Question about difference in similarly tagged releases

[alupizor]

I was looking for a movie the other day and found a few similarly or identically tagged releases that have notable differences.

Can anyone explain this? Do some groups re-encode WEB-DLs without re-tagging? Why is a HDRip (which I understand is a re-encode of a WEB-DL) the same size as a WEB-DL?


Space.Station.76.2014.720p.WEB-DL.x264.AC3-JYK

File size : 2.08 GiB
Format profile : [email protected]
Bit rate : 2750 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 532 pixels
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Space.Station.76.2014.720p.WEB-DL.x264.AC3-EVO

File size : 2.64 GiB
Format profile : [email protected]
Bit rate : 3611 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 528 pixels

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Space.Station.76.2014.720p.HDRip.x264.AC3.5.1-RARBG


File size : 2.90 GiB
Format profile : [email protected]
Bit rate : 4029 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 530 pixels

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Space.Station.76.2014.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H264-RARBG

File size : 2.92 GiB
Format profile : [email protected]
Bit rate : 3949 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 530 pixels

Hope someone can shed a light on this!

[HMthePM]

First 2 are same, only difference is encoding group. Difference in size may be attributed to different bitrate. The one with higher bitrate has bigger size.
Similarly with the last two. The have similar size, so mild difference might be due to different encoding setting.

[alupizor]

HMthePM, you would be right if these were Blu-ray encodes. But they are WEB-DLs, which I understand are iTunes releases stripped of any DRM.

I read somewhere else that only H264 tagged releases are untouched WEB-DLs, while all others (tagged x264) are re-encodes. I wonder what their source was?

[HMthePM]

Yeah. H264 is the original release. x264 is an encoder for h264. So how the final output is will depend on the encoding person. Here you see h264 has the largest size, rest are all small because they are compressed. Sometimes the conversion might be done to make it compatible with different playing devices.
If you dont mind the size, then I guess h264 will be your best bet.

[alupizor]

Oh, yeah, I never thought of that - about the compatibility with different playing devices. I guess that makes sense! Thanks a lot, HMthePM.