RatDVD (originally stylized "ratDVD") is the name of a proprietary

container format A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. No ...

for

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data Digital data, in information theory and information systems, is information represented as a string of discrete symbols eac ...

, 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 ...

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- ...

in a single file. Unlike other container formats like Matroska, 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 definit ...

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 ...

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 ...

. 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

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ratdvd Windows-only freeware

References

Further reading

External links