Correctly named folders make it easier to maintain clean archives and unique filenames allow dupecheck to work properly. Rules for naming files and folders are an important part of the standards. For example, scripts can read ID3 information from MP3s and sort releases based on those contents. Since these releases rarely have large numbers of files, leaving them unpackaged is more convenient and allows for easier scripting. These releases have content that is not further compressible without loss of quality, but also have small enough files that they can be transferred reliably without breaking them up.
MP3 and music video releases are an exception in that they are not packaged into a single archive like almost all other sections.
Because of this, modern playback software can easily play a release directly from the packaged files, and even stream it as the release is downloaded (if the network is fast enough).
Ripped movies are still packaged due to the large file size, but compression is disallowed and the RAR format is used only as a container. Repacking them would just create larger files and increase decompression time. Movies and MP3 files are already compressed with near maximum capacity. The reason for this is that some material compresses much better than others. The new RAR naming format,, removes the limit, although the individual split archives continue to be 50 MB for historical reasons and because the old RAR naming format is still being widely used.ĭifferent compression levels are used for each type of material being distributed. For example, a DVD-R image (4.37 GiB), split into 101 pieces, produces volumes smaller than 50 MB. This allowed for 101 volumes in a single release before the naming switched to s00, s01 and so on. įormerly, the size of volumes were limited by the RAR file naming scheme, which produced extensions. These measurements are not equivalent to traditional measurement of file size (which is 1024 KB to a MB, 1024 MB to a GB) in a typical DVD release, each RAR file is exactly 50,000,000 bytes, not 52,428,800 bytes (50 megabytes in binary prefix). The sizes of the archives within the distributed file vary from the traditional 3½" floppy disk (1.44 MB) or extra-high density disk (2.88 MB) to 5 MB, 15 MB (typical for CD images) or 20 MB (typical for CD images of console releases), 50 MB files (typical for DVD images), and 100 MB (for dual-layer DVD images). Allowed package formats today are limited to RAR and ZIP, of which the latter is used only in 0-day releases.
Next, the standard usually talks about how to package the material.
Some formats such as CloneCD can only be used on Windows computers, and these formats are generally not chosen for use in the standards. Formats are chosen such that they can be used on any major platform with little hassle. When choosing the file format, platform compatibility is important. For example, releases using the Xvid encoder must use the two-pass encoding method, which takes twice as long as a single pass, but achieves much higher quality similarly, DVD-R releases that must be re-encoded often use 6 or 8 passes to get the best quality. In general, quality is not sacrificed for speed, and the standards will usually opt for the highest quality possible, even if this takes much longer. New codecs are usually tested annually to check if any offer any conclusive enhancement in quality or compression time. Newer video standards moved away from the size constraints and replaced them with a quality based alternative such as the use of CRF. If more discs are required for sufficient quality, the standard will define the circumstances where it is acceptable to expand to a second or third disc. The standards are designed such that a certain amount of content will fit on each piece of media, with the best possible quality in terms of size. When choosing file size, the limiting factor is the size of the media to be used (such as 700MB for CD-R). Creators of the standard usually do comprehensive testing to find optimal codecs and settings for sound and video to maximize image quality in the selected file size. The first part of a standards document usually defines the format properties for the material, like codec, bitrate, resolution, file type and file size. There are rules of naming and organizing files, rules that dictate how a file must be packaged and an nfo file, that contains required information, must be added with the content. 3.3.2 DivX and Xvid for television sources.3.3.1 DivX and Xvid for retail and bootleg sources.