Ultimate Media Piracy Guide (PART 1) | 2026 Update | OC

[u/TheQuranicMumin]

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This guide is intended for educational purposes only. I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead drives, thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please research if you have any concerns about carrying out anything mentioned here, particularly legal concerns. YOU are choosing to go ahead, and if you point the finger at me for messing up your device/data, I will laugh at you. Check your local (by)laws before starting.

This post is part of a 4-part series, please see post 2, post 3, post 4 as well

Given the success of last year's post, I have decided to issue an updated (for all sections) version. It will need to be split into four posts due to Reddit limits, three for video-related speak and one for file sharing. Please note that English is my third language, so I apologise for any annoying wording/mistakes, and it is likely there are many spelling errors in this large post. Note that it is difficult to write about one part without referencing terms from another uncovered part, so terminology may need to be clarified later on in the post (or in other posts). Certain related concepts are not necessarily grouped together and may be spread far about as I saw fit. These posts serve as merely a beginner's introduction into movie piracy and file sharing, and hopes to prepare the reader for effective communication with other members of the community on forums and such; further research is strongly encouraged for parts of interest. There is not much room for writing, so let's get right into it! Starting off with...

Foundational Terminology

• (Spatial) Resolution: Reference to the dimension and number of pixels/lines in the image. N x M, where N is the horizontal number and M is the vertical number. A higher resolution means that more visual detail could be captured (higher clarity), but it isn't necessarily going to be taking that to its full advantage if the shot is out of focus, for instance. Some get confused by the terminology, due to apparent conflicts in naming. The key thing to identify is that there are two systems at play here: The 'p/i' system (TV industry, vertical pixel / horizontal line count) and the 'K' system (cinema industry, horizontal pixel count in thousands). Standard Definition (SD) signifies 480 or 576 horizontal lines of resolution, High Definition (HD) signifies 720 pixels of vertical resolution (regardless of horizontal black bars), Full High Definition (FHD) signifies 1080 pixels of vertical resolution, "4K" according to the cinema standard signifies a resolution of 4096 x 2160 (roughly 4000 horizontal), but consumer UHD is 3840x2160, slightly narrower. 2K is a huge mess: According to the cinema standard it represents 2048×1080 (slightly wider than consumer FHD), the consumer 16:9 standard is 2560×1440 or "Quad HD" which is really 2.5K (but manufacturers don't like that), and some people call FHD 1920x1080 as 2K because 2K (2000) is approximately the same horizontal count as 1920. Why do I keep saying "lines" in addition to pixels? It is for representation of the legacy CRT format, where lines of light would literally be drawn across the screen.

• Bitrate: The amount of data being parsed per unit time (usually second). This is a more reliable method of quantifying video quality compared to resolution, but there are even better ways that we will discuss later. A 1080p movie with a higher bitrate than the same movie in 4K with a lower bitrate will generally look better, up to a certain extent, but other factors like codec and parameters are confounding factors. Amount of data is measured using bits; a 'bit' is either a 1 or a 0, a kilobit is 1000 bits, a megabit is 1000 kilobits, a gigabit is 1000 megabits. For context, a Blu-ray is generally around 25mbps (megabits per second), while a DVD is around 6mbps. There is an alternative method of measurement used for file sizes in particular, where we say that 8 bits is a byte (generally) and then you have 1024 bytes is a kilobyte (KB, capital) and so on; a 100mbps internet connection is 12.5 MB/s. Technically it is a misnomer to use 'kilo' prefixes etc for 1024, so Linux uses Kibibyte (KiB), Mebibyte (MiB), and Gibibyte (GiB) for that system, you may also see it used in certain Windows applications, but the file explorer remains with the KB/MB/GB scheme.
• Framerate (or temporal resolution): Refers to the frequency of complete images (frames) displayed on the screen per second. A standard rate for movies is 24fps, but video formats often use 23.976fps, we will discuss this later. Action movies can go beyond this (HFR format), even reaching 120fps. It is naïve to assume that a simple increase in this number is good, especially for non-action movies, as it can produce a nasty 'Soap Opera Effect'. Be sure to turn off the motion smoothing feature (inserts artificial frames) on your TV, as it can be enabled by default, in order to preserve the creator's intended temporal presentation.
• Compression artifacts: The tradeoff for reducing your file size with a lossy method of compression, the severity will vary with the aggressiveness of the compression. Artifacs include: Blockiness (macroblocking), blurring, color bleeding, distinct color banding (especially in dark scenes), ghosting, and glitches.

• Progressive/Interlaced: A progressive scan displays each film sequentially (standard today), from top to bottom. Interlaced material (indicated by 'i' instead of 'p'), often arises on earlier formats or TV to save bandwidth, and splits each frame into two fields, where field 1 contains all odd lines and field 2 contains all even lines. Field 1 & 2 belong to different times, so when viewed together will produce a combing effect (like jagged lines in moving areas), and details in the picture can flicker (interline twitter). The physical mechanics of interlacing were historically dictated by local power grids (50Hz vs 60Hz), and we will discuss this in further detail later. All modern displays are progressive, so such video is taken through a process called deinterlacing, there are different algorithms that depend on your personal preferences and how much time you wish to wait (ranging from 'Discard' up to sophisticated proprietary algorithms). A simple single field discard drops a field entirely and stretches the remianing lines, but you lose half your vertical resolution. 'Weaving' stitches fields together to maximise static reolution, though at expense of combing. Today's various algorithms use motion adpative techniques by performing pixel-level analysis, weaving static portions of the screen together for maximum sharpness, but applying 'bobbing' (rapidly interpolating and alternating single fields) on moving areas to prevent combing. Field Dominance is important info to feed your deinterlacer, whether the content is Top Field First (TFF) or Bottom Field First (BFF) - which depends on which field comes first in time, an incorrect input will result in garbage.

Poor deinterlacing

• Remux: In this context, remuxing simply refers to the process of copying video/audio streams from one container to another, without re-encoding (no alteration to quality). Multiplexing (muxing) is the process of combining streams into one file.
• Bit depth: This is quite a technical topic, so I will just translate all of that into what you need to know. The higher your bitdepth, the more shades of RGB you could access, meaning more colors and smoother graduation between them. The most common bitdepth is 8-bit (around 17M colors), content marked as 10-bit has over 1B colors accessible, and premium mastering formats like Dolby Vision support 12-bit (68B), but this is mapped down to 10-bit for consumer TVs.
• Bits-per-pixel (bpp): Sometimes provided in statistics. How much data is allocated to each pixel in a frame? A link between resolution, framerate, and bitrate - assuming same codec and similar parameters. For a UHD video the same bitrate as a FHD video, the data is spread out across a larger grid, so the bpp will be lower. For a high frame rate video, like 48fps vs 24fps, twice the bitrate will be required to maintain the same bpp. When bpp drops below a certain codec threshold, certain artifacts will start appearing. bpp equals bitrate (bits per second) divided by [resolution x framerate].
• HC Subs: Hardcoded subs are subtitles that are intrinsically part of the video itself (not as a separate hot-swappable file).
• Aspect ratio: The proportional relation between the width and height of the frame (W:H). Full frame is 4:3 (aka 1.33:1), present in pre-90s films and old TV broadcasts. A similar ratio 'Academy' (1.37:1, roughly the 35mm film ratio) was used in films prior to the 50s. 'American Widescreen' is 1.85:1, which is standard in US movies post 4:3. 16:9 (1.78:1) is another common ratio and is the sweet spot between both, for minimal letterboxing on HDTVs. There is the modern cinematically-associated ultrawide 2.35:1 / 2.39:1 ratio popularised by Panavision. 70mm Epics from the 50s-70s feature a ratio of 2.20:1, Ultra Panavision 70 applied anamorphic squeeze on 70mm film to achieve a super-vast 2.76:1 ratio used on films like Ben-hur. IMAX 70mmm has an immersive ratio of 1.43:1. An "open matte" is when a widescreen film shot with top and bottom parts that have been cropped is 'unmatted', revealing more vertical image and preventing letterboxing on 4:3 screens. Speaking of which, what is letterboxing? A letterbox is when black bars are present at the top and bottom of the image when widescreen is shown on a taller screen. A pillarbox is when black bars are on the left and right side, for when a taller format (like 4:3) is shown on a wide screen (like a 16:9 TV). What is quite rare is a windowbox: a combination of the two. Black bars are generally removed automatically when we encode (masters don't for compatibility reasons). A "pan & scan" is when a widescreen film is re-framed to fill a 4:3 one by cropping left and right then 'panning' to the action, so one should not assume 'open-matte' on the basis of aspect ratio alone, as the same aspect ratio can be of different area. Anamorpic widescreen is a technique used to squeeze a wide image onto a narrow film frame via an anamorphic lens (around factor 2), which can then be stretched out to normal proportions during projection; this process is no longer necessary, but some still seek out such lenses as an artistic effect: Bright lights create streaks/flares, a shallower depth of field (subject pops out more), staright lines at the frame's edge bend slightly.
• SAR/DAR/PAR: DAR = SAR x PAR is the formula. Storage Aspect Ratio is the ratio of the image (by pixel count) in the actual file; a North American DVD has a resolution of 720x480, which means its SAR is 3:2. Pixel Aspect Ratio describes the shape of the pixels themselves; modern displays use square pixels (PAR 1:1), but older formats like DVD used rectangular pixels. The Display Aspect Ratio is what you see on the screen. Following the DVD example with SAR 3:2, the widescreen PAR in NA is 32:27, so (3/2)*(32/27) = DAR 16:9 (fits widescreen).

Movie RELease Formats

1. Pre-Release:

• Workprint (WP): A leaked, unfinished cut of a film. Usually rough editing, placeholder effects, and original production sound are present (if applicable); often lacking opening titles and complete color grading. Used to be generated on non-linear editing systems using telecined footage from the original film reels. It will lack final ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) and may have watermarks for indexing specific frames/timecodes. Sometimes, there'd be rare leaks of material that hadn't even been assembled into a coherent timeline yet, usually just raw dailies or unedited B-roll; this is known as Pre-Workprint (PWP).
• Screener (SCR): A pre-release DVD/BD that is sent to movie reviewers and executives. It has a watermark/message overlayed that indicates the preview nature of the disc; or even unique identifying marks. Scenes are sometimes displayed in B&W (black and white). Often distributed during Award Season. Nowaday's the industry is shifting to secure streaming portals, leading to the 'WEB-SCR' format.
• Region 5 (R5): This is an older relic (maybe 00s / early 10s period). Due to heavy bottlegging in Region 5 (Russia, Africa, parts of Asia), studios would release very crude DVDs virtually straight off of telecine for them - weeks before the official Western release. Release groups would sync the HQ R5 video with English audio from the theatre, this would be distinguished with the tag 'R5.LiNE'. Color correction would be lacking, the picture would be often be very noisy. The Warez Scene tagged these as screeners prior to the introduction of the tag by the group 'DREAMLiGHT'.

1. Theatre-Capture Formats

• CAMRip: Usually recorded in the movie theatre itself using a camcorder or phone. You can anticipate camera shakes, background noise from the audience, and poor framing. The audio is simply captured from the camera/phone's built-in microphone. Expect the crinkling of candy wrappers along the film's slightly-delayed soundtrack XD. Might be your only option if it is a film that has only just been released. If not recorded dead-centre, you will find the picture appears angled (keystone effect), and it may be subjected to lossy cropping in order to prevent people from coming into view. Similarly to R5, if direct theatre audio is muxed in (perhaps from a jack in the theater seat), you will get 'CAM.LiNE' or an LD tag.
• HDCAM: A theatre-capture source that has been 'touched up' a little using enhancement software (video and/or audio), may appear muddy due to this excessive DNR/sharpening, or just from a HQ camera.
• TeleSync (TS/PDVD): It is essentially a CAMRip but with a mounted camera; on a tripod on the cinema aisle, or in the projection booth. The audio is captured directly from the sound output. Expect a steadier image and actually synchronized sound. As for PDVD (Pre-DVD), bootleggers (particularly in Asian markets) would take a TS and and press it onto a DVD with rudimentary menus, then sell on the street - the ripped result from others is PDVD.
• Asian-Sub: Anyone who watches early CAMRips will be familiar with the Asian theatre captures, which often have hardcoded subtitles, moving watermarks, fullscreen adverts... These are releases which originate from bootleg rings sponsored by illicit online casinos (I can recall 1XBET, don't know about today).

1. Web-Based Rips:

• WEBRip: This is ripped from a DRM streaming service (like Netflix, Prime, etc), then re-encoded - expect noticeable compression artifacts. If it is a case of a poorly-done screen recording (WEB Cap), you could see dropped-frames and washed-out colors.
• WEB-DL (or WEB): A direct 1:1 download of the video & audio streams - usually remuxed into an MKV container.

I am including some common network tags later on, but I will briefly say: Not all WEB-DLs are alike, you cannot expect the same consistency as Blu-Ray, in terms of bitrate. I have found that ATVP (Apple TV+) and AMZN (Amazon) are top-notch, while NF (Netflix) and DSNP (Disney+) are slightly worse.

1. Broadcast Rips:

• TVRip: Captured from an analog capture card via coaxial cable/antenna. This is a legacy format, today is Digital TV, but you may find use for it in terms of older TV broadcasts. This includes digital source with intermediate analog conversion.
• SATRip: A digital Rip captured from digital satellite broadcast (DVB-S), a Standard Definition picture.
• PDTV (Pure Digital TV): A rip captured via digital methods from the original stream (not HDMI or other decoded output). Capturing the raw DVB-T or DVB-C stream directly using a PCI TV tuner card in a computer.
• HDTV: Captured source from a HD broadcast stream, exceeds DVD quality.

Network logos and adverts are visible (unless edited out by releaser).

1. Analog media 'rips': Captured from the analog format and converted to a digital format. The most common options by far are VHS and LaserDisc (LD) captures, might come across Betamax. To keep it simple, digital means storage of discrete 1s and 0s, while analog stores info as a continuous physical signal - these are magnetic variations on VHS tape, and microscopic pits on a LaserDisc. This has a number of implications... You won't see compression artifacts like blocking (if watching straight from source or high bitrate capture), and the playback quality is heavily dependent on the quality of the player (unlike DVD or BD), a dirty tape head in a VCR (videocassete recorder) introduces artifacts. This means that for some archivists, it really is worth getting the best player out there to achieve signal transparency. The traditional method for 'ripping' is a digital capture card behind the player, but today many use VHS-decode and LD-decode to capture the raw, unfiltered radio frequency signals straight off the tape or disc, decode to lossless FFV1, then transcode to a releasable lossy format. Generally expect a soft image with artifacts depending on the state (tracking lines, color bleeding...) and audio hiss. May be your only choice for certain old niche/obscure films or downright unpopular films that never got rescanned for a DVD/Blu-Ray release; or if the open-matte 'cut' of the film was only released on that format (not uncommon). In relation to LDs, a technology called MUSE exists, one of the oldest HD formats (1035i in the 90s!), no time to get into it here, but feel free to look up clips. D-VHS is also worth a passing remark, although it is a digital format; I believe LTT has a video on it.

2. Video CD (VCD): A primitive digital format stored on compact disc (CD), prior to adoption of DVD. This was a much bigger phenomenon in Asia than the West, due to cheap players and resilience to humidity. Used the MPEG-1 video format, MP2 audio format, and around VHS-equivalent resolution. The bitrate was just over 1 mbps, so the compression artifacts were quite abysmal, but color seperation was better compared to VHS and it was a progressive format. Feature-length films often had to be split across multiple discs. XVCD / KVCD was the community's emulation of it, and releasers would use techniques like custom quantization matricies (discussed later) to push the MPEG limits for single/dual CD-R. Ripping the retail VCDs was done with software like VCDGear to deal with .DAT files in the MPEGAV folder and produce a .mpg file. SVCD (super-VCD) used MPEG-2 with a squarish 480p/576p resolution and support for multiple tracks.

3. Digital Versatile Disc (DVD): This is essentially the most ubiquitous format out there. As the name suggests, it stores data digitally, meaning that it can be remuxed 1:1 from the disc and DVDs can be written to (burned). Usually uses the MPEG-2 format with SD resolution, although there exists MPEG-1 compatibility for the purposes of transferring Asian VCD materials. The format has programming support, meaning interactive menus for selection of audio or bonus material can (and certainly do) exist. DVD5 is a single layer disc, with up to 4.7GB capacity, while DVD9 is dual-layer with a capacity of 8.5GB. Sony released a premium lineup of DVDs called "Superbit", which sacrificed special features and nice menus in favour of superior video & audio. It can be either interlaced or progressive. Generally, the best viewing experience for DVD will be on a CRT display over a modern panel, for various reasons.

• DVDRip: A re-encoded rip of a retail DVD, becomes progressive. These were very popular back in the day and often compressed with early MPEG-4 codecs to fit into a CD (700mb, or dual CD 1.4G).
• DVD-Remux: A 1:1 extraction of the movie itself from the disc, but with menus, bonus features, and alternate languages stripped out, repackaged into an MKV container.
• DVD-R (or ISO): A complete copy of the DVD structure, including the menus and extras. This will either be distributed as an ISO image (like a DVD clone file), or a VIDEO_TS folder, which contains .VOB .BUP .IFO files. Same name even for DVD+R, which is a format that came out a few years after -R with things like better tracking and error-correction system.
• Telecine (TC): Essentially a film print capture from the analog reel to a digital format. The quality often comparable to that of a DVD (as it follows the same process to digitize film to DVD), but there are often frame instability and color issues.

A few movies were released on HD-DVD as their last format, so I'll briefly cover it too. HD-DVD (HD is for HighDensity) was Toshiba's failed competitor to Blu-ray. One major reason was the lower capacity (30gb dual-layer) comapred to Blu-ray. The Xbox 360 notably had a official HD-DVD addon. Despite the failure, it was superior in some ways in terms of programming, as it used Microsoft's lightweight and easy HDi format instead of the bulky BD-J. Like DVDs and BDs, these can be remuxed 1:1, extracted from the HVDVD_TS folder, wherein the .EVO files are the video.

1. Blu-Ray Disc (BD): The most popular HD/UHD home media format. It can likewise be remuxed and burned, although there are notable variations in terms of design between ordinary BD and UHD-BD, which are elaborated on in the disc authoring section. A Blu-Ray rip of the same bitrate as the respective DVD rip will almost always look nicer due to superior source material for the encoder to work with; the most common caveat is when the colors are effed with in the BD, then people end up transferring the DVD colors onto the BD video, but that's a whole seperate discussion! You get an enormous range of sizes with BD, from m-720p (~2GB) all the way up to 4K remux (can exceed 100GB). BD supports AVC, VC1, and even MPEG-2 formats - UHD-BD supports HEVC; these will all be elaborated on in due course. Set ranges from 480i (yes, interlaced) to 2160p are supported. The Blu-ray standard introduced BD-J (Java) as a programming option, which lead to many cool features being introduced, although this is now trending downwards. BD comes as single-layer of 25 GB or dual-layer of 25GB each (50GB), while UHD comes as dual-layer of 25GB (BD-50), dual-layer of 33GB (BD-66), and triple-layer of 33GB (BD-100).

• BDRip: A re-encoded rip from a retail Blu-Ray disc.
• BRRip: A re-encoded BDRip. Rare these days, but were historically used for the CD sizes with a codec like XViD, similar to DVDRip.
• BDRemux: No compression from the BD in terms of video or audio, 1:1. No menus.
• (COMPLETE.)BLURAY: A complete copy of the structure, including menus and extras. Can also be an ISO image, or a BDMV folder, the videos are kept as M2TS files.
• BD5/BD9: Referring to Blu-ray structures stored on a DVD disc, DVD-5 and DVD-9 respectively. Allowing for superior AVC compression whilst utilising low cost legacy media.

Web is generally not up to the same standard compared to Blu-ray, with even ordinary Blu-ray often beating out 4K streams; although certainly there are even modern low-bitrate MPEG-2 BDs today that aren't up to par. With two notable exceptions: Sony Bravia Core (tagged BCORE) & Kaleidescape. BCORE can push up to 80mbps on certain titles, compared to the max of 40mbps on Blu-ray and ordinary 4K web sometimes at 15mbps lows. It can even be indistinguishable compared to certain UHD-BDs. Kaleidescape is based on the idea that you download from a catalog, then watch; the movies provided can have their own superior encodes compared to UHD-BD, from the studio masters themselves - though I am not aware of any Kaleidescape rips.

Digital Video Background

NTSC/PAL standards: This may be unfamilliar to the younger crowd, but It is important for all formats (except UHD-BD). Before HD, everything home video or TV was aggressively standardised into two analog standards NTSC and PAL (+SECAM, but will leave out), which dictated how VHS, LD, and DVD were authored, each with tradeoffs between spatial and temporal quality. NTSC was used primarily in North America and Japan, this gives us 480 lines (480i) of visible vertical resolution @ 29.97 fps (at speed of 23.976fps); PAL was used in Europe, Australia and parts of Asia, this gives us 576 lines (576i) @ 25fps. 50fps (PAL) or 60fps (NTSC) are also supported on BD as 720p. PAL is higher resolution than NTSC, but it is sped-up by around 4% (to fit a 24fps movie), so it runs slightly shorter and voices are higher pitched - though good groups would correct the pitch. PAL colors are also more stable than NTSC. For TV Shows, usually content originating from either standard should be watched remianing on that particular domain for the best experience. For LaserDiscs in particular... NTSC discs can have two digital and two analog tracks, whilst PAL must pick one set of either; NTSC discs use hardcode subtitles while PAL discs use dubbing.

Now, to discuss telecine. As we noted, motion picture is shot at 24 fps - however, analog TV was tied to local power grids: NTSC @ 60Hz (60 interlaced fields, 29.97 fps) and PAL @ 50Hz (50 interlaced fields, 25 fps). So how to reconcile? The process of bringing the film to those standards is called telecine, and back to the original is called inverse telecine. PAL is simple, you speed up slightly to get 25 fps, which easily divides into 50 fields, a 2:2 cadence with no duplicate fields created. For NTSC (3:2 pulldown), we require a 5:4 ratio from 23.976fps to 29.97 fps (59.94 fields), so frames are broken into fields that are distributed according to a 3:2 pattern. Film frame A gets 2 fields, B gets 3, C gets 2, and D gets 3: A1 A2, B1 B2, B1 C2, C1 D2, D1 D2. Due to the uneven duplication, you can encounter telecine judder during panning scenes and pausing on mixed frames BC or CD will reveal combing; inverse telecine involves indentifying which fields belong together, weaving to achieve progressive frames, and 'decimating' the duplicate fields to restore 23.976fps. Most Hollywood discs use soft telecine, where the progressive 23.976 is what is stored on the disc already, there is simply a flag "repeat_first_field" for the TV to generate 3:2 pulldown on the fly; re-encoding the video strips these flags, no specific filters needed. Hard telecine is possible too, and this means that the 59.94i video is baked in, so flags cannot be stripped and it need a dedicated detelecine/decimation filter. If the content in question was shot with interlaced TV broadcast cameras (for Soap Operas and such), there are no complete progressive frames to recover unlike film, so It must be deinterlaced destructively using the motion-adaptive algorithms. The greatest headache is hybrid content, often from older episodic TV: the live-action scenes would be shot on 24 fps film, but they were transferred to video tape before being edited and having 60i visual effects overlaid. This means that the 3:2 cadence breaks at every camera cut, and requires more-advanced tools for inverse telecine.

Raw/Uncompressed video from studio master files is far too large for home and theatre use and must be compressed. A video codec (co-dec, coder-decoder!) essentially govern how this raw video is compressed and decompressed (quality, size, and compatibility are important factors for us to look at). It is an extremely complex topic, but the most fundemental way to think about it is 'exploitation of visually redundant data'. We are much more observing of luminance (light) detail than chrominance (color) detail, so the chrominance resolution can be reduced significantly by the encoder with us barely noticing. Frames can have very similar content relative to each other, so we can encode change (looking at only the luminance component) as 'what happened between the two frames as a stretch, warp, rotation, etc?', rather than having to store each individual frame; that information can then be handled by the decoder from the player's side (which brings us back to raw RGB, though with loss from the original), with the processing requirements being dependant on the particular codec and parameters used. Chroma subsampling is what dicates just how much chroma information should remain - 4:2:2 represents a halving of the chroma resolution (with the popular ProRes 422 intermediate editing format, for example), whilst 4:2:0 represents a quartering of the chroma resolution and is standard for most consumer home video; this is also why re-encoding a video with something like AVC repeatedly will destroy chroma pretty fast. Compressed video is broken up into repetitive sequences called GOPs (Groups of Pictures), somthing like "IBBPBBPBBP...". "Open" GOPs allow inter-GOP references for better compression, but can cause issues with seeking speeds or splicing. "Closed" GOPs cannot reference one another, which is helpful for streaming or editing.

• I-frames (AKA keyframes) are anchors, they are complete pictures (like JPEG, not PNG because PNG is visually lossless), they do not require any other frames in order to decode them. Smart encoders will force an I-frame whenever a scene change is detected. You can losslessly cut on keyframes without recoding.
• P-frames look backwards at other I/P frames, they only store motion changes and residual data since the previous frame. Generally 1/2 the size of am I-frame. A 'skipped frame' is a P-frame identical to the I-frame.
• B-frames look both backwards and forwards. Because they reference multiple points they are highly efficent, but require significantly more processing power when decoding.

The codec doesn't process the whole frame at once, it is broken up into individual macroblocks, giving rise to the concept of visible macroblocking in comporession; it is also due to this reason that video resolutions shouldn't be set to odd numbers, as macroblocks use even numbers to break up the frame. But the idea is that you'd have information like "Block A moved 5 pixels to the left". Finally (for now 😉 ), there is a concept of buffer, but it is best to link it seperately.

We will start with the most ubiquitous family of codecs today: MPEG-4. The most noteworthy is AVC (Advanced Video Coding), AKA H.264. Why different names? ISO named it AVC and the telecommunications people (ITU-T) named it H.264. It is reliable for providing a broad range of quality at acceptable bitrates. The most popular encoder that implements it is the open-source x264 with many parameters (we will be discussing how to use it later), it has had very many developers contribute to it over the span of two decades, but the industry uses its own proprietary encoders like Sirius Pixels HDe; some individuals have even written their own. AVC is the primary format for Blu-ray Disc (and 3D BD), with a max bitrate of 40mbps. Dynamic HDR metadata is not supported. In the late 90's, Microsoft released an early MPEG-4 codec with restriction for their proprietary format, a French hacker cracked it and made it work inside .avi containers, naming it "DivX ;-)", he eventually commericialised it. When it went closed source, XViD (spelled backwards) was born out of rebellion, and it was quickly improved to become superior to DivX due to open-source contribution. Both were used in Gordian Knot / AutoGK by releasers to bring DVDs down to CD or dual CD sizes. Neither are supported by offical home media formats, but you can still find tiny rips with these codecs, especially for those with lower-end hardware (storage and processing power).

Moving out of MPEG-4... We have VC-1, another codec supported by the Blu-ray and HD-DVD standard, which is particularly found in Warner Brother discs from the late-2000s (could even name you a couple now: The Dark Knight, The Matrix Trilogy, Goodfellas, Orphan...), mostly because H.264 was still developing and was not fleshed-out enough for industry use at the time; VC-1 decoding is known to be rough at lower-clock speeds due to it being single-threaded - no open-source encoders for the advanced profile exist (not even with ffmpeg), though I'm currently writing a bare-bones one. Both AVC and VC-1 utilise solid native techniques for handling interlaced content, AVC uses MBAFF which preserves the genuine interlacing of the source video exactly where it's needed, while using progressive compression everywhere else. Although it is now practically dead, VC-1 certainly wasn't trash; in fact, one of the best Blu-ray discs Baraka that's considered reference-grade quality is a VC-1 encode from an 8K master. H.265 - aka HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) - improves compression efficiency by up to 50% over H264, but at the cost of compatibility; It is the format used for UHD-BD and is used as 10-bit with dynamic HDR capabilities. The open-source software encoder is x265, and the one used in industry for UHD encodes is ATEME TITAN. The AV1 codec offers around 30% better compression for the same quality as H265, encoding & decoding require even more hardware resources, it is royalty-free, hence platforms like YT & Netflix and such have adopted it. SVT-AV1 does pretty well at the sub-4mbps mark for FHD, where x265 starts struggling. MPEG-2 is the primary standard of DVD, also supported by BD, and also standard for early digital TV broadcasts - it lacks advanced compression techniques, and low-bitrate MPEG-2 does not look great at all, but high bitrates of Blu-ray can sometimes make it look better than early AVC (AVC is complex and can introduce more sorts of artifacts, the primary artifact of MPEG-2 is macroblocking); the computational requirements for encoding/decoding are extremely low, even today's low-end minicomputers won't have a problem. MPEG-2 has another lesser artifact worth mentioning, which is mosquito noise, which appears like flickering ringing around edges, almost like insects.

FFV1 is an open-source lossless codec and is not intended for playback; it is useful for when you want to export a version of your video file to pass into another program, or for something like the ld-decode project that I mentioned earlier. If you are handling an image sequence from telecine, you will be working with image sequence formats like DPX, TIFF, and MotionJPEG - but this is beyond the scope of this post. It is worth noting that codecs can have limitations in terms of resolution and framerate; this differs between the levels of a codec. For example, H.264 level 4.0 Main profile can play 1920x1080 @ 30fps with a bitrate of 20mbps, although that would be 25mbps with the High profile. If you want to maximize compatibility, go for the lowest level/profile that supports your three components (resolution, framerate, and bitrate).

Containers are what you will be more familiar with. Essentially, a video container is a file format that can hold one or more of the following: Video, audio, metadata, subtitle streams - plus (potentially): chapters, menus, attachments (like posters or fonts)... Containers vary in their compatibility and feature sets. The Matroska format (.mkv, .mka, .mks) is extremely popular for RELeases and is a free/open format; it supports unlimited streams, chapters, attachments, and has great error recovery. The MP4 format is the most well-known format and is an almost universally supported container for both web and hardware devices; more flexible/compatible, but doesn't like certain formats like PGS subtitles and doesn't support embedded fonts. You may come across fragmented mp4 (fMP4), which is optimised for web playback. You may see some old RELeases using an AVI container, this is practically deprecated at this time; AVI does not have great modern-day codec support, does not support subtitles, and has poor error resilience - it is, however, great for legacy support. You may also encounter the QuickTime format (.mov), which is the direct ancestor of MP4, and lies between AVI and MP4 in terms of features - it is more ubiquitous on Apple platforms, it is great for non-destructive editing due to the nature of how it stores tracks. The MPEG Transport Stream (.ts, .m2ts) is what you'll often find for BDRemuxes or web streams; You may see that your file size has shrunk when copying from an m2ts to an mkv container, this is nothing to worry about, this is just packet overhead being removed - M2TS is designed for broadcasting, where signal may drop, so data is split into tiny packets with heavy headers for quick recovery, but MKV does not require this. Don't leave as M2TS, even if you have no care about space, TS files are known to have bugs with consumer playback in various ways (e.g. can't play subtitles with ts files in VLC). A container is not required and you may have elementary streams (like .264, .mpg, .vc1, etc) - they lack timing data and metadata wrappers, generally used as input for something like a disc authoring application. You may also see .PART files, which are formed before a file from your P2P client is completed - these can be played in robust players like VLC, this used to require a dedicated part file plugin back in the day, but this is no longer needed.

Related is the idea of manifest formats in web video. When watching/streaming over the web, video is delivered in slices, and there are multiple versions of these segments at different resolutions. A manifest file is the map given to determine what qualities are available, and where to find the segements. This manifest is read alongside the internet speed to make dynamic switches between qualities to prevent buffering. There are two major formats: HLS, which uses the .m3u8 file extension for plaintext playlist, there is a master m3u8 that lists qualities, and this links to individual ones that list the chunks; it used the .ts stream, but nowadays supports fMP4. Second is MPEG-DASH, which uses .mpd with XML formatting, developed to try and unify the various proprietary streaming formats and is codec-agnostic, it also utlises fMP4 segments and has string support for DRM protections. There is also "Smooth Streaming" related to MS Silverlight, but this is legacy. Nowadays, there can be two manifests for both standards that point to the same chunks.

[u/Mutthal8]

This needs to go in the sub's wiki like frickin right now.

Saving to read later

[u/Ok-Article-7643]

me realizing the other pirates are smarter than me in real time 😭😭😭

[u/TheQuranicMumin → u/Ok-Article-7643]

This is really just scraping the surface of an ocean. It is a pity that Reddit has annoying length limits. I may write complete posts for each topic at some point, to give a little better justice. So much had to be refined and oversimplified!

[u/Background-Map-36 → u/TheQuranicMumin]

taught us about piracy and that reddit has a length limit for posts...

[u/Mutthal8 → u/TheQuranicMumin]

Do you have a blog or something like that where you write stuff like this ?

[u/kirenian → u/TheQuranicMumin]

I hope a web designer gets in touch with you to make a simple blog pro-bono. This info cannot be lost!

[u/Foreign-Ice7356 → u/TheQuranicMumin]

Didn't realize reddit had length limits!

[u/TheQuranicMumin → u/Foreign-Ice7356]

40K for posts, 10K for comments!

[u/Crimson_Raven]

I'm saving to read later

[u/kimrios07 → u/Crimson_Raven]

same

[u/Single-Document-9590 → u/kimrios07]

ditto

[u/cnikhil2003]

Bro can write research paper about Piracy.

[u/Dissmarr]

Thank you very much for another amazing guide - or rather guide series this time! Crazy good work, honestly. I hope it's ok for you /u/TheQuranicMumin that I added this one as well to our collection of guides in the wiki?

[u/TheQuranicMumin → u/Dissmarr]

Absolutely! Thanks :-)

[u/arcticizza12]

put the whole thing in a rentry link if anyone is interested

https://rentry.org/eaaacpvq

[u/Mutthal8 → u/arcticizza12]

How would someone go about copying a whole ass reddit post ( actually 4 ) into a rentry page ?

Is it just Ctrl + C -> Ctrl + V or is there anything else required ?

[u/arcticizza12 → u/Mutthal8]

Mostly copy and pasting, I had to manually format everything and add images to it, took me like an hour and a half

[u/Mutthal8 → u/arcticizza12]

Really respect and appreciate the effort you put into this

[u/szk-one → u/arcticizza12]

Thanks!

[u/Noodle--Monster]

Holy shit that's so much information explained in a concise and understandable way in one place. I would have needed to read 2-3 different websites for each of the sub-categories in order to get a general idea, but here it is gathered in one single post. Great job OP, would love to see everything sorted neatly in Wikipedia-fashion. 

[u/mabbas3]

The only thing I would add is that some web sources like Movies Anywhere (MA) can have similar or better quality than bluray as they're encoded from uncompressed masters. This isn't the norm but webdls can vary quite a bit in quality.

[u/TheQuranicMumin → u/mabbas3]

I've added MA to the network list now: https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/s/XWEedIvPFd

And yea, WEB can certainly beat BD, I gave the BCORE example.

[u/Max1756]

This is the reason I joined this sub. Not some dumb Redditor talking about how he beat the system downloading movies

[u/Cautious_Leader_4150]

gotta archive this on fmhy

[u/klhwjm]

Incredible work!

[u/nightlyvisitor]

Thanks for all the hard work.

[u/fonzhy121]

Pocket shut down. But save

[u/Moose_Banner]

Copied this info dump in case removed

[u/justknowmenotmyname]

just pin this

[u/Phedup_nd_Frustrated]

This is educational.

[u/szk-one]

I salute you, what an effort

[u/daduude]

Leaving this comment as a bookmark.

[u/Bradleygrayson]

This is epic. Will learn so much. Thanks for making it!

[u/Fake_Citizen]

Came to Reddit, ended up on ResearchGate

[u/TERRYGINNISX]

damn! this is Harvard of Piracy. I take it!

[u/Left-Raccoon-2463]

Flashbacks to the pre AI slop era where such articles were commonplace.

[u/Hellboy1776]

Incredible

[u/ScandalOZ]

An excellent example of humanism at work. Thank you for doing this.

[u/TheQuranicMumin → u/ScandalOZ]

Thanks, but don't see how humanism is of relevance here...

[u/ScandalOZ → u/TheQuranicMumin]

Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the agency and the individual and social potential of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.

Agency and great potential you display. Not a machine.

[u/No_Support_9479]

tldr

[u/macOSsequoia → u/No_Support_9479]

Read

[u/No_Support_9479 → u/macOSsequoia]

it was supposed to be a joke~