frame|The ratDVD logo
RatDVD (originally stylized "ratDVD") is the name of a proprietary container format for digital video, developed by Peter Jensen and a group of Russian and Danish university students. The container format is a compressed archive format that holds all features of DVD-Video 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. thus significantly reducing the overall size: a typical DVD (usually above 4 gigabytes) 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 on a computer (as long as the needed codec has been installed) with a DirectShow-compatible DVD player, or converted back into standard DVD format. The program does not support copy-protected DVDs.