Large or small versions of movies
 

Most of the movies on FastTrack are under 500mb with around 250 being the norm. eDonkey has mostly 700mb+ versions. Which do you prefer and why?
I don't mind the small version for throwaway films but a big special effects pic deserves higher quality.

I refuse to watch the small ones myself :toi:

Well, obviously the bigger one are higher quality (higher bitrate). The image itself may look just as good on the small one, but the actual size of the picture will be bigger, so you can go full-screen with no problems. 534 (or something like that) and up (640 and 712 are common widths as well) is pretty standard for a 700mb file and you can throw it on a VCD. Finally, the smaller ones are usually ASF files, which tend to get terrible audio sync problems, either due to crappy encoding, the players or the format itself.

Standard movies (~2 hours) will usually come on 1 or 2 cds (700mb+ files). At 2 cds you're looking at pretty good picture quality (few artifacts) and good sound, maybe even an AC3 track.

Same here. If I can't get one around 700mb, I skip it. :ND:

usually the under-500mb ones are camcorder recordings, where speed (getting it from the theatre to the net) is more important than quality.

the 650mb and above are usually rips of DVDs/VCDs etc, months or years after cinema release.

I just can't take the cams and go for the rips, but then I got DSL; for others I guess there'll always be a place for smaller files.

Also I go for the rips coz I usually only d/l movies that crashed my PC when I rent them on DVD. F#k Hollywood if they're gonna press sh1tty discs!

I just wish people would make sure to mention when it's a cam so I could avoid it. :m: (I got tricked once assuming a 630mb file was rip; instead I got perspective, sync trouble and Chinese/Malay subtitles & chitchat).

But it will all be better soon with the help of Sig2Dat, FastTrack's P2P Movies and FastTrack Central... until Sharman screw things up again at least.

Evidently you don't use the same edonkey that I use. I get the movies there almost as soon as they are released in theaters. Not all of them that soon after release, but if they aren't there right away, its not long before they are there.

Did that make sense? :D

Aye I've noticed a lot of "DVD Screener" rips around, nice quality with a handy little "this is only for official screenings" (or such like) message ;)

I have not had any problems with movies about 150mb etc... I know the quality aint gonna be great, but its not bad for a movie like, say "attack of the clones" which aint out yet, at least its watchable. But if the movie is out, its best to get a dvd rip.

One thing I have noticed though, is that the quality of my movies depend on what graphics card I use.
My "Geforce" is shit at movies, too blocky especially on cam jobs, but with my "ATI" the quality is far better, blocks are almost unoticable.

But at the end of the day, can WE complain? are we paying for theses movies? - just be greatfull for what you get - I am.


H@Xor

As much as it ever does, dear...


(OK go ahead and spank me now... I deserve it :AB: )

well :con: it confused me. (not that THAT takes much :B: )

are you saying that as soon as the movie is out in the cinema/"theeder", you're finding 650MB DVD rips on eDonkey???

Damn, I'm impressed, I should run the Donk more often.

Yep, and sometimes even before its released :tu:

:BWL: :AB:






:hmm:

:AB: :S: Thank You... May I have another? :V:

While they're being handed out... :a:

These are a few that are out on eDonkey. Spiderman is 2gb.:shk:

At napho's suggestion, I just tried Direct Connect. I must say I am impressed! I've found most all the movies I was after in the large size, and the download speeds are incredibly fast compared to Edonkey. For instance, I was getting Blade 2 on Edonkey at around 10 kb; on Direct Connect it's coming in at 51 kb.

Great program so far. :tu:

I guess it depends on how soon you want it. Depending on how many sources I get, the smaller ones on FastTrack I can download within an hour or 2. The quality isn't all too bad as long as you don't watch it in full screen. You can also always choose "fit to screen" in media player and keep increasing the size until it's close to the point where it's no longer tolerable. I guess for movies with a lot of special affects and fast camera scenes then you might want to get a better quality version.

Although, with some p2p programs it is a little disappointing when it takes maybe a day or more to download a movie only to find out that it sucked. Basically, if I like a movie then I start searching for better copies or make my way to the theatres. I guess I consider the smaller ones like a preview without much invested time. Although, I find eDonkey great for when I want to collect high quality rips....good things are worth waiting for.

DC can be nice as long as you find someone fast to download from. A lot of broadband user especially cable modems have an upload cap so usually get around 10-12kb. What makes it worst is that many hubs require that you share more then one upload slot and for users like me who have upload caps our bandwidth is further divided so that users upload at about 3-4kb from me. On the average the users I download from are in the same situation, but I have been lucky a few times. What hub are going into Dawn? It's nice to find a hub with a lot of T1 and T3 lines :BL:

Tick auto-connect at startup and put Tracadie.dns2go.com as the address.

Quite a few T1 & T3 people hang here (or have been the last few days)

:BL: :BL: :BL:

Use (if you're not already) DC++ available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dcplusplus/

It's an open source direct connect client and far superior in almost all ways to the official one. It lets you connect to multiple hubs simultaneously for one thing, and supports multisource downloading (altho it can't really handle anything that doesnt have the same filename in my experience).

The only thing to note is that for some reason hub admins don't like ppl using DC++ (despite them using non official versions of the hub software) so make sure you enter (under personal information) a Description, bcoz if its blank DC++ identifies itself and ur liable to get kicked

Thanks ranger :tu: I'll be sure to check them out when I get a chance.

Yes, I'm currently using DC++ and found it better then the original. I don't believe the original is being updated anymore so DC++ is your only choice for improved features.

This is news to me. I think I have to play with DC++ a little more because I didn't know this option existed. Although, I'm only using version 0.162 which I'm guessing is pretty out dated by now.

I've been told it's because DC++ allows you to connect to multiple hubs meaning that you are only sharing maybe 2-3 upload slots between 10 or more hubs.

And thanks for the personal information thing. I did not know that.

neither; i prefer to buy the dvds.

i don't think where movies are at right now are in any way comparable to mp3s. i think of movies as pretty much sub-vhs; while mp3s were near cd quality. as a dvd fan i'm not impressed at all.

the best films (screeners) are still just about near vhs; i hardly consider that good quality. i won't even comment on the cams. even the dvd rips are pretty sub-dvd (even if maybe a bit better then vhs) but without 5.1 encoding or any extras i find it more worthwhile to spend the $20 and buy it.

then again; i'm excited this is happening (the trading of films) and I am having fun watching it grow; but i have no patience for watching those ridiculously large files that still can't provide decent quality.

amen brotha..

I think you could be right: But when mp3 first came around the quality was fairly crappy. But now, it's become fairly acceptable, so long as you're not too picky (like: aww, this is shitty.. you just can't hear the 15000khz on that now can you?)

DVD rips that I have made are almost the same quality as the .vob file: it's just converted into an mpeg instead. Makes a movie onto 3 disks instead, that's all, but DVD copiers are getting cheaper ;-) .. Sound quality isn't 5.1 yet on these rips, but I'm sure that given time people will figure out how to get that too, just as they've sorted the mp3 problems.

Just a matter of time, is all.

If it's a movie that I am really interested in, I'll just rent the DVD from Blockbuster. For all the rest, downloading the 700MB size and playing back on 19" monitor is a perfect way for "free" entertainment (great quality too) :ND:

I've learned from the whole movie thing that video quality is apparently a lot more subjective then I ever thought it was. And apparently I am a bit more sensitive then others.

With mp3s; incidentally; I was happy as a pig in shit when they were all encoded at 128kbs; and I didn't hear much of a degredation in quality. Many others, of course, did and do. (Of course; I also may have simply had cheap speakers).

ranger: I absolutely agree and I look forward to the future. What sucks is I doubt broadband is going to get any faster for $50 a month; and what you are describing sounds to me like the only way I could ever be interested in downloading films. However it would take forever to pull down 2.1 gigs per film (that's about the size of your rips I assume) and I'd be back in the store purchasing them instead.

Now that I do find interesting.

I found, for instance, on Direct Connect, a satellite connection from which I downloaded an mp3 at 70kb/s constant.

So, in theory, if we all had such connections (or better) and found that 200kb/s was the norm, then a 2.5GB download would be no real biggy, would it?

I've probably got another 35 years on this planet: I might just see real broadband yet.

seems pretty simple to me...

if you plan to watch on your computer then download one of the smaller copies. these are the avi, asf, ogg, wmv, and whatever else is used to give higher compression.

if you plan to watch on a DVD player then download the bigger version. that would be the mpeg's that are used for VCD or SVCD authoring.

to guage quality by file size is very unfair because dferent formats use different levels of compression. i have seen re-encodes of VCD's that looked every bit as good as the original VCD at half the file size. you just can not guage by size alone, you need to account for formats.