ratDVD! Anyone used this one yet?

[shhas]

Has anyone used this program here...
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/6481.cfm

I just read about it.. very sweet indeed. Supposedly, it's a new compression format without much loss of quality to go from a DVD-9 to about 3 gig preserving all menus and angles. It also claims that you can reconvert to regular DVD again without much noticable loss for average user. I read some posts on it and it might be true.

[dvd_maniac]

looking over at the thread on Doom9 it looks like it takes too long to be usable right now. 4-8 hours to compress from 7GB to 1.5GB?

Also, would the resulting files be playable in Sage?

[shhas]

Yes, I just read that too. That is way toooo much time to compress and expand. I probably try it over the weekend and see what it does.

[GbrNole]

there's no way that program is going to be able to compete with nero avc. ateme is setting some pretty high standards.

[SHS]

To me ratDVD is just another transcoding tools

[stanger89]

And with it's proprietary codec, it's dead before it gets going. VC1 and H.264 are the codecs of the future.

[Kanati]

dvdshrink is what I use and it's perfectly acceptable loss in quality for what it brings to the table.

[stanger89]

I must be too picky or something, any loss is unacceptable

[dvd_maniac]

there's no way that program is going to be able to compete with nero avc. ateme is setting some pretty high standards.

wouldn't it be great if the idea of ratdvd and Ateme were fused?
I shrink all my dvd's to around 300MB using Recode Standard AVC at 350kbps
Results look great on 57" HDTV using s-video. Now if I could keep the whole dvd at around 500-600MB using AVC and have it be one file then I should be able to have Sage play it using the External Video Player feature in Cayar's or other STV.

Now wouldn't that be something???

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

wouldn't it be great if the idea of ratdvd and Ateme were fused?

It's called HD-DVD

I shrink all my dvd's to around 300MB using Recode Standard AVC at 350kbps
Results look great on 57" HDTV using s-video.

I was about to say something, until I saw S-Video, even with H.265, there's no way 350kbps is enough to come close to DVD quality. You might be able to get by with 1Mbps. H.264 is not 22x more efficient than MPEG-2, more like 4, and that's probably being optomistic.

Of course, I do have to ask, What the heck! are you doing running S-Video to an HDTV? That's heresy.

[dvd_maniac]

I have an ATI AIW 9800 Pro and the DVI output gives me a very limited resolution and overscan issues, samw with Component. I just have not gotten around to fiddling with it and I am getting mixed signals about whether the ati hdtv adapter would help.

As for the quality of my encodes, they look pretty close to me, I know it's not DVD quality but it's good enough for me.

[PGPfan]

I just have to ask the naysayers if they've even tried this program? I have, and it's pretty darn good. Yes, it takes a while to encode. So what? It's doing alot of computation. There is no "miracle pill" when it comes to video codecs where they maintain HD quality, take 13 minutes to process, on a P4 2.0G machine, etc.

Fact is, this codec already uses a modified H.264. It is proprietary to avoid having to pay royalties for the license to use H.264. As long as there is no hardware encoder available for H.264, this codec (for pretty much all usages) is just as good when set to "high" quality. It does fully retain extra features, etc. which is a BIG PLUS. It 'can' create a fully compatible DVD that you can give to a buddy. NOBODY else can do that with full compatibility like this (and it 'can' be made to look very good on this DVD).

It is the ideal 'media server' application. Small file sizes, great picture, ALL FEATURES INTACT, great audio, and the ability to create a DVD when wanted. What, exactly, is it lacking feature wise?

What it does need is the ability to distribute the work during encoding to other machines on your local network that are otherwise idle. DVD ReBuilder has this available and it works VERY well. And finally, the playback compatibility needs to be tweaked a little since TheaterTek won't play it back, but that's a small, temporary price to pay for what this can do.

-PGPfan

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PGPfan

I just have to ask the naysayers if they've even tried this program? I have, and it's pretty darn good. Yes, it takes a while to encode. So what? It's doing alot of computation. There is no "miracle pill" when it comes to video codecs where they maintain HD quality, take 13 minutes to process, on a P4 2.0G machine, etc.

First, I'm not saying it's not good, or can't result in good PQ (as you deduce I haven't seen it).

However, the fact remains that it's a proprietary codec, IMO unless they switch to a standard one (H.264, VC1/WM9, XviD, DivX, etc) it's doomed to failure. There have already been codecs that have come and gone because they were non-standard. Really, Divx only exists because it was the first MPEG-4 codec, thus it has a foothold, XviD somewhat rode that wave. But realistically, H.264 and VC1 are the codecs that will replace MPEG2 as the standards, and XviD will probably continue as long as it's free. It would, however, take something truely groundbreaking to survive against the current competition.

The other comment (from me) is not that it's bad, just that, IMO, 300MB for a DVD is a completely unreasonable expectation, at least on a good display.

-edit, doing a bit of an experiment regarding this, converting Star Wars EP IV to 300kbps H.264, we'll see how it does (Nero Digital FWIW).
-end edit.

Fact is, this codec already uses a modified H.264. It is proprietary to avoid having to pay royalties for the license to use H.264. As long as there is no hardware encoder available for H.264, this codec (for pretty much all usages) is just as good when set to "high" quality. It does fully retain extra features, etc. which is a BIG PLUS. It 'can' create a fully compatible DVD that you can give to a buddy. NOBODY else can do that with full compatibility like this (and it 'can' be made to look very good on this DVD).

That's all well and good, but the fact that they made it non-standard will be a killer IMO. Plus I just don't like it when they claim they can go to small and back to no loss. Fact is, even if you go from 8Mbps DVD to 8Mbps H.264 there will be loss, and there would be more going back.

It is the ideal 'media server' application. Small file sizes, great picture, ALL FEATURES INTACT, great audio, and the ability to create a DVD when wanted. What, exactly, is it lacking feature wise?

Personally, one of the biggest things I love about my media server, is that I don't have to deal with all the extra features, it goes strait to the main movie. But, that's a personal decision.

[dvd_maniac]

Hey Stranger
I would agree that 300kbps for a Star Wars movie would be horrible. I use 350kbps for almost all movies except for Sci-Fi and High Action movies where I use 400-500kbps. The 300MB is just an average.

[footmasta]

I just tried this ratdvd and think its crap. The movies come out looking like crap and about every other time windows media player crashes.

[PGPfan]

Originally Posted by stanger89

First, I'm not saying it's not good, or can't result in good PQ (as you deduce I haven't seen it).

However, the fact remains that it's a proprietary codec, IMO unless they switch to a standard one (H.264, VC1/WM9, XviD, DivX, etc) it's doomed to failure. There have already been codecs that have come and gone because they were non-standard. Really, Divx only exists because it was the first MPEG-4 codec, thus it has a foothold, XviD somewhat rode that wave. But realistically, H.264 and VC1 are the codecs that will replace MPEG2 as the standards, and XviD will probably continue as long as it's free. It would, however, take something truely groundbreaking to survive against the current competition.

Stanger, I'm not sure what you mean here. I didn't begin to say that it will suplant H.264. In fact, I've done a lot of brainstorming with some devs regarding a project with H.264, and I agree it is the 'coming' standard. However, without HARDWARE it really offers no significant advantage over any other high-end video codec. Of course 'Rat' will never be adopted by the industry for obvious reasons, where H.264 will but that (to me) isn't the point. What 'is' the point is whether the codec can offer superior quality preservation at a lower bitrates. In much the same manner as H.264, this can. I believe that for the intended purpose (and as a media server) this is better than H.264 considering it was designed solely for working with DVD's, whereas H.264 is just a codec (no dvd structure maintained, etc.) with no option for support on current generation DVD STB's.

Originally Posted by stanger89

That's all well and good, but the fact that they made it non-standard will be a killer IMO. Plus I just don't like it when they claim they can go to small and back to no loss. Fact is, even if you go from 8Mbps DVD to 8Mbps H.264 there will be loss, and there would be more going back.

Perhaps I missed something but I don't believe that they were ever referring to image quality going small to back with NO loss. They certainly aren't that foolish. What they meant was the 'dvd structure' was perfect/totally intact.
Of course there is no way that you are going small and back without loss, but for the rare times you do create a hard copy (for a friend, family member, kids movies, etc.) having some loss isn't noticeable for most folk.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Personally, one of the biggest things I love about my media server, is that I don't have to deal with all the extra features, it goes strait to the main movie. But, that's a personal decision.

Here is where we differ. I (like you) prefer going 'strait to the main movie', but I don't want to force my preference on the person choosing to use my media server. This program lets you have it either way, so everyone is happy.

-PGPfan

[stanger89]

First off, some results.

ratDVD, Crap, at least now. I've tried twice to "rat" Star Wars Ep IV, and both times it has failed, first time, it gave me some wierd error, and didn't create an output, second time it created an output file, but it crashes whatever I try to play it with (and I tried restarting too). So I don't know what the quality is like, but it's not ready for prime time yet.

Now H.264, I'll give it credit for being efficient, but I must say 300kbps is definitely not enough for anywhere close to DVD quality. 1Mbps is probably more reasonable. I also tried (for the first time) to actually shrink something with DVDShrink, and with DVDShink set to ~38% (not sure but as small as it would go) I shrunk (MPEG-2 with AC3 audio mind you) Star Wars from 6GB to 2.6GB, and the result was much better than AVC, again I'd guess AVC could get you down to about 1-1.5GB.

Now a couple interesting points raised in that doom9 thread (from people who managed to get it to work.

It appears the the ".ratDVD" container is just zip/rar, I can open it in winrar and look at the contents (although my archive is corrupted for some reason). Further, it appears that it just uses MPEG2 for the video format, but perhaps with some filter tweaking to hide that fact, also the audio format seems to be AC3. See here for the details:
http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?...7&postcount=29

So, what we have is a "clever" packaging of essentailly DVDshrink output in a zip file (you can shrink in DVDShrink and maintain everything as well).

It's just looking more and more questionable to me, the website clearly states that it's intended to facilitate downloading of full DVDs, claims to be the authors own work, but uses standard Zip, MPEG, and AC3 (but without acknowledging it). Right now it just seems too much like a hack/underground thing to me.

One more thing. On the theory that it is just recoding in MPEG 2, I was curious to find out what it's doing, then I remembered, DVDShrink has the "Deep Analysis" feature, that goes through and looks really hard for what to remove (horrible explanation), so I fired up DVDS and started a "Deep Analysis", and it's really slow, just like rat does. It's looking more and more like it's just recoding MPEG2.

Originally Posted by PGPfan

Stanger, I'm not sure what you mean here. I didn't begin to say that it will suplant H.264. In fact, I've done a lot of brainstorming with some devs regarding a project with H.264, and I agree it is the 'coming' standard. However, without HARDWARE it really offers no significant advantage over any other high-end video codec.

First off, there's the fact that it apparently doesn't use a high-end codec, second there will be hardware, HD-DVD (be it from Tosh, Sony, or a merge) will bring hardware support for H.264 and VC1 to the masses.

Of course 'Rat' will never be adopted by the industry for obvious reasons, where H.264 will but that (to me) isn't the point. What 'is' the point is whether the codec can offer superior quality preservation at a lower bitrates. In much the same manner as H.264, this can. I believe that for the intended purpose (and as a media server) this is better than H.264 considering it was designed solely for working with DVD's, whereas H.264 is just a codec (no dvd structure maintained, etc.) with no option for support on current generation DVD STB's.

Leaving asside the questionable motives and techniques, here is my point in a nutshell. If this were a container, like OGM, MKV, AVI, it's a novel idea, essentailly DVD but with a better codec. Now if it were designed to use a standard codec (Xvid, DivX, H.264, VC1), or better yet, an arbitrary codec (like OGM/AVI), I think it would become quite popular.

The problem is it's locked to a single, (theoretically) proprietary codec, which IMO is what will kill it. Unless you've got a lot of pull/push to make it so (like Microsoft) it's nearly impossible to make such a thing mainstream. You're more likely to have support limited to a few apps.

Perhaps I missed something but I don't believe that they were ever referring to image quality going small to back with NO loss. They certainly aren't that foolish. What they meant was the 'dvd structure' was perfect/totally intact.

Maybe it's just my aversion to lossy compression, I just don't like the idea of lossy compression. The entire purpose of this thing it to shrink a DVD for transport, and the unshrink it. They don't make any claims about quality apparently, just features.

FWIW, I hate MP3 also.

Of course there is no way that you are going small and back without loss, but for the rare times you do create a hard copy (for a friend, family member, kids movies, etc.) having some loss isn't noticeable for most folk.

Of course you could quite easilly (with less loss) Shink it with DVD Shrink and maintain all the features as well, and it would be several orders of magnitude faster.

Here is where we differ. I (like you) prefer going 'strait to the main movie', but I don't want to force my preference on the person choosing to use my media server. This program lets you have it either way, so everyone is happy.

-PGPfan

Of course until it's supported by the likes of TheaterTek, IMO it's not a viable media server format.

[RedR]

Heya,

Well I gave ratDVD a spin and I must say I am quite impressed! I set the quality at 75% to just see what'd happen. The end result was a DVD from 4.3GB down to 630MB. The quality was very good and very acceptable. Thus I will continue to use ratDVD until something better comes along.

Enjoy,
RedR

[shhas]

I finally used it too. But it took forever (over 3.5 hours) to process a 7 gig movie on pretty robust system. Unfortunately, I don't have patience for that.

So far, the best quality I have found is the Nero digital format. It would have been so nice if for example the Plextor USB Convertx could process on the fly to Nero digital. On the other hand, with prices of storage coming down so fast, this might be a non-issue in the near future.

[glbrown]

It's already a non issue here at the haven. A DVD+RW 4X is ~60 cents and takes 15 minutes to write. Just cleaned another 80 gig off my drives this morning. The great quality setting allows most 2 hour movies to fit on a disk and they look about as good as a normal DVD. Of course, I can't see anyway so ymmv.

-gary-