Matroska as a CD container

[Tuxie]

Wouldn't that be cool?
Complete CD-rips with full TOC including indexes and CD-text, audiotracks compressed with FLAC, subchannel data as a separate stream, it could contain bzip2 or 7zip compressed datatracks..
You would be able to open the file in WinAmp/XMMS and just play the audiotracks like it was a CD..
You would be able to burn it and get a bit-exact copy of the original CD..
It would be easy to extract the audiotracks to separate ogg/mp3-files..
It would take audio-cd backupping to the next level :)
Let's call it .mcd or .mkc ;)
*brainstorming*

[robUx4]

Yes, that would be cool. And we already thought about that even before the first Matroska files existed :) That's one of our goals.

Even though the CD-Text stuff can be stored in Tags already. I'm not sure about the sub-channels. But at least one MKV files with multiple "CD" tracks is a goal that we want to achieve. It should already possible to do it with chapters. But there is simply no CD ripper that support Matroska and I'm not sure the DirectShow filter for matroska can support audio-only files.

conclusion : If you know any CD ripper developper, tell them about Matroska. We can help anyone working on that.

[robUx4]

PS: The file would be .mka

[tiki4]

MatroskaSplitter.ax supports audio only files (at least with AAC inside).

tiki4

[bilu]

How about karaoke lyrics? :)

(not a joke, it's subtitle-like functionality over audio!)

Bilu

[ChristianHJW]

Guys, i am working on a Guide for this right now, as it can be done already with what we have today .... thanks to jcsston's FLAC encoder filter and mkvmerege ;) ...

[mf]

Of course you also want to store the way the CD headers are all written, or you'll get checksum mismatches when trying to burn it on CD identical to the original :D.

[Tuxie]

Great to see that this is already planned! ;)

IMHO using a different extension than mka would be better.. If the extension is mkc (Matroska CD) it's easy to see that it is a CD-image, which (most of the time) is very different from a audio-file.. Maybe I want to associate mkc with my cd-burner program and mka with my audio-player..

Before telling ripper-authors there should be a well defined standard. It will only do harm if programs will have to support 15 different obsolete versions of the standard in the future because they (or someone else) implemented it too early and people starting using it..

Now I'm finally convinced, Matroska IS the future! :D

[robUx4]

If you are talking about an image, then you don't need Matroska because we don't store data as in a CD... But if you want all the (usable) content of a CD to play from a Matroska file, then it's probably possible with Matroska "native" formats.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Tuxie
Complete CD-rips with full TOC including indexes and CD-text, audiotracks compressed with FLAC, subchannel data as a separate stream, it could contain bzip2 or 7zip compressed datatracks.. Matroska already allows you to store the TOC and TOC2 in the tags, as well as all sorts of other identifying information. (http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/matroska/doc/website/technical/specs/tagging/multi/multiidentifiers.html) I'm not sure why you would want to store all of the other subchannel data. You can store just about anything you want in the Tags (http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/matroska/doc/website/technical/specs/tagging/index.html) and Chapters are an integral part of that.

However, if you really wanted to store subchannel data then find someone that will make you a program that will let you rip it into timestamped chunks. Then you just pick a CodecID for it and store it as a track. If you want to compress it, Matroska allows compression of tracks independant of the codec being used so this is certainly possible.

Because this was one of the original purposes of Matroska, there really isn't a reason to add another extension. MKA is for audio only file which is exactly what this would be.

[Tuxie]

thanks to jcsston's FLAC encoder filter and mkvmerge

Is there a patch somewhere? mkvmerge 0.7.5 doesn't seem to support FLAC..
Also, the codecodec server has been down for at least two days now so I can't reach the Matroska documentation :(

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Tuxie Is there a patch somewhere? mkvmerge 0.7.5 doesn't seem to support FLAC..

Nope, you have to use Graphedit and contruct a graph on DirectShow to encode FLAC into MKA. I was starting to work on a Guide as long as i was in China, but now real ( family ) life has me back unfortunately, and there was no progress on it since 3 days now.

Also, the codecodec server has been down for at least two days now so I can't reach the Matroska documentation :( ... yes, the server is down for now, we get a new kernel and a couple of security patches on it :) ...

[Tuxie]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
I was starting to work on a Guide as long as i was in China, but now real ( family ) life has me back unfortunately, and there was no progress on it since 3 days now.

How is that guide going? I'd love to read it... ;)

[ChristianHJW]

Its obsolete, mkvmerge 0.7.7 has FLAC muxing included ;) ...