Tip #8: Jewel’s Guide to Movie & DVD Rip Tags

Jun 20, 2007

So I was recently asked what the TS part of a movie download file name meant by a friend of mine so I thought I’d do up a quick guide to what all those extra bits’n'bobs mean on avi downloads.

DVD-SCREENER (DVDscr): sent to rental shops or other places for promotional use. Supplied on DVD, and is usually in letterbox view , 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.

TELECINE (TC): A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the movie reels. Sound and picture will be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio.

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 make shake. It might also 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.

TELESYNC (TS): A telesync is the same spec as a CAM but 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 dramatically.

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.

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