Explanation of Movie Types/ Formats

by **Pirates** Thu Dec 16, 2010 11:47 pm

CAM (Camera)

A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but often this won't be possible, so the camera may shake. Also seating placement isn't always ideal, 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.

TS (Telesync)

A telesync has the same specs 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.

DVDSCR (DVD Screener)

Same premise as a screener, but transferred off a DVD. Usually letterboxed , 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 transferred to SVCD or DivX/XviD.

Retail DVD

DVD's which are available in shops.

PAL / NTSC

PAL and NTSC are two different video standards, the former being European, and the latter being American. PAL has a slightly taller screen (256 lines non-interlaced, non-overscanned) as opposed to NTSC (200 lines), so if you see the bottom portion of a program's screen getting cut off on your American machine, chances are the program was written for PAL, and is running on your shorter NTSC screen. PAL and NTSC differences are somewhat less important to European users; since their machines default to PAL, running an NTSC program is no more than a minor annoyance having the screen only appear in the top portion of the display.

Dubbed:

If a film is dubbed, it is a special version where the actors' voices are in another language. Dubbed versions of English-language films are for people who don't understand English very well. In some countries, dubbing is very common, for example Germany.

Extended:

Sometimes movies are released again on DVD because now the movie is extended. They have put back deleted scenes. For example, E.T. was produced first in 1982 and years later it was brought on DVD again, but now digitally remastered and extended.

Digitally Remastered:

Digitally remastered means that an older not-digital movie has been re-editted, remastered and is released on DVD. Some really old movies look very bad compared to the new digital movies. Then they remaster it to make it look better, edit & recolor the video, etcetera. Remastering generally implies some sort of upgrade to a previous existing product, frequently designed to encourage people to buy a new version of something they already own.

Rated/Unrated:

Rated means a movie is censored, unrated logically means uncensored.

Recode:

A recode is a previously released version of a movie, 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.

R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6 (Region Code):

A dvd is released in a certain geographical area, or region and it's not viewable on a dvd player outside of that region. This was designed to stop people buying American dvd's 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. The regions are:
Region 1 - U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
Region 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
Region 3 - Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
Region 5 - Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
Region 6 - Peoples Republic of China

More general important tags:

PROPER:

Due to scene rules, whoever releases a certain release the first, has won that race. For example, when a group releases the CAM version of Titanic the first. If there is something "wrong" with the release (poor quality, out-of-sync, audio errors etc.) and another group has a better/correct version, it can release it and add PROPER to the release title to avoid being nuked. However, the source must be the same as the original release. For example: A poor quality CAM release by group A and group B releases their CAM release PROPER. A Telesync release doesn't PROPER a CAM release, because the source is different. 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. The reason for the PROPER should always be mentioned in the NFO.

REPACK:

If a group releases a bad rip, they can release a Repack. A Repack is a fixed version of the original release. It's similar to PROPER but then done by the same group. Note that a Repack is different from a fix. A Fix will repair the original release whilst a repack is a new release.

Rerip:

A previous rip was bad, now it's ripped again properly. Similar to repack.

READNFO:

When something important is mentioned in the NFO or as a replacement for PROPER, READNFO can be added to the releasetitle.

Now some tags just for movies/tv rips:

Sources:

DVDrip: A rip of the final released DVD. If possible this is released pre retail (for example, Star Wars episode 2). The quality of DVDrips is very good. DVDrips are released in SVCD and DivX/XviD.
VHSRip: Transferred off a retail VHS, mainly skating/sports videos and XXX releases.
TVRip: TV episode that is either capped 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). PDTV is capped from a digital TV PCI card, generally giving the best results. VCD/SVCD/DivX/XviD rips are all supported by the TV scene.

Formats:

VCD (VideoCD):

VCD is a mpeg1 based format, with a constant bitrate of 1150kbit at a resolution of 352x240 (NTSC). 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, and in reality you can fit 74min on a CDR74.

SCVD (SuperVideoCD):

SVCD is a mpeg2 based (same as DVD) video format which allows variable bitrates up to 2500kbits at a resolution of 480x480 (NTSC) which is then decompressed into a 4:3 aspect ratio when played back. Due to the variable bitrate, 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 bitrates, 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 for home-ripping by people who don't intend to release them.

XViD/DivX (Digital Video Express):

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 bitrate/resolution are interchangeable. 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 at the moment is XviD. The formal most popular codec was DivX.

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 352x480(ntsc) as the horizontal resolution is generally less important. Currently no groups release in CVD.

BD-Rip:
BDRip stands for BluRay Disk Rip

Additional source info for TV Rips:

HDTV (High Definition Televison):
Digital recording from a source stream at either 1080i or 720p at a bitrate from 19,39mbps or higher.

PDTV (Pure Digital Television):
Other resolution digital recordings from source streams at a bitrate of 10+mbps or higher. It is a label given to files that were ripped directly from a purely digital source, having less resolution than HDTV. This is accomplished by using a TV tuner card capable of receiving Digital Video Broadcasts or C-Band.

SDTV (Standard Digital Television):
Digital recording or capture from a source stream at any resolution with bitrate under 10mbps.This includes DirecTiVo but also captures from digisat or digicable with analog capture cards.

TVRip (Analoge TV Rip): Recorded from analog TV, lowest quality of all TV rips.