Can I safely rename mkv to mka?

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1

Hi there,

I am curious if it is safe to rename a .mkv file that only contains audio and nothing else to .mka? Every program I’ve tried this with doesn’t complain and I haven’t run into any issues. My question is if this is against the specs or is the container the same and the extension difference is just for convenience purposes?

Background info: I need to do some audio processing (mainly changing the audio pitch) on some .dts files. I’ve tried ffmpeg but sox gives me better results, however I know nothing about sox, so I’m just using Hybrid (Selur) for that, which utilizes sox. Hybrid however can’t output MKA files, only MKV since it is mainly used for video purposes.

2

Welcome!

From Matroska’s point of view the file name extensions don’t matter at all. Content-wise they’re the same type of file, carrying the same type of structure inside.

The only difference you might encounter is if a piece of software uses different code paths depending on the file name & extension instead of looking at its content. I don’t know of any program that treats .mkv & .mka differently, but I thought I’d mention it.