bit uncertain about what will come

[Doom9]

personally I feel that the ogm users are a bit left out in the dark.. a clear statement whether any future incarnation would be compatible with what is out there would certainly help to quell some lingering fears.. but hey, it's not my project so not my call. I'd suppose that Matroska would get a boost of future ogms turn out to be incompatible, because Matroska seems more focused on our corner of the video processing world.
As for an own forum, I have noted the amount of posts, but how much is buzz and how much is real? You see some developers being a bit more careful than their PR guy (of course it's Chris' job to push things ahead, but even he has to conform to the rules set on this board and since we had our little discussion I haven't had much reason to complain), and I'm a bit more careful, too. You know I don't rip for a living, and that I delete most of the rips I make (I keep a few DVD-Rs, milestone releases done using a new guide, new program or such but I doubt it's of much use keeping those so one day when I run out of closet space they'll be the first ones to go). If I did DivX (actually, I'd be doing XviD) I'd still stick to AVI for the simple matter that it works for me, and that a device that I will soon get can play DivX/XviD in AVIs, even with AC3, but no OGM or MKVs and I don't know of the latter two will ever be supported. While standalone playback isn't so big for me personally, it is for people in my environment, so when people want to loan a movie they get the original DVD with a warning not to scratch it, rather than a rip I quickly made so that they can scratch the hell out of it and I won't have to worry.
For now, AVI is still that standard. Matroska specs are final, but the implementation is far from it. Only time will tell if Matroska will become a pillar of the video encoding community. If it becomes a container of significant importance (and I think that lies mostly on factors that the members here have little to no influence on) it will get its own forum as a natural course of progress. If not, creating a forum now would probably give people the wrong impression.. then if Matroska doesn't become ubiquious, what then?
It's natural for a high tech site like this one, that we discuss things thoroughly and as soon as they happen. I have created OGM, MP4 and Matroska guides very early in the game so that people know how to do things. But from there to significant spread is a long road. There was a time when I would always have the ogm filters installed on my systems.. but that time has gone by. This isn't an as easy step as upgrading from DivX3/4 to DivX5/XviD.. doing that upgrade you know that for the forseeable future you'll be able to play back those codecs. Microsoft might feel compelled to one day offer a standard MPEG-4 decoder and thus enabling DivX5/XviD playback out of the box because those codecs have made "it". But, will they also support Matroska out of the box? Will major video editing tools support it? Those are questions that cannot be answered today but that imho are rather crucial.