>>1315545Not for stuff that is just ripped from YouTube or something, there is nothing exotic about the formats being used that would preclude making an MP4 with the "best" options like 1080p Premium VP9, 4K AV1, Opus audio.
In general? TL;DR MKV is just a better container. MP4 is QuickTime's MOV dragged kicking and screaming out from 1991 out into 2001 with more shit being tacked onto it with time.
>most hosts will stream the mp4 but not the mkvI don't think any browsers will play an MKV natively, anywhere you see it working is using some JavaScript to allow it. It's a moot point if you're downloading them.
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MKV supports more subtitle formats, any** audio/video codec, is more resilient to damage, and doesn't require a 2nd pass after muxing*
You can edit the metadata in an MKV without having to rewrite the entire fucking file.
You can add attachments ("thumbnail" cover art, hell any file you want technically) to an MKV without having to rewrite the entire fucking file.
MKVToolnix and friends will not decide your absolutely 100% Constant Frame Rate video is now suddenly Variable Frame Rate if you're muxing from an MPEG-TS...ffmpeg sure will.
I'm leaving out all the "fun" features most will never use like "Editions" out too.
* Mux an MP4 without interleaving it or forcing "-movflags faststart" in ffmpeg and Ctrl-C it. Alternatively, try making an OBS screen recording using MP4 and then kill the process. The file you're left with is unplayable, because the way the container was designed, a bunch of important shit (MOOV atom) gets written to the end of the file. It's why GPAC/MP4Box force it to be done by default and require manually disabling it with -flat.
** In theory. For a codec to work in an .MP4, ISO has to approve it. For a codec to work in an .MKV, you just need whatever program you're using to recognize it, or willing mux formats it doesn't recognize.
It's a God damn shame we got universal WEBM support everywhere, WEBM is just a neutered subset of MKV...
