ratDVD anybody tried yet?

[Tinker]

http://www.ratdvd.dk/

Anybody tried this software yet. Sounds intresting if it does what it claims. For HT use so to reduce the amount of HD space for storing contents. I dl'ing it now and give it a try later this week. Just curious if anybody has tried it.

[bonfigleo]

What exactly are the features that you like about this?

This appears to be rencoding the dvd just like xvid, dvix, etc. It just maintains all the dvd features like alternate audio, subtitles and menus.

He claims that there is no quality loss. Unless he is using some lossless compression, this is a lie. If his "new" codec really is better than dvix, xvid, etc there is no doubt that it will be very successful. I sugest checking out the doom9 forums for feedback.

[Tinker]

[QUOTE=bonfigleo] It just maintains all the dvd features like alternate audio, subtitles and menus.
.[/QUOTE]
This would be intresting if I can get better PQ the dvix or xvid and still maintain all the features and I can reduce the size some what. Just curoius to see what results are. Been using FAIRUSE and it ok but nothing great, just wanted to try something else and see. The DL'ing is too slow right now, will give it a try later tonight.

[RayL Jr.]

It says "highly compressed". Question is relative to other lossless formats?

[Tinker]

Well I tired it with basic default settings except that I choose the mid point for quality (100 setting). I took the complete Chronicles of Riddic DVD down to 1.7gb. The process took 5 hours on a AMD 64 3400+@2.6ghz. The following is what I found. I could not get it to play on WinDVD6 or Powerdvd6. In ZP the playback was screwed up in that there are multiple (3) images trying to play is small widows at the same time and locked up. The only player that it played in was windows media player 10. The menu systems was flakey. Some work and some just locked up. By selecting the chapters u can play the file. OK now for the subjective part. Overall image was a little soft but this can again be due to media player. The color were a little over satuated. again could be media player issues. On a small TV set the image was accepatble in that there was no real noticeable flaws but on my 60" set the image was soft. I would play with it a little more if if just would not have taken SO LONG to do its thing. 5 frigging hours....my time is worth more then what ever space I might be able to save in HD storage...since HD's are relatively cheap, I think I will just continue to rip the DVD movies to the server for now....holy cow did I mention it took 5 frigging hours!!!!!

[GMan4911]

There is a section in the FAQ on getting it to play in ZP. Did you try that?

[Tinker]

[QUOTE=GMan4911]There is a section in the FAQ on getting it to play in ZP. Did you try that?[/QUOTE]


No I didnt. After 5 hours, it was just getting too late to do anymore testing other then the ones I tried. May do some more later tonight.

[PGPFan]

For me, this software has excellent potential! I love the idea of conserving on storage space and then having the ability to 'expand' back into a normal DVD for use with STB's on the rare occaisions that I don't watch straight from my HTPC.

I'd love to see a 'distributed' encoder (like what is available with RB-farm for DVD Re-Builder), that would solve most of the pain of the long processing.

Just my .02!


-PGPfan

[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.....

[2ntense]

Im encoding The Incredibles right now. We'll see what happens.

[jflatt]

There is something fishy about it. First of all, he says it's a result of always downloading crappy rips. Way to admit to illegal activity on a public website. Second, his spelling is bad. He claims there is no HDTV support because there is no HDTV standard. Then there are claims that xvid is old and will be outdated soon. He also in the FAQ maintains that he wrote his own codec that somehow sidesteps any patents. I would still rather rip a DVD losslessly and store it in a Matroska container.

[stanger89]

Some more discussion of it on the Sage Forums:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=11635

To sum up what I've found:

It looks like the basic theory is this:
Recoded MPEG-2 Video
AC3 Audio
Both enapsulated in such a way as to make them appear not what they are (there's an interesing picture in the doom9 thread).
All of this contained in a standard zip/rar file. (Winrar can open the .ratDVD file)

From what I've been able to glean so far from various fora across the net, it looks like little more than DVD Shrink, tweaked to allow higher recompression levels, plus reworking of the files to hide that, plus a zip container.

The upshot: The theory of essentially merging DVD navigation with a more advanced codec is an intriguing idea. I think if ratDVD were essentally a container that supported a standard, or better yet arbitrary codec, it would be a winner, at least for some.

The downside, this thing, as jflatt so elequently stated, seems incredibly fishy. That combined with it's (if taken at face value) proprietary codec is going to kill it. There's just no room for another codec when there's Xvid, Divx, VC1, H.264, out there.

[Tinker]

http://news.com.com/New%20wrinkle%20in%20DVD%20swapping/2100-1025_3-5731042.html?part=rss&tag=5731042&subj=news

intresting read

tried a 2nd rat job, The Aviator. Look like it took about 4-5 hours from the estimated time, let it do its thing over night. Set it max quality setting. Got an avi file but it wasnt playable on any player.

couldnt get zp player to work from the FAQ either.

so far its been a bust...extremly long process to get a soft pic and unreliable.

[2ntense]

Well it didn't work for me either. Done with it.