Cam - labeled Camrip and cam : Common; Quality issues make this an unpopular format. A copy made in a cinema using a camcorder or mobile phone. The sound source is the camera microphone. Cam rips can quickly appear online after the first preview or premiere of the film. The quality ranges from terrible to very good, depending on the group of persons performing the recording and the resolution of the camera used. The main disadvantage of this is the sound quality. The microphone does not only record the sound from the movie, but also the background sound in the cinema. The camera can also record movements and audio of the audience in the theater, for instance, when someone stands up in front of the screen, or when the audience laughs at a funny moment in the movie.



Telesync - labeled TS and Telesync : Very common. A copy shot in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera mounted on a tripod, directly connected to the sound source. The professional camera source is then synchronized with audio source fed directly from the cinema's sound system, or captured from an FM radio transmission intended for hearing-impaired customers. Often, a cam is mislabeled as a telesync.



Workprint - labeled WP and workprint : Very rare. A copy made from an unfinished version of a film produced by the studio. Typically a workprint has missing effects and overlays, and often differ from its theatrical release. Some workprints have a time index marker running in a corner or on the top edge; some may also include a watermark. A workprint might be an uncut version, and missing some material that would appear in the final movie.



Telecine - labeled TC and telecine : Fairly rare; losing popularity due to R5 releases. A copy captured from a film print using a machine that transfers the movie from its analog reel to digital format. These were rare because telecine machines for making these prints were very costly and very large. However, they have recently become much more common. Telecine has basically the same quality as DVD, since the technique is same as digitizing the actual film to DVD. However, the result is inferior since the source material is usually a lower quality copy reel. Telecine machines usually cause a slight left-right jitter in the picture and have inferior color levels compared to DVD.



Pay-per-view rip - labeled PPV and PPVrip : Common. PPVRips come from Pay-Per-View sources. All the PPVRip releases are brand new movies which have not yet been released to Screener or DVD, but are available for viewing by hotel customers.



Screener - labeled SCR, DVDscr, BDscr : Very Common. These are early DVD or BD releases of the theatrical version of a film, typically sent to movie reviewers, Academy members, and executives for review purposes. A screener normally has a message overlaid on its picture, with wording similar to: "The film you are watching is a promotional copy. If you purchased this film at a retail store please, contact 1-800-NO-COPIES to report it." Apart from this, some movie studios release their screeners with a number of scenes of varying duration shown in black and white. Aside from this message, and the occasional B&W scenes, screeners are normally of only slightly lower quality than a retail DVD-Rip, due to the smaller investment in DVD mastering for the limited run. Some screener rips with the overlay message get cropped to remove the message and get released mislabled as DVD-Rips.



Digital Distribution Copy - labeled DDC : Common. A digital distribution copy (DDC) is basically the same as a Screener, but sent digitally (FTP, HTTP, etc.) to companies instead of via the postal system. This makes distribution cheaper. Its quality is lower than one of a R5, but higher than a Cam or Telesync.



R5 - labeled R5, R5 line : Very Common. The R5 is a retail DVD from region 5. Region 5 consists of the Indian subcontinent, most of Africa, North Korea, Russia and Mongolia. R5 releases differ from normal releases in that they are a direct Telecine transfer of the film without any of the image processing. If the DVD does not contain an English-language audio track, the R5 video is synced to a previously released English audio track. Then a LiNE tag is added. This means that the sound often is not as good as DVD-Rips. To account for the lesser audio quality typically present in R5 releases, some release groups take the high quality Russian or Ukrainian 5.1 channel audio track included with the R5 DVD and modify it with audio editing software. They remove the non-English spoken portion of the audio and sync the remaining portion, which contains high quality sound effects and music with a previously recorded source of English vocals usually taken from a LiNE tagged release. The result of this process is an almost retail DVD quality surround sound audio track which is included in the movie release. Releases of this type are normally tagged AC3.5.1.HQ and details about what was done to the audio track as well as the video are present in the release notes accompanying the pirated movie.

The other regions are:

R0 No Region Coding
R1 United States of America, Canada
R2 Europe, including Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan, Israel and South Africa
R3 Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo and Indonesia
R4 Australia and New Zealand, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America
R5 India, Africa (except Egypt, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho), Russia and former USSR countries
R6 Peoples Republic of China
R7 Romania
R8 Airlines/Cruise Ships
R9 Expansion (often used as region free)

R1 and R2 are considered the best quality.



DVD-Rip - labeled Dvdrip : Very Common. A final retail version of a film, typically released before it is available outside its originating region. Often after one group of pirates releases a high-quality DVD-Rip, the "race" to release that film will stop. The release is an AVI file and uses the Xvid codec (earlier DivX) for video, and mp3 or AC3 for audio. Because of their high quality, DVD-Rips generally replace any earlier copies that may already have been circulating. Widescreen DVDs used to be indicated as WS.DVDRip.



DVD-R - labeled DVDR, DVD-Full, Full-Rip, DVD-5/DVD-9 : Very Common. A final retail version of a film in DVD format, generally a complete copy from the original DVD. If the original DVD is released in the DVD-9 format, however, extras might be removed and/or the video re-encoded to make the image fit the less expensive for burning and quicker to download DVD-5 format. DVD-R releases often accompany DVD-Rips. DVD-R rips are larger in size, generally filling up the 4.37 or 7.95 GiB provided by DVD-5 and DVD-9 respectively. Untouched or lossless rips in the strictest sense are 1:1 rips of the source, with nothing removed or changed, though often the definition is lightened to include DVDs which have not been transcoded, and no features were removed from the user's perspective, removing only restrictions and possible nuisances such as copyright warnings and movie previews.



HDTV or DS Rip - labeled DSR, HDTV, PDTV, TVRip, HDTVRip : Very Common. TVRip is a capture source from an analog capture card (coaxial/composite/s-video connection). Digital satellite rip (DSR) is a rip that is captured from a non standard definition digital source like satellite. HDTV or PDTV or DTH (Direct to Home) rips often come from Over-the-Air transmissions. With an HDTV source, the quality can sometimes even surpass DVD. Movies in this format are starting to grow in popularity.



VODRip - labeled VODrip, VODR : Common. VODRip stands for Video-On-Demand Rip. This can be done by recording or capturing a video/movie from an On-Demand service such as through a cable or satellite TV service. Most services will state that ripping or capturing films is a breach of their use policy, but it is becoming more and more popular as it requires little technology or setup. There are many online On-Demand services that would not require one to connect their TV and computer. It can be done by using software to identify the video source address and downloading it as a video file which is often the method that bears the best quality end result. However, some people have used screen cams which effectively record, like a video camera, what is on a certain part of the computer screen, but does so internally, making the quality not of HD quality, but nevertheless significantly better than a Cam or Telesync version filmed from a cinema, TV or computer screen.



BD/BRRip - labeled BDRip, BRRip, Blu-Ray : Very Common. Similar to DVD-Rip, only the source is a Blu-Ray disc. A BD/BRRip in DVD-Rip size often looks better than a same-size DVD rip because encoders have better source material. A common misconception among downloaders is that BDRip and BRRip are the same thing. They differ in that a BDRip comes directly from the Blu-ray source, while a BRRip is encoded from a pre-release, usually from a 1080p BDRip from another group. BDRips are available in DVD-Rip sized releases (commonly 700 MB and 1.4 GB) encoded in Xvid, as well as larger DVD5 or DVD9 (often 4.5 GB or larger, depending on length and quality) sized releases encoded in x264.



WEB Rip - labeled WEB-Rip, WEBRIP : Common, WEB-DL is preferred. This is a rip by capturing a movie from a screen using a service like Hulu. For this reason the quality is often not optimal, but still suitable for small screen devices and often comparable with low quality XVID movies.



WEB-DL - labeled WEBDL, WEB DL : Common. This is a movie downloaded via an on-line distribution website (web download) like Amazon or iTunes. The quality is quite good since 1080p downloads are available most of the time. Release groups often don't like these uploads, because they can be done by "amateurs" with no release history. For most users there will be nothing to notice, while some advanced users will notice a less logical coding. For example: a lot of the uploaded high quality WEB-DLs are XVIDs and not x264 MKV files, while x264 is used more often for high quality movies like 720p and 1080p releases.

An advantage with these releases is that they mostly have no logo's in screen, just like BD/DVDRips



Source: http://en.wikipedia....e_release_types