MKV with 2 Video Tracks

[PDB]

Has anyone tried or had experience creating an MKV with two video tracks?

I assume both tracks have to be the same length and in general sync up to the same audio tracks but I was more curious about it compatibility-wise with video players. I see the option to switch video track in the MPC family and VLC for example, so those should be fine. It's other players I'm uncertain of.

[spoRv]

I tested once the possibility to have two video tracks at once - but as .m2ts or .ts, using TSmuxeR.

It worked find, at least on MPC and VLC. It would be nice to use it, for example, with HD project and SD untouched source, to let the viewer see the difference between them.

And, it would be great to have it work in the blu-ray format.

[CSchmidlapp]

Multi video tracks is always something I thought should be supported much more.
Having just multiple AR options is something that would be awesome.
Ive not tried it with MKV's in MPC. I may have a play.

DVD had multi angle option which should of been used for more AR options; especially considering many still had 4:3 TV's during its early days at least.
Does the BR spec allow for this also?

[zoidberg]

I accidentally muxed two video tracks into an MKV once, I was muxing a HD track into a DVD basically but forgot to deselect the DVD's video track. When I played the MKV in VLC the HD was the default track and I could switch between the tracks as if they were audio/subs. I noticed that the SD track was 'windowboxed' within the 1080p frame, I guess this wouldn't be a problem for two tracks of the same resolution.

Not sure about angles but blu ray definitely allows for picture-in-picture (PIP), there's even a set of options in TSmuxer. I don't know how well it works though as I've never tried, but I imagine you would be limited by the maximum total bitrate of 48Mb/s.

[deleted user]

I think I had some mkvs with two video tracks and some players were being difficult about it, iirc. VLC opened another window simultaneously, complicating things. But it's a great feature in concept.

[jerryshadoe]

On my computer, using VLC, I've never had a problem playing an mkv with two video tracks. However, if I'm streaming the same mkv to my PS4, then it only "sees" the first video track and no option to change it. I haven't tried authoring a BD, using two video tracks in the same stream, but I would imagine that it's not a problem since the format supports PiP.

[PDB]

Thanks guys for the advice.

I was thinking about creating a special feature/commentary video track but really only mulling it over at this stage. I was curious to see if it was a dead end before I even started testing it.