What's MKV and what's the big deal about it?

[kitchn]

HEar about it on one of the last few episodes of HD Nation and have done a lil research on it but not much yet.

What is it? Why should i use it? and is it the format i should use if i want to put my dvds on my hard drive?

[tehboris]

mkv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mkv) is an audio/video container format. It is a popular format because it fully supports multiple video, audio and subtitle tracks like DVDs and blurays but in a single file.

[kitchn]

so if i am wanting to back up my dvd collection to hard drive mkv would be the way to go ??

[tehboris]

At this time not necessarily as it has not been adopted widely. Depends what you intend to use to play it back. Though it will allow you to convert to other formats later.

[kitchn]

i plan on playing them on my 1080p HDTV which is hooked to a 9800gt video card on my computer

[tehboris]

MKV will work well for you as it is pretty well supported by all media playing software (except media center, but it can be added in some way).

[xfuuey]

always throw my 1080p mkvs on an external & plug the bitch up to my new samsung. lovin it

[replica9000]

I've been backing up all of my Blu-Rays and DVDs to MKV. Supports multiple audio / video / subtitle streams, plus chapter markers. Plus there are plenty of free tools to work with MKV.

[lefrenzy]

most of the animes I watch are in MKV format. I watch it using CCCP - Media Player Classic Home Cinema

[ghelyar]

Originally Posted by lefrenzy

most of the animes I watch are in MKV format. I watch it using CCCP - Media Player Classic Home Cinema

The reason Matroska (mkv) is popular for Anime is that it can store "srt" style text subtitles inside it. Most other containers can only use subpicture subtitles (sequences of images, not text).

In some cases it is also used because it can store ac3 audio, while storing ac3 audio in mp4 is difficult to impossible (apparently the spec just about supports it but I've never seen it done in practice). This commonly allows the original audio from the disc to be used without re-encoding.

In theory Matroska is great. You can put any number of video, audio or data streams inside the same open container. In practice, this means that just because something can support the container format itself, it does not necessarily mean that it can support the codecs used for the streams inside it. This means that the same mkv file may open in two similar devices but have no sound in one of them, for example.

When backing up media I keep it as close as possible to the original format. DVDs can be stored as iso or vob, Blu-rays can be stored as iso or m2ts, etc. When encoding, I just encode to mp4 files with x264 and faac. Because mp4 has more limitations on what codecs it can use, this generally means if anything can play one mp4 it can play all mp4s fully. What you encode to really depends on what devices you intend to use to play it back though.

Since the original post, Matroska has become more widely supported on devices.