ratdvd, new dvd tool

[dinobike]

too good to be true?

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/11893

Looks promisory.....

[lordsmurf]

Doesn't say anything special. You can just as easily make an ISO and cram it into a RAR file. But it's huge and P2P is a slow system. Would take days or weeks.

Not to mention that guy can buy them here and have them shipped overseas. Many stores sell to Europe. So his cover story is crap.

[steve2713]

Yes, too good to be true. If I had to guess I'd say it's converting the DVD to something like XVID or WMV. It will certainly be a lossy compression of some form, there's no way that you can get anywhere near 1gb from 4gb+ of MPEG2 video. A 10% lossless compression from MPEG2 video content would be impressive, let alone what they would lead you to believe ('no noticeable loss of quality').

[Baldrick]

I tried it yesterday.
It is awfully slow. Is it converting to xvid or h264 or??? I want more information.
The playback of the compressed ratdvd is messed up so I can't see how the quality is.

[BJ_M]

It is not either XViD or H264 ..... compressed a 8gig dvd to 3gig keeping everything ...

and looked very very good ..

took 5 hours though

[steve2713]

Well I went ahead and tried it, of course WMP 10 won't play it. I get some odd error when I try playing it back, although if I try playing it back with Media Player Classic I can hear the audio.

Just tried it in Nero Showtime and it plays but it is in B&W, 1 image taking up 1/4 of the screen and 2 smaller taking up an 1/8 of the screen... Problems....

[Baldrick]

I have same problem but with wmp, 1 big image and two smaller ones.

Why didn't you use a standard codec like XviD, H264?

There are three main reasons I have my own codec. First, I needed to store many of the original MPEG2 features to restore the original. Second, I had this idea that a real transcoder would be better than a decoder/encoder approach.

Third, I wanted to write my own video encoder just for the hell of it. XviD is nice but it's an old standard and it'll be outdated soon. Also H.264 and XviD (and other standard codecs) are covered by a wide range of patents and patent pools. I don't like that.

I think it is some kind of h264..x264...making an own codec from scratch sounds a bit too complex...

[secretagent]

The default priority for this program in taskmamger is set at low (idle time only) I changed the priority in taskmanger to normal and it gave a noticeable speed increase.

[Scarpad]

Ok I did some tests tonight and some more are ongoing. This is an interesting program. Here's what I did. I pulled an episode of Space 1999 off one of the disks. The Ep was about 2.5 Gigs. I chose this show becasue one it's film and two it's quite Large for TV on DVD. I also took Disk 1 of the Show "The Job" and did that. And Right Now I'm doing movie only of Criterion's Disk of "The Rock"

Impressions.

Disk one of "The Job" took about 4 Hours. This was on my Centrino Laptop.
I kept the default 95%. The Result 1.2 Gb. All menu's intact. Now I can only view this on my Laptop, but my Dell 700m has a pretty nice screen. And I compared it to the original. One person said his result was soft. I don't see that. Occasionally you do see some Macroblocking but overall this is a very nice result.

The single Episode of 1999 reduced down from 2.5 Gb to 450mb at 95%.
Once again very close to the original except to the macroblocking. I would say it looks like a very well encoded High Bitrate Xvid, and probably comparable to Nero Digital's Cinema Template.

The Macroblocking may keep this from being usuable on my 96" Projector, but I'm hazarding a guess here that on my 30" Widescreen Samsung I'd be Hard Press to tell the difference. And Keep in mind this is the First release and you can do better than 95% if you'll accept hight file size.

The Negative aspect would definately be that for know you have to use WMP10. I'm hoping eventually more players will be compatible, I personally use Theatertek, but Hell I'd settle for Nero Showtime 2.

I can see this as very usable for someone that wants to encode either Single TV Eps or their entire Disks for a TV Server.

I'll report Back after I see what happens with "The Rock" and see how it looks via the Projector.....

[sctele]

Since ratDVD offers high compression with intact DVD features and comparable video quality to Divx and Xvid, will it become the codec/program of choice for compressing DVD's? For example, I'd really like to use this program to backup my DVD's and keep them stored on an HTPC, and still retain all the features that I'd want. What do you guys think?

[CuCuy]

Sounds good to me. I might do the same myself one day.

[guns1inger]

Doesn't support Windows Media Centre at the moment, so you are restricted to XP

[mgh]

Tried a chapter ripped off a DVD using DVD Shrink opting for 192 kbps AC3
The size reduced from 164 MB to 49 MB
Converted the ratdvd back to DVD-the video kbps reduced from 4500 in original DVD to to 3622-file size to 129 MB.
On my IBM laptop, play back of both the ratdvd and the restored DVD were good. Incidentally, I have media player 9.
The purpose of the software is to compress the DVD for transmission and then restore it back with all original whistles and bells. Looks good for that.

[Bjs]

Ratdvd use's the exb encoder which is part of directx9c which basically put gose

Black "ditto" "ditto" green white "ditto" , ect ...

The "ditto" is a small replacement code for the actual code required for each pixel , very smart and clever and was something I was doing a while back ... but couldnt get the matrix exactly the way I wanted it , came close , but not as close as ratdvd has ...

This is how its able to pack the video down into such a small size , and unpack it without so much as blemish on the origianl look .

Just tried it out on a mini dvd of 280mbs , defaults used , output was 80mbs .

encode time was about 30 minutes per 10 minutes of video , and equal in return .

Quality was unchanged in conversion back to dvd format .

Excellent work , and it will make sharing whole dvds alot easier ...

[dvd.doe]

How do you get to that conclusion on the exb encoder? I personally have never heard of that before.

[Tidy]

Isn't bit substitution the reason why older video cards won't work with new versions of Direct X. I was under the impression that they change the Bit substitution matrix in nearly every major release. I could be wrong though.


My understanding is that it is kind of like bit stuffing so to speak.

[jarvis1781]

Ratdvd use's the exb encoder which is part of directx9c which basically put gose

Black "ditto" "ditto" green white "ditto" , ect ...

The "ditto" is a small replacement code for the actual code required for each pixel , very smart and clever and was something I was doing a while back ... but couldnt get the matrix exactly the way I wanted it , came close , but not as close as ratdvd has ...

This is how its able to pack the video down into such a small size , and unpack it without so much as blemish on the origianl look .

Just tried it out on a mini dvd of 280mbs , defaults used , output was 80mbs .

encode time was about 30 minutes per 10 minutes of video , and equal in return .

Quality was unchanged in conversion back to dvd format .

Excellent work , and it will make sharing whole dvds alot easier ...

Do you perhaps mean XEB Encoder?

[BJ_M]

i thought the XEB Encoder was used to spawn buffer overflows on some ftp servers ..

[dvd.doe]

My two cents:

I did 6 ratDVDs until now and when I look at the ratDVD video quality it MUST be H.264 or some high quality equivalent like WMV. On the ratdvd web site is stated that they did their own format - well, why not? Microsoft did it, the guys from VPx did it, some others did it - and it was done for ratDVD. All the talk about MPG1, exb, etc. doesn't make sense to me.

[secretagent]

made my first ratdvd from 4 gig to 1 gig, quality good, then took it to nero and did a hd burn. result a full dvd with extras stored on a 10 cent cd. that's progress.

[BJ_M]

i see ratdvds already being posted on Usenet and elsewhere .. that was pretty quick

[jarvis1781]

when ratDVD is processing a movie just check the task manager and you will see where the CPU cycles are going -> -> -> XEBEncoder.exe

[johns0]

I found a glitch with ratdvd,if you cancel a conversion then it will delete all the files not in a folder on your root drive if you specify the root drive as your destination.

[guns1inger]

That's some glitch

[Hooter Honker]

I have not had any luck with this program. I let it run for 24+ hrs. only got to 15% then the program crashed. I have a Sony PCV-RX790G. The dvd I was trying to convert is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I may have to try it on another PC.

HH

[smearbrick1]

So, help me understand this (I haven't checked this program out yet). From what I'm reading, you can compress an entire dvd down to a ridiculously small size, store it on a cd, play it back on your pc, then decompress the file back to it's original quality and burn it to dvd... complete with extras? After burning to dvd, it would then be playable in a set top player?

Is this correct?

[awlchu]

Just tried it last night. Reduction was 8.5 GB to 1.7 GB. Kept 5.1 AC3 and English subtitles only in main movie. Everything else left alone.

time? 4.5 hrs

system: P4 3.06g, 1 gig memory XP Pro SP1

Very impressed with the output, works under Media play 9.

Converting back to DVD format (from ratDVD) this AM to 4.7GB disk. I'm interested in seeing the output.

This tool is a keeper, IMOP. It can only get better!

[awlchu]

Now you can get ratDVD T-shirts etc. (faster than ratDVDs on networks etc.)

http://www.cafepress.com/ratdvd

[sctele]

So, help me understand this (I haven't checked this program out yet). From what I'm reading, you can compress an entire dvd down to a ridiculously small size, store it on a cd, play it back on your pc, then decompress the file back to it's original quality and burn it to dvd... complete with extras? After burning to dvd, it would then be playable in a set top player?

Is this correct?

It won't be returned to it's original quality, but yes, that is pretty much the gist of it.

[BJ_M]

I found a glitch with ratdvd,if you cancel a conversion then it will delete all the files not in a folder on your root drive if you specify the root drive as your destination.

other programs in the past also have been known to do this -- not a good thing, but not the first app to do it ..