Support for embedded NFO metadata and JPG artwork in MKV (Matroska) video contrainer?

I suppose things like video, audio, subtitle and chapter tracks are already standardized in mkv, things which need discussing are the following:

Movie info
An XML file which contains all the tags the xbmc nfo files or iTunes M4V files use. International ratings should be included as well. Example: movieinfo_<language>.xml or as tags within the MKV file if it supports multiple languages.

Images
Posters: poster##.jpg
Fanart: fanart##.jpg
Stills: stills##.jpg
Chapters: chapter##.jpg (like iTunes movie files have these tracks)

Trailers
Is this possible?

Is there any ticket in which XBMC supports reading metadata from MKV files? I really hate scraping.

Would it not be cool if multiple versions of a movie could be included in a video file like alternate endings and such and that when you start playing a movie, XBMC asks you which version you'd want. Does MKV support this?

i think we are on the same page here, that is what i like to get, and maybe finaly drop that folder per movie thing as it is not practical at all...

and final step would be addon for windows explorer to show the poster from every mkv in thumbnail mode....

dreams are nice

Nemesis7 Wrote:Would it not be cool if multiple versions of a movie could be included in a video file like alternate endings and such and that when you start playing a movie, XBMC asks you which version you'd want. Does MKV support this?

If you mean in a seamless branching kind of way, that can't be done with multiple video tracks within the same MKV file.

The MKV container does however have the ability to merge video from multiple files within the same folder...

An example could be with multiple versions of a movie:

Return of the king.mkv
Return of the king-extended edition.mkv (containing only the extended scenes)

Playing 'Return of the king.mkv' would play only that file, and playing 'Return of the king-extended edition.mkv' would (with ALOT of effort on the users part; in creating proper chapters and segment linking) would create a virtual time line between the two files and play the extended edition as if it were the complete movie...

I suspect that as XBMC supports the Matroska container this may already be possible....I haven't tested yet, might get the LOTR DVDs out this week and take a look.....

If so having XBMC pick up -extended edition (or similar) on a library scan shouldn't be difficult to implement (it's so easy being a back-seat coder!!!!!:rolleyes.

I like you other ideas, although an image for every chapter...... not sure i'd ever get to watch a movie with all that tinkering!!!

bjuraga Wrote:Nice to hear about this, brings back hope as to all that about re-encoding... for example i am ready to spend that minutes in a period of a weeks ( i have about 2000 videos) but if there is no standards on how to organize them or what should be attachment, how to name it and other stuff then i will have to do it all over again. so we should first find a way to agree on standards. For example i put in my mkv the subtitles in English and other languages where the movie file goes (mkvtoolnix) and media player classic reads them just fine - i can even select which one i like to show from the right click menu.

Is there a way for us to make a standard when there is none?I think that is the wright thing to do, there must be someone first in all things.....

Well sure we need some "standardized way" of storing the files but I don't think you will ever manage to get all the big media center softwares out there to use the same naming convention.

But actually this has absolutely no influence on my development as my goal is to provide a library/application which allows to add any kind of file as an attachment to an MKV. How you name it and what you put in the files is of no concerne to that library.

MKV also supports quite a list of tags like Artist, Composer and lots of other tags (check the official specification of MKV here http://matroska.org/technical/specs/tagging/index.html) but they say themselves on the page that the tags section might be the most complicated section in MKV so I'll concentrate on the attachments for the time being.

the complaxity of the tags is why i am here looking for alternative way. i guess its time to move on and make my own win explorer plugin.

Just wanted to give you guys a quick heads up on what I've achieved so far. I took off where euphoric left and refactored and restructured the existing code and rewrote the reading function to get better functionality and hopefully make it easier for the upcoming attempt to write back into an mkv file.

This is what the Windows GUI looks like after loading the mkv killa sample with a few attachments:



Attachments are automatically recognized and you can change their name, description and (auto-detected) MIME type. You can also export them to a file on your harddisc or directly open them by double clicking one of the list items.

Next step will be to allow adding new files using the "Import" functionality or Drag'n'Drop and after that writing the attachments into the MKV. I will keep you updated on my progress.

Montellese Wrote:Just wanted to give you guys a quick heads up on what I've achieved so far. I took off where euphoric left and refactored and restructured the existing code and rewrote the reading function to get better functionality and hopefully make it easier for the upcoming attempt to write back into an mkv file.

This is what the Windows GUI looks like after loading the mkv killa sample with a few attachments:



Attachments are automatically recognized and you can change their name, description and (auto-detected) MIME type. You can also export them to a file on your harddisc or directly open them by double clicking one of the list items.

Next step will be to allow adding new files using the "Import" functionality or Drag'n'Drop and after that writing the attachments into the MKV. I will keep you updated on my progress.

So how did this progress so far?

(2010-05-10 07:53)Montellese Wrote:  [quote=bjuraga]

MKV also supports quite a list of tags like Artist, Composer and lots of other tags (check the official specification of MKV here http://matroska.org/technical/specs/tagging/index.html) but they say themselves on the page that the tags section might be the most complicated section in MKV so I'll concentrate on the attachments for the time being.

Any progress on adding codec to see through MKVs?

Found a link that might be helpful...

Here's an example on the bottom of this page:
http://matroska.org/technical/cover_art/index.html