Matroska
Encyclopedia
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 in one file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in concept to other containers like AVI
, MP4
or Advanced Systems Format
(ASF), but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source
software. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MK3D for stereoscopic video, .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.
Matroska is an English
word derived from the Russian word Matryoshka ( mɐˈtrʲoʂkə), which means nesting doll
(the common Russian cylindrical-shaped doll within a doll, also known as a babushka 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. The loose transliteration may be confusing to Russian speakers, as the Russian word matroska actually refers to a sailor suit
.
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. This coincided with a long coding break by the MCF's lead developer, during which most of the community quickly migrated to the new project.
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.
Thus, the following are "goals", not necessarily existing features, of Matroska:
, VLC
, ALLPlayer
, foobar2000
and PowerDVD
and media centers such as Plex
, Boxee
, PS3 Media Server
and XBMC, and the web browser Google Chrome
. A number of software tools such as HandBrake
and Pinnacle Studio
also support Matroska.
, OPPO Digital
, Panasonic
,, LG
, Samsung
, Sharp
and Western Digital
.
which is free to use and the 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
.
Open standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....
free container format, a file format
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks in one file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in concept to other containers like AVI
Audio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
, MP4
MPEG-4 Part 14
MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital video and digital audio streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images...
or Advanced Systems Format
Advanced Systems Format
Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media...
(ASF), but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MK3D for stereoscopic video, .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.
Matroska is an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
word derived from the Russian word Matryoshka ( mɐˈtrʲoʂkə), which means nesting doll
Matryoshka doll
A matryoshka doll is a Russian nesting doll which is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The first Russian nested doll set was carved in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo...
(the common Russian cylindrical-shaped doll within a doll, also known as a babushka 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. The loose transliteration may be confusing to Russian speakers, as the Russian word matroska actually refers to a sailor suit
Sailor suit
A sailor suit is a uniform traditionally worn by enlisted seamen in the navy, and other government funded sea services. It later developed in to a popular clothing style for children....
.
History
The project was announced on 6 December 2002 as a forkFork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of the Multimedia Container Format
Multimedia Container Format
Multimedia Container Format, abbreviated MCF, is an unfinished container format specification and a predecessor of Matroska. The project has been abandoned since early 2004, but many of its innovative features found their way into Matroska.-History:...
(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
Extensible Binary Meta Language
Extensible Binary Meta Language is a generalized file format for any kind of data, aiming to be a binary equivalent to XML. It provides a basic framework for storing data in XML-like tags...
(EBML) instead of a binary format. This coincided with a long coding break by the MCF's lead developer, during which most of the community quickly migrated to the new project.
In 2010, it was announced that the WebM
WebM
WebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....
audio/video format would be based on a profile
Profile (engineering)
In standardization, a profile consists of an agreed-upon subset and interpretation of a specification. Many complex technical specifications have many optional features, such that two conforming implementations may not inter-operate due to choosing different sets of optional features to support...
of the Matroska container format together with VP8
VP8
VP8 is an open video compression format released by Google, originally created by On2 Technologies.After purchasing On2 Technologies in early 2010, Google has provided an irrevocable patent promise for underlying patents for the VP8 format, and released a bitstream format specification under a...
video and Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
audio.
Goals
The use of EBML provides extensibility for future format changes. The Matroska team have openly expressed some of their long term goals on Doom9.org and hydrogenaudio.org.Thus, the following are "goals", not necessarily existing features, of Matroska:
- creating a modern, flexible, extensible, cross-platform multimedia container format;
- developing robust streamingStreaming mediaStreaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
support; - developing a menu system similar to that of DVDs based on EBML (this feature seems to have been abandoned);
- developing a set of tools for the creation and editing of Matroska files;
- developing libraries that can be used to allow developers to add Matroska support to their applications;
- working with hardware manufacturers to include Matroska support in embedded multimedia devices;
- working to provide native Matroska support in various operating systems and hardware platforms.
Software support
A range of software has native Matroska support. Those include media players such as MPlayerMPlayer
MPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows version works, with some minor...
, VLC
VLC media player
VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
, ALLPlayer
ALLPlayer
ALLPlayer is a Polish freeware media player developed by ALLPlayer.org It was designed to allow watching videos with subtitles in a variety of formats. ALLPlayer is originated and developed by ALLCinema Ltd. Partnership. Unlike other media players, it does not use Windows Media Player to play...
, foobar2000
Foobar2000
foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface...
and PowerDVD
PowerDVD
CyberLink PowerDVD is a media player for Microsoft Windows. Several editions of the software are sold including "Ultra", "Deluxe" and "Standard". All editions support the viewing of DVD and the Ultra edition supports Blu-ray playback, including the playback of Blu-ray 3D content.The product is...
and media centers such as Plex
PLEX
PLEX or Plex may refer to:* PLEX , a programming language used by Ericsson for their AXE telephone exchange* Plex , media center software including a media server, and desktop and mobile clients...
, Boxee
BOXEE
Boxee is a cross-platform freeware HTPC software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV...
, PS3 Media Server
PS3 Media Server
PS3 Media Server is a DLNA compliant UPnP Media Server. Originally written to support the PlayStation 3, it has been expanded to support a range of other media renderers, including Xbox 360 and various Samsung and Sony televisions. Written in Java, it streams or transcodes many different media...
and XBMC, and the web browser Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
. A number of software tools such as HandBrake
HandBrake
HandBrake is a general-purpose, open-source, cross-platform, multithreaded video transcoder software application. HandBrake was originally developed by titer in 2003 as a general-purpose video transcoder to make ripping a film from a DVD to a data storage device easier...
and Pinnacle Studio
Pinnacle Studio
Pinnacle Studio is a non-linear video editing software application manufactured by Pinnacle Systems, a division of Avid Technology. It is the consumer-level counterpart to Pinnacle's former professional-level software, Liquid Edition . It also inherits from VOB Computersysteme's Instant CD/DVD...
also support Matroska.
Hardware support
A number of companies produce hardware such as Blu-ray players and media centres that support the Matroska container including AsusASUS
ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated is a multinational computer technology and consumer electronics product manufacturer headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Its product range includes motherboards, desktops, laptops, monitors, tablet PCs, servers and mobile phones...
, OPPO Digital
OPPO Digital
OPPO Electronics Corp., Ltd is an electronics manufacturer based in Dongguan, Guangdong, China. Its major product lines include MP3 players, Portable Media players, LCD-TV, eBook, DVD/Blu-ray Disc players and low cost mobile phones...
, Panasonic
Panasonic
Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
,, LG
LG
LG may refer to:*LG Corp., a South Korean electronics and petrochemicals conglomerate*LG Electronics, an affiliate of the South Korean LG Group which produces electronic products* Lawrence Graham, a London headquartered firm of business lawyers...
, Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
, Sharp
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...
and Western Digital
Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation is one of the largest computer hard disk drive manufacturers in the world. It has a long history in the electronics industry as an integrated circuit maker and a storage products company. Western Digital was founded on April 23, 1970 by Alvin B...
.
License
CoreCodec owns the copyrights and trademarks for the Matroska specification, but the specifications are open to everybody. The Matroska project is an open standardOpen standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....
which is free to use and the 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
BSD licenses
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses. The original license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix-like operating system after which it is named....
.
See also
- Combined Community Codec PackCombined Community Codec PackThe Combined Community Codec Pack, more commonly referred to as the CCCP, is a collected archive of codecs packed for Microsoft Windows, designed originally for the playback of anime fansubs. The CCCP is developed and maintained by members of various fansubbing groups...
- Comparison of container formatsComparison of container formatsThis table compares features of container formats. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.-Information:-Audio formats supported:-Video formats supported:-Caption formats supported:...
- Open source codecs and containersOpen source codecs and containersThis is a listing of open-source implementations of media formats—usually called codecs. Many of the codecs listed implement media formats that are restricted by patents and are henceforth not open formats. For example, x264 is a widely used open source implementation of the heavily patent...
- SubStation AlphaSubStation AlphaSubStation Alpha , abbreviated SSA, is a subtitle file format created by CS Low that allows for more advanced subtitles than the conventional SRT and similar formats. This format can be rendered with VSFilter in conjunction with a DirectShow-aware video player , or MPlayer with the SSA/ASS library...
(SSA/ASS Subtitles)