File Types and File Sizes: A Useless Waste of Time

[OropherZero]

@guy07 unless you're planning on putting kareoke or subtitles into an AMV is there really a point to using mkv at all :/

[Qyot27]

@guy07 unless you're planning on putting kareoke or subtitles into an AMV is there really a point to using mkv at all :/

Don't forget Vorbis audio (although I'm really one to talk - I'm one of the few who use MKV for distro but I still use AAC; it's for practicality issues on my end and the fact I do use ASS subtitles). For those that keep their media players highly segregated for video and audio, and who more frequently use MP4 with their audio-only files, MKV is a rather nice solution to the problem as it'll always open in the video player when double-clicked.

What I'd want to see are the statistics backing up the idea that your video will get less downloads if it's in MKV rather than MP4 and see if said statistics actually support the claim or not. The software differences are (or just about) null; I'd think the real statistics would back up people still flocking to AVI rather than either MP4 or MKV, simply because they'd assume videos in the latter two are going to be H.264 and hence hard to playback (which is rather false these days; last I checked ffdshow has been approaching CoreAVC-like performance on lower-end machines, so it doesn't take a monstrously powerful computer to playback average - read: Standard-def - H.264 AMVs anymore).

[Kionon]

The software differences are (or just about) null; I'd think the real statistics would back up people still flocking to AVI rather than either MP4 or MKV, simply because they'd assume videos in the latter two are going to be H.264 and hence hard to playback (which is rather false these days; last I checked ffdshow has been approaching CoreAVC-like performance on lower-end machines, so it doesn't take a monstrously powerful computer to playback average - read: Standard-def - H.264 AMVs anymore).

I think this is an accurate depiction of reality. I personally believe that most people (ie not competitive editors who are regulars on the org, especially on the forums) do not yet understand mp4 and h264, and would rather stick to a fourcc codec like divx or xvid packaged in avi which they have come to associate with video files. Unlike us, who understand the differences between codecs and containers, and also that avi represent a VFW container, most people see "avi" and think "I can watch this, it is a video file" where as they see "mp4" and wonder how it's different from an mp3.

[Zero1]

I wonder if MKV will be the new mp4
...how come it's not more popular?

There's more chance of Elvis coming back from the dead.

First point is that both containers serve different purposes.
The MKV creators had the intention of it being an "editable" container, that would basically replace AVI in applications such as Virtualdub (but it's not as simple as sticking MKV support in and calling it Virtualdubmod).

They also never intended it to be used for distribution, that is they didn't expect, or want people creating MKV files and using them as final output for movie rips, fansubs, AMVs, you name it. It was supposed to be the step in the middle so you can mix and match different sources, experiment and check it out before committing to a final container.

In effect, MKV is the "new" AVI, and MP4 is the new MPG. MP4 is the official successor to MPG, but MKV is effectively a fan made container to rival AVI. If you want AVI's true successor, you're likely to find it in ASF or WMV.

The reason MKV will not become the new MP4 is because MP4 offers something MKV cannot, and that's wide industry support. MP4 only really became popular about a year or two ago when H.264 was becoming popular, MKV long before (way back to early DivX days, perhaps 5 years ago when it forked from the failed MCF container), yet MKV support is nowhere near the scale of MP4. With MP4 you have commercial companies supporting it, as well as a good interest in the open source field.

The other reason people tend to avoid MKV, is fear that it will end up obsolete like MCF (which is what MKV was originally known as, or forked from) or OGM. All these filetypes promised the same things, but unfortunately they failed to deliver. MP4 has a good future ahead of it, I mean look how old MPG is and it's support is still strong. I mean fucking hell, they are still using modified MPEG-2 transport streams for storing Bluray and HD-DVD video in. That's some lasting impression.

You only have to consider that PS3, Xbox360, PSP, mobile phones, iPod, AppleTV, KiSS 1600, Zune, Archos and countless other portable/MP4 players are some of the hardware that support MP4 (in one complexity or another), yet compare that with existing MKV hardware devices, and you will probably struggle to find a single one.

You see the problem with MKV is that it's always open to change, which is why people are so afraid to implement it. That and of course because it supports such a wide range of things, if you added MKV support and people found that your player didn't support crazy ASS subtitles (lol I made a funny), VP6 or whatever other obscure codecs may be contained within, they would bitch and moan about it, so the solution is: Don't support jack shit.

Now when I say open to change, I will take one example that really bugs me about MKV. It's MKV v2; basically what this is, is a feature called simpleblock. It was designed to reduce file overhead at the expense of some features. What gets to me is that this extension or whatever you would call it, is not backward compatible and uses the same MKV extension as any other file.

What this means is that I may have an older splitter (or in case of a hardware device, a fixed splitter) and come across this MKV v2 file which has the same MKV extension. The problem then comes when I try to play it back because the splitter does not understand the new MKV format, and the end user isn't given any warning because on the surface, it looks just like any other MKV file. I'm not a splitter designer and I'm not implying that I could do a better job than the MKV team (respect where it's due, it's a great project), but I would have been tempted to give it the file extension MK2/MKV2 or something, just to show at a glance that it's different from standard MKV files.

Software is a similar story, by using MKV you limit your choice of players somewhat; for example a low complexity H.264 + AAC file will play in Quicktime in MP4, but if you put the same audio and video in MKV, it won't play. You might think, "Oh well Quicktime sucks" and I'd be inclined to agree, but you can't change the fact that people do use it, and it's the default media player on Mac.

The other side to this is user friendliness. As you know, a lot of pre-built PCs are loaded to the top with damn software; you tend to get a CD/DVD burner software like Nero bundled. Now hold that thought, because Nero supports and installs decoders/splitters for H.264+AAC in MP4. So Joe Average walks into a store, buys a new computer preloaded with Nero, and hey presto, he can play H.264 MP4 without downloading or installing a thing. It just works.

Now we know it's not hard to install codecs and what not, but to the majority of people, this is not easy. I know 4 guys at work with PCs, and honestly, if I gave them an MP4 or MKV file and they didn't already have the decoders, they wouldn't know what the fuck to do. MP4 is basically ease of use and compatability.

That's basically why the org uses it en masse, it's easy, very well supported and is the standard container for H.264 and AAC (among other things like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual (DivX/XviD), MP3 etc).

Don't forget Vorbis audio (although I'm really one to talk - I'm one of the few who use MKV for distro but I still use AAC; it's for practicality issues on my end and the fact I do use ASS subtitles).

Vorbis is nice, but the gap between it and AAC is slim to non existant. In fact in popular bitrates (~128kbps an so on) it's been shown to have better performance than Vorbis. It's a question of is the difference noticable enough to warrant using Vorbis and in turn MKV, or will you use AAC and MP4 for increased interoperability.

However I won't argue your case on subtitles. Although MP4 offers softsubs, the common players have gimped support (because they rather support and work on ASS as it's existing), so although I've done MP4 softsubs before, I wouldn't recommend it to people. In this case I say fair play to use of MKV since you are getting a genuine benefit usually worth the sacrifice in player support. However if you are simply coding audio + video, I don't see any sense in using MKV. It doesn't benefit you with that kind of usage (in fact if anything it cripples you a bit what with lack of MKV support in the industry).

For those that keep their media players highly segregated for video and audio, and who more frequently use MP4 with their audio-only files, MKV is a rather nice solution to the problem as it'll always open in the video player when double-clicked

I don't quite follow what you are saying. As you know, MP4 is basically anyones format. It can be audio/video, audio only, video only, interactive only (such as games, 2D/3D renders, flash), or a mixture of all giving you DVD like (and better) functionality. For example you can have in movie player skins, overlay menus and such (the kind you see in HD-DVD).

That said if you double click an MP4 file and it opens with a general media player, if it's audio only it works just like playing an MP3, or if it has audio and video, it's just like watching an AVI. I'm not sure where this divide comes where it matters if your files are audio only or not. Perhaps if you had a player like Winamp which is predominantly an audio player, but even this will play video MP4.

Also audio only MP4 files are generally given the extension .M4A; while this is not strictly correct since they are still MP4 files, it means you can of course associate audio only files (with the M4A extension) to an audio player of choice, and have MP4 play in whatever takes your fancy.

What I'd want to see are the statistics backing up the idea that your video will get less downloads if it's in MKV rather than MP4 and see if said statistics actually support the claim or not. The software differences are (or just about) null;

I would tend to disagree. Outside of opensource there is a world of difference (Ok well maybe not that drastic, but MP4 has good commercial support and MKV has little to none). As I said, it's hard to appreciate it from an outsiders/noobs point of view when we have been doing it for so long, but MP4 in general is a lot easier for Joe Average to manage than MKV. Cross platform compatabilty is also somewhat better, hence why MPEG open standards always come out on top over proprietary efforts from Real, Apple, MS or lone efforts like MKV.

I'd think the real statistics would back up people still flocking to AVI rather than either MP4 or MKV, simply because they'd assume videos in the latter two are going to be H.264 and hence hard to playback

I think it's simply "multiplexaphobia". Stick H.264 in AVI and people will be relatively open to downloading it (or rather tricked, because perhaps they would assume they can already play it back since it's AVI or thinking it's ASP). For arguments sake you could put ASP + MP3 in MP4, and make it quite clear that it's just "XviD + MP3 but in MP4" and I still think people would avoid it, yet if it was in AVI, they would be happy with it.

As you say, decoders are becoming mature and feature complete and the average computer is faster. I think H.264 is becoming less of an issue, but containers always remain a stumbling block. Look at how people avoid MOV still, despite it now contains H.264 + AAC (such as Apples trailers).

[Qyot27]

For those that keep their media players highly segregated for video and audio, and who more frequently use MP4 with their audio-only files, MKV is a rather nice solution to the problem as it'll always open in the video player when double-clicked

That said if you double click an MP4 file and it opens with a general media player, if it's audio only it works just like playing an MP3, or if it has audio and video, it's just like watching an AVI. I'm not sure where this divide comes where it matters if your files are audio only or not. Perhaps if you had a player like Winamp which is predominantly an audio player, but even this will play video MP4.

Also audio only MP4 files are generally given the extension .M4A; while this is not strictly correct since they are still MP4 files, it means you can of course associate audio only files (with the M4A extension) to an audio player of choice, and have MP4 play in whatever takes your fancy.

Well, that is pretty much the situation - I've stuck with Winamp 2.95 as my audio player (hence no H.264 video support - and really crappy support for pretty much any other type of video) and loathe pretty much anything past that, while using either WMP6.4 or MPC for video. Or if I'm in Linux, I stick with XMMS for audio and use mplayer for video (not the xmms-mplayer plugin, either). And while I know I could associate only M4A with Winamp and use MP4 for video, I just don't like M4A - I've been using MP4 as the regular extension since long before M4A became widely popular, and habits like that are hard to break.

What I'd want to see are the statistics backing up the idea that your video will get less downloads if it's in MKV rather than MP4 and see if said statistics actually support the claim or not. The software differences are (or just about) null;

I would tend to disagree. Outside of opensource there is a world of difference (Ok well maybe not that drastic, but MP4 has good commercial support and MKV has little to none). As I said, it's hard to appreciate it from an outsiders/noobs point of view when we have been doing it for so long, but MP4 in general is a lot easier for Joe Average to manage than MKV. Cross platform compatabilty is also somewhat better, hence why MPEG open standards always come out on top over proprietary efforts from Real, Apple, MS or lone efforts like MKV.

Going from a bare installation, I meant that the commonly recommended software - granted, within the AMV community or fansub area - are virtually the same.

At the current moment, even though hardware MP4 support is rising, I'd still expect that most view the files on their computers and don't think about slapping it on a disc or USB stick and trying to use it on their hardware player. If they did think about trying to play it via a hardware player it's hard to tell whether they'd be inclined to just try to play it the way it is or go through the process of making it adhere to DVD (or HD-DVD or Blu-ray, once consumer authoring programs for those become widely available) standards, which means reencoding and nulling out the benefits, unless in the HD-DVD or Blu-ray instances the files were already encoded properly in H.264 - something that if the KiSS player thread was any indication, may be rather finicky with certain features and thus would still need reencoding to correct.

I'm not slighting releasing things in hardware-compatible modes though - all of my earliest videos were originally released in standard 352x240 1150kbps Video-CD MPEG1/224kbps MP2. And I do intend to have a high-def MP4/H.264/AAC release with proper specs for the KiSS player in addition to the standard gamut of encodes, albeit probably without the added content (I actually not only use ASS subtitles but I use MKV's Attachments area as well for things like info sheets and commentary) - I would like to know how subtitles are mitigated on there, though. I just don't have the luxury of my own hosting so the only ones getting good distro like that would be the HD content - otherwise the H.264 encodes I normally do would be too much for the hardware, or so I would think based on some of the results from the aforementioned KiSS player thread.

I'd think the real statistics would back up people still flocking to AVI rather than either MP4 or MKV, simply because they'd assume videos in the latter two are going to be H.264 and hence hard to playback

For arguments sake you could put ASP + MP3 in MP4, and make it quite clear that it's just "XviD + MP3 but in MP4" and I still think people would avoid it, yet if it was in AVI, they would be happy with it.

I've actually been really tempted to do this with any subsequent ASP releases for some time just to screw with the ones that go and put them on video sharing sites - make 'em work for it a little, although I think the conversion programs are getting broader support so it's probably a moot point now. Still, it should at least weed out those that don't know what the heck they're doing.