MKV and MP4 -- Difference or should I care?

musicvid10 wrote on 5/24/2009, 11:30 AM

I noticed when trying out a number of x264 encoder GUIs, they saved with an .mkv extension rather than .mp4 / .m4v

Are they interchangeable? Is the container technology the same? Do I even need to know this?

Comments

A. Grandt wrote on 5/24/2009, 2:39 PM

MKV and MP4 are not interchangeable as such, though the h.264 stream inside the containers may well be identical.

Often an MKV can be remuxed to mp4 and vice versa.

Vegas will not read an MVK though, sadly as it is imho a far more flexible and capable container than the MP4.

owlsroost wrote on 5/25/2009, 2:06 AM

See [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska] (info) and [url=http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVtoolnix] (mux and demux tools).

I've recently started using it for my own HDV-derived stuff - it has the advantages of supporting chapter marks and great codec flexibility - I create .mkv files with HDV mpeg-2 video + FLAC audio + chapter marks.

Tony