Can I add MKV metadata tags that will show in Windows Explorer?

[seanmcnally]

Before I start, yes, I realize there are things like Icaros that can modify Windows Explorer to show different tags, this doesn't work for my use case.

What I'm interested in is how I can save metadata tags to MKV files that will *natively* show up in vanilla Windows Explorer. I'm already aware of one of them - the "comments" tag seems to work nicely. But beyond that, Windows Explorer in Windows 10 has an extremely long list of tags that it is capable of displaying. Is there any way to utilize these at the MKV file level?

I'm also aware that Matroska has a list of "official" tags...but from my understanding, other non-official tags are theoretically possible?

Any help greatly appreciated, thanks!

[LigH.de]

To display tags in the Windows explorer, Windows needs to understand the container and know how to get that information. The general MKV format was not one Windows supported out-of-the-box, so it might need an Explorer Extension to get to know it. The best chance might be creating a specific subset of MKV, WebM, which is at least a "web standard".

[seanmcnally]

Thanks for the information! I’ll definitely look into WebM. This is for an archive of family movies that will be passed down for generations, so software dependencies are unfortunately just not going to work.

I’m really interested in the fact that I got the “comments” tag to work…I’m wondering if there are any hacky ways to cram metadata into an MKV file. Or, does windows see the file type and just automatically parse it a certain way based on the extension?

[LigH.de]

Getting metadata into an MKV file, using MKVToolNix, is less an issue than enabling the Windows Explorer to read them out for display. Yes, Windows needs to first detect and then parse a media file. The file name extension may be a first step in a sequence of required work.

The MP4 container may be supported better, having a more strict specification.

Please note that both MP4 and WebM only support a more narrow selection of audio and video formats, and they don't have much in common. Matroska (MKV) is the really universal container format, but also the most complex of them.