Matroska

Last updated
Matroska
Matroska Logo.svg
Filename extension
.mkv .mk3d .mka .mks
Internet media type
video/x-matroska audio/x-matroska
Initial release6 December 2002;21 years ago (2002-12-06)
Latest release
1.7.1 [1]
8 October 2022;19 months ago (2022-10-08)
Type of format Container format
Container for Multimedia
Extended from MCF, EBML
Open format?Yes
Free format?Yes [2]
Website matroska.org

Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. [3] The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanced Systems Format (ASF), but is an open standard.

Contents

Matroska file extensions are .mkv for video (which may include subtitles or audio), .mk3d for stereoscopic video, .mka for audio-only files (which may include subtitles), and .mks for subtitles only. [4]

History

The project was announced on 6 December 2002 [5] 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 (EBML) instead of a binary format. [6] This coincided with a 6-month coding break by the MCF's lead developer for his military service, during which most of the community quickly migrated to the new project.[ citation needed ]

In 2010, it was announced that the WebM audio/video format would be based on a profile of the Matroska container format together with VP8 video and Vorbis audio. [7]

On 31 October 2014, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 10 would support HEVC and Matroska out of the box, according to a statement from Gabriel Aul, the leader of Microsoft Operating Systems Group's Data and Fundamentals Team. [8] [9] Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 9860 added platform level support for HEVC and Matroska. [10] [11]

"Matroska" is derived from matryoshka (Russian : матрёшка [mɐˈtrʲɵʂkə] ), the Russian word for the hollow wooden dolls which open to expose another smaller doll, that in turn opens to expose another doll, and so on. The logo writes it as "Matroška"; the letter š, an "s" with a caron over it, represents the "sh" sound (/ʂ/) in various languages. [12]

Design

The use of EBML allows extension for future format changes. The Matroska team has expressed some of their long-term goals on Doom9.org and Hydrogenaudio forums. Thus, the following are "goals", not necessarily existing features, of Matroska: [13]

Development

Matroska is supported by a non-profit organization (association loi 1901) in France, [16] and the specifications are open to everyone. It is a royalty-free open standard that is free to use, and its technical specifications are available for private and commercial use. The Matroska development team licenses its libraries under the LGPL, with parsing and playback libraries available under BSD licenses. [13]

Support

Software supporting Matroska include all ffmpeg/libav-based ones, [17] including, notably, mplayer, mpv, VLC, Foobar2000, Media Player Classic-HC, BS.player, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Blender, Kdenlive, Handbrake, MKVToolNix as well as YouTube (which uses WebM extensively). [18]

Outside of ffmpeg, Windows 10 supports Matroska natively as well. [19] Earlier versions relied on codec packs (like K-Lite Codec Pack or Combined Community Codec Pack) to integrate ffmpeg (via ffdshow) and other additions into Windows’ native DirectShow.

Apple macOS’s discontinued native QuickTime notably lacked support.

See also

Related Research Articles

Audio Video Interleave is a proprietary multimedia container format and Windows standard introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows software. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback. Like the DVD video format, AVI files support multiple streaming audio and video, although these features are seldom used.

A video file format is a type of file format for storing digital video data on a computer system. Video is almost always stored using lossy compression to reduce the file size.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DivX</span> Brand of video codec products by DivX, LLC

DivX is a brand of video codec products developed by DivX, LLC. There are three DivX codecs: the original MPEG-4 Part 2 DivX codec, the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC DivX Plus HD codec and the High Efficiency Video Coding DivX HEVC Ultra HD codec. The most recent version of the codec itself is version 6.9.2, which is several years old. New version numbers on the packages now reflect updates to the media player, converter, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FFmpeg</span> Multimedia framework

FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects and standards compliance.

Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other compression technologies, WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater for specialized content. After standardization by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), WMV version 9 was adapted for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc and became known as VC-1. Microsoft also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store video encoded by Windows Media Video.

RealVideo, or also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks — the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and as of 2008 was at version 10. RealVideo is supported on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile phones.

The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.

Multimedia Container Format (MCF) is an unfinished specification for container format, designed to be completely free and open. The project was abandoned in early 2004, but many of its innovative features have since found their way into Matroska, MCF's de facto successor.

A container format or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Notable examples of container formats include archive files and formats used for multimedia playback. Among the earliest cross-platform container formats were Distinguished Encoding Rules and the 1985 Interchange File Format.

These tables compare features of multimedia container formats, most often used for storing or streaming digital video or digital audio content. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.

QuickTime File Format (QTFF) is a computer file format used natively by the QuickTime framework.

FFV1 is a lossless intra-frame video coding format. It can use either variable-length coding or arithmetic coding for entropy coding. FFV1 is particularly popular for its performance regarding speed and size, compared to other lossless preservation codecs, such as M-JPEG2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VP8</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format released by Google in 2010

VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008.

A demultiplexer for digital media files, or media demultiplexer, also called a file splitter by laymen or consumer software providers, is software that demultiplexes individual elementary streams of a media file, e.g., audio, video, or subtitles and sends them to their respective decoders for actual decoding. Media demultiplexers are not decoders themselves, but are format container handlers that separate media streams from a (container) file and supply them to their respective audio, video, or subtitles decoders.

DivX Plus HD, launched in 2009, is the brand name for the file type that DivX, Inc. has chosen for their high definition video format. DivX Plus HD files consist of high definition H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video with surround sound Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio, wrapped up in the open-standard Matroska container, identified by the .mkv file extension. DivX Plus HD files leverage and extend on Matroska's ability to support multiple language tracks, subtitles, chapters, and additional bonus content.

HTML video is a subject of the HTML specification as the standard way of playing video via the web. Introduced in HTML5, it is designed to partially replace the object element and the previous de facto standard of using the proprietary Adobe Flash plugin, though early adoption was hampered by lack of agreement as to which video coding formats and audio coding formats should be supported in web browsers. As of 2020, HTML video is the only widely supported video playback technology in modern browsers, with the Flash plugin being phased out.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebM</span> Audiovisual media file format

WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by Google, and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libav</span> Multimedia framework

Libav is an abandoned free software project, forked from FFmpeg in 2011, that contains libraries and programs for handling multimedia data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opus (audio format)</span> Lossy audio coding format

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end embedded processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MKVToolNix</span> Free and open source Matroska libraries and toolset

MKVToolNix is a collection of tools for the Matroska media container format by Moritz Bunkus including mkvmerge. The free and open source Matroska libraries and tools are available for various platforms including Linux and BSD distributions, macOS and Microsoft Windows. The tools can be also downloaded from video software distributors and FOSS repositories.

References

  1. ↑ "Release release-1.7.1 · Matroska-Org/Libmatroska". github.com. October 8, 2022. Archived from the original on February 28, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023.
  2. ↑ Matroska Multimedia Container (Partial draft). Sustainability of Digital Formats. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. 21 December 2015. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  3. ↑ Matroska v4 element specification Archived 2018-02-04 at the Wayback Machine , Matroska.org. "TrackNumber: The track number as used in the Block Header (using more than 127 tracks is not encouraged, though the design allows an unlimited number)."
  4. ↑ "Matroska FAQ - Q3: What file extensions does Matroska use?". www.matroska.org. Archived from the original on 2019-04-08. Retrieved 2018-07-16.
  5. ↑ "Matroska: Older Archives". Archived from the original on 2017-08-03. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  6. ↑ Lhomme, Steve (2002-12-06). "Re: Proposed Spec Changes". Newsgroup:  gmane.comp.video.mcf.devel. Archived from the original on October 11, 2016. Retrieved May 23, 2016.
  7. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions Archived 2021-09-22 at the Wayback Machine , the WebM project
  8. ↑ Gabriel Aul (October 31, 2014). "HEVC also supported in-box". Twitter. Archived from the original on December 29, 2020. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
  9. ↑ John Callaham (November 1, 2014). "Microsoft: Windows 10 will support the HEVC video compression standard". Windows Central. Archived from the original on 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  10. ↑ Bogdan Popa (November 3, 2014). "Microsoft Confirms MKV File Support in Windows 10". Softpedia. Archived from the original on 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  11. ↑ Gabe Aul (November 12, 2014). "New build available to the Windows Insider Program". Microsoft. Archived from the original on March 3, 2015. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  12. ↑ "Matroska Media Container Homepage". matroska.org. Archived from the original on 2023-04-11. Retrieved 2023-04-11.
  13. 1 2 "What is Matroska?". matroska.org. Archived from the original on 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  14. ↑ "Streaming". matroska.org. Archived from the original on 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  15. ↑ "Menu Specifications". matroska.org. Archived from the original on 29 December 2020. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  16. ↑ "Legal Aspect - Matroska". matroska.org. Archived from the original on 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2020-08-01.
  17. ↑ "General Documentation". ffmpeg.org. Archived from the original on 2012-01-06. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  18. ↑ "Third-party applications - Matroska". Archived from the original on 2021-04-21. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
  19. ↑ "More on Native Flac and MKV Support in Windows 10". 5 January 2015. Archived from the original on 6 January 2024. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.