AfterDawn: News

ratDVD v0.6 released

The innovative DVD Container format/application ratDVD has been updated to version 0.6. The new version includes:

-Windows 2000 support
-AC-3 SP/DIF support (see settings tool)
-Implemented warning for corrupted input material from DVD
-Some optimizations regarding speed
-Tagging for ratDVD movie collections

With its ability to compress complete DVDs incl. all features, menus, navigation, etc. to a high quality 1.x GB file, ratDVD is the ideal format for DVD movie collections and DVD sharing. The new ratDVD 0.6 now enables tagging information like title, actors, director, plot, etc. to be embedded into the ratDVD file.



As we all know from MP3, once you get a huge collection of titles, tagging is the one thing you really need. Until now, downloaded movies were just a filename on your harddisk. With ratDVD tagging information, you can build your own digital library of virtually hundreds of movies and never lose track of which one is which.

The ratDVD tagging information is retrieved online from imdb.com and is stored as XML inside the ratDVD file. Windows Explorer displays all ratDVD files with the original cover as thumbnail. P2P programs could use this information to provide detailed information about a ratDVD when searching. Source code for developers will be made available shortly.

The new version also includes the following bugfixes:

-Delete only created destination folder when cancelling conversion to DVD
-Convert to DVD creates separate folder in which the VIDEO_TS is stored.
-VIDEO_TS title search pointers corrected
-Fix for DVDs created with DVDlab(Pro)
-Fix for "list index out of bounds" when removing specific titles on some DVDs
-Fix for pink blocks occurring on specific chapter changes on some discs when reconverting to DVD
-Fix for displaying three/five black/white images during playback on some computers
-Fix for subtitle handling in .ratDVD playback (subtitles were displayed too often)
-Flickering in progress dialog when converting stills or very short titles

You can download the latest version at:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_tools/ratdvd.cfm

After downloading, visit the ratDVD forum and check out the guide (yet to be updated to v0.6).

Written by: Jari Ketola @ 13 Jun 2005 9:03

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• 5 comments

• Ghostdog

  I still don´t understand how they can compress that much data without loosing huge amounts of quality.

  14.6.2005 01:34 #1

• redtab99

  ahhh... I want the time I wasted I this back. They try to make it sound better than what it is.

  14.6.2005 02:20 #2

• jim_dandy

  I tried this program just for grins, and there was a huge loss in the quality of the picture after I converted it back, and burned it.

  14.6.2005 16:37 #3

• Phantom69

  i think this soft is still in its EARLY stages of development, i'll check again in a couple of months on the development of this soft. same... sounds so promising. oh well, hope its better by the time i get back to it...

  14.6.2005 23:49 #4

• 4790tom

  I thinks its a great application for compressing DVDs for file sharing, but unfortunately the default quality setting produces pretty mediocre (VHS or less) results.
  
  Raising the quality setting further to say 125 creates a much better result, but also results in a file that's substantially larger > 3.x gigs - an unreasonable size for file sharing IMHO and too close to the result one can easily obtain with DVDShrink. (Not to mention the fact that I can generate an ISO file of a movie with DVDShrink in roughly 30 minutes, while ratDVD averaged 3 to 5 hours to render a movie on my system.
  
  WMP10 and Media Player Classic both had some intermittent problems playing .ratDVD files. And the results were often far from perfect. I encountered numerous instances of macro blocking and other video artifacts in actions scenes of movies such as "Return of the Jedi."
  
  

  15.6.2005 09:10 #5