Years and years later, and still no MKV support?

[dorraj]

CC 2017 just came out, and I was majorly disappointed to find out that MKV (Matroska) files are still not supported. There are posts dating back to 2012 about this. A lot of high-quality online videos are shared as MKV files, as the container is only getting more and more popular. Windows 10 even announced that they will support MKV right out of the box in 2014. Here it is, 2017, and somehow, Adobe Premiere Pro still does not support MKV. How? The most basic of video players out there nowadays support MKV, how does the best video editor software still not support it??

[WebOfWebs]

Give it a rest already.

Not supporting mkv has NOTHING to do with professionalism. Obviously.

All the real experts want mkv and more !!!! Supporting another CONTAINER is not difficult (in any department)

But i´m sure your wedding videos make you more of an expert than matroska himself.

If adobe doesnt bow to the will of the masses, they will go the way of ibm, microsoft, atari, etc.

Just out of interest, WHEN adobe caves and does what we paying customers want, will you leave? will you stop being a professional? will you refuse to use mkv?

[R Neil Haugen]

I asked a team member how many requests they get for various codecs to be added at NAB a year ago. He listed the top 10 or so (by the number of requests filed) ... and they're for various heavy-cam files like CinemaDNG, Arri-RAW, some of the upper RED/Arri/Sony media log formats, a number of intriguing DSLR formats.

Matroska/mkv wasn't mentioned. It simply didn't have enough requests to be up there.

So I think bowing to the will of the masses isn't in your particular interest. You need a better reason, and that the major archiving houses work heavily with this would be what I would suggest pushing.

And very important, get everyone you know to post a feature request for Matroska support!

Neil

Adobe Bug Report /Feature Request form ... https://www.adobe.com/go/wish

(They never respond to postings, but all filed reports are collated and distributed to all relevant managerial types, so they are seen.)

[Zoe7traveller]

.....and two years later, this is still being debated? haha

I just hopped on here because I was trying to import an mkv also...and realized I could not.  Seriously?  It's a popular format -- so I was shocked just now to learn Adobe doesn't support it.

Asking everyone to take the time to go fill out a feature request is a little silly.  Having compatibility with mkv is kinda just common sense.  It's not a feature I expect to be added, it's a feature I expected to have been there years ago.

[R Neil Haugen]

It's all relative. What to you and your acquaintances, peers, and colleagues might be a common format, is not necessarily one that is common in the general NLE world. In several years, including five straight NAB's in Vegas, and plenty of time talking shop with others there in other spots, I've never once had a person in person mention mkv files. I've spent the odd hour discussing all sorts of things around the Adobe booth, the Black Magic, Avid, you name it booth.

That's one of the frustrating things about this program: its user base is very diverse, and a seemingly decent sized sub-set may be (compared to the entire user-base) still a relatively small group.

After a few people here extolled the virtues of it, I looked it up online. The information sounds pretty good, and yea, it would be very nice if that was an option. I even put in a feature request for it myself though even if it was supported in PrPro the chances that I'd use it are pretty small.

Hence ... the need to get more requests on that collated list. Moaning on here isn't communicating your wishes to the people who develop the program ... that's what the feature/bug reports are for in Adobe practice. I'm supporting your request, not objecting to it, remember that.

Neil

[Jim_Simon]

It's a popular format

Not for pros.  No camera uses it.  No standardized delivery formats use it.

[DavidLevy]

Not for pros.  No camera uses it.  No standardized delivery formats use it.

You must not work Live events at conventions or shows in Las Vegas.

"Not for pros"

Wrong

I've worked with and know of very notable industry people who've worked with the format medium.

"No camera uses it"

Wrong

Panasonic Builds Up 4K Cameras for Live, Sports & Remote Broadcast

And more.

Are you a live events camera op?

Otherwise how could you possibly know all options there are out there, on this subject, if you just sit at a desk all day?

You need to be working in the field before making statements like this about what's being used in the field.

This is directed at all of you, in this thread.

"No standardized delivery formats use it."

Wrong

Look at the column of VARIABLE FRAME RATE

Comparison of video container formats - Wikipedia

Don't mix apples to oranges by comparing DTS Masters for theater film consumption to internet of things film delivery.

You really need to stop this crusade of giving outdated and FALSE information Jim.

It's starting to get old.. no pun intended.

In a theater your video bandwidth is nowhere near as limited or cost prohibitive as it is for over the internet; however, to each consumer with varying degrees of signal strength, quality, and speed.. video bandwidth is the massive deciding factor on what technology to use. An ADAPTIVE format is what is most efficient for reducing bandwidth requirements.

This includes varying encoding quality per frame and reducing frame rates when very little action is happening.

The opposition to this is ridiculous as when film photographers were to DSLR when it came out.

As was Toys-r-us for not adapting properly to market changes as Amazon disrupted the market.

ADAPTING... is what helps keep you relevant and efficient.

For now, VFR is part of that adapting process to combat the bandwidth challenge.

And MKV is a fantastic container that supports VBR + VFR + HDR.

[Jim_Simon]

I don't work in Vegas, but I do work a lot of live events.  Current Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, former President Bill Clinton & former Senator Hillary Clinton, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Carl Rove are probably the most notable people I've worked with.  I use Sony, Fuji, Canon and Ikegami broadcast cameras.  I work with Blackmagic, Panasonic, Sony and other broadcast switchers.  I've designed, built and directed multi-camera live events for well over a decade.

I hope that answers some of your questions.

To address some of your misunderstandings, by saying the MKV format isn't used by professionals, it would be an unreasonable interpretation to read that as "no professional anywhere has ever used the format in a professional capacity", especially if you've read all my posts in this thread.  The proper interpretation is that not enough professionals use the MKV format in their daily work to consider it a "professional" format, or a format used by professionals.  I stand by that claim.

With regard to Variable Frame Rate, Panasonic uses that term in their cameras to denote separate capture and recording frame rates.  Footage can be captured at 60 fps, but recorded at 24 fps for slow motion playback.  Such footage plays back in slow motion not only within the camera, but in all media players and NLEs alike, without any special settings.  This is vastly different from the variable frame rate used by amateurs when shooting with their cell phones, or recording video game footage.  Despite the name, Panasonic's VFR actually records at a constant frame rate for any given clip.  There is no professional equipment that actually records media whose frame rate changes over the duration of the clip.  In any event, I'm unclear what this has to do with the consumer oriented MKV format?  The only recording formats I saw listed for the linked Panasonic camera are MTS (AVCHD) MOV and MP4.

[NimChimpski]

I confess I haven’t read every post in this thread so if I am suggesting something already covered, please forgive.

maybe Matroska should look after it’s clients and modify their codec to import into PP/create the plug-in?

....just pondering. If Adobe is amenable to Matroska import solutions maybe they can be phone-a-friend while Matroska irons out the bugs?

[Stan Jones]

NimChimpski  wrote

create the plug-in?

Interesting. Many steps were taken by plugins/non-Adobe developers producing an option. I think this means it is possible:

Re: adding support for FFV1 and Matroska

[cbenci]

And once again a client has supplied some footage in MKV format and I have left another feature request. As I have stated before, just being able to convert from MKV to another codec in Media Encoder would be enough.

All this talk about it not being a professional codec to me is a moot point. Not supporting MKV interrupts my workflow. My agency is a professional business that uses Premier Pro daily, therefore this is a professional request to support an additional codec - no more, no less.

I don't understand the push back by some users against a feature that only makes the software stronger and ultimately more usable. Strange.

[Jim_Simon]

I don't understand the push back by some users against [this] feature

Because Adobe has limited resources.  I'd much prefer they spent their Premiere Pro development resources on formats more common in professional use.

There are issues with all of the following that still need improvement:

CinemaDNG

Alexa ProRes

Canon RAW

RED

KinneRAW

Adobe has gone low in their recent development, choosing to work on VR and cell phone compatibility, things many people want but not much used at the broadcast and cinema level, a target I'd much prefer Adobe aim for with Premiere Pro.

[cbenci]

As a Pro user of the C200, I too am really looking forward to native Canon Raw support - this is really very important. And as a Pro, I want MKV support so I can edit jobs quicker and easier. One is not mutually exclusive of the other.

A client, who build and sell cars worldwide, through their media arm supplied me with high quality MKV's of stock footage of their product. Now do I tell them it's not Pro enough for us to edit the footage or do I ask my video editing software to do as it's supposed to and support a container that has been around for many years.

Adobe may have limited resources but that's not my concern, especially when I read about record profits to the tune of half a billion dollars. Let's reinvest some of that money into growing the Premier Pro team shall we? Don't get me wrong - I happily pay my subs and don't ever begrudge a company for, god-forbid, turning a profit... but half a billion dollars profit and limited resources don't really match up do they?

As I said before, at the very least give me an option in Media Encoder to transcode to another codec.

So yes, I would like Premier Pro to support all of the codecs you have mentioned and support MKV.

[Stan Jones]

2018.1.1 and I imported an mkv sample from another thread, and then tested the one other mkv sample I had handy:

Imported without problem. AAC audio no problem; Vorbis for another and did not import the audio. I don't see any announcement about changes. Did I miss something?

[EuroSiti]

Imported without problem. [...] I don't see any announcement about changes. Did I miss something?

Not really. The Premiere Pro enthusiast who reviews the highlights of the latest update is also surprised (if the player doesn't automatically jump to the correct segment, forward manually to 20:20)

:

He does note that the media handling seems a little buggy, but he is nonetheless excited about this.

By the way. I just noticed that the lightweight 3rd party Windows tool Icaros offers some really useful improvements to Windows Explorer that will (among other technical metadata) enable correct display of contained video and audio formats in the regular detailed (column) view.

Given that Sony decided to drop MKV container support in their latest Playstation 4 media app update... And of course given that Adobe clearly don't want to publicly announce this improvement, I will allow myself (once again) to conclude that certain decision makers whose bizarre logic is beyond my comprehension still sees Matroska as a highly controversial ('evil') container format primarily used for pirated content that should be banned (just like Sony did with the 'evil' MP3 audio format back in the 1990s)... That didn't work, as some of you might remember.

[jimveta]

I too am delightfully surprised at MKV support and found out by accident just trying it on a whim.

Not only that, but I'm surprised Premiere supports 10-bit h.264 too! I'm a new user but I was under the impression it did not support 10-bit for h.264 (only h.265) However, I'm guessing the later is due to some of the cameras using 10-bit h.264

I assume the mkv support may be from professional internet streaming side using mkv internally, as even it's not used for client delivery, it's a fantastic intermediate container and also the fact that vp8, vp9 and av1 are delivered in the WebM container which is based on mkv.

Now all that's needed is flac support.

[Skylir]

What is your damage Jim_Simon!??

You're like a parasite following this thread for years, abasing and dismissing users of their honest request for one of the most widely used video formats for "non-professionals."

MKV has been a requested file format as early as 2008 on adobe forums, and have been one of the most requested formats every year since. Have you ever considered the number of students in high school or college who uses Adobe Premiere for school or enthusiast projects at home? Students alone outnumber the professionals using the software. Guess what is one of their formats of choice? Bingo. I won't even bring up the other non-professional demographic that makes up the majority of the paid Premiere users.

"I just don't see that happening any time soon."

Well, it happened, Jim. Only took one additional year of ignoring thousands of user requests.

No thanks to you, buddy.

[cryo._]

It is 2021, and we still do not have the mkv support. I recently tried a trial of premiere pro and I was quite baffled when I saw it not being supported by it. Not only does PPro don't support it, almost all non-free softwares don't support it. Not even windows 10 itself (out of the box, you need to buy a codec from MS store to enable support). 

What baffles me more is the 'professionals' here defending Adobe for 'removing' support, it's not even like it didn't at some point of time not support it. We know for a fact that MKV is one of the best containers available for media, supports FLAC, VBR, multiple audio tracks, multiple subtitle tracks etc. all being stored in a single file. Yes it may be quite heavy for PPro to work with this container but it has all the features a 'professional' would need.

Speaking of which, I'm not a pro but just a learner and to me mkv appeared like a single stop solution to working with videos, i could easily store a lot of data in it and it would always work fine, unlike mp4. As for other professionals, maybe they don't use mkv, maybe they have never heard of it, but 2 things, 1. Can it not be simply just them having been constrained by their tools (like PPro) ? (like if i draw an image in an image software, its the best image drawing software and it will land me a job/experience but it only works with png images, will I want to shift to another software or a workflow that involves working with jpgs? even if they were to be better) and 2. Ok the pros don't know about mkv but have they been told about its features and got to try it out ? One may not know the taste of apples and if you ask them if they are interested their answer would likely be no until they try it.

Good news though, https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/38135902-restore-mkv-format... is the 2nd most upvoted feature request on PPro request forms (even though it was made in 2019), kinda makes you question what happened to the earlier requests