Better Media Container Formats? 54
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."
Re:.WMV?? (Score:1)
Think I despise it because it's MS and therefore evil? Guess again. My most despised codec is XVID, an open source project. XVID is a total mess. There's god knows how many versions floating around, it's impossible to do a straight MPEG conversion in TMPEG without first re-encoding the video (a problem which has never occured for me with ANY OTHER codec), the quality isn't that great...
OGM isn't bad, though the conversion process is
Re:.WMV?? (Score:1)
Yes, the Windows Media Video family of codecs are rather crocky (although I think it's more due to the decoders than to the nature of the encoding; the decoders tend to make everything look blotchy and posterised), but you can store most any sort of video stream in a WMV (that is, ASF) stream that you like.
Quick rundown of WMVs I have lying around:
MP43, wmav2
VDOM, mp3
WMV1, wmav2
WMV2, wmav2
WMV3, wmav2
So while the different flavours of the Windows Media Video codecs are common, they aren't universal. As for
Variable frame rate? (Score:1)
Re:Anime, for one (Score:2)
Re:Why bother? (Score:1)
Re:Variable frame rate? (Score:1)
Re:Variable frame rate? (Score:1)
Re:Variable frame rate? (Score:2)
I must disagree (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:I must disagree (Score:1)
But support for multiple audio tracks and subtitle tracks is not in any way a hack! AVI header and index table support description of multiple streams, not just 1 (video only) or 2 (video+sound). Subtitle tracks ( '00tx' ) are also defined in the standard.
The fact that only few tools were supporting these features, or didn't do it righ
Re:I must disagree (Score:2)
Re:I must disagree (Score:2)
Sounds like everything else Microsoft put out!
Re:I must disagree (Score:2)
AVI DOES support VBR audio. I have and have made AVI files with VBR.
It most certainly does NOT. By exploiting a bug in the Microsoft video renderer, it is possible to play an AVI file with VBR audio straight through without loss of synch. However, you CANNOT seek within this file, it will not play in synch on other platforms, and is not a standards-compliant AVI.
As for the rest of your nonsensical points, fault tolerance is a function of how robust the format is. The Ogg container format has significan
Media Containers... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, if they are CDs you don't really care about, you can store them on a CD spindle. Otherwise, the old 5 1/4" floppy containers work fairly well.
You can also get some fairly nifty CD storage racks, like This one [sharperimage.com].
Oh, wait... You were talking about... Never mind.
Aspect ratio (Score:2)
Re:Aspect ratio (Score:1)
MPCF = MPlayer Container Format (Score:3, Interesting)
It was first raised in Feb2003 here [mplayerhq.hu].
The conversation died for a while, and then it was brought up again [mplayerhq.hu] in March. (Although the conversation seemed to get bogged down on selecting a name for the format).
The format description [mplayerhq.hu] is now included in the DOCS/tech directory of the mplayer tarball. Not sure whether any of it's actually implemented in the mplayer code.
AVI does support multiple audio tracks (Score:3, Interesting)
It may be that most media players can't deal with it, but the AVI format certainly supports multiple audio tracks, and it always has, as Google confirms [google.be]. BTW, have you looked at MOV (QuickTime)? It's better than AVI, and it is better known than the other formats you list.
Quicktime. (Score:2)
Seriously - I don't know why more projects don't use it, it seems perfect to me...
Re:Quicktime. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Quicktime. (Score:2)
Quicktime is quite capable of taking a Xvid video track, an AAC audio track, and a properly formated text track and rolling them into a movie with nothing more than Quicktime Player, so it can be used for what you just did.
Of course, it could have been used for much of the rest of the process too.
Hell, Apple even provides a tool to get the MPEG2 transport stream off your HDTV receiver in their firewire dev tools.
Mpeg4 or perhaps MOV (Score:2, Informative)
Ask Doom9 (Score:3, Insightful)
The quick-'n'-dirty answer is that, as long as you've got muxers and demuxers for the formats you're working with, converting from one container format to another is generally lossless, so you don't really need to worry about losing data to an obsolete format. In this layman's opinion (I'm not an A/V software programmer, but I play one on Slashdot), Matroska looks like a good choice here, since you can mux practically everything under the sun into a Matroska file. But be warned that practically-speaking not all of the existing Matroska filters recognize data like chapters; in contrast, formats like OGM may not support as much metadata, but the existing filters generally recognize all of it.
Re:Ask Doom9 (Score:1)
QuickTime? (Score:3, Insightful)
And no, QT isn't one codec. There have been issues in the past about QT support on OSes like Linux- but that was because of a lack of support for the Sorensen codec that QT can use.
What are the limitations of QT? What does it do better or worse than AVI or the others? Myself, I've no clue, but would be intersted in finding out...
Re:QuickTime? (Score:2)
Re:QuickTime? (Score:2)
The player sucks, not many tools for
Like I'm gonna sit down and waste my time writing a better Quicktime player because a lame AC told me to....
VirtualDub and TMPGenc can do some amazing things with very little knowledge. I'll stick with good ol' AVI/MPG.
Re:QuickTime? (Score:1)
> I'm not the one who asked this AskSlashdot question. I was replyin' to RevAaron as to why most people don't use
This was what I did, answer a question for RevAaron.
I wasn't participating with a general discussion about much else, but you damn AC's keep bringing me in! Like I said, I don't care. AVI works for me, Quicktime sucks for me. It a naggy piece of shit!
Re:QuickTime? (Score:1)
Try Quicktime or MPEG-4 (Score:3, Insightful)
Want multiple overlapping video tracks, various text tracks (perhaps one for each language, with the machine auto selecting, or asking the user if you want), SMIL support for web integration, sprite tracks, static picture tracks, built-in realtime effects, user interaction, chapter markers, searchable subtitles, etc?
It's all there, and *MUCH* more. most of people don't have a clue how absurdly versatile that format is, it's done everything you've asked for 'since the '90s.
Why AVI is bad (Score:1)
You CAN do 2 audio streams in AVI, just like you CAN do VBR MP3 in AVI, but it's not a good idea. By default, most media players will render both audio streams simulatenously, which is not what you want, unless the user has a filter like Morgan's Stream Switcher installed or uses an advanced player like BSPlayer or ZoomPlayer.
Using VBR MP3 in AVI requires the well-known "Nandub hack" now available in a few other programs as well. AVI is NOT designed to handle VBR audio formats,
Yes AVIs do support multiple audio tracks. (Score:1)
ASF (Score:1)
One word: (Score:1)
Re:One word: (Score:1)
Only thing matroska lacks is hardware support .... (Score:1)