The future of matroska .....

[ChristianHJW]

... or better, where should we go in your opinion ?

Note that multiple choices can be done, but please dont tick all 10 of them ;) ....

[gircobain]

I crave dvd-like menus :rolleyes:

It's what's missing for us to make pro backups :D

[pogo stick]

Menues! Menues! Menues! Menues!
Can I vote at least twice, please?
You can call me childish. I don't care. :D
But seriously, before replacing AVI Matroska will have to survive MP4 upcoming.
While you will be creating media framework and a codec API many Matroska users will be seduced by MP4.
h.264, MP4 editing tool and MP4 in hardware are on the way! Be careful!
And menues are excellent bait. Bond knows. ;)

[Zarxrax]

As much as the gstreamer stuff sounds like a good idea, I think the first priority should be getting people to use the container. I don't think the majority of people could care less about a media framework, they just need the features that have been promised since the beginning. Once that stuff is taken care of, I think gstreamer would be the next logical step.

[KpeX]

Well, my two choices would have to be Native MPEG4 or MusePack in Matroska, but I have a feeling the second one may be dependent on Mr. Klemm's work. I use MPEG-4 codecs for virtually all of my video projects and being able to easily go from native MKV to MP4 would be great. MKV is useful for supporting more formats than MP4, like vorbis, vobsubs, etc., and mkvmerge is much easier to use to mux several streams than graphedit + 3ivx. So I feel it would be valuable to go from 'true' MPEG-4 video in MKV to MP4 or vice versa easily.

I don't honestly see the need for menus in matroska. With the ever-cheapening DVD media and the onset of Dual layer burners, if I want a backup just like the DVD I'd simply use DVD format.

The API would be nice, but it would be a huge project. However I feel this is ultimately necessary for matroska to have such an API in order to produce a versatile editor (as TCME was proposed), in order for matroska to become a 'working' format and not a 'final' format as almost everyone uses it right now.

All this IMHO of course.

[jk888]

A new Matroska Codec Pack with the new ffdshow, yes it's finally stable enough to add it in. Alot of decoding issues have been fixed since the 2003-05-23 version.

[GIR]

Has MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 video already been taken care of :confused: please excuse my ignorance if it has, its been a while and I have not heard much about it since I used mpeg2mkv a few months back with less than spectacular results :( I'm just wondering if any 'progress' has been made in this area.

[stephanV]

Menus??? Bah, who needs them anyway? :p

Native MPEG4 support would be nice though, as that is the codec-standard that is most widely spread. I don't see how MP4 and Matroska can compete with each other, as they are quite different things. Matroska can become the new improved AVI, while MP4 is a highly specialized container. MP4 can have private streams of course, but I believe that might ruin the interoperability. So in an ideal world people would use MP4 for complete MPEG4 stuff (e.g. MPEG4 ASP video with AAC audio) and Matroska for just about everything else.

Good luck with the project!

[bond]

ah one of chris' famous polls :D

i voted for the following:
1) native mpeg-4
why? because hacks developed for the crappy AVI container should not have its place in a smart container, like matroska, which is not needing these hacks

2) menus
why? because its simply nice to be able to make a real 1:1 copy of a dvd.
basically i already mentioned that in MP4 the menu information is stored in the bifs TRACK, which is simply a track like a audio/video track (and the same idea as what is called "control track" in mkv)
now if matroska can store various a/v streams, why cant it simply store the bifs control track too? using the same menu system as Mp4 in Matroska
allowing the storage of mpeg-4 systems streams will also allow much more than only menus of course
(of course its only an idea, i dunno if its as easy to implement technically as it sounds :D )

3) flexibility
Originally posted by stephanV
I don't see how MP4 and Matroska can compete with each other, as they are quite different things. Matroska can become the new improved AVI, while MP4 is a highly specialized container. MP4 can have private streams of course, but I believe that might ruin the interoperability. So in an ideal world people would use MP4 for complete MPEG4 stuff (e.g. MPEG4 ASP video with AAC audio) and Matroska for just about everything else.thats exactly my opinion!
and as a conclusion it might can be drawn that matroska should aim at providing the storage of AS MUCH as possible audio/video formats

like if i want to combine realvideo9 and speex, what can i use? matroska!

[scrat]

Hey!

Menues! Menues! Menues!
Matroska has everything for a complete DVD-backup except menues. USF-subtitles would be nice, but I can life without it...


cu, scrat

[P0l1m0rph1c]

Hi guys. Well, i voted in control tracks, MPC in matroska, and Native MPEG4.

Native MPEG4 is a thing that should be done a long time ago, since we're still using AVI hacks to put mpeg4 streams in matroska, and that is unnecessary, since matroska supports things like b-frames perfectly.

Musepack is a great audio codec, and storing an album encoded with MPC in an MKA file, would be nice. Besides, using MPC for audio with concerts or music videos would be cool too. But, as KpeX said, that's mostly dependant on Klemm's work (where are you Frank? :( ).

Although i din't see the immediate über-advantage of menus, i think of control tracks a good addition, since they allow to make some interesting things, and are the basis to menus. So, for a start, I think control tracks are a reasonable goal.

About the whole framework thing. I think it's important, really. But, if that is taking all of the time that could be used to develop matroska itself further, i think it should be postponed, or at least put to 2nd place.

Having more lossless support would be nice too, but first things first, imho.

Anyway, whatever you do, do it fast, or else you'll lose support to other things quickly...

[damrod]

i agree

maybe add menues can be good also ;-))

[Blueseb]

where is 'more hardware support' checkbox??? :D
ok, serious now; menues and most of all multimedia framework would be great, i'm a matroska addict and that's what i need.

[ChristianHJW]

Astonishing result for this poll, i have to admit. Allow me to comment on that later, i dont want to influence people who are still voting now .....

[tiki4]

I'm late to the pack as always. I also voted for MPC support and native MPEG4 (which seems already playable in VLC, I wonder what's the difference to e.g. MPlayer). Another thing I wish for sure is to be able to play FLAC album in MKA in Linux. So far I can only play those files with MPlayer, but of course there is no TAG support, no replaygaining and no seeking to chapter positions.

@Christian: On HA you posted in a thread in the MPC section that you would try to contact Frank Klemm. I wonder if you were able to contact him... any news from Musepack would be appreciated by many people.

CU,

tiki4

[GrEEk_OuTcAsT]

Matroska needs more support from the players. And I don't speak for the Dshow filters. I think that players need to have the support of the matroska container with internal filters. The only players that do that, are MPC and Mplayer. The core media player is ultra-high-buggy, the VLC is good, but has bugged vobsub support and poor subtitles support generally.

After that matroska needs more muxing tools and more editors for matroska files (especially editors for MKS subtitles). VDubMod can't open files with VobSubs in it. Thanks MOSU we have the great mkvtoolnix and his mplayer support. But we need more.

It would be also good to have .mks support from the subtitle programs.

[Sigmatador]

media framework and codec API based on GStreamer :D

[unmei]

voted for menues, native mpeg-4 video and usf.

Menues - well i like to back up DVDs, and for now i always felt there was something missing :)

Native mpeg-4 - i really dont like my Xvid raped into some AVI scheme and this will probably become even more important with with the h.264 codecs.

usf - my position dictates me to put that tick, even if i don't feel it has to hurry (and i can't help ATM with u96 in such a messed up state in transition to the next version). It is just at some time in the future i would like to drop the final "export to SSA" before i mux my subs into the final video file.

[edit] i forgot to tick "MP4 and matroska can live fine side by side", which is true for me since mpeg-4 doesnt let me use vorbis (aoTuV :)) and the mpeg-4 timed text looks OK form the specs, but i prefer SSA/ASS or USF.

[gotaserena]

As the team is doing a superb job in trying to get support for as many codecs as possible, all I can say is that you *badly* need an editor, and then an API is more important than extra stuff like menues. I think an editor will be the most compelling reason for new people to use matroska, whereas extra stuff will only preach for the converted.

[outlyer]

OK, for the record, I voted the first five. Looking at the results I guess I'm not "mainstream" :D. They'd go in this order:

[list=1]
Native MPEG4


"Free-Us-Of-Crappy-Hacks"

Musepack

For Ultra HQ rips and for Music Videos, a higher bitrate codec is needed, and we all know what's the best :D

Control Tracks

I *want* this.
Although it may prove not specially popular it would differentiate Matroska.

Menues

Required for "real" DVD copies as we all know, I just don't give so much importance to this, and considering it'll be HARD i very much prefer the team's time expended in something else :p

USF

USF is, on paper, killer. All the current formats have annoying shortcomings that USF would wipe (until we notice some USF shortcomings)
[/list=1]

Sorry for the lousy explanations :p