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RatDVD - Please Use.

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[Moved from Star Wars forum to Technical Discussions - M]

I've just found this software: RatDVD It can compress whole DVDs down into files some times under 1.5 gig! and then decompress and burn them or play them in WMP! I think this would be great program for distributing Fan edits and Preservations seeing as it can cut the file size in half meaning people get them faster.

When I download movies, I want the full DVD feature set and I want to be able to watch it on any DVD player - without losing any features of the original DVD. That is what ratDVD can do for you.

ratDVD takes a full featured DVD-9 movie and puts it into a highly compressed .ratDVD container format file of about 1.x GB in size - while preserving all the features of the original DVD such as:
dvd movie content selection

* Full anamorphic picture, 16:9, 4:3, Pan/Scan, WideScreen, Lettorbox based on original DVD video content.
* Support for full seamless branching
* Up to 9 multiple video angles and 8 audio tracks
* Up to 32 subpictures not limited to text (e.g. animated anecdotes)
* Keep movie versions (Directors Cut, Theatrical version, etc.), Alternate story endings, making of, visual commentary , cut scenes, animated anecdotes, etc...
* Constant Quality and Constant Average Bitrate transcoding modes


Sounds good huh? And it works! I downloaded a movie I had but the disc was scratched and it works perfectly! and plays on my PS2 and DVD player.

http://www.ratdvd.dk/images/logo.gif
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Wow that sounds great!!!

Oh wait, no it doesn't...

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I think it greatly reduces the quality. But I'm no expert, so maybe Moth3r can fully explain it.
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Let me start off by saying WMP is a POS!

The whole goal here is to distribute the films in the best quality possible, compressing a 4.4G film into a 1.5G file will destroy any quality advantage gained by all the work that has been done. You might as well just watch your vhs copy.

BTW did I mention that WMP Blows...
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Originally posted by: Ell the Ewok

This is a compresser, not a compressing codec, its kinda like a zip or a rar you uncompress and burn it.


EDIT:
Actually, it seems to mention transcoding, so it is definitely not something like rar/zip compression.

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But Ell, you must realise this will be throwing away information?!

MPEG-2, like JPEG is already compressed, so the likes of WinRAR and WinZIP make very little difference to the overal size of a disc. The only possible way this could work is my transcoding the file to another format, or by compressing the mpeg frames again like ReMPEG does.

And here is the part of his FAQ where he talks about his magic codec:

Are there any more details about the Video codec you are using?

RatDVD uses a video codec called XEB. This codec is the result from an experimental project I did with some fellows and that does not use any XviD, x.264, etc. code although by the very nature of it contains routines which is similar in function and even to a small extend in output to what you’ll find out there – obviously I didn’t reinvent video-encoding. Since I have been asked here is a small summary of the codec internals:

* It is block based (No wavelets anywhere)
* It has a dynamic GOP structure, P frames have only one reference frame, B frames two.
* GOPs are significantly longer than normal DVD GOPs and always closed
* To avoid drift in long GOPs it has a build-in intra-refresh mechanism
* It has intra prediction significantly more advanced than MPEG2, but not quite as flexible as H.264
* It uses an integer transformation that approximates DCT
* It uses a piecewise linear adaptive quant. The Quant level is determined for each macroblock by a simple psycho visual model
* It has a primitive in-loop deblocking filter
* Mode decision is part lagrangian optimization, part ad hoc based on statistics manually tuned to fit.
* It uses an in-codec scaler and the actual encoded picture size can vary in both dimensions between GOPs
* In order to maintain navigation ability and the reconvertability the codec suffers some limitations that others don’t
* The MUX format is H.262 + some private extensions

The main reason for this codec was the ability to transport the complete DVD navigation data to be able to recreate the original DVDs. Now that this goal is reached I can look in more detail at the performance and quality optimizations since I believe that there is still a lot more potential.

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I don't want to be some kind of "intruder" here, but I think this format is not readable on Mac, which sounds really bad for me...
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It's easy to not notice any loss in quality when it's a re-encode from a professional dvd that you dont have the source to compare it with. Presuming that there is no quality loss ignores the very nature of Ratdvd.

Ratdvd re-encodes mpeg2 video into a proprietary video codec. It is not magic. It's very similar to xivd in many ways but (imo) not as good a codec. Use this on a fan preservation which is already an edited version of a dvd or even a laserdisc capture and the quality will suffer.

The only advantage of ratdvd over doing an xvid encode (or similar) is to maintain dvd menu navigation. It is not a superior codec to xvid or x.264.

Many fan preservations already create smaller xvid encodes for download. These are better quality than Ratdvd re-compressions.

Xvid is cross-platform, Ratdvd is not. Ratdvd distributions will only work on windows. Xvid can work on Windows, Mac, Linux and a large number of other devices.

So while Ratdvd might be fine for studio dvds if you do not mind the loss in quality, I don't see it offering any substantial benefit for a preservation or fan edit project in terms of quality when compared to other simpler distribution tecniques such as xvid encodes. The benefits of features are potentially outweighed by the proprietary nature of the format and I personally would not restrict who could see it by choosing a windows-only format.
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I have used RatDVD twice now. I downloaded torrents for the two "made for tv" live-action Ewok movies from 1984 and 86 (Caravan of courage and battle for endor, respectively)

These were rips off of the officially available dvds, and the two files were approx. 850 MB each.

Menus, chapters, etc. were kept exactly how they were and to be honest...I am satisfied with the results.

These two Ewok movies were never exactly high quality pieces of film to begin with...and the ending result was more than watchable (considering all the bootlegs I have seen in my time) a little bit as "assy" video quality here and there is nothing to complain about.

I was satisfied when I used it....we'll see how I like it in the future if the need arises.


Thinking about it...you wouldnt use it for something like, say, the X-Zero project...where quality is everything, but for something small like I used it for...its a great tool.
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For a start, saying that a disc is scratched or that a movie was never high quality to begin with is not an excuse to discuss downloads of commercially available DVDs - please don't do it.

I think most of my misgivings about the Ratdvd thing have been covered already. I also think the name is a bit shit, too.

You should realise that this sort of thing is not new - back in the early days of DivX there was something called a "Micro DVD" that offered similar functionality. However it never became popular. Those who wanted a fully-featured DVD would download a DVDR rip. Those who wanted a quick download would download a movie-only DivX/XviD file.

Now the old DivX is obsolete and the new DivX went out of favour when it went commercial, XviD is the only choice IMO. Consistently highly regarded in Doom9's codec comparisons, and many standalone player makers specifically advertise XviD playback as a feature - which shows that an open source project, with no advertising budget whatsoever, can clearly make a significant impact in today's world.

I'd like to see XviD used more in our fan edit/preservation community. For material like VHS/TV rips that are not DVD quality to begin with, I think many people would rather download 1 or 2 700MB AVI files than a 4.3GB DVD. And for those edits that are put out on DVD, making an alternative AVI version available for those bandwidth-restricted users would help get the release out to a wider audience.

(I realise that this view may be at odds with some of the "bitrate whores" who frequent this forum - yes you know who you are, and I don't give a shit how big your TV is. )

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ratDVD re-encodes the video and audio, and will remove features (like audio tracks, etc.)

read the page here:
http://www.ratdvd.dk/dvd_to_ratdvd.htm

and the FAQ:
http://www.ratdvd.dk/faq.htm#VideoCodec

the only special thing about this program/format is that it keeps the dvd structure and is able to recreate it on decompression.

it would transcode the source 2x (1. compress, 2. "decompress")

it's not worth using.


later