RatDVD (originally stylized "ratDVD") is the name of a proprietary
container format for
digital video
Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...
, developed by Peter Jensen and a group of Russian and Danish university students.
The container format is a
compressed archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...
format that holds all features of
DVD-Video
DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia in the 2000s until it was supplanted by the high-definition Blu-r ...
in a single file. Unlike other container formats like
Matroska
Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Adva ...
, it is designed to accurately mirror the exact feature set of standard video DVDs, facilitating round-tripping back to the DVD-Video format.
RatDVD files are created by a computer program of the same name.
The video portion of a RatDVD file is compression by a proprietary
video codec
A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...
named "XEB", thus significantly reducing the overall size: A typical DVD (usually above 4
gigabyte
The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix ''giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB.
This defini ...
s) can be compressed to about 1 or 2 GB, with some loss in video quality due to recompression.
The resulting RatDVD file can then be played directly in a computer (as long as the needed codec has been installed) by a DirectShow-compatible DVD player, or converted back into standard DVD format.
RatDVD program is
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...
and works on
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. The last
version
Version may refer to:
Computing
* Software version, a set of numbers that identify a unique evolution of a computer program
* VERSION (CONFIG.SYS directive), a configuration directive in FreeDOS
Music
* Cover version
* Dub version
* Remix
* ''Ve ...
of this freeware was 0.78 and was released in 2005.
The program does not support copy-protected DVDs.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ratdvd
Windows-only freeware