The Matroska Multimedia Container is a file that ends with .mkv and stores multimedia content like movies and TV shows. Unlike similar containers like ASF, AVI, and MP4, MKV is an open specification that is made up of mostly open source software.

The MKV project was started on December 6, 2002 as a fork of the MCF (Multimedia Container Format) project. It is based on EBML (Extensible Binary Meta Language), a binary derivative of XML.

File extensions used with Matroska

  • .mkv - The primary extension used with video files including those with audio.
  • .mka - An audio only file.
  • .mk3d - A 3D stereoscopic 3D video file.
  • .mks - A Matroska stream file.

Chat terms

  • How to convert MKV video to AVI in Windows.