Updated 29 July 2009
Q: Can I play your releases on a regular DVD player? If so, how?
A: Yes, but you must encode the video and audio to the right formats first. This means encoding the video to MPEG-2 Part 2 and the audio to MP2 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer II) or AC3. If you’re using Windows, you can use ConvertXtoDVD. If you’re using GNU/Linux, you can use DeVeDe.
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Q: What video player should I play your releases on?
A: VLC, MPlayer, or Xine. FFDShow can be installed to play them on a DirectShow based media player such as Windows Media Player or Media Player Classic.
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Q: What tools do you use to make your releases?
A: Currently, I usually use x264 with AviSynth as a frameserver for the video, Nero AAC for the audio, and MP4Box to mux the video and audio together. I use MEncoder/MPlayer to extract subtitles. In the past I used HandBrake.
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Q: What encoding settings do you use?
A: The settings can be different each release, but in general it is something like this.
--crf 20 --bframes 4 --me hex --subme 8 --mixed-refs --ref 4 --b-adapt 2
MediaInfo can show what exact settings were used on a particular release and what version of x264 was used to encode it.
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Q: Does preserving the anamorphic pixel aspect ratio from the DVD help the quality?
A: Preserving the anamorphic pixel aspect ratio from the DVD gives a release more vertical resolution than if the video had been vertically resized to square pixels (for example, 720×432 or 720×352 compared to 720×304). If there is sufficient bitrate for the extra resolution, it will look better.
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Q: Why do you use the MP4 container format?
A: The container format isn’t necessarily the most important aspect of a release. It’s what goes in it, the video and audio formats, that are important. I use MP4 mostly for its support of H.264 and AAC, as well as the fact that it is well supported.
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Q: Who don’t you use the Matroska container format?
A: AAC and MP4 are just as good as Vorbis and Matroska, but they are compatible with more players, both hardware and software.
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Q: Why do you use the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video format?
A: It is far more efficient than the MPEG-4 ASP video format in most situations.
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Q: Why do you use the AAC audio format?
A: It is far more efficient than MP3, MP2, and AC3. It’s roughly the same as Vorbis, quality-wise.
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Q: Why don’t you use HE-AAC instead of LC-AAC? Isn’t HE-AAC just like LC-AAC but better?
A: HE-AAC is used for low bitrates (often 48-64Kbit/s stereo) to make them not sound as bad. It isn’t used for normal bitrates (such as 128Kbit/s stereo) where the intention is to sound good.
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Q: Will your releases work on the Apple TV, PS3 or Xbox 360?
A: Most of them probably will.
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Q: Will your releases work on the PSP, iPod or iPhone?
A: Most of them probably won’t.
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Q: Will you make your releases compatible with my PSP, iPod or iPhone?
A: No, these devices have significant restrictions on the video.
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Q: I got a letter from my internet service provider about copyright infringement, does this have anything to do with you?
A: No, anyone can connect to any public bittorrent swarm and collect IP addresses to send copyright infringement letters. The releaser cannot stop this, as who joins the swarm is fully out of the control of the releaser.
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Q: One of your torrents is dead, will you reseed it?
A: No.
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Q: Where can I find your releases?
A: I put my releases on Mininova, DarksideRG, Demonoid, Release Lounge, UKB-KVCD, Hexagon and this site. They can be often by found on many other sites, too.
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Q: If I request a film for you to encode and release, will you do it?
A: Probably not.
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Q: How do I play the subtitles included in your release?
A: Extract them from the compressed archive (if they are in one) and put them in the same directory as the video file. They should have the same filename as the video but with [Subtitles - xx] at the end. Open the video in VLC. Select which subtitles you want.
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Q: Why don’t all of your releases have the same size?
A: One size does not fit all films. Some films are longer than others, some films have more motion, etc.
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Q: Why don’t all your releases have the same bitrate?
A: A certain bitrate does not equal a certain quality. Some films will need a high bitrate to achieve a certain quality, while others only need a medium or low bitrate. This is due to the compressibility of the video, determined by things such as the amount of action, detail and noise present in the video. This does not mean that all my releases are the same quality. Some are not, particularly some of my earlier ones.
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Q: Why don’t you hardcode English subtitles in to the video for non-English films?
A: I don’t want to force subtitles on to people. If I include subtitles, they will be optional. Not everyone wants to watch a film with English subtitles.
There are many different people downloading my releases from all over the world, with a large variety of languages. If I include subtitles of any language, they will be optional.
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Q: What does “1-Pass CRF 20″ mean? Isn’t it better to use two passes when encoding?
A: CRF is a ratecontrol method. Instead of setting a specific bitrate for the video, it sets a certain approximate quality. 20 is a CRF setting. Settings can range from from 0 (lossless; the exact same as the input file, no quality is lost but the file is very large) to 51 (terrible quality), with a range of 18-24 being reasonable. It is true that two passes should be used when specifying a certain bitrate so the encoder can distribute the limited bits to the places that need it most, but this is not needed with CRF encoding. Instead, the encoder uses as many or as few bits as needed to achieve the quality it has been set to.
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Q: Why don’t you encode your releases at HD resolutions?
A: Encoding high definition video (720p or higher) at the bitrates that I use (usually between 1000 and 1300 Kbit/s) would result in very bad looking compression artefacts. HD videos usually need much higher bitrates to look good.
If I could make one request, it’s that you keep the quality of the encoding on the high side please. The Films that are encoded to come it at well over 1 gig in size, look so much better than the 700 meg files. Sammy xx
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