Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Video Format Battles: MKV vs MP4

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

It seems like a law of nature that we can't have something good without some other version of the same thing coming along. That's why we have Coke and Pepsi, Windows and Mac, Antz and A Bug's Life, Deep Impact and Armageddon. And so we have two video formats: MP4 and MKV. They are both containers, that is, they contain various encodings of audio and video tracks. They can both be used for different delivery formats (for example, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) or Apple's HLS streaming (except HLS doesn't work with MKV)). MKV has minor advantages (for example, it can store audio tracks in multiple languages, and is better for ripping CDs because it can keep tracks separated; a limited version, WebM, is used for in-browser streaming), while MP4 file sizes are smaller and more likely to work on your device.m If you have an MKV you need to convert to MP4 (it's rarely the other way around) your best bet is probably to use the open source VLC application. Here's another video format battle article, a versus article, a how-to choose article, and a comparison table.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Oct 06, 2024 9:41 p.m.

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