[Matroska-devel] Re: EBML

[Paul Bryson]

"Martin Nilsson" wrote...
> Right now my focus is on going through all the layers of Matroska and at
> least try to change everything that I don't like... I hope you guys are
> open for debate when I reach the difficult parts.

The format is certainly not perfect, but it is to late to make major changes to
the basic design as there is already to large of a user base.  Additions are the
most likely thing to work.  There is actually a push to formalize a version 1.0
specification so that changes can be made for version 2 or 3 featuring
improvements, without breaking current tools.

For instance, I would prefer all Clusters to be children of a parent element
named "Clusters" to make it easy to find non-Cluster elements in the file
without a seekhead. You probably wouldn't have more than a single Clusters
element in a Matroska file, unless you were repeating the Tracks element.  But,
this would make finding other level 1 elements at the end of the file extremely
fast.  However, changing the level of a major element would break every existing
tool, and would probably be to difficult to do for version 2 or 3 of Matroska.

Version 2 of Matroska is when certain more advanced features such as menus are
planned.  So, just because you do not see them yet does not mean they have not
already been considered, and possibly planned for the future.  It might be good
to quickly browse through the mailing lists to see the ideas that have already
been discussed as it may spark some of your own.


Pamel