How does MKV segment linking work?

[coolxal]

How does a file look for other segments?

I downloaded a file vid1 that is in C:\dir1\ which links to another file vid2 in a subdirectory C:\dir1\dir2\ and it works if I move that file to dir1 (so both files are in dir1). I figure that it'll work as long as it's in the same directory or any subdirectory of dir1 but it also works if I move vid2 to C:\ or C:\dir3\ or C:\dir3\dir4\..

[aedipuss]

files don't look for anything. the software video player may. usually if files are in the same directory and numbered sequentially it will continue on. like vid_01 and vid_02 may play together.

[coolxal]

No... that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the segment linking functionality of MKV which links segments together by a segment ID number. The filenames are irrelevant. And directories as well which is what I'm asking about.

[Ai Haibara]

I usually see this described as 'ordered chapters.' This page from the CCCP wiki describes it as such:

Ordered chapters also exist, where you can split a movie across multiple files and have it seek normally. An interesting application of this would be thus: Instead of encoding the OP and ED for every ep of a series, you would instead encode them once as separate files and then use ordered chapters to seamlessly integrate them into the correct part of each episode. Very cool.

This is the most technical description I've seen for it so far: http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-99489.html

[aedipuss]

not on the same page.

[coolxal]

Either you're misunderstanding me or I'm misunderstanding you because I have no idea how your explanation relates to my question. I don't know why you're talking about sectors or OS level file handling details.

There is metadata in the MKV header that tells the media player in what order to play files with the MKV UID as far I can understand. I'm simply interested in knowing how the media player knows where to find the file with the specified UID even if I put said file in a sub-directory or even super-directory.

[Ai Haibara]

You might try asking your questions on the lists.matroska.org mailing lists or the doom9 forum, as they might be better able to give you an in-depth and technical explanation about the feature and how it works. I was originally going to suggest emailing the author of Haali Media Splitter, as according to the post I linked to above, he does seem to have some understanding about it.

[coolxal]

Thanks. I'll try that.