If you’re a hardcore scener, you can probably leave this thread right now, there’s no use in reading the following paragraphs. However, there are also many people who are not so familiar with a scene slang and that’s why I’ve decided to collect a list of most common nuke reasons and explain them for you. This way, you will always know what to expect from a release which is nuked.

General DELPRE reasons

pre.spam
Any abuse of the prebots is considered prespam. For example adding fake releases or putting out personal messages (HELLO.WORLD etc)

cut.echo
Relaying pre’s all depends on well configured filters. For example releases by the group VH-PROD often get cut. If you look at the default naming of movie releases the groupname always follows after the first – for example HELLO.WORLD-VH-PROD. Since this group uses a – in their name misconfigured bots will pass on the release as HELLO.WORLD.XVID-VH leaving out the -PROD. THis is one example of a cut echo.

General NUKE reasons

missing.region.info.or.tag
For some releases it’s mandatory to list which region the material is from either in the dirname of the release or in the nfo.

selfmade.compilations.not.allowed
Generally nothing selfmade is allowed. For example music (best of) compilations or collections of classic games which are not available for sale. This to ensure quality and keep the amount of duplicate material at bay.

internal.shields.dupe.only
The effects of the “INTERNAL” tag are a general misconception. This tag is supposed to be used for re-releases of popular old titles according to today’s standards. It can also be used when the original release is of bad quality. Quality isn’t a legit reason to nuke a release as long as all rules were applied correctly. This is when an INTERNAL copy can be released. The original release wont be nuked this way. It only prevents releases from being nuked for being a dupe. All other rules should be applied. *INTERNAL release aren’t allowed on the majority of sites (because they are dupes by default) This is what makes them so rare.

stolen.from.p2p
lately a very popular and common nuke reason. This basically means that the scene group which pred the release stole it from another source – specifically a peer to peer network (p2p) in this case. In most cases, this means a private BitTorrent tracker,  DC hub or webblog which obtained and released the copy of a title faster than any other scene source. This nuke reason will not affect your viewer’s experience and many sceners consider it useless as we basically steal the movies anyway.

stolen.src
stolen source. Similar or same as the above nuke reason. Scene groups can steal the video or audio also from each other, apart from stealing from peer to peer networks.

dupe
dupe means simply a dupe. The nuked release was already released by another group earlier, so the nuked one is basically useless, doubled. This doesn’t really matter if you don’t care about the strict scene rules.

undersized
a release is nuked for being undersized when it doesn’t fully use the capacity of one or two CDs. This means that the final rip is for example 680 MB, while it could be 700 MB and offer a better quality of image and audio. Once again, this is not a serious deal unless it’s undersized by hundreds of megabytes.

oversized
guess what.

mislabeled
a release trying to look like a better quality rip. A good example would be an R5 rip from Russian video source released as dvdrip – the difference isn’t that big in this case and scene groups always get more props for releasing dvdrips. The another case can be a typo or wrong year in the release name.

grp.req
a nuke requested by the release group. Happens when a scene group releases something and realize it’s completely wrong, not working or simply bad, so they request a nuke.

bad.pack
bad packing. The group didn’t pack their release properly, according to scene rules. This means they either forgot to pack it into 15/20/50 MB RARs or it’s completely impossible to unpack it.

compression.used/m0
One mistake often made when packing releases is the use of the wrong compression mode when creating the archives. Depending of the files inside the archives there might or might not be use for compression. For example an already compressed (XViD) movie wont decrease in size while compressing a raw image will decrease by 50% or more in size. ISO’s of (console) games often contain text files and images which can be compressed. This is why each section has a rule on using m0 (no compression just “storing” the files inside archives) or m1 (minor compression). The higher the level of compression the longer it takes to compress and decompress the archives.

invalid.proper
proper is a release fixing other, previously nuked release. When a certain group releases proper and the first release is actually fine, the new one becomes nuked for invalid proper.

Foreign NUKE reasons

Season.shield
A nuke reason seen in the German TV scene where the group that pres the first episode of a season gets to pre every following ep that season. If another group pres an episode of the shielded season it will get nuked. (yes … retarded)

Movie NUKE reasons based on TDX 2005.

bad.res
bad image resolution. The scene rules define allowed image resolutions and their aspect ratios. If a movie doesn’t fit in these rules, it means the image will be probably malformed in a certain way. Many advanced video players allow to change the image resolution, so this can be sometimes fixed at your computer.

bad.ar
bad aspect ratio. A similar reason to the above one. Each video was originally filmed and released in a specific aspect ratio (horizontal vs. vertical side). The most common AR is 2.35:1 which is for example a resolution of 640×272 pixels. Bad aspect ratio leads to in-proportional image, where characters appear to be either too wide or, more often, too tall. This can be also fixed with some media players.

bad.crop, overcropped
movies on DVD contain black parts of the image above and below the actual video. In order to decrease the final size and offer the best possible quality, these black parts must be removed before encoding and releasing in xvid. Sometimes, scene groups don’t properly remove / crop these parts and it means that the image misses top or bottom part, therefore you don’t see the whole scene. Cropping is often used also for removing watermarks or hardcoded subtitles, but it still means a serious loss of the image. The other, not so common extreme, is when a group forgets to remove these black boxes.

bad.ivtc, no.ivtc
quite a common nuke reason which affects mostly lower-quality releases. IVTC means inverse telecine and it’s basically a process of converting a movie (usually PAL) with high FPS (30 frames per second) to lower FPS (for example 24) in order to save space and offer better image quality. This conversion often goes wrong (bad.ivtc) or completely lacks (no.ivtc, lazy sceners)). As a result, the image appears to be jerky and the final release uses too much space for no reason.

interlaced
the image contains visible black lines, which often cause the video to be completely unwatchable. These black lines are visible mostly during movement on the image and are caused by incorrect field order. I won’t go into details explaining the reasons for this, it’s caused by different way of displaying frames and fields (half-frames) in the video, more details are available for example here. It’s highly recommended to not download any interlaced release.

cbr.audio
audio can be either CBR (constant bit rate), or VBR (variable bit rate). According to the scene rules, all releases should contain VBR audio, so any release with CBR is instantly nuked. Variable bit rate allows better quality, according to the current sound, while constant one sets the same quality for the whole movie, including the quiet parts. However, releases with AC3 audio almost always use CBR. It’s often hard to distinguish the difference between CBR and VBR for an untrained ear, so this nuke reason isn’t too serious if you don’t care about the rules.

bad.fps
bad frame rate. The frame rate should be close to the original framerate. Not a very common nuke reason, but it’s better to beware any release with this nuke.

oos, out.of.sync
out of sync, audio isn’t synced with video. Extremely annoying mistake which makes most of such release completely unwatchable. This happens very often with cams, telesyncs and telecines, which require a synchronization of audio and video from different source. Some releases are completely out of sync, while others have this problem only for a few seconds or minutes.

qpel.not.allowed
qpel or quarter pixel is a feature of modern encoding codecs such as H.264 which allows better and more efficient compression. Videos encoded with quarter-pixel precision motion vectors require up to twice as much processing power to encode, and 30-60% more processing power to decode. Thus, such releases often cause software problems or are completely unplayable at certain DVD players.

ghosting
annoying feature of a release, which result into ghost effect during every movement in the movie. It’s caused by in-proper encoding and can’t be easily fixed.

field.shifted, dupe.frames, blended.frames, custom.quant.matrix
other mostly serious faults affecting the image, caused during encoding the final video.

divx.not.allowed, no.audio, missing.audio, get.rerip, get.proper
no need to explain these I guess.

0DAY NUKE reasons based on 0DAY ruleset 2010.1.

MU
MU stands for Minor Update. This term denotes an update of a previously released application within a certain time-period, the MU-period. Major updates are allowed regardless of the last time a previous version was released. In this case, the nfo must include some motivation for considering this a major update (security- and stability-critical hotfixes for instance). Typical major updates are defined as a version-change for the most significant number in the version, for instance v9.1 being updated to v10.0. Exceptions are possible, but must be noted in the nfo.
The minimum MU-period is 1 month

WII NUKE Reasons

scrubbed.dumps.not.allowed
WII games use “garbage” data to fill up the size of a DVD5/9. This data is useless and a waste of storage space and bandwith however it’s forbidden to release an ISO without this data (dump)

MP3 NUKE Reasons

low.audio.bitrate
It’s forbidden to use a minimum or maximum bitrate when encoding an MP3 release however the minimum bitrate for CBR MP3’s bought from an online store is 192kbit.

The following article will describe the process of distributing a preannouncement from the site it was issued on to the prechan it ended up.

As with every scene there will always be sub scenes. Even in the world of filesharing the definitions of being a “scener” widely vary. A scener might be someone who’s on a ranked site or he who’s part of a releasegroup where a racer on unranked sites is considered a “site-scener”. This also goes for the pre scene. Those with access to sitepre are considered elite while those on prenets are the average and those who are afiliated with p2p/public or echo are considered noobs.

This article is split in three sections matching above mentioned groups.

SitePRE
When a release is pred the directory containing the files is first uploaded to an FTP by a member of the releasegroup. The FTP uses a set of scripts (zipscript) to verify and index the release. A set of these scripts is called a sitebot. This bot will for example index the name, size and filecount of the release.
Next is issueing the actual !pre command where the release is made public and announced by an eggdrop bot which queries the sitebot and announces it in the site’s IRC channel, sitechan,  and addpre chan. The term addpre chan gives away that it’s a channel where pre’s are added and uses a uniform style. This makes it easier for bots to understand the information that passes by.

Example of a release that was pred being announced in the sitechan:

<SITEBOT>  [PRE-RELEASE] ==] MiSTAKE PRE [== Met.Het.Mes.Op.Tafel.S03E13.DUTCH.WS.PDTV.x264-MiSTAKE – (with 245MB in 20 Files) – [TV]

Example of the release being announced in the addpre chan:

<BOT1> !addpre Met.Het.Mes.Op.Tafel.S03E13.DUTCH.WS.PDTV.x264-MiSTAKE TV
<BOT2> !info Met.Het.Mes.Op.Tafel.S03E13.DUTCH.WS.PDTV.x264-MiSTAKE 245MB 20F

At this point the members of the site have noticed the announcement of the bot in the sitechan and the bots in the addpre chan have picked up the addpre signal.

PreNet
A PreNet is an IRC network that operates as a central hub where announcements relayed from above mentioned sites come together. Since each site has a couple affils it takes access to a lot of sites to make up the amount of releases you see passing by in the average prechan.
A PreNet is also the place where nukes are issued and rules are debated.
If you’re on a PreNet you have access to a feed which carries about every preannouncement made globally. Next up is the local part. The term local is used because owners of prebots relay the feed from a prenet to a local, private channel where they are alone with their prebot. This is where the prebot gets the info from which he outputs in a fancy way in the prechan you have access to.

P2P-Pre-Scene
Getting into sites and prenets takes some skill and especially the right contacts. People who don’t have these assets but still want to run a prebot can resort to echoing. Echoing is simply copying information from one chan or another. This behaviour is against the etiquette and will get you in trouble.
WebPreDB’s often use these sources which isn’t a real problem just that they contain more spam than the pure feed and are a bit slower. Sites like OrlyDB are known for echoing prechannels run by private trackers.

This can be best shown by a real life Example

The tag is the name of the release. These release names give you information about the release instantly. More detailed information is written in the nfo file. Often these tags contain a lot of words and definitions which you may not understand. Below you can find definitions of tags.

PROPER:
Due to scene rules, whoever releases a certain release the first, has won that race. For example, when a group releases the CAM version of Titanic the first. If there is something “wrong” with the release (poor quality, out-of-sync, audio errors etc.) and another group has a better/correct version, it can release it and add PROPER to the release title to avoid being nuked. However, the source must be the same as the original release. For example: A poor quality CAM release by group A and group B releases their CAM release PROPER. A Telesync release doesn’t PROPER a CAM release, because the source is different. PROPER is the most subjective tag in the scene, and a lot of people will generally argue whether the PROPER is better than the original release. The reason for the PROPER should always be mentioned in the NFO.

REPACK:
If a group releases a bad rip, they can release a Repack. A Repack is a fixed version of the original release. It’s similar to PROPER but then done by the same group. Note that a Repack is different from a fix. A Fix will repair the original release whilst a repack is a new release.

Rerip:
A previous rip was bad, now it’s ripped again properly. Similar to repack.

READNFO:
When something important is mentioned in the NFO or as a replacement for PROPER, READNFO can be added to the release title.

Movies/TV

Type: Cam
Label: CAM, CAMRip
Description: 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.

Type: Telesync
Label: TELESYNC, TS, PDVD
Description: A telesync (TS) is a bootleg recording of a film recorded in a movie theater, sometimes filmed using a professional camera on a tripod in the projection booth. The main difference between a CAM and TS copy is that the audio of a TS is captured with a direct connection to the sound source (often an FM microbroadcast provided for the hearing-impaired, or from a drive-in theater). Often, a cam is mislabeled as a telesync.

Type: Workprint
Label:  WORKPRINT, WP
Description: 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.

Type: Telecine
Label: TELECINE, TC
Description: 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.

Type: Pay-Per-View Rip
Label: PPV, PPVRip
Description: 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.

Type: Screener
Label: SCR. SCREENER, DVDSCR, DVDSCREENER, BDSCR
Description: 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.” or more commonly if released for awards consideration simply, “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.” 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 mislabeled as DVD-Rips.

Note: Screeners make a small exception here—since the content may differ from a retail version, it can be considered as lower quality than a DVD-Rip (even if the screener in question was sourced from a DVD).

Type: Digital Distribution Copy or  Downloadable/Direct Digital Content
Label: DDC
Description: 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.

Type: R5
Label: R5, R5.LINE, R5.AC3.5.1.HQ
Description: 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 Reserved for future use, MPAA-related DVDs and “media copies” of pre-releases in Asia
– R8 Airlines/Cruise Ships
– R9 Expansion (often used as region free)

Note: R1 and R2 are considered the best quality.

Type: DVD-Rip
Label: DVDRip
Description: 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.

Type: DVD-R
Label: DVDR, DVD-Full, Full-Rip, ISO rip, lossless rip, untouched rip, DVD-5/DVD-9
Description: 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.

Type: HDTV or DS Rip
Label: DSR, DSRip, DTHRip, DVBRip, HDTV, PDTV, TVRip, HDTVRip
Description: 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.

Analog, DSR, and PDTV sources are often re-encoded to 512×384 if fullscreen, 640×352 if widescreen. HDTV sources are re-encoded to multiple resolutions such as 640×352 (360p), 960×528 (540p), and 1280×720 (720p) at various file sizes for pirated releases. They can be progressive scan captured or not (480i digital transmission).

Type: VODRip
Label: VODRip, VODR
Description: 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.

Type: BD/BRRip
Label: BDRip, BRRip, Blu-Ray/BluRay/BLURAY, BDR, BD5/BD9 (also known as BD25/BD50)
Description: 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 or x264, as well as larger DVD5 or DVD9 (often 4.5 GB or larger, depending on length and quality) sized releases encoded in x264.

BD5 or BD9 are also available, which are slightly smaller than their counterpart DVD5/DVD9 releases. They are AVCHD compatible using the BD folder structure, and are intended to be burnt onto DVDs to play in AVCHD compatible Blu-ray players. More recent types, probably associated with the use of newsgroups and cheaper storage at home, are complete Blu-ray copies (images). They are commonly referred to as BD25 or BD50 and may or may not be remixed (but not transcoded). (Remixing is keeping the original video, but eliminating audio tracks, and/or adding audio tracks in other languages.)

Music

TV: Audio from television material
Radio: Audio from radio material
WEB: Audio downloaded from an online music store
VLS: Vinyl Single (1-2 tracks)
EP: Vinyl Maxi-single (2-5 tracks)
LP: Vinyl Full-length Album
CDS: CD Single (1-2 tracks)
CDM: CD Maxi-single (2-5 tracks)
CDR: CD-Recordable (CD-R)
DVD: Audio from a DVD. Often cabaret shows or concert/music dvd’s.
Promo: Promotional
XX: Imported
RETAiL: Retail
Liveset: A record of a DJ mixing live. Mostly recorded using:
– DAB: Digital Audio Broadcasting is a system used to broadcast radio programmes.
– SAT: Music broadcasted via satellite channels.
– CABLE: Music broadcasted by radio channels via cable radio.

Labelcode/Catnumber:
This is a code which is like a unique code for every music cd/vinyl/etc. The code isn’t just some number, but it contains values which are recognisable. For example: Catnumber: WNRD2371 is a cd from WieNerwoRlD Ltd.

Clean:
The music is censored. Generally sexual or violent words, which are replaced by ‘bleeps’ or stripped.
Explicit: The music is not censored.

0DAY/APPS

AIO
AIO stands for All-In-One, meaning an all-in-one software pack. For example: Microsoft Office, which contains Word, Frontpage, Publisher, Access etc.

RTM
RTM means Release To Manufacturing. This release is leaked before it’s available in stores. A RTM version of a software title is the final retail version, the one that you will be seeing in stores.

VLM
VLM stands for Volume License Key. This means that the cracked application is already licensed, and therefore doesn’t require an activation after installation.

Crack Type
For example crack or keygen.

PSP

UMDRip
Yhis applies only to Playstation Portable (PSP) games, and it means that some stuff was ripped from the original game because it was not required or was ripped to save space. For example languages or movie files.

UMDMovie
The Playstation Portable (PSP) is also capable of playing movies. Though a PSP can’t playback DVD’s or CD’s, only UMD discs. So movies for the PSP get released on UMD discs.

PSXPSP
This is a PSX (Playstation 1) game playable on a PSP (Playstation Portable) using custom PSP firmware.

USA, JAP, EUR
Especially PSP releases, but also other console releases, are sometimes tagged as USA, JAP and EUR. These are alternative regions, and they replace PAL and NTSC. USA are off course the United States of America, JAP is Japan and EUR is Europe.

256MS, 512MS, 1GB and 2GB
These tags only apply to PSP releases, and they show the required size of an UMD disc. UMD discs can contain up to 2 gigabytes. When a game is 100mb it fits on every UMD disc, but when a game is 900mb it will only fit on 1GB and higher UMD discs.

Standards in the warez scene are defined by groups of people who have been involved in its activities for several years and have established connections to large groups. These people form a committee, which creates drafts for approval of the large groups. In organized warez distribution, all releases must follow these predefined standards to become accepted material. The standards committee usually cycles several drafts and finally decides which is best suited for the purpose, and then releases the draft for approval. Once the draft has been signed by several bigger groups, it becomes ratified and accepted as the current standard. There are separate standards for each category of releases. more

An overview of these rules can be found here