Criterion Collection

[Caballero]

Is anyone familiar with the releases group nikt0 ? They seem to have released a lot of the Criterion Collection releases, but I am a little confused by the size of their releases. I'm used to 1080p x264 movies taking up somewhere from 7 GB to 12 GB in file size. Their releases all seem to be around 4 or 5 GB. Do they just use such a high compression on their releases that the download is not worth it?

[IdolEyes787]

Fairly low but not ridiculously low bitrate for 1080p. 5 -6k as opposed to double or more than that for some of the more "prestigious" groups. Plus if it's an older movie then it might only be 2 channel which surprisingly can safe a lot file size.
Personally I don't really notice much if any difference once the 5k threshold is passed.

[Caballero]

My understanding is that the Criterion Collection guys are remastering and restoring the movies before releasing them, so it would seem counterintuitive to me to to compress the video more than is common and lose all that work again.

Seven Samurai -- SADPANDA release is 19 GB. nikt0 release is 11 GB. I've seen some nikt0 file sizes going down to 2.5 GB for a (relatively recent) 1080p movie. I don't know.

I'll grab both Samurais and see how they compare. nikt0 seems to have a fairly complete catalog of Criterion releases. Not sure there are many other versions of the older releases around...

[IdolEyes787]

My understanding is that the Criterion Collection guys are remastering and restoring the movies before releasing them, so it would seem counterintuitive to me to to compress the video more than is common and lose all that work again.

Criterion is basically trying to give the best possible version of a film so, yeah. I think if you are making a library of these films then I would definitely go with the best rip that your circumstance allows. Unfortunately not everyone has infinite bandwidth, space or in the case of torrents, ratio so there still definitely is a place or releases like nikt0.

[anon]

Unfortunately not everyone has infinite bandwidth, space or in the case of torrents, ratio so there still definitely is a place or releases like nikt0.

In my case, the appeal is not wasting too much time downloading something when 1. I can't tell the difference against a first-class encode with my current display, 2. I'll delete it after watching anyway.

That aside, I've never heard of this particular group, but comparing MediaInfo reports should easily confirm what Idol said. Furthermore, looking at the x264 parameters will also tell you if they spike the bitrate during "important" parts of the movies.

[Caballero]

What is this "delete" thing you are talking about?

[anon]

The "I have multi-terabyte NAS arrays which I expand regularly" demographic is overrepresented in the filesharing community... and most importantly, doesn't include me

[IdolEyes787]

Your argument makes no sense. As far as I know Michael Criterion only made like a half dozen movies anyway.