Matroska
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| Filename extension | .mkv .mka .mks |
|---|---|
| Internet media type | |
| Developed by | Matroska.org |
| Type of format | Container format |
| Container for | Multimedia |
The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free Container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file.[1] It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in conception to other containers like AVI, MP4 or ASF, but is completely open source. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.
Matroska is an English word derived from the Russian word "matryoshka" (Russian: матрёшка, IPA: [mɐˈtrʲoʂkə]), which means "nesting doll" (the common Russian egg-shaped doll within a doll). This is a play on the container (media within a form of media/doll within a doll) aspect of the matryoshka as it is a container for visual and audio data. The transliteration may be confusing for Russian speakers, as the Russian word "matroska" (матроска) actually refers to a sailor suit.
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History
The project was announced on December 7, 2002 as a fork of the Multimedia Container Format (MCF), after disagreements between MCF lead developer Lasse Kärkkäinen and soon-to-be Matroska founder Steve Lhomme about the use of the Extensible Binary Meta Language instead of another binary format. This coincided with a long coding break by the MCF's lead developer, which caused most of the community to quickly migrate to the new project.
Goals
The Matroska project developers believe that the use of EBML brings them a number of advantages, including making it easier to extend the format for decades into the future as new developments occur and/or as the project goals change. The format has been designed from the ground up for longevity and extendability (unlike formats such as AVI). The Matroska team has spoken openly on Doom9.org and hydrogenaudio.org about some of their long term goals, including:
- creating a modern, flexible, extensible, cross-platform multimedia container format;
- developing robust streaming support;
- developing a "DVD-like" menu system based on EBML;
- developing a set of tools for the creation and editing of Matroska files;
- developing libraries that can be used to allow developers to add Matroska support to their applications;
- working with hardware manufacturers to include Matroska support in embedded multimedia devices;
- working to provide native Matroska support in various operating systems.
Software support
Listed below is software that has native Matroska support.
- ALShow
- Avidemux
- BS.Player
- Chameleo
- The Core Media Player
- CorePlayer Mobile
- The Core Pocket Media Player
- DivX Player
- GOM Player (Makes audio sound slow motion)
- Gstreamer-based Players (Totem, etc.)
- HandBrake
- jetAudio
- Kaffeine
- The KMPlayer
- Media Player Classic
- Media Player Classic - Home Cinema
- MediaPortal [2]
- Mezzmo Media Player
- MPlayer
- MythTV
- Perian Quicktime Plugin for Mac OS X [3]
- Target Longlife Media Player
- Totem Movie Player
- VirtualDubMod
- VLC media player
- VSO Software
- Vuze (client) Media Player
- xine
- Zoom Player
Hardware support
A number of settop boxes such as the Popcorn Hour and Tvix media players have stated publically in user forums that they are considering or pursuing Matroska support, but as of Q2 2008 (nearly 6 years after its introduction) no manufacturer has produced a consumer electronics device with official Matroska playback capabilities. Some end users in these public forums report partial success in use with certain codecs and files but inherently, the extensible architecture of the Matroska container (which is often stated as a benefit of its design) makes comprehensive hardware playback support very difficult to provide, thus becoming a drawback by hindering its adoption in this market while competing formats with a fixed architecture such as AVI or DivX have gained widespread support.
Zensonic
The Matroska homepage indicated in an April 2006 posting that playback on settop devices would be forthcoming starting with the release of the Zensonic Z500 media player. This was subsequently denied by administrators of the Zensonic official support forums, and to date no Zensonic device supports Matroska video.
Sigma Designs
Sigma Designs, manufacturer of the majority share of hardware MPEG decoder chipsets used in media playback devices has released 3 new chipset designs in the previous 2 years; the SMP8650, 8630 and 8620L, all of which explicitly support the most common high-definition video formats, H.264 and the MP4 container, as well as Microsoft's VC-1 codec and AVI format but do not contain any built in support for Matroska, though some OEMs do provide support in their firmware packages.
Sigma based hardware which supports Matroska
| Company | Model(s) | Website |
|---|---|---|
| PopcornHour | A-100, A-110, B-110 | http://www.popcornhour.com |
| Egreat | EG-M31A, EG-M31B | http://www.egreathd.com |
| Kaiober | K007 | official forum only http://bbs.hd-tv.cn/forum-71-1.html |
| HDX | HDX900 | http://www.hdx1080.com |
| Dune HD | Ultra | http://www.dune-hd.com |
| iStar HD | Mini (HDMI 1.1), Mini (HDMI 1.3) | http://www.istarhd.com |
Cowon
The Cowon A3 supports MKV as well as many other formats, including the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC open audio formats.[4]
Content in Matroska
Initially the uptake of the format was low. It was initially used almost exclusively for DVD rips of anime, as the container allowed the viewer to choose between the original language track and a dub. In recent years, however, Matroska has seen wider use due to the scene adopting it as a format of choice for high definition content ripped from HDTV and next generation video discs (HD DVD and Blu-ray). It usually carries H.264 video, one or more AC3/AAC/DTS audio tracks and sometimes one or more subtitle tracks (sometimes coupled with one or more embedded TrueType or OpenType font). Before H.264, most MKV files from the above mentioned scene contained RealVideo (RV9, RV10) encoded video tracks, which at that time was slightly superior to MPEG-4 Part 2[citation needed] (used e.g. by the DivX, Xvid and FFmpeg MPEG-4 codecs), especially for anime material, in combination with MP3 or Vorbis encoded audio streams and soft-subtitles.[citation needed]
License
Matroska is an open standards project. This means it is free to use, and that the technical specifications describing the bit stream are open to everybody, even to companies that would like to support it in their products. The source code of the libraries developed by the Matroska Development Team is licensed under GNU LGPL. In addition to that, there are also free parsing and playback libraries available under the BSD license, for proprietary software adoption.
See also
- LiVES
- Comparison of container formats
- Open source codecs and containers
- Combined Community Codec Pack
References
- ^ Matroska Format Specifications, Matroska.org.
- ^ MediaPortal Features (01/01/2007)
- ^ Perian details
- ^ Cowon A3 product page
External links
- Official Matroska Homepage
- Technical specifications for the Matroska Container Format
- Proposed RFC
- Matroska news page, with April 2006 posting of Zensonic Z500 support
- Zensonic forums official response of no Matroska support
- Sigma 8650 MPEG decoder chipset
- CoreCodec – Official Matroska Developer Project Home
- Perian (MKV) QuickTime Component For Mac
- Haali Media splitter
- Project Announcement on Doom9 forums
- Parser, de-/muxer and player
- MKVToolnix - Cross-platform tools for Matroska
- The XviD-Ogg-MKV Walkthrough – Step-by-step instructions for MKV encoding in Microsoft Windows
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