How to read a video file name: 2160p, x265, and HDR

A video file name is packed with standardized abbreviations that describe the title, release year, resolution, original master source, HDR color standard, audio layout, compression codec, and packaging group. For example, x265 signifies that the video was compressed using the open-source High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC / H.265) encoder, halving file size compared to older H.264 video while retaining crisp detail.

Understanding these naming tokens helps you evaluate whether a file will look crisp on an Apple Silicon Mac’s Liquid Retina XDR screen, play smoothly in hardware without draining your battery, and deliver discrete 5.1 surround sound to your speakers or headphones.

How is a standard video file name structured?

Many video downloads follow a common naming convention so that people, media scrapers and players can tell versions apart. Because files travel across web servers and operating systems, words are separated by dots or hyphens rather than spaces.

A typical high-definition release name arranges metadata in a predictable order:

Title.Year.Resolution.Source.HDR-Format.Audio-Codec.Audio-Channels.Video-Codec-GROUP.extension

Here is an illustrative name, using the title of Sintel, Blender Studio’s open movie (its official downloads are named more simply):

Try it

Anatomy of a video file name

Sintel.2010.2160p.WEB-DL.DV.HDR10.DDP5.1.Atmos.HEVC-GROUP.mkv

Title

Film or television title

1. Sintel: Title. Film or television title
2. 2010: Release Year. Original theatrical or broadcast year
3. 2160p: Resolution. 3840 × 2160 pixels (4K Ultra HD)
4. WEB-DL: Source. A streaming service's file, not re-encoded
5. DV: HDR Dynamic. Dolby Vision frame-by-frame metadata
6. HDR10: HDR Static. Base HDR10 fallback metadata
7. DDP5.1: Audio Codec. Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound (E-AC-3)
8. Atmos: Spatial Audio. Dolby Atmos 3D positional object metadata (JOC)
9. HEVC: Video Codec. High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265)
10. GROUP: Release Group. The encoding team or distribution group
11. mkv: Container. Matroska multimedia container (RFC 9559)

Each piece of this string informs your media player how to render the video, what hardware decoder to invoke, and how to configure audio output channels.

What do resolution tags mean: 2160p, 1080p, and 720p?

Resolution tags indicate the vertical pixel count of the picture. The trailing letter “p” stands for progressive scan, meaning every frame contains all of its lines:

• 2160p (4K Ultra HD): Contains 3840 horizontal pixels by 2160 vertical lines (approximately 8.29 million total pixels). This matches the native resolution of 4K televisions and looks sharp on high-density Mac displays.
• 1080p (Full HD): Contains 1920 horizontal pixels by 1080 vertical lines (approximately 2.07 million total pixels). This has served as the baseline high-definition standard for Blu-ray discs and web streaming for nearly two decades.
• 720p (HD): Contains 1280 horizontal pixels by 720 vertical lines (approximately 921,600 pixels). Frequently used for fast web streaming and television broadcasts where bandwidth is constrained.

Occasionally you will encounter an “i” suffix, such as 1080i. This designates interlaced video, a broadcast television standard where each frame is sent as two fields of alternating odd and even lines. Modern Mac displays are strictly progressive, requiring players to deinterlace the footage to avoid horizontal comb artifacts during fast motion.

What do source tags mean: REMUX, WEB-DL, WEBRip, and BluRay?

The source tag reveals where the video originated and whether the file underwent lossy re-encoding during packaging. For an in-depth breakdown of these differences, visit our guide on REMUX vs WEB-DL vs WEBRip.

The standard source tiers include:

1. REMUX: A 1:1 lossless transfer of the elementary video and audio streams extracted directly from a commercial physical disc (Blu-ray or Ultra HD Blu-ray). The video is never re-encoded; it carries the disc’s bitrate (typically 20 to 40 Mbps for 1080p, and 40 to 100 Mbps for 4K) alongside lossless audio.
2. WEB-DL: A copy of a streaming service’s file (from services such as Apple TV+, Netflix or Amazon Prime Video) exactly as it was delivered, without a second encode.
3. WEBRip: A video recorded from an active web stream using hardware HDMI capture cards or desktop software recorders, then re-encoded through an encoder like x264 or x265. While often indistinguishable from a WEB-DL to casual viewers, it has undergone a second lossy encoding step.
4. BluRay / BDRip: Content encoded from a commercial Blu-ray Disc. A file marked “BluRay” indicates a high-bitrate encode targeting transparency to the disc master, while “BDRip” historically designates a lower-bitrate or downscaled transcode intended for smaller file sizes.
5. HDTV: Content captured directly from a digital terrestrial or cable television broadcast (ATSC or DVB-T). These files frequently carry on-screen station logos, commercial break cutouts, and broadcast compression artifacts.

What do color and HDR tags mean: 10bit, HDR, DV, and HDR10+?

Color and dynamic range tags tell you how much brightness, contrast, and color depth the file contains. On modern Apple hardware with Liquid Retina XDR displays (capable of 1,600 nits peak brightness), these tags indicate how vividly highlights will render:

• 10bit: Indicates 10 bits per channel (1,024 values per channel, about 1.07 billion colors). Standard 8-bit video provides only 256 values per channel (16.7 million colors), which can show visible banding across skies, sunsets, and dark shadows. HDR video uses 10 bits or more.
• HDR / HDR10: High Dynamic Range video following ITU-R BT.2100. It uses the Perceptual Quantizer (PQ / SMPTE ST 2084) transfer function and the wide BT.2020 color space, with static metadata (SMPTE ST 2086, plus MaxCLL and MaxFALL) describing the whole film.
• DV (Dolby Vision): Dolby Laboratories’ proprietary HDR format. It provides dynamic frame-by-frame metadata (SMPTE ST 2094-10) that adjusts tone curves continuously to fit the exact capabilities of your screen.
• HDR10+: An open dynamic metadata standard (SMPTE ST 2094-40) backed by Samsung and Amazon that, like Dolby Vision, recalculates contrast on a scene-by-scene basis.
• HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma): An HDR standard developed by the BBC and NHK for broadcast television, maintaining backward compatibility with standard dynamic range displays.

If a file name includes both DV and HDR10, it features a hybrid profile (such as Dolby Vision Profile 7 or 8.1). If your media player does not support Dolby Vision, it gracefully falls back to playing the base HDR10 layer without color distortion.

What do audio tags mean: DDP5.1, Atmos, TrueHD, and DTS-HD?

Audio tags specify the compression format, speaker channel configuration, and spatial audio capabilities of the soundtrack. To understand how audio channels are mixed and separated, read our article on movie audio formats explained.

Common audio tags include:

• DDP5.1 / EAC3: Dolby Digital Plus (Enhanced AC-3), standardized as ETSI TS 102 366. It delivers 5.1 discrete audio channels: front left, center, front right, surround left, surround right, and a low-frequency effects (LFE) subwoofer channel. It is the most common surround format on streaming platforms.
• Atmos: Object-based spatial audio. Instead of assigning sounds strictly to fixed speaker channels, Dolby Atmos introduces dynamic 3D positional coordinates (x, y, z) that sound designers place anywhere in the listening environment. In streaming files, Atmos is delivered via Joint Object Coding (JOC) on top of a Dolby Digital Plus track.
• TrueHD: Dolby TrueHD, a bit-for-bit lossless audio codec based on Meridian Lossless Packing. Found on Blu-ray discs, it carries up to 8 channels of 24-bit 96 kHz studio audio at up to 18 Mbps.
• DTS-HD MA: DTS-HD Master Audio, a lossless surround format that packages a lossy DTS core (usually 1.5 Mbps) with a lossless extension, up to 24.5 Mbps in total.
• AAC: Advanced Audio Coding (ISO/IEC 14496-3), a standard lossy codec for stereo or 5.1 sound at modest bitrates (typically 128 to 256 kbps for stereo).

What do video codec tags mean: x265, HEVC, x264, and AV1?

The video codec tag reveals which compression algorithm was used to encode the pictures. This informs you whether your computer can decode the video in dedicated hardware or must use software decoding:

• x265 / HEVC: High Efficiency Video Coding (ITU-T H.265). The tag HEVC refers to the standard, while x265 indicates that the file was compressed using the open-source x265 software engine maintained by MulticoreWare. All Apple Silicon Macs (M1 or newer) decode HEVC directly in hardware.
• x264 / AVC: Advanced Video Coding (ITU-T H.264). x264 designates the open-source encoder developed by the VideoLAN project. Supported in hardware across every modern Mac.
• AV1: The open-source codec developed by AOMedia. It provides 20% to 30% greater efficiency than HEVC. Apple Silicon M3 and newer chips decode AV1 in hardware; on M1 and M2, players like MacLC and VLC decode it in software with dav1d.

To understand the engineering differences and compression ratios between these codecs, consult our complete breakdown of H.264 vs H.265 vs AV1.

How does MacLC decode stream tags in its Watch section?

Decoding complex release names manually requires memorizing dozens of acronyms. When browsing media in MacLC’s Watch section using Stremio-compatible add-ons, you do not need to memorize release string abbreviations.

Instead of forcing you to decipher Sintel.2010.2160p.WEB-DL.DV.HDR10.DDP5.1.Atmos.HEVC-GROUP.mkv, Choose a Version presents clear badges:

• Resolution: Labeled cleanly as 4K or 1080p.
• Dynamic Range: Badges for Dolby Vision, HDR10, or HDR10+.
• Audio: Summarized as 5.1, Atmos, or Stereo, with language tags.
• Stream Details: Shows total file size and available peers.

Quick cheat sheet for reading video file names

When you encounter an unfamiliar video file, consult this quick reference table to determine what each tag represents:

By understanding how video release tags fit together, you can pick the right version of a film for your screen and avoid wasting storage on inferior encodes. And when you press play, MacLC shows what each file really contains and picks the best way to play it on your Mac.