[Mentar]

Originally Posted by lamer_de

- More supported advanced audio codecs, saving bitrate
AAC works with avi, ditto DTS. Don't know of any other advanced audio codecs. Maybe ogg (which indeed does not work with avi), but that seems to be optimised for low bitrates.

And this is exactly why it would be particularly suited for fansubs.

- Less muxing overhead. Yes, sometimes muxing an avi with the same audio file is smaller in mkv than in native avi. I kid you not.
While I have not tested this myself extensively, savings should probably range in the 100KBs for a file with 1 video and 1 audio stream of 24mins length. Neglectable, if you ask me.

It adds up with the audio. Only by itself, it's no big issue, but all things combined it starts to be one.

- Soft subtitle support. Once mkv makes its way, fansubbers can skip on the quality-lossy video recompression to hardsub their tracks.
Possible in avi as well with AviMux-gui and vsfilter. Also, nobody wants to distro 350MB files for 20mins of a/v. Or 150MB noisy ones. The main point of encodig is not to add subs, but to deliver pleasing looking video at reasonable filesizes. Those points do not apply to most of the raws, so you'd still have to re-encode.

I beg to differ. Most good quality raws nowadays are decent enough, and adding the subtitles for another hardsub doesn't improve the quality, it lessens it due to the recompression. In the fewest cases the fansubbers manage to "improve" the video (then the chosen raw must have been horrible), they only add the subs and reduce the size, usually to 175 megs.

If the use of mkv would be more widespread, the RAW providers could shoot for the right size by themselves, so that the fansubbers would only have to mux in the subtitles. Which is how it should be done (from a purist's standpoint), every recompress reduces the achievable overall quality.

- Multilanguage subtitle supportNeglectable. For most languages with sufficient interest, subbing scenes already do exist (.fr, .br, .de, .it to name a few)

Exactly. If mkv was used, it would be much easier to simply add the extra subs. Which is something which slowly spreads in the DVD world. Insisting on avi forces them to make their own full releases with full encodes.

- All other mkv container advantages, like chapters etc.
I will give you that, although I don't see the point. The only chapter markings that make sense are OP/Eyecatch/ED and well, I never felt the urge to jump to those points directly.

I did, and I do. Skipping the OP is a convenient thing to do.

If you want to use another container, use .mp4 :P

Heh... hardly ^_^

Sure you can argue "hey, with this and this hack you can do that with avi, too". But why should we do that, if a technically better and sound solution is already available? Simply because the fan community might take a while to get their playback systems set up? I disagree with letting laziness prevent technical progress. The DVD world pretty much has moved on to MKV already and the way things are developing, it's only a matter of time until the fansub world follows suit. It has already begun.