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Years and years later, and still no MKV support?

Community Beginner ,
Nov 23, 2016 Nov 23, 2016

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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??

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Adobe Employee , Nov 23, 2016 Nov 23, 2016

Hi dorraj,

File a feature request here.


Thanks!

Kevin

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LEGEND ,
Nov 23, 2016 Nov 23, 2016

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Premiere Pro is designed for professionals.

Professionals just don't use that format.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 24, 2016 Nov 24, 2016

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That is hardly a reason to not include support for it. Premiere Pro is designed for professionals, but that doesn't mean only professionals are the ones who use it. How is adding support for something bad? Getting more people to use your products since it has good compatibility sounds like a win to me.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 25, 2016 Nov 25, 2016

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I agree with you on that, an added codec support is a win. Maybe it was an agreement between Adobe and Apple, its very difficult for Adobe to incorporate new technology. Its an embarrassing limitation that they don't like to talk about, plus its financially beneficial to them. Its especially true for open source and trending standards. So even though every expert and professional knows that .mkv and .h264 (now h265) are the best containers and comprehensive formats available, Adobe *still* wont be able to provide them.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 25, 2016 Nov 25, 2016

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As Zac said, a programmer who wants to add support may use the SDK to write a plug in Premiere Pro SDK

And then sell the plug in to all of the people clamoring for MKV support

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LEGEND ,
Nov 28, 2016 Nov 28, 2016

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That is hardly a reason to not include support for it.

It's actually a pretty good reason, I think.

If the bulk of your customers don't need the feature, why spend limited resources adding it?

It would make a lot more sense for Premiere Elements to add that support.

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Explorer ,
Dec 27, 2016 Dec 27, 2016

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There is a good and simple way to get >> LOSSLESS << conversion of mkv files, to mp4 files.

It uses the "Convert/save" feature of VLC (a completely free video player that can handle just about any format).

It lets you simply replace the "ac" audio file, in an mkv file, with an mp3 audio file, to turn it into an mp4 file.

The step-by-step procedure for doing it, is here:

Simple lossless conversion of mkv files (Matroska) to mp4

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Participant ,
Feb 24, 2017 Feb 24, 2017

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Jim_Simon  skrev

Premiere Pro is designed for professionals.

Professionals just don't use that format.

I believe a professional archivist from the MEDIACONCH project under the EU funded PREFORMA project pool sent a formal request to Adobe regarding FFV1 video and MKV container support on behalf of a very large number of professional cultural heritage institutions (including film archives, records offices, private (business) archives and museums) back in autumn 2016.

Obviously cultural heritage institutions don't have an awful lot of money to spend compared to broadcasters or the advertising industry. But this also means they probably tend to care a bit more about open standards and optimal storage formats for long term preservation.

Unlike far more closed software solutions like Final Cut, it should in fact be possible to add custom plugins to Premiere that could enable FFV1 and MKV support. Just not sure if there is any plugin available at this point. But the finalization of the MKV+FFV1 standards will presumably be ready here in 2017.

If the option to edit FFV1 in MKV in Premiere, FCP or Sony Vegas don't become available sometime soon, it will indeed have a very negative impact on the PREFORMA standardization project. And that would be a real shame. ProRes might look nice, but it isn't a real lossless format, and very much restricted to Apple's own products. That's just not a viable solution for our digital cultural heritage.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 24, 2017 Feb 24, 2017

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a very large number of professional cultural heritage institutions

I'd wager that "very large number" is actually pretty small when compared to the total number of industry professionals.

Like any company, Adobe goes where the market is.  Enough people start using MKV, Adobe is likely to add support.

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

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Participant ,
Feb 25, 2017 Feb 25, 2017

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You are absolutely right. It's a food chain where non-profit open standards just don't fit in.

It would actually be interesting to know how decisions are made regarding which media formats to support. I think that actual customer demands for specific media format support are extremely rare. I would guess that at least 95% of professionals just stick with what's available in the existing software. However, if a company like Sony, Canon or Apple invents a new (closed source, heavily patented) format for a new product line, that format is likely to be supported almost immediately regardless of what the consumers think about it.

The PREFORMA project did in fact consider using MXF as their recommended container. But those plans were effectively terminated when they learned about the paywall they needed to pass just to get hold of the MXF format specifications. MXF is owned by the broadcasting industry. They have no interest in collaborating with cultural heritage institutions even if their productions will eventually end up there.

If MKV and FFV1 support was in fact available in Adobe or Apple software, it wouldn't take long before all other socalled lossless formats wouldn't be used much anymore. Even the camera manufacturers would feel the pressure to support these common standards.

As long as software and even something as simple as mathematical compression algorithms can be patented (notably in the USA), things aren't going to change at all. And that's the main reason we are still stuck in this jungle of non-free, often entirely brand-specific standards that makes long term storage (unnecessarily) complicated and expensive to those who are (professionally) responsible for preserving and managing it.

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Participant ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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Here is an example that perfectly illustrates a professional use case where the lack of Matroska container support is nothing more than a nagging limitation (it's the 2nd comment on the linked page). This is from a Final Cut Pro discussion forum, but it could as well have been about Adobe Premiere.

Given the number of (unemployed) actors out there, I can easily imagine that this workflow is very typical. Obviously this user isn't a big business customer, but that just makes me wonder if regular customer demand matters at all when it comes to adding support for "new" media formats?

Apple and Adobe must have gotten several hundreds of such demands for MKV, FFV1, VP9, FLAC, Opus and WebM support over the past 7-8 years. (By the way: Those six formats/containers cover the total number of standardized modern media formats, so we're not talking myriads of obscure open source formats here).

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Engaged ,
Jul 03, 2017 Jul 03, 2017

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This childish reply is very wrong and reveals a naïve attitude of the world.
MANY professionals use MKV as its technically superior to other containers.

Implementing MKV would cost virtually nothing but add priceless value to the software.

I can picture your narrow social group, all clapping each other on the back, claiming to be *the* professionals - completely ignorant of the other 99% of adobe clients, all of which use multiple 3rd party programs to fill in the numerous holes and gaps Adobe refuse to fill.

How many forum questions end in "use this other program..." !?!?!?!

So please, enough with the "only professionals..." comment. Its not a valid argument anymore, if it ever was.

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Participant ,
Jul 07, 2017 Jul 07, 2017

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We all know this is happening right now with our feature requests lol

sXUPjzN.png

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LEGEND ,
Jul 07, 2017 Jul 07, 2017

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Actually, not at all ... the things are delivered to the managerial types (and several layers I understand) in some tabulated format. So the people who decide budgets and The Path Forward all get them. And apparently need to read through every one.

There are a few things to consider though ... there are rather a lot of them, and from talking with a couple different program managers, many of the more common requests are ... well ... hardly practical or of interest to any regular user. To be polite. So when parsing the numbers, one has to deal with some decent numbers of things most of us wouldn't want them to waste time on.

Also ... the program managers are one of the people getting a say in what's done. But only one. I don't know how many layers of management may be involved, this is all kept rather murky it seems ... but there seem to be several. And with different parts of the company ... with different ideas as to what the User Base would or should want of their own.

And within each program, the manager may be more or less interested in different features & parts of the programs. Therefore more or less interested in spending what part of the budget he/she actually controls on ... what.

Having dealt with the new head of PrPro back when he was the head of SpeedGrade at NAB, I do rather like his outlook on relating with the U-B.

I've put in a lot of requests myself ... and actually have I think two that have made the product, but ... that product (SpeedGrade) ... seems moribund at the moment. Alas.

Neil

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Participant ,
Jul 07, 2017 Jul 07, 2017

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Hi R Neil, no no I get it lol. It's a meme brother. Kidding on the square. The idea is that some features the subscriber base under the age of 35 now (Millenials, Video Gamers, YouTubers, Live Streamers, Meme makers, etc etc), I think ask for, the situation seems like they're being ignored. Project managers or .. program managers, I think would acknowledge new trends/demands but yes with different layers of decision making... let's face it... in an overgeneralizing sense... baby boomers and even Gen X just can't stand Millennials. There's likely going to be some baby boomer in management that thinks the millennial feature requests (MKVs, GIFs, VFR, etc etc) are stupid or not worth investing in. And... I'm willing to bet Millennials make up a big portion of the subscriber base. Isn't that something.. lol. But that's the political climate right now with many traditional businesses that aren't thinking outside their "box" mindset. And, imo, for the most part, I think Adobe is struggling with that across the board, even though they are attempting to make strides at it.

P.S. Yes this is me overgeneralizing and being opinionated.. but.. it's not without some merit/insight.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 08, 2017 Jul 08, 2017

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I've been to NAB for several years, and a teaching assistant at Adobe MAX in San Diego last November. Adobe is running out a constant stream of mobile apps especially in the graphics area of Illustrator/InDesign & 3D ... collaborative things that allow you to work part of even a 3d graphics project on your phone or device, add bits to a Library, share that with your desktop app, share that with your mates ... review and change things back with the phone/device, immediately ported back to the entire group ... so I think Adobe in general is working very hard at "modern" life.

Personally, I love [edit: NOT Captivate, sigh] Capture. I don't make "brushes" and other things with it, but it's got a wondrous feature to create Looks that can be saved to my Library and used in PrPro ... I don't understand why it's not nearly everyone's go-to phone app!

With that, and knowing that a number of folks who have been major program managers and have been replaced are still working within Adobe, but nobody will say  ... on ... what? ... makes me wonder what else they've got cooking in the test kitchens. No clue, but they tend to roll out DVA things either at NAB or MAX. They always have some fun surprises to wow the crowd at the daily mass-programs at MAX.

Unfortunately, not all the new Wow stuff immediately seems to work as seamlessly as one would hope ... but again, Captivate is a pretty cool app. Some of the others are in the process of becoming ... and should get somewhere very useful pretty soon in software terms.

When sitting with a cup of coffee with a program manager and one of his supervisory sub-managers and the topic of the Wish Requests come up, and they both either laugh or roll their eyes at some of what they receive, I've thought it might be fun to actually see that list. Or at least parts of it ... but no, that's not happenin' baby, not no way not no how.

But yea, there seems to be a feeling about being around Adobe ...

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present for your consideration ...

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call ...

  ... The Adobe Zone.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 23, 2016 Nov 23, 2016

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MKV isn't even in the top 5 most used video format around the globe. For sharing, yeah, its useful because of its capability for being low size and giving high quality output.

.mp4, .mov, .avi, .wmv, & .flv, are more commonly used by the professionals as mentioned by Jim_Simon.

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New Here ,
Jan 10, 2017 Jan 10, 2017

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maybe not in the top 5, but it should be included for those of us that do use it.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 10, 2017 Jan 10, 2017

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There are a lot of things small subsets of the PrPro userbase say such things about. I've got several of them myself.

However, having met many of the 'team' members and leaders at NAB and now Adobe MAX, there aren't nearly as many of "them" as you'd think, having to deal with all the issues that need fixing besides the continual efforts to keep the program moving down the internally mapped "road to the future" that of course, Adobe doesn't share publicly.

So when you've got something like MKV, which is a superior form of H.264, and there are other codecs to achieve similar things already available for the small subset who use it ... well, bigger fish are gonna get fried up for dinner.

I'd love Matroska to "make" the list. Ain't gonna happen. There isn't enough pure need.

Neil

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LEGEND ,
Jan 10, 2017 Jan 10, 2017

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it should be included for those of us that do use it.

I disagree.  The format just isn't used in professional circles.  There are a thousand other improvements I'd rather see Adobe spend their limited resources on before catering to non-professionals.

That's what Elements is for.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 10, 2017 Jan 10, 2017

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I do agree with you on this:

But unfortunately Elements does not support mkv either.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 11, 2017 Jan 11, 2017

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I was suggesting that the Premiere Elements crowd are the ones that need this, not the Premiere Pro crowd.  If Adobe were to devote resources, Elements is the better program for this.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 11, 2017 Jan 11, 2017

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Users on the elements forum hardly ever ask for mkv.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 11, 2017 Jan 11, 2017

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Then the folks here need to try and garner that support...over there.

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Engaged ,
Feb 11, 2017 Feb 11, 2017

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i disagree.

ignoring the future for the traditionalists is narrow minded and will harm the business.

Just because Apple says no to mkv shouldnt dictate adobe's stance - but it does unfortunately.

Its only a container for peats sake!

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