MKVtoolnix is a easy-to-use set of commandline tools to create, alter and inspect Matroska (.mkv) files. MKVtoolnix was developed by Moritz Bunkus, the port for MorphOS was done by Christian Rosentreter.

With this set of tools it is (e.g.) possible to extract the data from Matroska files and put them together with mencoder into an AVI file, so that MPlayer or Frogger can play them. But you also can create Matroska files out of avi files and ogg files.

At the moment the following sources are supported:
- AVI files with MPEG4 video and MP3, AC3 or PCM audio
- external AC3, MP3, WAV, DTS and AAC/MP4 files
- Ogg/OGM files with all the stuff mentioned above AND Vorbis audio :)
- Subtitle Ripper text subtitle (e.g. those created with Subtitle Ripper)
- SSA/ASS files
- Matroska files themselves
- RealMedia files (both RealVideo and RealAudio)
- Chapters, tags, attachments
and more.

The MorphOS port was statically built with libebml v0.7.0 and libmatroska 0.7.0. Download the archive here.

With the ports of MKVtoolnix and the upcoming new version of MPlayer 1.x (which will have own support for Matroska files) MorphOS is ready to support on of the most promising new file formats out there.



About Matroska

Matroska aims to become THE Standard of Multimedia Container Formats. It was derived from a project called MCF, but differentiates from it significantly because it is based on EBML (Extensible Binary Meta Language), a binary derivative of XML. EBML enables the Matroska Development Team to gain significant advantages in terms of future format extensibility, without breaking file support in old parsers.

First, it is essential to clarify exactly "What an Audio/Video container is", to avoid any misunderstandings.

- It is NOT a video compression format
- It cannot be used to compress music or pictures like MP3 or JPEG, as it is not a codec.
- It is an envelope for which there can be many audio, video and subtitles streams, allowing the user to store a complete movie in one single file. This ensures that the audio and video can be played in most Media players.

Matroska is designed with the future in mind. It incorporates features you would expect from a modern container format, like:

- Streamable over internet (HTTP and RTP)
- Fast seeking in the file
- High error recovery
- Menus (like DVDs have)
- Chapter entries
- Selectable subtitle streams
- Selectable audio streams
- Modularly Extendable

Matroska is an open standards project. This means for personal use it is absolutely free to use and that the technical specifications describing the bitstream are open to everybody, even to companies that would like to support it in their products (a special license will be required). For more details please visit the 'License' sub-page. The source code of all the libraries developed by the Matroska Development Team is licensed under GNU L-GPL and QPL license types (dual license).