Matroska

Matroska is an open standard audio/video container. The name Matroska is derived from the Russian Matryoskha dolls that are enveloped in larger, similarly-shaped dolls. It is an advanced container format and can support audio, video, subtitles, chapters, and metadata. In addition to these, it also contains the requisite information to play back these different data streams together. A typical Matroska video file is a .mkv file, and an audio file is a .mka file.

 

This container is based on EBML, or Extensible Binary Meta Language - a binary derivative of XML. This makes the container extensible with respect to future formats. Matroska files contain a large number of different audio and video compression formats such as RealVideo, DivX video and XVid. If you have the latest Matroska Direct Show pack installed, even a Windows Media Player as old as version 6 can play a Matroska file.

 

The Matroska container is the most efficient of container packs. In addition to handling almost all available video formats and variable frame rates, it supports HTTP streaming and subtitles including embedded fonts.