The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file. It first became popular in the anime fan-subbing community (where users create subtitles) since it supports multiple audio and subtitle tracks in the same file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows.

Matroska is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4 or ASF, but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source software. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to play MKV files in Windows.

There are actually quite a few ways to play MKV files in Windows. The two methods outlined below are both quite easy. If you already use Media Player Classic to watch movies, you’ll probably want to go that route. If you don’t object to installing a different (and really great) media player, you’ll want to use VLC.

Method #1 – Using VLC

Method #2 – Using Media Player Classic

Using VLC to play MKV files

Step 1

Start out by downloading and installing VLC. Once it’s installed, launch it and select Media -> Open File….

Step 2

Navigate to your .mkv file, select it, and click Play.

Step 3

And that’s it. Your video will open and play.

Using Media Player Classic

Step 1

If you already use Media Player Classic as your video player, you can still play .mkv files, it just takes a few more steps than using VLC. When you try to open a .mkv file in Media Player Classic, it may or not play. You might get an error similar to the screenshot below, or it may play the video, but with ‘glitches’ and audio ‘hiccups’.

Step 2

To solve this, navigate to the Media Player Classic Options by selecting View -> Options…. From there, select Internal Filters from the left navigation window, and remove the check from the box labeled Matroska in the right window. Click Apply and then OK.

Step 3

Now head over to the Combined Community Codec Pack home page, and download the package for your version of Windows. The installation is simple, you’ll mostly click Next and Continue a bunch of times. When you get to the section that allows you to customize what gets installed, remove the check from the box labeled Players – you won’t need either of them (as you’ll be using Media Player Classic).

Step 4

On the Select Additional Tasks screen, remove the checks from every box except Set Perceived Types.

Step 5

Make sure that all of the FFDShow Video Decoders and FFDShow Audio Decoders are all selected.

Step 6

In the File Association section, make sure that Media Player Classic is selected, or if it’s already the program that opens when you double-click an .mkv file, No Change is selected.

Step 7

Finish the few remaining steps, and once everything is done, double-click an .mkv file. It should load in Media Player Classic and play – both audio and video – just fine.

Some people are asking if they can play MKV files on their PS3, and the answer is oftern "No". While this is not wrong, it's also not true, you can play MKV files on your PS3 and the instructions below will show you how to do this.

What you will need:

• An MKV file

• MKV2VOB

• A PS3 (duh!)

What MKV2VOB does is remux an MKV file with x264 video and AC3 audio into a VOB file which is playable on your Playstation 3. This will not result in the loss of quality because the audio or video are not touched. The streams are split and mixed into the VOB file.

So you've got your MKV file now and you are ready to start remixing it:

Firstly, you have to open MKV2VOB and select the file which you would like to work on and then select where you would like to save the finished file. When you have done this, click Save.

You will then have a dialog box pop up that asks if you want to enable automatic MPEG2 transcoding. It is recommended that you click Yes.

Another box will then pop up when you start the whole process. Do not close this box. Wait for it to complete what it is doing.

When that box has closed, another box will open. Again, do not close or mess with this box. Wait for it to complete what it is doing.

When that box has finished doing what it is doing, yet another box will open. Leave this alone and do not close it.

When that box has closed the task is complete and you should be presented with a Remuxing Complete box.

The instruction below will show you the basic steps of how to make one single mkv from a Blu-ray Disc video without quality loss and also how to shrink it to a MKV, MP4 or AVI.

Tools required:

MakeMKV

HandBrake (if you want to shrink the movie)

AnyDVDHD (may be required for some Blu-rays)

Guide

In MakeMKV choose the Blu-ray drive (If MakeMKV can't read the Blu-ray Disc, you might need to install AnyDVD HD and run in the background).

Just choose the main movie, the biggest title, keep one audio track (You can try to keep the AC3 DD audio track).

Save it by click on Make MKV. You need a lot of HDD space, around 10-20GB. This will take around one hour or so. (If MakeMKV can't read the Blu-ray Disc, you might need to install AnyDVD-HD and run in the background).

You can now play the mkv using for example VLC Media Player, KMPlayer or MPC-HC. Or play using Windows Media player with ffdshow and haali media splitter installed.

Shrink it

If you want to shrink the video you can easily use HandBrake.

In Handbrake load the mkv, Source->Video File.

Set output file.

Choose the High Profile->Film Preset (or use profiles for PS3, Xbox 360, etc)

Set the desired output file size, Under Video->Target size, like 8100MB for a dual layer DVD-R or 4400MB for standard DVD-R.

Start CONVERT.

Done!

The following is an instruction of converting MKV file to DVD with ConvertXtoDVD. With VSO ConvertXtoDVD, you can burn your MKV movies to DVD quickly and smoothly. With just one click, the program will convert and burn MKV files to DVD automatically and promise you the conversions are completed quickly with the best quality.

Instructions

Step 1

Download this MKV to DVD Converter. Install and run it.

Step 2

Click add button to add MKV file that you want to convert to DVD.

Step 3

Set DVD menu. Double click DVD Options for more details.

1 Choose a DVD menu template which you like most.

2 Check Play method that you want:

3 Set title menu parameters.

You can change Disc name to what you want, and edit all menu pages text style by click button.

Step 4

Edit titles. Double click a title to show the details. Then you can edit title menu; Set titleset menu parameters and other parameters.

1 Edit title menu.

2 Set title munu parameters:

3 Set other parameters including audio, video, chapter, subtitle, etc.

4 Of course you can make more setting by clicking "setting" button on the top of the interface menu:

Step 5

After all the setting. Click convert button to convert your MKV file to DVD.

When the MKV to DVD conversion is end, the MKV to DVD converter will inform you to insert a DVD disc to continue buring MKV to DVD disc. If there's a DVD disc in your DVD-Rom, the burning process will begin automaticaly.

Ok. That's all the process of converting/ripping MKV to DVD.

You may meet with the situation that some HD videos are in the MKV extension format, and you can’t play those files on your Windows Mobile devices. Now, here is a step by step guide on how to convert MKV file to AVI for Creative Zen, or convert MKV to MPG, MP4 for iPod, iPhone, PSP, etc.

What you need:

Software: 4Videosoft MKV Video Converter

OS Supported: Windows NT4/2000/2003/XP and Windows Vista, Windows 7

Hardware Requirements: 800MHz Intel or AMD CPU, or above; 512MB RAM or more

Step 1: Add video files to convert

(1) Add: Add the video files.

Click the to add you want to convert video files. The supporting input format including:

After you add the file, you would see the following picture.

(2) Profile: Choose the output format from the "Profile” Column, find what your player supporting format or the devices

The output format is also powerful, you can see from the following picture.

(3) Settings: Click Settings to open the settings window.

(4) Merge: You also can put you file into one, just click Merge into one file, that’s ok.

(5) Destination: Click the Browse, you can put the converted file into what you want disk, and in the Open Folder, you can find the file.

Step 2: Start conversion

Click the Start to convert your MKV file.

At last, connect your devices with your computer, and send your converted MKV file to your devices. Enjoy your favorite movie and music on the go!MKV Video Converter also has the capacity to trim video, crop video, capture the picture, and the function as powful as Video Converter!