Step 1: File Size
For those new to torrents you really only need to be aware of 3 things. The relationship between seeders and leechers, a basic knowledge of file sizes, and process of elimination. Seeders and leechers serve as the foundation for why torrents work so well and why they are so controversial. If you need to know more about seeders and leechers click here.
For this how-to, I'm going to do a torrent search on btjunkie.org for Windows 7:
This is a nice result on my search. An easy way to eliminate what is NOT the torrent I'm looking for is to take a look at the file size. Since I know windows 7 is a large Operating System distributed on a DVD, I can instantly rule out files smaller than 2GB. The same process can be applied to Movies as well. But we will address that later.
Step 2: Seeders and Leechers...
I've read quite a few articles on what the ideal amount of seeders and leechers should be. Although some say it's debatable, you ideally want more seeders than leechers. If that is not an option, the closest you can get to a 1 to 1 ratio is usually best since this will give you a large pool of sources to download from without too much strain on each source. So lets apply this to our results. You can see the first result on the list has more seeds (sources) but significantly more people downloading it (leechers) the ratio here is about 1 to 1.3. The next one down is slightly more in our favor since there are more seeders than leechers here. Both offer good speeds and since a large amount of people are circulating this file, it must mean that this is a fully working copy of windows right?
Step 3: The all important comments section
When I click on the first file in my list, I get taken to the torrent details section:
At the top we see the torrent trackers hosting this file, the size of the file, the date added and so on. As I scroll down a bit I start to enter the all important comments section. This is where you can save yourself a lot of wasted time. By reading through the comments on this torrent
They didn't say some very good things about this file. By taking 15 seconds to read this section, I just saved myself an entire evening of disapointment not to mention a wasted DVD-R. READ THE COMMENTS OF YOUR TORRENTS. This is all important and very easy to do. Some torrents can also be password protected and a quick visit to this section may reveal the information you need to unlock your torrent.
Side Note
Now how does this apply to movies you ask. There are several types of movies you'll encounter in the torrent-verse. Workprints, screeners, dvd-rips, SVCD/VCD, and dvd-copy. Depending on how much time has gone by since the movie release, your movie will be in one or more of these formats. Before a movie goers have a chance to sit in a theater with a video camera, private showings for producers, film critics and big executives take place. Production companies will use what is known as A "workprint" or a digital cut of the movie to distribute for this purpose. You've probably seen this happen with movies like Wolverine: Origins where you were able to watch the movie start to finish even though it was clearly still in post production. Any time your watching a good quality movie before its been released in theaters your watching a workprint.
Workprints are torrents really worth hunting for. Workprints are not as common as Screeners but its worth the work if you find one since there is a clear difference in quality. The remaining formats I previously mentioned are good to familiarize yourself with. If your interested in more information on DVD-rips and VCD's I've provided some good resources below:
SmartRipper, a great freeware VOB file copier
A staple piece of software for DVD-rippers
Great guides for DVD-ripping
Not Freeware, Fully featured complete movie conversion suite that takes out all the guess work. I rarely recommend software you have to pay for but this tool really pays for itself in the amount of time you save.
Private Torrent Trackers: How they help, How they hurt
In the ol' days of file sharing, people would scour IRC, Bulletin Board Systems, and newsgroups to get their hands on the latest and greatest in pirated software even before there was such a thing as pirated software. On their dial-up connections, they spent thousands of hours downloading what would take us minutes to download now. Although the learning curve of finding these files has greatly diminished, avid and impatient file downloaders of the present take painstaking measures to be the first to find the latest leaked version of pirated software. They then make it their personal mission to distribute these files to the masses.
This may sound a bit shady, but believe it or not, there is a slew of Private torrent sites that allow you to browse through a collection of user posted torrents you may not find on larger torrent sites like thepiratebay.com and mininova. These Private trackers maintain a database of registered users and will require you to register an account with them before you can access their resources. There is also an even more elusive side to torrents that still uses the IRC format to communicate and send private torrent invites from their hosted trackers. This is an aspect of torrents I do not recommend beginners get involved in.
Pivate trackers exist is to allow the groups responsible for leaking or cracking files several layers of anonymity. By dispersing these files to a handful of cautious and experienced individuals, the direct link between the file and the distributor is broken. The file can then continue to be distributed by just about anyone that participates torrent file sharing. At this point, thousands of people are sharing the file and no one really knows where it really came from. Groups will often tag the file with their group name but their real identity and physical location remains unknown. This process is not a product of over zealous hackers indulging their ego, this is actually a necessary part of torrent sharing.
So if its necessary, how does it hurt the torrent process?
By segmenting torrents into private servers, similar torrent files exist on multiple servers. For instance, you may have 2 or more Windows 7 torrents that are essentially the same torrent in every way but tracked separately on private servers. By porting this collection of torrents over to a single torrent file with a complete list of trackers, you can eliminate superfluous files. This would basically allow a tracker to pool seeders and leechers that would otherwise exist separately on private servers to a single torrent. Torrent files with 0 seeders 0 leechers would diminish and your files would download faster. Basically, private servers, although necessary, are unfortunately inefficient and clutter the internet with extra stuff we don't need. But clutter is nothing new for the web now is it.
No comments:
Post a Comment