Categories of Matroska files

This MKV player offers two versions, one for Mac OS X and the other for Windows. Download and install the right version to your computer and launch it when you want to watch MKV. Click the Open File button to trigger the open file dialog.

Matroska Multimedia Container is a free open source format that contains four types of files: MKV (Matroska video), MKA (Matroska audio), MKS (subtitles) and MK3D (stereoscopic/3D video). These four categories are the best choice for whenever you want to play MKV files on your Mac device. Here is an overview of the four Matroska file categories.

MKV files

MKV extension is commonly used for HD movies and TV shows. It is great for playing videos, audios (in movies) and videos with subtitles. The best players to open the MKV extension with include Elmedia Player, Windows Media Player, 5KPlayer (containing MKV codec) and VLC (although sound and subtitles may be unavailable).

MKA files

These are mostly used as audio files and normally contain various audio compression formats such as MP2, MP3, AAC, AC3, DTS among others. This extension can have either music albums or display karaoke subtitles. With MKA extension, you can easily divide audio files into tracks or chapters, change tracks and merge MKA with MKV format.

MKS files

With MKS extension, you can easily import various subtitle formats, including VobSub (.sub), SubRip (.srt), Sub Station Alpha (.ssa/ .ass) and Core Media Player XML universal subtitle format (.usf). Any open source MKV player can launch an MKS file by simply double-clicking on it.

MK3D files

MK3D extension is commonly found in home theaters because it’s a special 3D option of MKV multimedia. It provides 3D video support in two isolated video tracks – one track for each eye, but at times it can be one track with data for both eyes in numerous formats.

With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 3.0 is a major upgrade for VLC. Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos. It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental). Completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use.

Video

• Rewritten video output core and modules, allowing subpicture blending in GPU.
• Shader support in the OpenGL output, for colorspace conversion, including 10bits.
• New video outputs for Windows 7, Android, iOS and OS/2.
• New debanding, grain, denoising and anti-flickering filters.
• New deinterlacing filter, including an Inverse Telecine algorithm.

Audio

• New resamplers for higher quality audio.
• New dynamic range compressor and karaoke filters.
• Simplification of the audio core for faster processing.
• New audio outputs for iOS, Android and OS/2.

Formats

• Multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM.
• Support for 10bits codecs, WMV image and some other codecs.
• Rewritten support for images, including jpeg, png, xcf, bmp..
• Important changes in RealVideo and Real Format support.
• CrystalHD cards and Android OpenMAX support for hardware decoding.

Input and Devices

• Experimental support for BluRay discs:
  • Menus are deactivated in this release (will come soon).
  • AACS and BD+ DRM libraries and keys are not shipped, for legal reasons.
• Support for SDI capture cards and QTKit devices.
• Support for new adaptive streaming protocols, like HLS and DASH.

For Mac Users

• Completely new, single window interface:
  • Available in 2 colors: Lion grey and QTX black.
  • Extensions support and better Lion integration.
• Support for all QTKit devices through qtcapture and qtsound modules.
• Continued support for X 10.5 and PPC users (1080p and ProRes on Dual-G5!).

For Anime FansIcad mac serial.

• Vastly improved MKV demuxer.
• Rewritten linked segments and ordered chapter files support.
• Correct support for FLAC, RV and Hi10p in MKV.
• Rewritten seeking support in cue files.
• Various ASS subtitles improvements.

For professional Users

• Support for ProRes 422 and 4444, AVC/Intra.
• Support for Jpeg-2000 and DNxHD/VC-3 in 10bits.
• Support for EBU subtitles (stl) and EIA-608.
• SDI and HD-SDI card support for input on Linux.
• New Dirac/VC-2 encoder, faster than the previous one.

For Developers

• libVLC, libVLCcore and libcompat have switched from GPL to LGPLv2.1+.
• New libVLC examples are available: media player, photobooth and mediainfo clones.
• New JSON requests on the web interface to control running VLC instances.
• Implementation of the MPRIS2 interface to control media players.
• VLC's web plugins have been rewritten for better integration and stability in all browsers.

What's New:

Core:

• Fix potential subtitle picture allocation failures
• Fix snapshotting with subtitles when using hardware acceleration
• Fix green/missing line/column when the picture dimensions are odd

Codec:

• Add support for 12 bits decoding of AV1
• Fix HDR support in AV1 when the container provides the metadata

Decoders:

• Important improvements in hardware decoding for macOS, notably faster, supporting more samples and removing crashes/deadlocks
• Improve compatibility for DxVA2 and D3D11 decoding, fix crashes when seeking and fix blacklisting of broken drivers
• Fix SSA subtitles forced alignment
• Fix E-AC-3 stuttering
• Fix MIDI playback on macOS
• Add playback support for ProRes 4444 XQ

Demux:

• Fix wrong colors in some AVI files
• Fix IFO files playback to start DVDs
• Fix a crash with missing/invalid MPEG SDT
• Update VP8/9/10 ISOBMFF bindings and improve HDR for those cases
• Fix TTML inside MP4
• Improve MP4 read of color information
• Fix flac seeking and improve flac parsing
• Improve mkv opening & seeking speed
• Fix display of chapters with no name defined
• Miscellaneous MKV crash fixes
• Fix crash with multi-region DVDs
• Fix audio being muted on DVD chapter change
• Fix audio being muted when seeking in a BluRay disc

Access:

• Avoid a crash/assert in FTP after seeking

Audio output:

• Fix mmdevice default audio device handling
• Fix 'reset audio volume' being forcefully deactivated
• Allow a default device to be used by VLC
• Only warn once about misconfiguration for AUhal devices on macOS
• Improve resampling and latency computation for CoreAudio
• Passthrough is now disabled by default

Audio filters:

• Fix audio stutter after unpausing with headphones
• Fix silence when dolby-surround was mis-selected in preferences

Video output:

• Fix OpenGL crashes or bad display with semi-planar chromas
• Fix OpenGL interop (zero-copy) disabled for tvOS
• Major rewrite of the iOS video output to fix numerous crashes
• Important improvements of the D3D11 video output to use less memory and less GPU for HDR tone-mapping
• Fix crop on vertical videos with Direct3D11
• Fix Direct3D9 filters settings not being applied properly
• Fix transform filters with hardware decoding
• Fix snapshot and filters with HEVC hardware decoding
• Fix a buffer overrun during GPU/CPU image copy
• Fix glitches on DVD menus with Direct3D11
• Fix non-HDR content playback on HDR screens with Direct3D11
• Fix YUV full range displayed incorrectly in Direct3D11
• Fix miscellaneous crashes in Direct3D11
• Fix potential black screen with 10bits videos on Direct3D11

macOS:

• Fix Growl notifications on recent macOS versions
• Fix conversion output file name encoding
• Fix crash reporting on macOS 10.7 and 10.8
• Fix crash on exit
• Fix remember playback position
• Fix Blu-ray disc Java menu
• Fix swiping on time slider to change position
• Fix problems with restoring user name from keychain
• Fix localization issues

Qt:

• Fix last folder used in open dialogs
• Allow to customize the seek jump when using the mousewheel
• Fix fullscreen controller positionment on multiscreen setups
• Fix pasted URLs not being trimmed
• Fix jump size not being configurable
• Fix missing time labels updates
• Fix playback speed slider not accepting 1.0x value
• Fix raw input dump
• Fix window size after a fullscreen playback

Misc:

• Fix lua rc & oldrc interfaces host specification
• Fix crashes when searching for renderers
• Relocate localedir for Linux (improves snap i18n support)
• Fix VDPAU GLX usage on Linux
• Improve support for NetBSD
• Fix MSI script for Windows
• Fix libvlc_media_list not going to next media
• Fix character encoding on win32 consoles
• Miscellaneous chromecast improvements
• Fix missing OSD navigation feedback
• Various VLSub improvements
• lua: Fix scripts not being loaded on some filesystems
• lua: Add vlc.io APIs to handle UTF-8 paths

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