Sources
CAM
A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this wont be possible, so the camera may shake. Also seating placement isn’t always idle, and it might be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there’s text on the screen, but a lot of times these are left with triangular borders on the top and bottom of the screen. Sound is taken from the onboard microphone of the camera, and especially in comedies, laughter can often be heard during the film. Due to these factors picture and sound quality are usually quite poor, but sometimes we’re lucky, and the theater will be fairly empty and a fairly clear signal will be heard.
TELESYNC (TS)
A telesync is the same spec as a CAM except it uses an external audio source (most likely an audio jack in the chair for hard of hearing people). A direct audio source does not ensure a good quality audio source, as a lot of background noise can interfere. A lot of the times a telesync is filmed in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera, giving a better picture quality. Quality ranges drastically, check the sample before downloading the full release. A high percentage of Telesyncs are CAMs that have been mislabeled.
TELECINE (TC)
A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the reels. Sound and picture should be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio, although 4:3 telecines have existed. A great example is the JURASSIC PARK 3 TC.
SCREENER (SCR)
A pre VHS tape, sent to rental stores, and various other places for promotional use. A screener is supplied on a VHS tape, and is usually in a 4:3 (full screen) a/r, although letterboxed screeners are sometimes found. The main draw back is a “ticker” (a message that scrolls past at the bottom of the screen, with the copyright and anti-copy telephone number). Also, if the tape contains any serial numbers, or any other markings that could lead to the source of the tape, these will have to be blocked, usually with a black mark over the section. This is sometimes only for a few seconds, but unfortunately on some copies this will last for the entire film, and some can be quite big. Depending on the equipment used, screener quality can range from excellent if done from a MASTER copy, to very poor if done on an old VHS recorder through poor capture equipment on a copied tape. Most screeners are transferred to VCD, but a few attempts at SVCD have occurred, some looking better than others.
DVD-SCREENER (DVDscr)
Same premise as a screener, but transferred off a DVD. Usually letterbox , but without the extras that a DVD retail would contain. The ticker is not usually in the black bars, and will disrupt the viewing. If the ripper has any skill, a DVDscr should be very good. Usually
R1
Region 1 is the DVD region code for North America. This is usually the top of the line releases with the latest movies. However, these releases usually take longer to hit p2p sites.
R3
Region 3 is from Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
The quality of R3 retail is very similar to dvdscr’s.they must use a TS or a cam English audio rip because there high quality audio would only be in a Region 3 language.
R5
An R5 is a warez release, made with a telecine machine from an analog source. Unlike a TC, the digitization is performed by the studio itself with very professional (and expensive) equipment and usually from the original source. The purpose of it is to create a high quality digital copy (usually for a later DVD release). But unlike a DVD, an R5 is released before the digital post-processing is finished. The quality of the rips can differ, but an R5 can be almost indistinguishable from a DVDRip since many movies are published on DVD with minimal editing.
The name R5 refers to DVD Region 5, which includes the former Soviet Union, the Indian subcontinent, and much of Africa. In an effort to compete with movie piracy in these areas, the movie industry chose to create a new format for DVD releases that could be produced more quickly and less expensively than traditional DVD releases. R5 releases differ from normal releases in that they lack both the image post-processing and special features that are common on DVD releases. This allows the film to be released for at the same time that DVD Screeners are released. Since DVD Screeners are the chief source of high-quality pre-DVD release pirated movies (in comparison to cam or telesync, mostly), this allows the movie studios to beat the pirates to market. Bootlegged copies of these releases are often distributed on the Internet.
DVDRip
A copy of the final released DVD. If possible this is released PRE retail (for example, Star Wars episode 2) again, should be excellent quality. DVDrips are released in SVCD and DivX/XviD.
BRRip (Blu-Ray Rip)
Is a copy of a Blu-Ray disc. I usually has a display resolution of 2 different types, 720p and 1080p and most of them use an .mkv container. Beeing able to hold a very large amount of data Blu-Ray rips are ofter encoded into HDx264 or XviD formats, which reduces its filesize drastically.
VHSRip
Transferred off a retail VHS, mainly skating/sports videos and XXX releases.
TVRip
TV episode that is either from Network (capped using digital cable/satellite boxes are preferable) or PRE-AIR from satellite feeds sending the program around to networks a few days earlier (do not contain “dogs” but sometimes have flickers etc) Some programs such as WWF Raw Is War contain extra parts, and the “dark matches” and camera/commentary tests are included on the rips. PDTV is capped from a digital TV PCI card, generally giving the best results, and groups tend to release in SVCD for these. VCD/SVCD/DivX/XviD rips are all supported by the TV scene.
WORKPRINT (WP)
A workprint is a copy of the film that has not been finished. It can be missing scenes, music, and quality can range from excellent to very poor. Some WPs are very different from the final print (Men In Black is missing all the aliens, and has actors in their places) and others can contain extra scenes (Jay and Silent Bob) . WPs can be nice additions to the collection once a good quality final has been obtained.
DivX Re-Enc
A DivX re-enc is a film that has been taken from its original VCD source, and re-encoded into a small DivX file. Most commonly found on file sharers, these are usually labeled something like Film.Name.Group(1of2) etc. Common groups are SMR and TND. These aren’t really worth downloading, unless you’re that unsure about a film u only want a 200mb copy of it. Generally avoid.
Watermarks
A lot of films come from Asian Silvers/PDVD (see below) and these are tagged by the people responsible. Usually with a letter/initials or a little logo, generally in one of the corners. Most famous are the “Z” “A” and “Globe” watermarks.
Asian Silvers / PDVD
These are films put out by eastern bootleggers, and these are usually bought by some groups to put out as their own. Silvers are very cheap and easily available in a lot of countries, and its easy to put out a release, which is why there are so many on the scene at the moment, mainly from smaller groups who don’t last more than a few releases. PDVDs are the same thing pressed onto a DVD. They have removable subtitles, and the quality is usually better than the silvers. These are ripped like a normal DVD, but usually released as VCD.
Satellite Rip
Usually refers to a movie that was ripped off satellite television. This tends to happen for movies that have not been released on DVD yet (such as the Star Wars trilogy) and the quality can be extremely good.
LD Cap aka LaserDisc Rip
As the name suggests this is ripping from a LaserDisc. Athough better quality than a VHS tape it is not as good (although some people will debate this) as a DVD. The most well-known LD Caps are the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies ripped by Kramerica.
Formats
VCD
VCD is an mpeg1 based format, with a constant bitrate of 1150kbit at a resolution of 352×240 (NTCS). VCDs are generally used for lower quality transfers (CAM/TS/TC/Screener(VHS)/TVrip(analogue) in order to make smaller file sizes, and fit as much on a single disc as possible. Both VCDs and SVCDs are timed in minutes, rather than MB, so when looking at an mpeg, it may appear larger than the disc capacity, in reality you can fit 74min on a CDR74.
SVCD
SVCD is mpeg2 based (same as DVD) which allows variable bit-rates of up to 2500kbits at a resolution of 480×480 (NTSC) which is then decompressed into a 4:3 aspect ratio when played back. Due to the variable bit-rate, the length you can fit on a single CDR is not fixed, but generally between 35-60 Mins are the most common. To get a better SVCD encode using variable bit-rates, it is important to use multiple “passes”. This takes a lot longer, but the results are far clearer.
XVCD/XSVCD
These are basically VCD/SVCD that don’t obey the “rules”. They are both capable of much higher resolutions and bit-rates, but it all depends on the player to whether the disc can be played. X(S)VCD are total non-standards, and are usually home-ripped by people who didn’t intend to release them.
KVCD
This is a newer format which is growing fast. It is a way to encode your AVI files to MPEG so that you can put them in your DVD standalone and watch them on your television. The revolutionary thing about it is that the mpeg files created are not bigger in size than the original avi! The downside is that not all DVD standalones can actually play this new KVCD format.
DivX / XviD
DivX is a format designed for multimedia platforms. It uses two codecs, one low motion, one high motion. Most older films were encoded in low motion only, and they have problems with high motion too. A method known as SBC (Smart Bit-rate Control) was developed which switches codecs at the encoding stage, making a much better print. The format is Anamorphic and the bit-rate/resolution are interchangeable. Due to the higher processing power required, and the different codecs for playback, its unlikely we’ll see a DVD player capable of playing DivX for quite a while, if at all. There have been players in development which are supposedly capable, but nothing has ever arisen. The majority of PROPER DivX rips (not Re-Encs) are taken from DVDs, and generally up to 2hours in good quality is possible per disc. Various codecs exist, most popular being the original Divx3.11a and the new XviD codecs.
CVD
CVD is a combination of VCD and SVCD formats, and is generally supported by a majority of DVD players. It supports MPEG2 bit-rates of SVCD, but uses a resolution of 352×480(ntsc) as the horizontal resolution is generally less important. Currently no groups release in CVD.
DVD-R
Is the recordable DVD solution that seems to be the most popular (out of DVD-RAM, DVD-R and DVD R). It holds 4.7gb of data per side, and double sided discs are available, so discs can hold nearly 10gb in some circumstances. SVCD mpeg2 images must be converted before they can be burnt to DVD-R and played successfully. DVD>DVDR copies are possible, but sometimes extras/languages have to be removed to stick within the available 4.7gb.
MiniDVD
MiniDVD/cDVD is the same format as DVD but on a standard CDR/CDRW. Because of the high resolution/bit-rates, its only possible to fit about 18-21 mins of footage per disc, and
Blu-Ray:
The successor to the DVD, this format has nearly six times the capacity of a DVD, permitting it to carry movies in high definition format, providing the best in-home video entertainment ever developed.
x264 / H264
H264 / x264 is the next-generation video compression format. H264 / x264 is also known as MPEG-4 AVC. Developed for use in high definition systems such as HDTV, Blu-ray and HD-DVD as well as low resolution portable devices such as Sony PSP, iPod and Smartphones. H264 offers better quality at lower file sizes than both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ASP (DivX / XviD).
H.264 is the original commercial version of this format which is used by the studios and commercial manufacturers. x264 is the freeware version developed by open source coders to mirror the format and is used by many underground encoders and rippers as the format when encoding or converting into this format.
Most commercial or download movies in the H264 / x264 format are in either MKV or MP4 files, these are the most popular containers at the moment for this popular high quality/low file size format as the are compatible with the standards created by the manufacturers of many brands ( Quicktime, Blu-Ray, HD DVD, AVCHD).
H.264 is also sometimes referred to as MP4, this is technically incorrect. MP4 is a container format much like AVI or MKV and it can be used to “house” many different types of compression codecs, not just H.264. It is true though that MP4 is a very popular choice for the H.264 format. MP4 should not be confused with MPEG-4 video either.
Misc Info
Resolution
A measurement of the detail that can be displayed – or ‘resolved’ – in a video image. Resolution is commonly expressed as the number of horizontal lines (measured vertically) used to create the image, with higher numbers indicating more detailed images.
Screen Resolutions
Pixel
Short for ‘picture element’. This is group of three tiny dots (one red, one green and one blue) that together form a single coloured dot. The picture consists of hundreds of thousands of these coloured dots arranged in a grid.
HD (High Definition)
A more detailed video format with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels or, more commonly, 1920 by 1080 pixels.
HDTV (High Definition Digital television)
A term referring to the highest quality digital television format, providing greater sharpness and detail than standard definition television (SDTV).
1080i
The name applied to the HDTV standard most commonly available in Australia. This delivers digital video with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels (1920 x 1080), or 1440 by 1080 pixels (1440 x 1080), in interlaced format.
1080p
The video standard used for Blu-ray, the highest quality currently available. This provides 1920 by 1080 pixel resolution (1920 x 1080), normally at 24 or 60 frames per second.
576i
The name applied to Australia’s standard definition TV system. This is basically the same as PAL.
576p
According to Australian law, this is a high definition format. In reality, it offers little over the 576i of SDTV. It is used in Australia by SBS in what it claims is its HD channel.
720p
A high definition digital video format where the image has a width of 1280 pixels and is 720 pixels tall (1280 X 720). The video is in progressive scan format, and may be delivered either 50 times per second (in Australia on ABC HDTV) or 60 times per second (in the US with downloadable HD movies and TV).
SD (Standard Definition)
The standard picture resolution similar to that seen on DVD. This has a resolution of 720 by 576 pixels (720 x 576).
Regional Coding
This was designed to stop people buying American DVDs and watching them earlier in other countries, or for older films where world distribution is handled by different companies. A lot of players can either be hacked with a chip, or via a remote to disable this.
RCE
RCE (Regional Coding Enhancement) was designed to overcome “Multiregion” players, but it had a lot of faults and was overcome. Very few titles are RCE encoded now, and it was very unpopular.
Macrovision
Macrovision is the copy protection employed on most commercial DVDs. Its a system that will display lines and darken the images of copies that are made by sending the VHS signals it can’t understand. Certain DVD players (for example the Dansai 852 from Tescos) have a secret menu where you can disable the macrovision, or a “video stabaliser” costs about 30 pounds from Maplin http://www.maplin.co.uk).
NTSC/PAL
NTSC and PAL are the two main standards used across the world. NTSC for North America and Japan, and PAL for Europe and the rest of the world.
Release Files
RARset
The movies are supplied in RAR form, whether its v2 (rar>.rxx) or v3 (part01.rar > partxx.rar) form.
BIN/CUE
VCD and SVCD films will extract to give a BIN/CUE. Load the .CUE into notepad and make sure the first line contains only a filename, and no path information. Then load the cue into Nero/CDRWin etc and this will burn the VCD/SVCD correctly. TV rips are released as MPEG. DivX files are just the plain DivX – .AVI
NFO
An NFO file is supplied with each movie to promote the group, and give general information about the release, such as format, source, size, and any other notes that may be of use. They are also used to recruit members and acquire hardware for the group.
SFV
Also supplied for each disc is an SFV file. These are mainly used on site level to check each file has been uploaded correctly, but are also handy for people downloading to check they have all the files, and the CRC is correct. A program such as pdSFV or hkSFV is required to use these files.
Resolution
A measurement of the detail that can be displayed – or ‘resolved’ – in a video image. Resolution is commonly expressed as the number of horizontal lines (measured vertically) used to create the image, with higher numbers indicating more detailed images.
The image below represents the differences in the various sources resolution (sorry for the transparent png):
Scene Tags
PROPER
Due to scene rules, whoever releases the first Telesync has won that race (for example). But if the quality of that release is fairly poor, if another group has another telesync (or the same source in higher quality) then the tag PROPER is added to the folder to avoid being duped. PROPER is the most subjective tag in the scene, and a lot of people will generally argue whether the PROPER is better than the original release. A lot of groups release PROPERS just out of desperation due to losing the race. A reason for the PROPER should always be included in the NFO.
SUBBED
In the case of a VCD, if a release is subbed, it usually means it has hard encoded subtitles burnt throughout the movie. These are generally in malaysian/chinese/thai etc, and sometimes there are two different languages, which can take up quite a large amount of the screen. SVCD supports switch able subtitles, so some DVDRips are released with switch able subs. This will be mentioned in the NFO file if included.
UNSUBBED
When a film has had a subbed release in the past, an Unsubbed release may be released
LIMITED
A limited movie means it has had a limited theater run, generally opening in less than 250 theaters, generally smaller films (such as art house films) are released as limited.
INTERNAL
An internal release is done for several reasons. Classic DVD groups do a lot of .INTERNAL. releases, as they wont be dupe’d on it. Also lower quality theater rips are done INTERNAL so not to lower the reputation of the group, or due to the amount of rips done already. An INTERNAL release is available as normal on the groups affiliate sites, but they can’t be traded to other sites without request from the site ops. Some INTERNAL releases still trickle down to IRC/Newsgroups, it usually depends on the title and the popularity.
STV
Straight To Video. Was never released in theaters, and therefore a lot of sites do not allow these.
ASPECT RATIO TAGS
These are *WS* for widescreen (letterbox) and *FS* for Fullscreen.
RECODE
A recode is a previously released version, usually filtered through TMPGenc to remove subtitles, fix color etc. Whilst they can look better, its not looked upon highly as groups are expected to obtain their own sources.
REPACK
If a group releases a bad rip, they will release a Repack which will fix the problems.
NUKED
A film can be nuked for various reasons. Individual sites will nuke for breaking their rules (such as “No Telesyncs”) but if the film has something extremely wrong with it (no soundtrack for 20mins, CD2 is incorrect film/game etc) then a global nuke will occur, and people trading it across sites will lose their credits. Nuked films can still reach other sources such as p2p/usenet, but its a good idea to check why it was nuked first in place. If a group realize there is something wrong, they can request a nuke.
NUKE REASONS this is a list of common reasons a film can be nuked for (generally DVDRip):
STOLEN.FROM.P2P
Lately a very popular and common nuke reason. This basically means that the scene group which pred the release stole it from another source – specifically a peer to peer network (p2p) in this case. In most cases, this means a private BitTorrent tracker, which obtained and released the copy of a movie faster than any other scene source. This nuke reason will not affect your viewer’s experience and many sceners consider it useless as we basically steal the movies anyway.
STOLEN.SRC
Stolen source. Similar or same as the above nuke reason. Scene groups can steal the video or audio also from each other, apart from stealing from peer to peer networks.
BAD.RES
Bad image resolution. The scene rules define allowed image resolutions and their aspect ratios. If a movie doesn’t fit in these rules, it means the image will be probably malformed in a certain way. Many advanced video players allow to change the image resolution, so this can be sometimes fixed at your computer.
BAD.AR
Bad aspect ratio. A similar reason to the above one. Each video was originally filmed and released in a specific aspect ratio (horizontal vs. vertical side). The most common AR is 2.35:1 which is for example a resolution of 640×272 pixels. Bad aspect ratio leads to inproportional image, where characters appear to be either too wide or, more often, too tall. This can be also fixed with some media players.
DUPE
Dupe means simply a dupe. The nuked release was already released by another group earlier, so the nuked one is basically useless, doubled. This doesn’t really matter if you don’t care about the strict scene rules.
UNDERSIZED
A release is nuked for being undersized when it doesn’t fully use the capacity of one or two CDs. This means that the final rip is for example 680 MB, while it could be 700 MB and offer a better quality of image and audio. Once again, this is not a serious deal unless it’s undersized by hundreds of megabytes.
OVERSIZED
The opposite of the above nuke reason.
BAD.CROP, OVERCROPPED
Movies on DVD contain black parts of the image above and below the actual video. In order to decrease the final size and offer the best possible quality, these black parts must be removed before encoding and releasing in xvid. Sometimes, scene groups don’t properly remove / crop these parts and it means that the image misses top or bottom part, therefore you don’t see the whole scene. Cropping is often used also for removing watermarks or hardcoded subtitles, but it still means a serious loss of the image. The other, not so common extreme, is when a group forgets to remove these black boxes.
BAD.IVTC, No.IVTC
Quite a common nuke reason which affects mostly lower-quality releases. IVTC means ‘inverse telecine’ and it’s basically a process of converting a movie (usually PAL) with high FPS (30 frames per second) to lower FPS (for example 24) in order to save space and offer better image quality. This conversion often goes wrong (bad.ivtc) or completely lacks (no.ivtc, lazy sceners)). As a result, the image appears to be jerky and the final release uses too much space for no reason.
INTERLACED
The image contains visible black lines, which often cause the video to be completely unwatchable. These black lines are visible mostly during movement on the image and are caused by incorrect field order. I won’t go into details explaining the reasons for this – it’s caused by different way of displaying frames and fields (half-frames) in the video, more details are available for example here. It’s highly recommended to not download any interlaced release.
CBR.AUDIO
Audio can be either CBR (constant bit rate), or VBR (variable bit rate). According to the scene rules, all releases should contain VBR audio, so any release with CBR is instantly nuked. Variable bit rate allows better quality, according to the current sound, while constant one sets the same quality for the whole movie, including the quiet parts. However, releases with AC3 audio almost always use CBR. It’s often hard to distinguish the difference between CBR and VBR for an untrained ear, so this nuke reason isn’t too serious if you don’t care about the rules.
BAD.FPS
Bad frame rate. The frame rate should be close to the original framerate. Not a very common nuke reason, but it’s better to beware any release with this nuke.
MISLABELED
A release trying to look like a better quality rip. A good example would be an R5 rip from Russian video source released as dvdrip – the difference isn’t that big in this case and scene groups always get more props for releasing dvdrips. The another case can be a typo or wrong year in the release name.
GRP.REQ
A nuke requested by the release group. Happens when a scene group releases something and realize it’s completely wrong, not working or simply bad, so they request a nuke.
OOS, OUT.OF.SYNC
Out of sync, audio isn’t synced with video. Extremely annoying mistake which makes most of such release completely unwatchable. This happens very often with cams, telesyncs and telecines, which require a synchronization of audio and video from different source. Some releases are completely out of sync, while others have this problem only for a few seconds or minutes.
BAD.PACK
Bad packing. The group didn’t pack their release properly, according to scene rules. This means they either forgot to pack it into 15/20/50 MB RARs or it’s completely impossible to unpack it.
INVALID.PROPER
Proper is a release fixing other, previously nuked release. When a certain group releases proper and the first release is actually fine, the new one becomes nuked for invalid proper.
QPEL.NOT.ALLOWED
Qpel or quarter pixel is a feature of modern encoding codecs such as H.264 which allows better and more efficient compression. Videos encoded with quarter-pixel precision motion vectors require up to twice as much processing power to encode, and 30-60% more processing power to decode. Thus, such releases often cause software problems or are completely unplayable at certain DVD players.
GHOSTING
Annoying feature of a release, which result into ghost effect during every movement in the movie. It’s caused by inproper encoding and can’t be easily fixed.
FILED.SHIFTED, DUPE.FRAMES, BLENDED.FRAMES, CUSTOM.QUANT.MATRIX
Other mostly serious faults affecting the image, caused during encoding the final video.
DIVX.NOT.ALLOWED, NO.AUDIO, MISSING.AUDIO, GET.RERIP, GET.PROPER