Matroska

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sat May 24, 2003 7:46 pm

Anyone else looked into this?

http://www.matroska.org/

It's a open container format that, to me, looks like a scaled-down version of the Quicktime or MPEG4 container formats -- e.g. where a Quicktime or MPEG4 container can embed anything ranging from video to audio to VRML in its tracks, Matroska will work only with audio and video. However, I suppose that's sufficient for a lot of purposes...I guess you could call Matroska an extended VOB.

Of particular interest for AMVs (I mean, that's what this site is all about) is native support for attachments. This just screams "security nightmare" to me, but even so, it's still an interesting idea. A thread a while back mentioned the possibility of including the codec needed to play back a video with the video file; that's definitely one application. Maybe storing creator's notes with the video could lead to some interesting developments. You can store pictures in the attachment field -- I'd love to see an AMV that, if you overlay a certain solid block of color onto it, you see hidden messages (remember those "decoder glasses" things of yore?

)

The only player that I know of that currently even handles current-spec Matroska containers is mplayer, but there's got to be others out there.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sat May 24, 2003 7:48 pm

Oh yeah, I'm stupid. There are DirectShow filters also available for Matroska containers. Looks like VirtualDubMod also has Matroska muxing support.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Sat May 24, 2003 8:17 pm

yep. I've been avoiding it until most of the features on the todo list are implemented, because the release was bare-bones to the max.

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Sun May 25, 2003 1:46 am

Yeah they keep redoing the direct show filters and mucking up the suport in zoom player, so I'm going to wait until it's more stable ^^

ChristianHJW · Post by **ChristianHJW** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 3:10 pm

Lo Guy, sorry for being late, somehow my matroska radar missed your cool place, but now i'm here. I have seen the last post to this thread was made 25th may, means 25 days after our public beta release, since then a lot has happened :

1. SSA/SRT UTF8 subtitles support from matroska. You need Gabest latest DVobSub for that ( 2.26 currently ) from his Guliverkli project page, but it should work in every good Dshow player now, with either Gabest matroska splitter or latest 'official' matroska DShow parser filter. For muxing use either VirtualdubMod, mkvmerge or Gabest' matroska muxer Dshow filter ( only working solution for SSA right now, mkvmerge to be fixed soon )

2. AAC audio support : matroska is amongst the first container formats to support AAC, for both 2.0 ( Stereo ) and 5.1 ( DD ). You can mux any number of audio streams into your matroska file, and mix AAC, AC3, MP3, Vorbis, Realaudio ( Cook, ATRAC, soon ), PCM sound and every other available audio compression format with an existing ACM codec and a wFormat tag.

3. RealMedia support, for RV9 video codec : playback works already with mplayer ( Linux, MacOSX, BeOS, Windows ) and also on DirectShow using Gabest RV9 decoder filter. For muxing use Gabest Dshow matroska muxer ( source must be a RM file made with Helix producer or the like, or mkvmerge ( soon ).

4. Native MPEG4 MKV files : while current matroska files are mainly transmuxed from either AVI or OGM and using our so-called 'AVI compatibility mode', as they were all ( most ) produced from VCM codecs, we are about to prepare the next generation of matroska files using our real x-platform 'native mode'. This mode is strictly using coding order for all frames, there are no hacks necessary for b-frames like inserting dummy frames and the like as this mode has native b-frame support, and as a sideeffect it will finally remove all the mentioned compatibility problems with XviD encodings, as in the file itself you will not be able to tell what encoder was used to make it, it will be tagged 'V_MPEG4/ISO/SAP' internally in the MKV track header ( SAP means Simple Advanced Profile ) and it could be done with DivX5, XviD, 3ivX D4D or Nero Digital .
Now, for playback we plan some neat things, to make sure its playing in any case. From our Dshow parser filter we will search for ffdshow first, XviD.ac 2nd, divxdec.ax 3rd, 3ivX D4D DSF 4th, etc. ..... so in any case, whatever MPEG4 capable filter is installed, the file will play

5. Anamorphic encoding : if you havent seen the quality difference between a 2 CD DVD backup copy made with resizing filter ( max res. 720 x 304 PAL ) or without resizing, simply cropping the DVD source picture down to 720 x 432, you wont believe the difference.
Matroska supports anamorphic encodings fine already, and basically in every DShow player also if ffdshow is being used.

6. Player support : matroska is now directly supported by

TCMP
Media Player Classic
[url=http:/www.videolan.org]VLC 0.6.0[/url]
mplayer
BSplayer
Zoomplayer
Radlight
.. more to come ....

7. Encoding support

VirtualdubMod
DVDtoOGM
DVX
DVD2AVI_nic
GordianKnot ( soon )
mencoder ( not so soon, but will come

.. )

Just a couple of points what matroska can do already, and where we want to go in the near future .....hope it will find some fans here also

....

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 6:06 pm

Good lord!

When I saw the username I thought... wait, can't surely be the same guy

Good to see you getting around

Thanks for the post. I can tell you that there are quite a few members here who are long time doom9 readers (and some regualr doom9 posters) who are keeping a close eye on current container developments.

The guides which a lot of people on the site use for encoding are about 9-12 months out of date now - I've been waiting for a maturity in YV12 avisynth to do a big revision. The next revision of the guides will see an additional section on new containers and the usefulness thereof, so matroska may well get a look in.

I've already seen anime digisubs use matroska, so that's a good sign that the anime community are getting to find out about it.

kmv · Post by **kmv** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 6:14 pm

Hi there and welcome to the org!

Since you have been good enough to resurrect this thread, perhaps you could comment on one of trythil's original points (which I am quite interested in): attachment security. How will you prevent matroska from becoming another virus/trojan medium?

If this has already been dealt with, feel free to just post a link.

ChristianHJW · Post by **ChristianHJW** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 6:55 pm

kmv wrote:perhaps you could comment on one of trythil's original points (which I am quite interested in): attachment security. How will you prevent matroska from becoming another virus/trojan medium?

Good question, and i am happy to answer it :

As you may know we are an open standards/open source project, and there has been a lot of discussion about this subject, without a clear result yet

.

The dev team is split in 2 halfs :

- security hardliners : They prefer to allow only a couple of allowed formats for attachements, like .jpg, .doc, .txt, .png, etc.

- the rest : They tend to allow everything, even .exe, and leave it to the app that will extract the attachements from the MKV file to come up with warnings if the file is an .exe or anything that could be dangerous in principal.

To clarify a common misconception about matroska file attachement : There are no plans for any kind of 'auto-extract' feature, like self dezipping stuff from the DShow filter or such, it will always use a manual depack function to extract the attached files from the movie, using an app that was designed for this purpose ....