xREL.v3

UPDATE!

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High Definition x264 Standards
Revision 4.0 :: 2011-01-29

[ Intro ]
A lot has happened in the years since the last revision and time came for some updates.
Main changes include the need to provide proof for retail disc sources in view of the many
suspicious releases that we have seen over the last year, Sizing has been made a bit more
flexible, Subtitles rules have been reworked, foreign overlays have been addressed and finally
suggested encoding settings have been updated to match the codec developments/changes since the
previous standards.
This rule set will target HDDVD and Blu-Ray sourced 720p and 1080p movie and TV-show rips.

[ Previous Releases ]
These rules do not apply to previous releases, and propering for those reasons will not be tolerated.

[ General ]
1.1) Release must be packed in RAR. SFV and NFO must be included.
1.2) Rars must be in multiples of 50 MiB, no more than 99 files.
1.3) Compressed rars are not allowed.
1.4) Release must be muxed into a mkv container.
1.5) NFO should contain information on Audio and Video Bitrate.
1.6) BluRay and HDDVD sources dupe each other.
1.7) Suggested directory format:
Movie.Name.YEAR.<720p/1080p>.BluRay.x264.<PROPER/READ.NFO/REPACK>-GROUP
TV.Show.SxxExx.<720p/1080p>.BluRay.x264.<PROPER/READ.NFO/REPACK>-GROUP
1.8) No intros, outros, betweenos, or any other form of defacement of the film will be tolerated.
1.9) Credits must not be removed but can be encoded at a lower bitrate provided they
don't contain any scenes (bloopers, story, etc).
1.10) A sample roughly 60 seconds in length is required.
1.10.1) It must be cut from the final release and not encoded separately.
1.10.2) It must be put within a directory named "Sample".

[ Video ]
2.1) If needed, appropriate de-interlacing and ivtc must be applied.
2.2) Must use a minimum encode of 2 passes.
2.3) Width of release must be mod 16. Height of release must be mod 8.
2.4) Crop the black borders from the source. Crop to the widest frame possible.
Info: For technical reasons you cannot crop 1 pixel, the minimum is 2 pixels, therefore propering
for 1 pixel over/under does
not make sense.
2.4.1) Resizing is not allowed on 1080p encodes. Either crop to closest mod8/mod16 without overcropping, or crop().addborders()
2.5) Use the same aspect ratio as the source, not what IMDB, cover or any other sources say.
2.6) Custom Matrices are allowed.
2.7) VfW (Video for Windows) is not allowed.
2.8) x264 version used must be no more than 50 revisions from newest.
2.9) Level 4.1 must be respected.
2.10) --deblock must be enabled (default).
--aq-mode must be enabled (default).
--bframes 3 or higher is required (default).
--ref 5 or higher is required unless the vertical resolution is greater than 864, then 4 must be
used to respect L4.1.
--me umh or higher is required.
--subme 7 or higher is required (default).
--trellis 1 or higher is required (default).
2.11) 720p refers to a MAXIMUM resolution of 1280x720.
2.11.1) For aspect ratio equal or above 1.78 horizontal resolution must be 1280.
e.g. AR of 2.35:1 will be 1280x544.
2.11.2) For aspect ratio lower than 1.78 vertical resolution must be 720.
e.g. AR of 1.33:1 will be 960x720.
2.12) 1080p refers to a MAXIMUM resolution of 1920x1080.
2.12.1) For aspect ratio equal or above 1.78 horizontal resolution must be 1920.
e.g. AR of 2.35:1 will be 1920x816.
2.12.2) For aspect ratio lower than 1.78 vertical resolution must be 1080.
e.g. AR of 1.33:1 will be 1440x1080.
2.13) Video bitrate should be as follows:
2.13.1) 720p - Minimum 4000 kbit, maximum 8000 kbit. Minimum bitrate for animation is 2300 kbit.
2.13.2) 1080p - Minimum 8000 kbit, maximum 14000 kbit, though not more than source-2000kbit. Minimum bitrate for animation is 5000 kbit.

[ Suggested encode settings for 720p ]
3.1) First pass:
x264.exe --pass 1 --profile high --stats movie.stats --bitrate 4000 --preset slow -o NUL movie.avs
3.2) Second pass:
x264.exe --pass 2 --profile high --stats movie.stats --bitrate 4000 --preset slow --ref 5 --subme 7 --analyse all --no-fast-pskip -o movie.mkv movie.avs

[ Foreign overlays ]
4.1) English spoken movies sources with non-english overlays in the actual movie footage are NOT allowed.
This does not count for start/end credits but to relevant movie parts. e.g. on screen locations text,
hardcoded non-english subtitles (hardsubs) and similar occurrences. example: http://i52.tinypic.com/2mnof94.jpg

[ Audio ]
5.1) Audio must be AC3, DTS or FLAC, preferably from source.
DTS core must be extracted from a DTS HR/HD MA track.
AC3 640 kbit, DTS 768 kbit and DTS 1536 kbit must be encoded from a higher bitrate source.
Encoded DTS track must be decodeable by older hardware decoders.
FLAC audio must be created from LPCM, DTS HD MA or TRUEHD sources.
5.2) Audio bitrate must never be below 640 kbit, unless source only has lower bitrate audio track.
5.3) All audio shall be 5.1 with correct channels, except in the case of stereo/mono only.
5.4) Release must only contain one audio track muxed into the mkv container, unless original language isn't english.
5.4.1) Original language audio track or English dubbed track must be used.
5.4.1.1) English dubbed movie without original audio track must be tagged DUBBED.
5.4.1.2) DUBBED release only allowed if no release with secondary English dubbed audio track exists.
5.4.2) If original language is not English:
5.4.2.1) English Subtitles must be included.
5.4.2.2) English dub is allowed as a secondary audio track.

[ Subtitles ]
6.1) English subs in a text-based format (.srt) must be muxed into the mkv container for non-english movies or non-english scenes.
They should be carefully ocr'd and must be in sync. It is encouraged to include english subs for
english spoken movies too.
6.2) Subs MUST be from a retail source. Fan/Custom/Web subs are not allowed.
6.3) Must use a separate substream for FORCED subtitles when available for english movies with foreign spoken parts (e.g. the alien
the "alien spoken" parts in District 9). http://i52.tinypic.com/2zi3tkh.jpg
When making use of forced subs, it is necessary to enable this stream by default, placing it above any other stream,
so that there is no user interaction required when playing the movie. For this, the muxer has to be
set to show the stream
by default.
6.4) Subtitles must not be burned into the video stream.
6.5) Multi-language subtitles cannot be used as a basis for a dupe.
6.6) "Subs" directories are allowed.
They are intended only for external (not muxed) use and must be in vobsub format (idx/sub).
Vobsubs can be made using BDSup2Sub (http://tinyurl.com/49txsaw). Please use the subs resizing option in BDSup2Sub
according to your release (1280x720 resizing for 720p, 1920x1080 for 1080p).
6.6.1) External subs CANNOT replace muxed text-based srt subs for non-english movies/scenes and can only act as a supplement.
6.6.2) Vobsubs are NOT allowed to be muxed into the mkv container.
6.6.3) Vobsubs need to be in a single idx/sub set format. Multi-language streams can be made into one set using VobsubMuxer
(http://tinyurl.com/4aqdsal) or similar.
6.6.4) Subs in /Subs dir need to be rar packed using best compression and should be identical in
tagging to mkv name. Subpack rar name
must not dupe main release rar names.

[ Total Size ]
7.1) Final mkv file size in MiB (1048576 bytes) must be:
Multiples of 1120
DVD5/x (896, 1493, 2240, etc.)
Also allowed 2713, 8140 for all releases and 4070 for 1080p tv.
7.2) A max undersize of 40 MiB can be tolerated.
7.3) Propering a release that could have been a larger size is not allowed, unless below minimum bitrate.

[ Proof ]
8.1) ALL releases MUST now include source proof in the following way: Snapshot (not scan) of the
actual physical disc (printed side) in
jpg/png format with a group tag (e.g http://i53.tinypic.com/2jg9yqe.jpg). Disc snapshot must be in good quality with disc details clear
and readable. Small portions containing store stickers/barcodes may be blurred or blackened.
It's encouraged to also add a web hoster link to nfo to avoid trading skips.
8.1.2) Cover scans and m2ts samples may be added but DO NOT count as sufficient proof.
8.1.3) Releases that fail to pre with such proof are to be considered a nuke and can be propered.
Proofixes later than 2 hours from pre
(if a proper has not been pred during that time) will not be accepted.
8.2) IMPORTANT NOTE:
Some mobile phone cameras (such as iPhone) add exif metadata to the pictures (gps location for
example). It is ESSENTIAL to make
sure exif metadata is removed from your snapshot. This can be done in windows7 (http://i53.tinypic.com/2qltvu9.png), by editing
and re-saving the picture with Microsoft Paint or using freeware tools available on an "exif remover" web search.
e.g http://tinyurl.com/purejpg.

[ Signed By (in alphabetic order) ]
aAF, aBD, ALLiANCE, AMIABLE, AVCHD, AVCDVD, BESTHD, BLOW, CBGB, CiNEFiLE, CLUE, CROSSBOW, CULTHD, Felony, FilmHD, HD4U, HDEX, HUBRIS, iBEX,
iNFAMOUS, iNGOT, KaKa, LEVERAGE, NODLABS, NOHD, PELLUCiD, PFa, QCF, REFiNED, REWARD, SECTOR7, SEMTEX, SEVENTWENTY, SHORTBREHD, SiNNERS,
TENEIGHTY, THUGLiNE, TREBLE, TWiZTED, WASABi, XPRESS

[ Refused to Sign (in alphabetic order) ]
AVS720, FLHD, Japhson, LCHD, OEM1080

[ These rules apply from 2011-02-07 00:00:00 GMT (1230768000 unixtime) ]

[ Change Log ]
added
changed

+ 4.1: Foreign overlays are not allowed.
+ 6.2: Subs must be from a retail source. fan subs are not allowed.
+ 6.3: Forced subtitles for non-english scene must be included in seperate stream.
+ 8.1: Source Proof is enforced.
* 3.1: First Pass suggested settings updated.
* 3.2: Second Pass suggested settings updated.
* 6.6: Subs directories for Vobsubs are allowed.
* 7.1: Multiples of 1120 instead of 2240.