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Streaming with high bit rates (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have a Disney plus subscription through my family and watched a cool animation film yesterday. Sadly the horrible nitrate destroyed all the nice particle effects wich really took me out of the experience.

Are there any sites wich offer high quality streaming or should I look into torrenting for blue ray rips?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Streaming can provide decent quality, but not high quality. That's simply too costly on scale.

Bit rate alone doesn't necessarily tell you quality either.

I suggest you look for downloads and look for

Release Groups that match your intentions (once you found favorites you may want to stick to them)
Screenshots on releases/info pages
Encoding information

To assess encoding information, you look at file type, video codec, and encoding bit-ness.

From high to low compatibility, and low to high compression ratio:

mp4 file, AVC/x264/h.264
mkv file, HEVC/x265/h.265
mkv file, HEVC, 10-bit
mkv file, AV1 [10-bit]

You can consider the triplets of the codec to be different names for the same thing.

You'll be able to play all file and codec types on a PC, but not necessarily on other devices. If you're streaming from PC to something else, that's fine too.

I'm usually looking for 10-bit HEVC releases because of their vastly superior size for quality. If that's not available, HEVC or AVC. In most cases, it doesn't matter too much to me.

A video with a lot of movement or visual detail will have bigger sizes.

If you compare an AVC release and bitrate with a HEVC 10-bit release and bitrate, they are vastly different. You can get the same quality for a fraction of file size and bitrate. More bitrate is often a waste of bandwidth and storage space.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you for your super detailed response. That's a lot of information 😅 Talking about codecs is only applicable to torrenting, right? (I've never seen a streaming site talk about the codecs they use).

I don't really mind paying a bit (and hopefully supporting the creation of new media), but it's unbelievable that Disney+ butchers a lot of the most memorable Pixar scenes, with terrible compression. (When a lot of snow, confetti or other particles are on screen).

PS: I live in the EU, so I'm not signing away my right to live by subscribing to a streaming service. WTF is going on on the other side of the atlantic. I can't even believe what a capitalist nightmare some call the United States of America.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Any form of audio and video uses codecs. It applies to streaming websites as well. It's usually technological details that is not obviously disclosed to users for simplicity/convenience.

It's possible to inspect the stream and media, and find out what is being used. It may offer alternative streams, to support more efficient modern and less efficient older platforms.