Digital Movie Caveats

For people collecting digital movies, this is a quick guide to help you avoid some of the poor quality stuff out there. The digital video files available online are mostly created by individuals with varying degrees of knowledge and skill. Some of the stuff is top notch quality while other stuff is total crap. Some of the crap goes unnoticed and therefore becomes spread all over, despite serious problems.

Know what you are collecting by looking for the following common problems with digital video.

PAL Speedup

When a 2 hour movie plays in 1 hour 55 minutes, and all of the actors voices are slightly higher in pitch, it tends to go unnoticed by the average collector. This problem is caused by PAL Speedup. Once you become aware of it, you will never be able to ignore it. Videos with PAL Speedup should be marked as bad and not kept in your collection.

Missing Forced Subtitles

It might be a Sci-Fi movie with aliens speaking in Klingon or a thriller with a few scenes of people speaking a foreign language, either way, most of us need English subtitles during these scenes, because we don't speak the factitious Klingon language or know what the foreign terrorist is saying. However, we don't need distracting subtitles through the entire movie for the English characters. Those subtitles that appear only during the few non-English parts are called "Forced Subtitles" and many people neglect to include them when creating the digital movie file from the source. It requires some extra effort. There are movies where perhaps only five lines of forced subtitles are in the movie, but we still want them included in a quality digital video. The YIFY group has gotten bad about neglecting to include them. Avoid video without forced subtitles.