RatDVD? [Archive] - Page 2

danpos

4th June 2005, 21:09

@All

Come on, guys ! Lets go calm down. I think that the discussion is gonna OFF-TOPIC way. We must to discuss the tool itself, because of it presents new technology that's very interesting. And only this. Because of any knowledge can be used in "white side of force" or "dark side of the force" and each one has freedom of choose what way to follows with all implications that a such decision can carries out. In this way, why do we back to the good TOPIC discussions about the tool and then to forget the OFF-TOPIC posts (like this one :D for example) ?

See ya !

bond

4th June 2005, 21:13

it presents new technology that's very interesting.what new technology?
till now i only saw proove of ac3, mpg and zip, which i wouldnt really call "new technology" ;)

opsis81

4th June 2005, 21:31

@ bond
I 'm sure it's the original .vob.MPC can't play it unless I disable the internal MPEGSplitter,Showtime loads Nero Splitter(the filter that uses from mpeg and vob files)
I had a strange feeling that the video stream might be AVC(yes it looked that good to me).But it seems that it isn't,I have tried to play the xvo files to videolan and I have tried to connect to it in graphedit with moonlight's mpeg splitter (the version that handles avc-in-mpg) but it the video stream couldn't be splitted.
ratDVD tools look very much like nero's tools?I don't think so.The only resemblance I can see is that it uses the "menus-main movie-extras" style like Recode and DVDShrink.
Speaking for nero,I think formats like that will push them to finally add mp4 menu support in Recode.Seriously what are they waiting for?

opsis81

4th June 2005, 21:38

what new technology?
till now i only saw proove of ac3, mpg and zip, which i wouldnt really call "new technology" ;)

Yes it isn't a "new technology".But this is also the power of the program.It can transform even DVDs with the most complicated structure to ratDVD format and convert it back to DVD.

Leonardo1001

4th June 2005, 21:40

@bond: I think the navigator looks like the MS DVD Navigator - maybe they just hacked it? Regarding Nero: I don't think that they even have a DS Navigation filter but I am not sure. I have tried to find it in graphedt but could not find one. Do you happen to have it's name, guid or something so that I can have a look?

SeeMoreDigital

4th June 2005, 21:41

I wonder whether the people behind ratDVD have developed an new type of Mpeg2/VOB video compression tool...

A kind of "souped up" ZIP, RAR or 7-ZIP, if you will :)

Cheers

bond

4th June 2005, 21:44

opsis81

4th June 2005, 21:53

Nero DVD Navigator

CLSID
{6C7CDDD4-C4EE-470D-B643-0EF3B68E6396}

FilterData
hex:02,00,00,00,00,00,60,00,04,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,70,69,33,\
08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,06,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,74,79,33,00,\
00,00,00,20,01,00,00,30,01,00,00,31,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,20,01,00,00,40,01,\
00,00,32,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,20,01,00,00,50,01,00,00,33,74,79,33,00,00,00,\
00,20,01,00,00,60,01,00,00,34,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,20,01,00,00,70,01,00,00,\
35,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,20,01,00,00,80,01,00,00,31,70,69,33,08,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,20,01,\
00,00,90,01,00,00,31,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,20,01,00,00,a0,01,00,00,32,70,69,\
33,08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,74,79,33,\
00,00,00,00,20,01,00,00,b0,01,00,00,31,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,c0,01,00,00,b0,\
01,00,00,33,70,69,33,08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\ 00,00,30,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,d0,01,00,00,b0,01,00,00,6a,91,0b,ed,4d,04,d1,\
11,aa,78,00,c0,4f,c3,1d,60,2b,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,\
2c,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,32,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,\
d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,33,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,34,80,\
6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,4d,50,34,41,00,00,10,00,80,00,00,\
aa,00,38,9b,71,4d,50,34,56,00,00,10,00,80,00,00,aa,00,38,9b,71,26,80,6d,e0,\
46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,2d,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,\
6c,bb,ea,74,78,74,73,00,00,10,00,80,00,00,aa,00,38,9b,71,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

XEB Navigation Filter

CLSID
{482D10B6-376E-4411-8A17-833800A065DB}

FilterData
hex:02,00,00,00,00,00,80,00,03,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,70,69,33,\
08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,74,79,33,00,\
00,00,00,98,00,00,00,a8,00,00,00,31,70,69,33,08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,30,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,b8,00,00,00,c8,00,00,\
00,32,70,69,33,08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
30,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,b8,00,00,00,d8,00,00,00,31,74,79,33,00,00,00,00,e8,\
00,00,00,d8,00,00,00,76,69,64,73,00,00,10,00,80,00,00,aa,00,38,9b,71,59,34,\
58,83,96,f7,18,41,84,52,aa,80,ad,fc,69,0a,6a,91,0b,ed,4d,04,d1,11,aa,78,00,\
c0,4f,c3,1d,60,2c,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,2d,80,6d,e0,\
46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,6c,bb,ea,20,80,6d,e0,46,db,cf,11,b4,d1,00,80,5f,\
6c,bb,ea

Different CLSID and FilterData

Leonardo1001

4th June 2005, 23:37

@bond,opsis81: Somehow I had to reinstall Nero, but now I got it. However, when I compare the three navigation filters (MS, Nero, ratdvd) only the MS and ratdvd have the same number of pins. The property pages all look some kind of identical (probably no big surprise since they all have the same function, right?) but all are different in the number of buttons, layout, etc... In summary: For me it looks like this are three totally different, independent filters...

onesoul

5th June 2005, 04:10

@ Leonardo1001

Actually I was making a pun on the weird choice of naming the software.

I find the concept interesting although I didn't test it yet.

milh31

5th June 2005, 12:34

Ok time for some pics but first a few infos

Movie : Tokyo Fist (1995 - Japan)

Original DVD size : 3.76GB
RatDVD file size (with 5.1 -> 2.0) : 995MB
Transcoded DVD size : 2.88GB

Quality : Default 95%

A bunch of before/after pics : http://users.skynet.be/fa036594/RatDVD.TEST.TOKYO.FIST.zip

onesoul

5th June 2005, 13:53

It blurs too much but I guess it is the preferred method, which presents less blocks, at this kid of compression.

How does it behave at higher quality?

Seimour

5th June 2005, 15:49

A new dedicated forum has been added in cdfreaks' club (as show in ratDVD main page). It can be found here (http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=108)
This looks interesting because, xvid took too much time when encoding in 2 passes mode, full quality (Ultra High, Wide Search, QPel)

danpos

5th June 2005, 16:12

My first trying with ratDVD:

Movie : Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Original DVD size : 7.49GB
RatDVD file size (with 5.1 -> 2.0) : 1.44GB
Transcoded DVD size : 6.05GB

Quality : Default 95%

I just don't get to play with .ratDVD, using neither MPC and VLC (my WMP is old and don't want to upgrade it to WMP10, because of I already used it before and I didn't like it).

I've tried re-registering the .ax inside XEB folder and reboot my machine. I still only get to play the audio from .ratDVD file, but video didn't.

Some advice are greatly appreciated.

TIA,

wmansir

5th June 2005, 17:59

You can try using the zoom player with some tweaking. Check out the instructions here (http://www.ratdvd.dk/faq.htm#ZoomPlayer).

danpos

5th June 2005, 18:11

You can try using the zoom player with some tweaking. Check out the instructions here (http://www.ratdvd.dk/faq.htm#ZoomPlayer).

:thanks: mate ! I'll give it a shot asap ! ;)

CYA!

danpos

5th June 2005, 20:09

@wmansir

I followed your advice and I went to ratDVD FAQ, readed it and I did all recommended. When I fed ZP with a .ratDVD file, I got the following error: "Divison by zero" :eek:

I'm using ZP Pro 4.03 ...

Some tip?

CYA!

EDIT: I got sucess for playing .ratDVD for now ! I just did some adjust in it, installing filters and other minors stuffs. BTW, I got a weird playback with .ratDVD. The movie was resized, appeared other 2 retangles with piece of movie running and the movie itself find it out without color (b/w) ... :eek: Well, solved the playback issue, I'm gonna to do the reverse procedure (.ratDVD -> DVD) and then I'll see that I got at final ...

MaXiMuS

6th June 2005, 02:35

from VCDHelp.com forum (http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=270225)
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 ...

bond

6th June 2005, 13:00

so anyone knowing already what video coding format is used in ratdvd?

i read somewhere that it might be mpeg-1 or some variant of it. can anyone deny or agree with that?

celtic_druid

6th June 2005, 15:24

Surely if it were MPEG-1 based it would be quicker?

JonRead

6th June 2005, 16:17

bourtzovlakas

6th June 2005, 19:32

Is it true, that the program doesn't work with any other OS, than XP??

SeeMoreDigital

6th June 2005, 20:20

Mpeg 1 ?? I can't imagine the quality would be as good as it is in ratDVD if it was using mpg1, also I don't think mpg1 creates the smudging effect in this codec, it usually creates blocks. To me it looks like a WM9 or 10 or something.There's not a lot wrong with how Mpeg1 looks, especially when it's been encoded at DVD resolutions ;)

Cheers

wmansir

7th June 2005, 00:56

I just read a post (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=138959) by the author over at CDFreaks.

•I have extended the libdvdnav. I have to clean it up a bit but will probably release it as open source this week.
•I hope to release the playback filters also this week.
•Yes, I will publish details about the format although I don’t know when I will get to that.

I did my own test and have to say I was disappointed. Although the disc I used was a difficult source (The Abyss, R1). The video quality was terrible, and that was with the quality slider moved all the way up. However, I am impressed by the fact that it worked at all.

Kurtnoise

8th June 2005, 09:53

There are now a package (http://www.ratdvd.dk/code.htm) for the playback in any dshow players. So, Bye-Bye WMP10... ;) The libdvdnav sources are also available.

Enots_

8th June 2005, 12:34

MPEG1 are you guys insane, blind or just in between? Typical artefacts in MPEG1 are ringing (mosqito's) and blocks - especially at low bitrates. I don't see any ringing arond sharp edges as I would expect from something that had been cored or quantized to death. What I see in ratDVD is beyond all a bit of blur. Now the blur could come from resizing back and forth - accepted - that is however is inconsistent with the fact that some (I'd say most) edges are sharp and well defined and those edges which shouldn't be sharp (like shadows) aren't. I also got to love the argumentation from some that MPEG1 looks great in DVD resolutions - it does - but below 1 Mbit in Full (or even half) D1? Bollocks!

So lets take a look beyond visual impression and go to the data. The .ratDVD container is really a zip as been duely noted. Within this zip you find the .VOB which is now called .XVO. Within the .XVO you find a muxing format which appears to be related to the original DVD. Demuxing this you don't find any 0xE0 video stream. Instead I found a mysterious 0xEF stream. This stream always start with a "XEBC" identifier. Interestingly the UI says converting MPEG2->XEB - and the exe file is called XEBencoder.exe. If it where MPEG1 we'd be able to find startcodes here. 00 00 01 00 (Picture header) no where to be found, 00 00 01 xx (Slice headers) none. 00 00 01 B7.. nada.. nothing of what you'd expect in MPEG1. You could argue that it is an encrypted stream, but I don't see nothing which would indicate encryption....

What is this codec then? No fucking idea. But it ain't MPEG1.

LordIntruder

9th June 2005, 06:59

Hi,

I've been playing with this new tool. I had a 71min rip available on my HDD, an old movie, not clean with grain. I encoded it with Xvid, 1291Kbits and Ogg at q3. Looks great once encoded.

Now with ratDVD I deselected all bonus to only keep the video, the audio and the menu (total size of vob was around 3Gb). I choose this to do a fair compare with my 700Mb Xvid rip.

I selected "95" on the slider and launch the encode. Around 4 hours on 2400+ and it weigh 1Gb (0,97Gb exactly).

I have WMP 9 and not 10 as recommended and I got some problems to select the menus. Nothing appear then a yellow icon popup, then it disappear, reapper later then I click it and the movie start. Here I'm really disappointed, the image looks ok if you look far but close to the screen every detail is gone, I can see many blocks, light blocks but still they are here. The image looks like RV10, I mean when there is not enough bitrate with RV10, it clean and blur every detail. Same here with ratDVD.

I don't know what is the final resolution because I don't know how to see it on WMP.

So ok the movie is watchable, I see ten times worst but it is not the revolution expected. ;)

This tool is absolutely the easiest I ever play with. It is a real one-click program. You launch it, you select the IFO in the \video, everything is already ticked, you just have to click "Go" and ratDVD begin the work. Very very easy.

It's a very good tool for beginners, rip DVD, burn it on CD-RW or DVD-RW, play it on PC, loan it to a friend, and if a day you want to make it a real DVD, it is really easy too. But for those who want quality, high quality, I wonder...

In short: at the quality "95" and compare with a Xvid rip:

- bigger file
- worse quality
- play only on XP with WMP but didn't tested the direct show stuff.
- absolutely easy to use, a real one click program.

I saw that the slider allow me to go up to 150. Maybe that at 150 I would got a very good looking movie but at what size? So the publicity "one DVD on one Gb" we saw on every site is totally ridiculous, obviously not verified. On the ratDVD site it is told:

".... of about 1.x GB in size...."

Yes you can get an 1.00Gb file size or a 1.99Gb or even more, depends of the size of the DVD. ;)

Anyway, thanks to the author for his work and hope he will improve its baby. :)

infoscapeone

9th June 2005, 08:04

Strange. In my tests it was always clearly above XviD quality at the same bitrate. Can you give us some more data about the test you did?

Which movie did you use? Was it transcoded already?
What was the content of the movie (e.g. sizes, stream information of every title/title set)?
Which part of this did you enode with XviD (title, streams, etc.)?
What settings did you do in ratdvd (regarding the subtitle and audio streams) and Xvid?

Thanks.

Teegedeck

9th June 2005, 11:53

Strange. In my tests it was always clearly above XviD quality at the same bitrate.

I would call it 'high art' to manage to produce a picture worse than RatDVD's with any modern codec.

Load XviD's default-settings and try again...

Cyberace

9th June 2005, 14:31

so anyone knowing already what video coding format is used in ratdvd?I too like to know and have asked over at cdfreaks.com forum (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=139402) as ratDVD devs seems to reply to posts there ;)

onesoul

10th June 2005, 01:20

RatDVD merchandise (http://www.cafepress.com/ratdvd)! What a heck is this? Lol, you gotta be kidding.

Fishman0919

10th June 2005, 02:25

onesoul, we usually don't agree... but that is some funny s###....LOL

danpos

10th June 2005, 02:32

RatDVD merchandise (http://www.cafepress.com/ratdvd)! What a heck is this? Lol, you gotta be kidding.

LOL, that's very funny ! I wanna a sweatshirt for me ! :D

CYA!

riggits

10th June 2005, 05:38

tell me how many people(not companies) have permission to make the dvds or movies they buy available for download by others. dont bother i already know the answer...none. this isnt a tool for companies to better facilitate a reasonable business model for pay services. its for people to make their complete dvds smaller to download by others.

quality of downloaded movies is irrelivent. downloading copyrighted content,such as copyrighted movies(rips or complete dvds), is illegal in most countries and discussion of such things is against this forums rules.

could it have a legal use ? yes if it was used for distributing home movies. considering however it also says things like

and all pictures on the page are of commercial films there is not even an attempt to suggest a legal use.

What's wrong with backing up commercial films on DVD? Most people think it quite reasonable to keep copies of films they have purchased, but for many it is unfeasible to do the backup themselves. Lack of equipment, time, knowledge, and desire to spend countless hours on ripping/burning can prevent a sensible backup operation.

Maybe you should review your own relevant Supreme Court rulings and common law re: downloading copyrighted works. If you have the original DVD, you can download a copy of it whenever it appears on P2P networks; there's no law against common sense (yet) AFAIK, and it saves hours of encoding, hard drive space.
Believe it or not, you still have (some) rights in the USA. Don't be so quick to force your narrow-minded assumptions onto others here with such reckless abandon. If you value your freedoms so little, and live as if you don't have them, you probably won't notice when they're actually gone.

dragongodz

10th June 2005, 06:55

What's wrong with backing up commercial films on DVD?
nothing, i never said there was. its the distribution of said copyrighted material that is wrong and illegal in most countries.

for many it is unfeasible to do the backup themselves
sorry but the law doesnt care that you can not afford to buy the equipment to do it yourself. so this is irrelivent.

If you have the original DVD, you can download a copy of it whenever it appears on P2P networks
show me exactly where the law says that please, and i mean for the majority of countries not just one.

Believe it or not, you still have (some) rights in the USA.
hmm strange, the country listed next to my location doesnt look like U.S.A. to me. so please do NOT try and tell me what rights i do and do not have in my country, i know them much better than you.

Don't be so quick to force your narrow-minded assumptions onto others here with such reckless abandon. If you value your freedoms so little, and live as if you don't have them, you probably won't notice when they're actually gone.
dont be so quick to try and take pot shots at people without knowing your facts because you obviously know bugger all about me and my views.

heres some things for you to consider.
1. downloading copyrighted material is NOT legal in every country, owning a movie does not automatically give you this right.
2. this board has rules and if you do some searching questions about downloading copyrighted material is generally considered to be under rule 6 to cover all legal possabilities.
3. i will quote wmansir from page 3 of this thread
I agree his intent is clear, but as long as the discussion remains about using it as a backup tool and not sharing/shared material, I think it is appropriate.
so a mod, whos opinion is the only one that really counts in the end, has clearly said what can and can not be discussed. if you have a problem wih that then try talking to him about it.

Teegedeck

10th June 2005, 08:50

I too like to know and have asked over at cdfreaks.com forum (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=139402) as ratDVD devs seems to reply to posts there ;)
Alright, now the developer(s) come(s) forward with details about the codec in the FAQ:
* 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 extensionsSo it seems basically a non-standard MPEG-1,-2 or -4 (assumption, until we learn otherwise --> quote: "obviously I didn’t reinvent video-encoding"). As the codec is too weak to be actual MPEG-4, I tend to believe it is a 'Frankenstein'-MPEG-1 or -2 with some MPEG-4 features (from various levels and profiles) thrown in.
Although he tries to make adaptive quantization sound like he invented it. :p

One of the features lent from MPEG-4 seems inbuilt deblocking; the more interesting thing though is: The impression that this codec reduces resolution doesn't seem to be all untrue - quoting again:
"It uses an in-codec scaler and the actual encoded picture size can vary in both dimensions between GOPs"That (and deblocking) should explain the high CPU load on playback, too.

I think the most striking characteristics of RatDVD (blurriness, strong compression) are mostly explained now by these two:
- reduced resolution encoding
- deblocking

bond

10th June 2005, 10:52

indeed very interesting

tough i find very funny his statemtents to have to devlop an own codec because
1) keeping mpeg-2 features, for being able to do "transcoding" and not decoding/encoding
2) not using patented technologies

i would say that his tool indeed simply does decoding/reencoding (cause how else could you change the gop structure and use loop, reduced resolution?), so something like bitrate peeling isnt used

about patented technologies: well as long as he doesnt show any specs he will be on the save side with this claim, but i heavily doubt it that his tool doesnt use any patented tech (unless he is a good lawyer too :D )
after all he uses patented technology already with using ac3 and therefore isnt "on the save side" legally (at least in western countries)

would have been a chance for ogg theora/vorbis useage :)

Enots_

10th June 2005, 10:59

As the codec is too weak to be actual MPEG-4, I tend to believe it is a 'Frankenstein'-MPEG-1 or -2 with some MPEG-4 features (from various levels and profiles) thrown in.

Bollocks. MPEG-4 is a bitstream definition... Although bitstream does set some upper limits to the quality you can achieve they set no lower limits. Infact don't take my word for it - eliminate all inter-mode decisions in Xvid and it'll still produce Xvid conform streams but they'll look like shit at bitrates that worked well before...

Teegedeck

10th June 2005, 13:22

Bollocks. MPEG-4 is a bitstream definition... Although bitstream does set some upper limits to the quality you can achieve they set no lower limits. Infact don't take my word for it - eliminate all inter-mode decisions in Xvid and it'll still produce Xvid conform streams but they'll look like shit at bitrates that worked well before...
So your point is, it might as well be a bad MPEG-4 implementation?

708145

10th June 2005, 13:29

So your point is, it might as well be a bad MPEG-4 implementation?

It seems to be much closer to what On2 does. In-codec scaling and such.

bis besser,
Tobias

Teegedeck

10th June 2005, 14:05

bond, these are some interesting points you came up with in the cdfreaks-forum.

Can the devel have written such statements not knowing he contradicted himself?

bond

10th June 2005, 14:36

Can the devel have written such statements not knowing he contradicted himself?
hm i dont know actually, he might refer to the ideas that the same video coding formats can encode themselves best (eg a mpeg-2 video codec can reencode mpeg-2 best), but i never saw any real proove for that

MaXiMuS

13th June 2005, 22:36

More Codec info from RatDVD FAQ (http://www.ratdvd.dk/faq.htm)

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.

bourtzovlakas

13th June 2005, 22:40

There is also a new version....
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/ratDVD/1117684936/1

* Tagging with IMDB support
* Shellextension to display ratDVDs with DVD cover in Windows Explorer
* Windows 2000 support
* AC-3 SP/DIF support (see settings tool)
* Implemented warning for corrupted input material from DVD
* Some optimizations regarding speed
* Bug Fixes: Delete only created destination folder when canceling conversion to DVD
* Bug Fixes: Convert to DVD creates separate folder in which the VIDEO_TS is stored
* Bug Fixes: VIDEO_TS title search pointers corrected
* Bug Fixes: Fix for DVDs created with DVDlab(Pro)
* Bug Fixes: Fix for “list index out of bounds” when removing specific titles on some DVDs
* Bug Fixes: Fix for pink blocks occurring on specific chapter changes on some discs when reconverting to DVD
* Bug Fixes: Fix for displaying three/five black/white images during playback on some computers
* Bug Fixes: Fix for subtitle handling in .ratDVD playback (subtitles were disyplayed too often)
* Bug Fixes: Flickering in progress dialog when converting stills or very short titles