Matroska
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| Matroska (Матрёшка) | |
|---|---|
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| File name extension | .mkv .mka |
| 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 (and audio) and .MKA for audio-only files.
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. Interestingly, Russian speakers will note that the deliberately simplified or erroneous transcription has turned the meaning to 'sailor's clothing/sailor's wife/female sailor' (essentially, simply an ambiguous informal feminine of 'sailor' (Russian: матроска), in Russian that can be casually used to refer to anything of the feminine gender pertaining to sailors).
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[edit] History
The project was announced on December 7, 2002 as a fork of an earlier container format project, after disagreements with that project's creator about the use of the Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML) instead of another binary format. The founders of the Matroska project 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.
[edit] Goals
With Matroska's roots in EBML it 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 to create a modern, flexible, extensible, cross-platform multimedia container format that can:
- develop robust streaming support;
- develop a "DVD-like" menu system based on EBML;
- develop a set of tools for the creation and editing of Matroska files;
- develop libraries that can be used to allow developers to add Matroska support to their applications;
- work with hardware manufacturers to include Matroska support in embedded multimedia devices;
- provide native Matroska support in various operating systems.
[edit] Software support
Listed below is software that has native Matroska support.
- ALShow
- Avidemux
- Azureus Vuze Media Player
- BS.Player
- Chameleo
- The Core Media Player
- CorePlayer Mobile
- The Core Pocket Media Player
- GOM Player
- Gstreamer-based Players (Totem, etc.)
- HandBrake
- jetAudio
- Kaffeine
- The KMPlayer
- Media Player Classic
- MediaPortal [2]
- Mezzmo Media Player
- MPlayer
- MythTV
- Totem Movie Player
- VirtualDubMod
- VLC media player
- VSO Software
- Xbox Media Center
- xine
- Zoom Player
- Perian Quicktime Plugin for Mac OS X [3]
[edit] Hardware support
[edit] Popcorn hour
Popcorn hour, a hardware-based media player, supports the Matroska format.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 support for Matroska.
[edit] 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 sees 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, AC3/AAC/DTS (also multiple) audio tracks and sometimes subtitle tracks. Before H.264, most MKV files from the above mentioned scene were holding 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 and Xvid codecs), especially for anime material, in combination with MP3 or Vorbis encoded audio streams and soft-subtitles.[citation needed]
[edit] 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.
[edit] See also
- LiVES
- Comparison of container formats
- Open source codecs and containers
- Combined Community Codec Pack
[edit] References
- ^ Matroska Format Specifications, Matroska.org.
- ^ MediaPortal Features (01/01/2007)
- ^ Perian details
[edit] 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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