Matroska Splitter
The Matroska Splitter allows you to play file with the extension .mkv. Whenever you play a movie it includes at least one video stream and one audio stream. Since its not practicle to have 2 files to play Audio/Video, you pack both into a single file by using a so-called container format file.
This container and the software coming with it take care of a lot of important functions, like the correct timing of the audio and video playback when the file is played.
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The AVI container was originally introduced by Microsoft in the early 90s, and was designed as a very flexible A/V container format for the video and audio compression formats of those days. It is necessary to understand that AVI is only one ( but important ) part of a complete multimedia framework called ‘Video For Windows’ ( VfW ), offering programmers not only a container but also a complete set of API commands to be able to program their own video and audio codecs, using either the VfW or the ACM interface ( this was back from the days when Microsoft was still dedicated to sell their operating systems to people, instead of multimedia solutions as they are trying to do today with WMV, so they had to make their OS attractive to other programmers ).
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Unfortunately this VfW framework cannot support many of the more advanced features that modern audio and video compression formats will offer, such as Variable Bitrate audio encoding ( VBR ), or Variable Framerate video encoding ( VFR ). Although AVI was extended with an additional standard called ‘Open DML AVI’ in the mid/late 90s, overcoming most of its very annoying limitations like the 2 GB file size limit, there is still no proper and spec compliant way to support modern compression formats like the excellent, opensource Ogg Vorbis audio compression format..
We currently have 4 different extensions specified :
- .mkv : Used for Video files, as well those containing audio (movies) or video only
- .mka : Used for audio only files, can contain any supported audio compresion format, such as MP2, MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AC3, DTS, or PCM
- .mk3d : For files with stereoscopic (3D) video
- .mks :Used for Subtitles that an ‘elementary’ matroska stream
Identify the codec with GSpot when you use the Matroska Splitter. The Matroska Splitter now also does AC3 format audio and video files.
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