Comments

craftech wrote on 9/26/2009, 5:59 AM
I use MakeMKV.

Works well when played from an external hard drive to my WD TV HD Media Player through either my HT projector setup or my Panasonic Plasma TV.

John
musicvid10 wrote on 9/26/2009, 7:43 AM
Handbrake renders to MKV. I love the controls -- simple interface, but full cli support.
Rory Cooper wrote on 9/26/2009, 9:52 AM
How do you guys rate Mkv files say compared to DivX

I often render out 720p DivX and the results are quite good

Rory
hazydave wrote on 10/10/2009, 2:09 AM
I think some of you are confused about MKV... it's not a video or audio standard, it's a wrapper -- like Quicktime (.mov), MPEG-2 (.m2ts, .mts, .mpg), or MPEG-4 (.mp4). It can contain anything you like.

Most folks are probably putting the same stuff in .mkv wrappers that you'd put in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 wrappers: AVC, AAC, AC3, etc. DivX is using it, rather than AVI, for their more recent DivX standards... it supports more sophisticated file structures with navigation, as you can with the MPEG standards but not with AVI.

Why the interest? Well, some of the kids online are using it simply because it's the latest thing, and they're all so very l33t. In more defensible terms, it's an open spec, and a new one.. so it does most of the things folks have thought about doing in a video stream standard, and the tools are open source and free. If you compare, most of the free tools for manipulating MPEG-4 and even MPEG-2 streams are weak and/or buggy. And usually closed source.
Marco. wrote on 10/10/2009, 3:10 AM
Anyone successfully authored a menu based on MKV? If so - how did you do that?

The MKV specs says it's possible, but I didn't find any infos how to do or any app to build MKV menus.

Marco
altarvic wrote on 10/10/2009, 5:11 AM
As hazydave sad, MKV (aka Matroska) - it is container for visual and audio data. Matroska is an English word derived from the Russian word "matryoshka", which means nesting doll container.
Marco. wrote on 10/10/2009, 5:38 AM
I know. It's a wrapper which is capable of using menu structures just like a video dvd does. Thus makes it possible to keep dvd menus when converting to MKV. Also it should be possible not only to keep menu structures but also to build new menu structures - what makes MKV a VERY interesting container format nowadays. The pity is the lack of information how to do this.

Marco
musicvid10 wrote on 10/10/2009, 9:12 AM
"Why the interest? Well, some of the kids online are using it simply because it's the latest thing,'

Why the interest? Well, it's a wrapper that will hold the original content without re-encoding, or compressed content. It will retain not only DVD chapters, but the menu structures as well (not a lot of implementation of this yet). Lots of advantages over M4V.

An MKV file, among other things, is like a portable DVD that you can keep on your hard drive, play, and even extract the original footage later and recreate the original with menus and chapters intact (someday), and no quality loss. There is some attraction there.