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Karohh · 12-06-2005

I ran a short video quality test with xvid and ratdvd. This is what I did and found out. You can download the files at from the following location and judge yourself:

StarWars.VIDEO_TS.original.zip
StarWars.ratDVD
StarWars.xvid.avi
StarWars.VTS_01_1.from.ratdvd.VOB
StarWars_from.xvid.m2v

I don’t know if there is any traffic limit for these files. Maybe it would be good if someone could put them on some mirror.

Here is what I did:

1. Used DVDShrink to create a short 20 sec. DVD without audio and subtitles from Star Wars V of 18,5 MB (File: StarWars.VIDEO_TS.original)
2. Fed this DVD into ratDVD and got out a 3,9MB ratDVD file (File: StarWars.ratDVD)
3. Fed this into xvid (the Gordian knot way) and got out an 3,9MB XVID file (File: StarWars.xvid.avi)

Since we all know that players may play the files differently depending on a multitude of parameters I now converted both files back to MPEG-2 where playback shouldn’t do any smoothing, etc.

4. Used the standard ratDVD program to rebuild the DVD and got out a DVD structure with this VOB of 14,3 MB (File: StarWars.VTS_01_1.from.ratdvd.VOB)
5. Used TMPGEnc (using constant quality) to convert the Xvid file to M2v of the same size (14,4 MB) than the ratDVD vob file (File: StarWars_from.xvid.m2v)

Before anyone complains, here is what I think is a little bit unfair but I don’t think that these details really matter:

• When I created the xvid files I used n-path because otherwise it wouldn’t hit the desired size. RatDVD defined the size and had only one run.
• The ratDVD was is size almost equivalent to the xvid although it had to carry the additional dvd information (navigation, etc. – no idea what size this would be)
• The final file size of the “unratted” MPEG-2 was identical in size with the M2V that came out of the xvid file although M2V does not include all the muxing, DVD navigation, etc. I don’t know how much this is but I’m guessing only very few percent, if at all

So, what do we see? When I looked at it I like the ratDVD file a little better although or maybe because it was a little smoother. When my roommate looked at it he liked the xvid one a bit better – interestingly because it was less smooth. So at the end, this quality comparison ended as so many of these “what is better” comparisons that I have seen – it is really in the eye of the observer and what every individual likes more.

The one thing that can be derived from this is that if you need only a bare title from a DVD, it is fine to stay with xvid. If you want the complete DVD, ratDVD is the way to go.

12-06-2005	#20 (permalink)
Karohh New on Forum Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 22	Re: Quality Thread I ran a short video quality test with xvid and ratdvd. This is what I did and found out. You can download the files at from the following location and judge yourself: StarWars.VIDEO_TS.original.zip StarWars.ratDVD StarWars.xvid.avi StarWars.VTS_01_1.from.ratdvd.VOB StarWars_from.xvid.m2v I don’t know if there is any traffic limit for these files. Maybe it would be good if someone could put them on some mirror. Here is what I did: 1. Used DVDShrink to create a short 20 sec. DVD without audio and subtitles from Star Wars V of 18,5 MB (File: StarWars.VIDEO_TS.original) 2. Fed this DVD into ratDVD and got out a 3,9MB ratDVD file (File: StarWars.ratDVD) 3. Fed this into xvid (the Gordian knot way) and got out an 3,9MB XVID file (File: StarWars.xvid.avi) Since we all know that players may play the files differently depending on a multitude of parameters I now converted both files back to MPEG-2 where playback shouldn’t do any smoothing, etc. 4. Used the standard ratDVD program to rebuild the DVD and got out a DVD structure with this VOB of 14,3 MB (File: StarWars.VTS_01_1.from.ratdvd.VOB) 5. Used TMPGEnc (using constant quality) to convert the Xvid file to M2v of the same size (14,4 MB) than the ratDVD vob file (File: StarWars_from.xvid.m2v) Before anyone complains, here is what I think is a little bit unfair but I don’t think that these details really matter: • When I created the xvid files I used n-path because otherwise it wouldn’t hit the desired size. RatDVD defined the size and had only one run. • The ratDVD was is size almost equivalent to the xvid although it had to carry the additional dvd information (navigation, etc. – no idea what size this would be) • The final file size of the “unratted” MPEG-2 was identical in size with the M2V that came out of the xvid file although M2V does not include all the muxing, DVD navigation, etc. I don’t know how much this is but I’m guessing only very few percent, if at all So, what do we see? When I looked at it I like the ratDVD file a little better although or maybe because it was a little smoother. When my roommate looked at it he liked the xvid one a bit better – interestingly because it was less smooth. So at the end, this quality comparison ended as so many of these “what is better” comparisons that I have seen – it is really in the eye of the observer and what every individual likes more. The one thing that can be derived from this is that if you need only a bare title from a DVD, it is fine to stay with xvid. If you want the complete DVD, ratDVD is the way to go.