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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 concept to other containers like AVI, MP4 or 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), .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.

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. The loose transliteration may be confusing for Russian speakers, as the Russian word matroska (Russian: матроска) actually refers to a sailor suit.

[edit] History

The project was announced on 6 December 2002^[2] as a fork 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.

[edit] Goals

The use of EBML provides extendability for future format changes. The Matroska team has openly expressed some of their long term goals on Doom9.org and hydrogenaudio.org.

List of Goals

• creating a modern, flexible, extensible, cross-platform multimedia container format;
• developing robust streaming support;
• developing a menu system similar to that of DVDs based on EBML;
• 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.

[edit] Software support

Listed below is software that has native Matroska support.

[edit] Media players

[edit] Media centers

[edit] Tools

[edit] Hardware support

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Although most standalone players now support the AVI format, thus far Matroska support is still rare. Support in this area is essential for the container to achieve the degree of ubiquity foreseen by its proponents. There is a sort of "chicken and egg" logjam where the manufacturers hesitate to support it because it is not widely used, and it is not widely used because of very limited hardware support.

A number of set-top boxes such as the Popcorn Hour and EGreat^[5] NMT's and DVICO TVIX media players have stated publicly in user forums that they are considering or pursuing Matroska support. Some end users in these public forums report partial success in use with certain codecs and files. The first chipset to include Matroska Video support has been released by Texas Instruments under the name "DaVinci".

[edit] Samsung and LG

Since 2009, the Matroska format is supported by Samsung and LG televisions and LG Blu-ray players. ^[6] Matroska support has been confirmed in Samsung's 6 series (LE40B650) and 7 series (UE40B7020) and LG's LH5000 and above range of televisions. Matroska files can be played out of the box on these televisions directly from USB flash drives or HDD based storage devices when connected to the television's USB slot. DTS audio is not currently supported.

[edit] Zensonic / Ziova

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, but the Zensonic company never implemented Matroska support. Zensonic Changed the company name to Ziova http://www.ziova.com and have since released the CS-615 which has Matroska support.

[edit] Sigma Designs

Sigma Designs do not contain any built in support for Matroska, though some OEMs (such as Western Digital and Conceptronic) do provide support in their firmware packages.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Cowon

The Cowon A3, O2 supports Matroska as well as many other formats, including the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC open audio formats. Aspects of the Matroska supported is that of multiple audio tracks. If the Matroska file has chapters or subtitles, then these features are not accessible, however, the movie plays as normal. Subtitles in the SubRip (.srt) or SAMI (.smi) format load automatically with the movie once the subtitles are in the same directory and has the same name as the movie.^[7]

[edit] Archos

The Archos 5 Internet Tablet (Generation 2, Google Android based) supports the Matroska container. It is the first Archos portable media device to do so.

[edit] RAmos

The RAmos T11RK and T12 portable media players support the Matroska container. Multiple embedded subtitles are supported in the .srt format, as are multiple audio tracks, in AC3, AAC, MP3 or DTS. They are both based on the Rockchip RK2806 chipset.

[edit] Content in Matroska

Initially the uptake of the format was low. It was used almost exclusively for DVD rips of anime, as the container allowed the viewer to choose between the original language track and a dub with the option of subtitles. It also allowed for variable frame rates. In recent years, however, Matroska has seen wider use due to the warez 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). The format usually carries H.264 video, one or more AC3/AAC/DTS/Vorbis audio tracks and sometimes one or more subtitle tracks (coupled with TrueType or OpenType fonts).

[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 anybody, including 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, there are free parsing and playback libraries available under the BSD license, for proprietary hardware and software adoption.

[edit] See also

Free software portal

• LiVES
• Comparison of container formats
• Open source codecs and containers
• Combined Community Codec Pack
• SubStation Alpha (SSA/ASS Subtitles)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Matroska Homepage