This idea crossed my mind while browsing though ccMixter (a site that promotes remixing content under Creative Commons licenses): wouldn't it be cool if there was a container that would keep all the samples used in a song, along with every information that comes with it (channels, effects, etc...) ? I.e. instead of having Ardour / Protools / whatever "project" files, you would have a single file containing all the necessary data, with the audio being encoded losslessly with routines borrowed from a fast and efficient codec like WavPack. It could then be either loaded in a mastering tool, or simply played back directly in a compatible player.

What would be the point? Why not just make a tarball of your project, if you want to send it to someone? Well, the idea is to have masters of songs licensed under Creative Commons licenses distributed either on physical media or on the net, suiting both the casual listener and the remixer, without the latter having to download them twice, and without the need for twice the storage on physical media (CD-R, DVD-R...). The original bit-depth and sample rate would be kept as well.

I understand that saving a project in this format every 5 minutes would be impractical (because of a relatively complex file structure, lossless encoding and whatever I'm not thinking about). Such a file format would serve only as a distribution format that would require authors to "export" their projects to, as a final step.

I have zero experience in either mastering or software development, but whether this is a good or bad idea, I'd like to know why? Insights from people in the know would be appreciated

Come on, nobody? Not even the matroska devs?

the problem with such specs is that once it is actually delivered and used by bunch of apps it is allready old news, meaning that apps will get the features that can't be supported by that (maybe just a few months old) format..., then there is hacking time when every individual app will try to 'expand' that format to fit its needs and you are slowly back to ground zero.

i do wonder if matroška is supporting some sort of serial packing of things as opposed to vertical thought?

Not that I understand the idea fully, but this would have little value for the end user and it seems to me highly impractical for the producer.

well, there are formats like that (ok, well not like that exactly), for example OMF:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/omf_e...t_protools.html

or AAF:
http://www.aafassociation.org/

An enquiry like this has to be sent to the official communication interfaces of the matroska project, its no use if only myself is reading it.

matroska-devel AT lists DOT matroska DOT org