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 on board 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.

TC (Telecine):
A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the reels. Sound and picture should
be quite 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. TC should not be confused with Time Code , which is a visible counter
on screen throughout the film.

IVTC (Inverse Telecine):

Inverse Telecine is the process where video editing tools reverse telecine process.
Basically inverse telecine brings back movie's original frame rate from NTSC's
29.97fps to 24fps.

SCR (Screener):
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 letter boxed screeners are sometimes found. The main drawback 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 thru 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.
DVDSCR (DVD Screener):
Same premise as a screener, but transferred off a DVD. Usually letter boxed, and
without the extras that 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.

WP (Workprint):
A workprint is a copy of a film which has not been finished yet. There 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
have actors in their places) and others can contain extra scenes (Jay and Silent Bob).
WP's can be nice additions to the collection once a good quality final has been
obtained.

PPV (Pay-Per-View):
PPVRips come from Pay-Per-View sources, all the PPVRip releases are brand new
movies which have not yet been released to Screener or DVD but are available for
viewing by Hotel customers.

DDC:
DDC is basically the same as a Screener, but sent digitally to companies instead of
via the postal system. This makes distribution cheaper. Its quality is lower than one
of a R5 but higher than a Cam or a Telesync.

VODRip:
VODRip stands for Video-On-Demand Rip. This can be done by recording or
capturing a video/movie from an On-Demand service such as through a cable or
satellite TV service.

BD/BR Rip:
PA BD/BR Rip in DVD-Rip size often looks better than a same-size DVD rip
because encoders have better source material. What is commonly misunderstood
among downloader's is that a BDRip and a BRRip is NOT the same thing. A BDRip
comes directly from the Blu-ray source, and BRRip is encoded from a pre-release,
usually from a 1080p BDRip from another group. BD Rips are available in DVD-
Rip sized releases encoded in XviD as well as larger DVD5 or DVD9 sized releases
encoded in x264. BD5 or BD9 are also available, which are slightly smaller than
their counterpart DVD5/DVD9 releases, are AVCHD compatible using the BD
Folder structure and are intended to be burnt onto DVDs to play in AVCHD
compatible Blu-ray players. More recent types, probably associated with the use of
newsgroups and cheaper storage at home, are complete Blu-ray copies. Commonly
referred to as BD25 or BD50 and may or may not be re-mixed but not transcoded.

R5:
This is a region 5 DVD rip, which are released in Russia. These often occur labeled
as R5.Line, which means the original audio has been dubbed over with an English
audio source, often taken from a TS or TC.

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.

H264(x264):
The new(ish) video standard known as H.264/AVC presents a collection of state-of-
the-art video coding capabilities that can provide interoperable video broadcast or
communication with degrees of capability that far surpass those of prior standards
such as Divx and Xvid, while maintaining a similar bitrate and filesize.

Retail DVD/BluRay:
DVD's or BluRay 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.

Other important tags for movies / dvd's:

COMPLETE:
A release is COMPLETE when it's a DVD5. When a DVD is COMPLETE, it didn't
need any adjustments and the video is therefore untouched. Most DVD's though are
DVD9, so they need to be compressed to DVD5. DVD5 is much more wanted since
all DVD players can read these DVD's, and almost every DVD burner can burn
them. DVD9 discs are less popular, they are more expensive and not many people
can burn a DVD9.

LiMiTED:
A movie is LiMiTED when it has a limited theater run. Generally smaller films
(such as art house films) are released as limited. The scene considers a movie limited
when it has a generally opening in less than 300 UK theaters, or in less than 500
USA theaters. In the scene jargon, it's usually called 300 UK screens, or 500 USA
screens. Officially, it's not the opening weekend's number of theaters that counts,
but the peak of the number of theaters. For example; when a movie has 275 UK
screens in the opening weekend, and 1 week later it has 325 screens, it's not limited.

STV:
STV stands for Straight To Video. These movies were never released in theaters,
instead, they were immediately released on video/dvd. Therefore, a lot of sites do not
allow these movies.

FESTiVAL:
This is a variation of STV/LiMiTED. A FESTiVAL is a movie which hasn't been
shown in a public theater, but has been shown on a film festival (such as Cannes
Film Festival). An example of a FESTiVAL movie is Hot Tamale (imdb), which has
not been in a public theater, but it was shown on the Newport Beach Film Festival.

iNTERNAL:
An internal release is done for several reasons. The most common reason is because
it has already been released before, and with iNTERNAL in title, the release won't
be nuked. iNTERNAL's are quite common. Also lower quality theater rips are done
iNTERNAL so it doesn't lower the reputation of the group. 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. Although a release is iNTERNAL, it still can
be very popular. For mp3's the interla-tag is different. For mp3 releases it's release
title-year-Group_iNT. That way the internal release won't be calculated into the
group's stats. This avoids mp3 groups from doing a lot of internal releases, since
they would just do that to get better stats. Some groups rename iNTERNAL to iNT,
since this much shorter.

Subbed:
If a release is subbed, it typically has hard encoded subtitles burned into the movie.
It may also be soft subs and have a sub file with 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 and DVD support switchable
subtitles, so some DVDRips and most DVD's are released with switchable subs.

Unsubbed:
When a movie has been released subbed before, an unsubbed release may be
released.

Custom.Subbed:
A release can also be custom subbed. Movies often are released earlier in the USA
than in Europe. These movies mostly contain a few subtitles, the ones that are
spoken in the USA. European groups can create custom subtitles and add these to
the dvd(rip). For example, when Dutch subtitles were added to a NTSC DVDr:
Madagascar.2005.Custom.NL.Subbed.NTSC.DVDr-Group. Off course, it's not just
European, also Japaneese movies can be subbed english for example.
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.

SE:
SE stands for Special Edition. Like the name says, it's a special dvd edition of a
movie. Often special editions contain extra material like deleted scenes, interviews,
or a making-of.

DC:
DC stands for Director's Cut. A director's cut is a specially edited version of a movie
that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit of the movie. It is
often released some time after the original release of the film, where the original
release was released in a version different from the director's approved edit. 'Cut' is
synonymous with 'edit' in this context.

DL:
DL stands for Dual-Language, meaning the dvd contains more than one language.
Synonym: ML.

FS / WS (Aspect Ratio Tags):

These are FS for Full Screen and WS for Widescreen (letterbox).

Language Codes:
The language of the movie and the language of the subtitles can also be mentioned in
the release name. Sometimes the language is fully mentioned in the release name,
such as DUTCH, NORDiC, GERMAN and iTALiAN. Sometimes it's shortened, and
then the ISO standard country abbreviations are used. These are the same as the
abbreviations which are used for www-domains, for example: NL (Dutch), NO
(Nordic), DE (Germany), IT (Italian). When there are multiple languages or
subtitles, MULTi or MULTiSUBS is mentioned. In general, when the language is
fully mentioned in the release name, this is the movie language. The abbreviation
usually means the subtitle(s). So DUTCH will mean that the language is Dutch, and
NL will mean that the menu/subtitle is Dutch.

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-edited,
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.

Encode:
Encoding is opposite of decoding. Encoding means that a file, whether it is an audio,
video or picture file, is compressed to another format that normally takes up less
physical drive space than the previous format.

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, it's not
looked upon highly as groups are expected to obtain their own sources.

Cinavia:
Cinavia is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system utilizing audio watermaking
technology created by verance that can detect when an illegal movie download /
pirate DVD is being played on a PlayStation 3 (PS3) console and modern Blu-ray
stand-alone players on the market. Content protected by this technology carry
inaudible codes (the watermark) embedded in the audio tracks by the owner of the
copyright that indicate how and where they are to be used.

Scene tags:

PROPER:
Due to scene rules, whoever releases a certain release the first, has won that race. As
an 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 a repack.

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

RAW:
Raw means that video data is uncompressed. RAW video, depending on resolution
and frame rate can take up many GBs of space for sm