Better Media Container Formats?

altaic asks: "Today I was looking for a container format to store my anime collection (multi-language audio and subs), and I discovered popular media containers actually suck. AVIs are a hacked mess and don't even support multiple audio tracks. OGMs are catching on, but they don't have an index, nor do they support variable framerates (the fps value is stored in the header). I found some info on the Matroska container, which looks really cool (it supports multiple subtitle streams, multiple audio streams, a slew of other nice features), as well as the very young MPCF (mplayer container format). I'd really like to hear about other people's experiences with newer, more useful media containers."

I must disagree

[DemoLiter3]

Multiple audio tracks AND multiple subtitle tracks can be muxed into AVI and play very well.

You'll need only these 2 tools to achieve this:
VobSub [divx-digest.com] and MMSwitch [morgan-multimedia.com]

VobSub package contains the SubMux utility for muxing an AVI video, multiple audio tracks and subtitle files (in SRT, SUB, SSA and other formats) into AVI. MMSwitch will allow separate playback and easy selection of multiple audio tracks in any media player based upon DirectShow graphs, WMP for example.

In WMP, audio tracks and subtitle tracks can be then easily selected via context menu.

Mpeg4 or perhaps MOV

[Zorton]

Take a look at mpeg4. On my machine (OS-X) I use a program called OpenShiiva (http://openshiiva.sourceforge.net/) to dump DVD's. It uses mpeg4 for the container and Xvid or 3vix/AC3 for the audio-video stream. As far as changing frame-rates on the fly I don't know if that type of thing is in the spec or not. As far as subtitles and multiple audio streams I think it will work just fine. However I'm not an expert so feel free to correct me on this. Nice thing about mpeg4 is the mpeg standard. Hopefully you will be able to encode with either Xvid,Divx,3vix,Apple or M$ and playback on any mpeg4 complaint player. Once again your millage may vary, i've read in the 3vix forum that Xvid isn't quite mpeg4 complaint and I would imagine most of the other codecs have similar idiosyncrasies.

On the other hand there is Mov or Quicktime. This format is very mature and will play on most anything that Quicktime supports. It does allow for subtitles and multiple audio streams.

Although I think ogm is the container of choice for anime lovers....

Zorton