Open MKV File

Storing high quality video content in MKV file

The world of digital video has lived through a real revolution in recent years. There has been a battle of formats, codecs and file containers. This caused many problems for anyone working with multimedia due to format compatibilities, compression and performance issues. MKV is one of the formats competing for the top spot for media playback.

Video Formats Competition

You probably heard about some media formats popular now: AVI, MPG, MOV, RM, WMV, FLV and many others. These file extensions are some of the many that for years have fought for the hegemony of the digital video standard. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and also possess different characteristics when it comes to reproduction.

But the main issue is that almost all of them are proprietary formats requiring royalty fees or licensed codecs. And many of the operating systems do not have the appropriate codecs preinstalled to ensure smooth and easy reproduction. In order to play a certain media file on your hardware you would have to spend time searching for an appropriate codec.

For some time now, with the emergence of HD video, surround sound and multi-language files, the throne of the cross-platform video formats is held by the MKV.

MKV can package inside all kinds of audiovisual content with various levels of video and audio quality. MKV format is open source which made it highly desirable for every multimedia professional. Inside an MKV file you can have several video tracks, of various quality levels, different audio tracks and infinite subtitle files.

A single MKV file can host a movie with the audio streams in different languages and you can select the one you want most, with the quality you want. The same applies to the choice of the subtitles.

If your media content is a series, you can have all (or several) chapters in a single file and you can select them at your convenience whenever you want. That makes MKV a very difficult opponent to beat.

Compatibility and size

Quality, HD, and 3D feature in MKV file has a performance, compatibility and size cost that does not go unnoticed. This is especially noticable if your computer and video software are rather old.

However, it is always possible to convert MKV to a compatible format and only choose video, audio and subtitles tracks you need.