Lossless stream rip cheatsheet

lossless-stream-rip-cheatsheet.md

Lossless stream rip cheatsheet

Note: This guide may be slightly outdated. It may be still useful for older releases, but nowadays the vast majority of releases are correctly tagged as WEB-DL (unless it's RARBG/rartv). Protip: prefer looking at file names instead of release names, as they tend to be more accurate.

This is a short cheatsheet to help you determine whether a release from Amazon, Hulu, or Netflix contains the lossless/untouched (as in no further loss of quality compared to what the streaming services provide) video/audio or not. Most newer P2P releases are correctly tagged, but for older releases, it cannot be reliably determined based on the tags alone.

In most cases, non-lossless rips from these services are screen captures (which, when done by professional releasers, should be high quality and contain little to no glitches – see the history section for details), but in some cases they may be simply reencoded from the untouched stream, for example to crop black bars or reencode from a higher-quality stream to achieve better quality. Also, generally the audio is untouched even when the video is not, but that's not always the case. There is no easy way to differentiate these cases, so I'm only describing what to look for in regards to lossless video streams, and for those, you can be quite certain the audio is losslessly preserved as well. Internal releases on private trackers such as BTN generally provide such information about the video and audio, but in practice these notes rarely make their way to other sites.

You will need a program called MediaInfo to view the relevant information in files. Some sites already post the output of the program, but you may want to verify it yourself after downloading the files to make sure.

Amazon

• Release tag:
  • AMZN.WEB-DL / Amazon.WEB-DL
  • AMZN.WEBRip (old/mislabeled releases)
  • WEB-DL DD+ / WEB-DL AAC2.0 AVC / WEB-DL DD5.1 AVC (TrollHD)
  • WEB-DL AAC2.0 H.264 / WEB-DL DD5.1 H.264 (TrollHD – some of these are from iTunes instead)
  • WEB (scene releases)
• Format profile:
  • 1920×1080: High@L4
  • 1280×720 / 960×540: High@L3.1
  • 640×480 / 704×396: Main@L3

Note that the dates given below are approximate.

2015

• Constant bitrate
  • 1920×1080: 10 Mbps
  • 1280×720: 6 Mbps
  • 640×480 / 720×404: 2 Mbps
• No mention of x264 version or encoding settings

August 2016 – present

• Variable bitrate
• Maximum bitrate:
  • 1920×1080: 15 Mbps
  • 1280×720: 4.5 Mbps
  • 960×540: 2.995 Mbps
  • 720x480: 2.4 Mbps
  • 640x480 / 704×396: 1.8 Mbps
• As of May/June 2018, Amazon has stopped specifying any maximum bitrate on their newer encodes.
• Average bitrate is often significantly lower than the maximum for animated content.
• Tagged WEB-DL DD+ by TrollHD

August–September 2016

• x264 core 148 r2623 d5b2374
• Encoding settings:
  • 1920×1080 / 1280×720: crf=18
  • 960×540: crf=19
  • 720×480: crf=20
  • 640×480 / 704×396: crf=22

Note that there is a gap here, no untouched rips were released for a while because the exploit was patched.

April 2017 – present

• No mention of x264 version or encoding settings
• Usually tagged H.264 rather than x264

Note: Some videos, even new content, may use 2015 or 2016 video encoding settings, but E-AC3 audio (and subtitles, when available) are still included.

Hulu

• Release tag:
  • HULU.WEB-DL
  • HULU.WEBRip (old or mistagged releases)
  • WEB (scene releases)
• Format profile:
  • 1080p: High@L4
  • 720p: High@L3.1
• No mention of x264 version or encoding settings
• Usually tagged H264 or H.264 rather than x264

Netflix

• Release tag:
  • NF.WEB-DL / Netflix.WEB-DL
  • NF.WEBRip (old/mislabeled releases)
  • WEB (scene releases)
• 2160p:
  • Untouched 4K rips were possible for a short period of time, they are currently not possible to do
  • Always HEVC, since there is no H.264 stream
  • Format profile: Main 10@L5@Main
  • Bitrate: 15–16 Mbps
  • No mention of x265 or encoding settings
• 1080p and lower (H.264):
  • x264 versions:
    • x264 core 118
    • x264 core 148
    • x264 core 148 r2714 2daf636
    • x264 core 148 r2715 7e75228
    • x264 core 148 r2717 0d2410d
  • Baseline profile:
    • Format profile: Baseline@L3 (640x480)
  • Main profile:
    • Format profile: Main@L4 (1080p), Main@L3.1 (720p), Main@L3 (720x480)
    • Encoding settings: rc=2pass and for 1080p maximum 7.5 Mbps (bitrate=7500)
  • High profile:
    • Format profile: High@L4 (1080p), High@L3.1 (720p), High@L3 (960x540)
    • Encoding settings: rc=crf and for 1080p maximum 20 Mbps (vbv_maxrate=20000)

Release tags: WEB/WEB-DL and WEBRip

Let's start with P2P groups. Historically, on BTN, the WEB-DL tag was reserved for releases from iTunes, which has a long-standing public method to break its DRM, and WEBRip was used for rips from streaming services with weak or no DRM. When content from streaming services such as Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix started being released, since it wasn't possible to break their DRM, screen captures ("caps") were made instead. (These are generally done using a lossless HDMI capture card and then the 300–400 GB output is reencoded to a reasonable size. This can be done because HDCP is already broken.) But there was no explicit provision in the release name rules for this, so WEBRip was used.

Later, it became possible to circumvent the DRM used by those streaming services. There were two exploits specifically for Amazon, one in 2015 and one in 2016, and then in 2017, untouched rips from Amazon, Hulu and Netflix started appearing, as the Widevine DRM itself, now used by all three streaming services, has been broken. However, since WEB-DL was reserved for iTunes, they were still tagged as WEBRip, which lead to confusion about which releases are untouched.

BTN has since then changed their rules to require WEB-DL instead of WEBRip for all untouched rips, and also iT.WEB-DL rather than plain WEB-DL for iTunes. New releases from reputable groups should be now clearly tagged, however there are sites like RARBG which still tag everything other than iTunes as WEBRip, and then there are many sites which just use the notation of whatever other site they got it from, so you may still need to look at the details to make sure. File names are now generally preserved so it should be easy to tell for new releases, but RARBG used to rename files.

As for the scene, starting from 2016, all untouched releases are tagged WEB, while captured/reencoded ones are tagged WEBRip. However, there are some releases before the standard was established tagged WEBRiP which are generally (if not always) untouched. In both cases, there is no source tag, so you need to check the NFO (it may or may not be mentioned there) or the MediaInfo to determine the source. The source may be anything including iTunes and network websites, not necessarily Amazon/Hulu/Netflix. iTunes releases require proof (screenshot of download in progress), so those are easy to identify.

Thanks for explaining when WEBRip and WEB-DL should be used.

Scene-Groups aAF and BiGiNT also release WEB-tagged releases.

I have noticed aAF, but forgot to add it to the list. Thanks!

Which do you think would be better quality - a bluray 1080p x264 encode versus a 1080p x264 WEB (not webrip)?

SERIOUSLY, MOROSE, and SRS also release WEB, as does TBS (although the quality of the latter is usually poor for some reason)

@eliluong A good quality P2P encode is almost always better than any WEB-DL or WEBRip. And it worth to mension that sometimes a WEBRip is better than the WEB-DL. For example Netflix 1080p WEB-DL's are bitstarved, while the 1080p WEBRip's, for example NTb releases (encoded from the 4k stream) are much better due to the higher bitrate.

Netflix 2160p: Untouched 4K rips were possible for a short period of time, it is currently not possible.

Do we know when it was possible? Would like to know if lossless 4k rips of specific series (ex: Stranger Things S2) exist.

@vonapon Sorry for the late reply, I don't get notifications on this. It was only possible for a short period of time in summer 2017, I think from April to June or so. You won't find untouched 4K rips of newer content from Amazon/Netflix, however TrollHD has started doing HDR x265 WEBRips.

@rm-root Most sites don't even allow other audios other than the English/original in a release. For foreign language dubs you have to go to sites that are specialized in that particular language you are interested in.

@nyuszika7h can you update the cheatsheet with disney+ and appletv+?
DSNP -> EAC3 256k & ATMOS 768k
ATVP -> AC3 384k & ATMOS 448k
Are there other infos to recognize DSNP and ATVP pure WEB-DL releases?

Some updates I found:

• [Edit 1] netflix audio DDP2.0 is cut in EAC3 version, not in HE-AAC version (best audio quality for DDP2.0).
• [Edit 2] there is another netflix x264 1080p encoder version x264 core 148 r2721 6d200cf (proof from private trackers/trusted releasers)
• [Edit 3] there is another netflix x264 1080p encoder version x264 core 148 r2722 1b0121b (proof from private trackers/trusted releasers)

Thank you for this cheat sheet. I assayed to decipher everything for years but this verifies the patterns I noticed for web-dl labelled files [not folders]. Please maintain this for accuracy.

Quick question: have one tagged webrip from NTB but file says AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb. The show just finished airing so the encode date is new but not listed. The bit rate mode is Constant. Is it still lossless?

I have noticed this is commonplace for rarbg. My conjecture is it is commonplace for other sources as well. Pay attention to the actual files because they likely are more accurate with regards to this. Of course I can be incorrect but my conjecture is if amzn.web-dl is in the file name the streams should be true to lineage.

I have noticed this is commonplace for rarbg. My conjecture is it is commonplace for other sources as well. Pay attention to the actual files because they likely are more accurate with regards to this. Of course I can be incorrect but my conjecture is if amzn.web-dl is in the file name the streams should be true to lineage.

thank you!

I do my best not to download releases with web rip in the file names. Sometimes this is not feasible and it seems to be so for obscure or older films and/or programmes. It depends how much I want a particular release provided it is the only source I can find.

I do my best not to download releases with web rip in the file names. Sometimes this is not feasible and it seems to be so for obscure or older films and/or programmes. It depends how much I want a particular release provided it is the only source I can find.

Right. Re: the NTB file, I downloaded the same episode but from another source (not NTB but still amzn web-dl) and the settings were similar (no encoding, constant bitrate) but the bitrate and GB size were bigger than NTB's, so I assume this one is better quality? I'm confused again over NTB haha

It is equivocal to me as well. If you use Mac OS, download [and purchase a lifetime license for] MediaInfo from the App Store. The in-app purchase unlocks comparison of two or more files: all fields, identical only, or different only. This capability is extremely useful here. My supposition is if two of the same release exist, and the one set is labelled ntb[rarbg] and the other set is labelled ntb without the [rarbg] suffix, it is likely they are sourced from the same place. When in doubt, download both in full and use the comparison feature of MediaInfo if possible. If the bit rates, frame rates, et cetera differ greatly, keep the one of higher technical value. The audio is a good metric to use; I always keep the copy with the superior audio provided that is a factor.

Also, pay attention to the encoded date value metadata. That will tell you which is ‘original’ or existed initially. Not all files have that data, but anything encoded with MKVMerge does and anything encoded with LAV does not. Why I know not but intuition [not logic because I cannot provide a proper deductive argument] tells me anything encoded with LAV is not a true web-dl [from the video-on-demand service] sourced copy. I do my best to stay away from them as well.

This is all really valuable and helpful info, thank you so much!

Hi, there is another netflix x264 1080p encoder version x264 core 148 r2724 dbe0335