Best Bit Torrent Forum?

April 29, 2009 6:32 PM

Best Bit Torrent Forum? I'm having a problem, plus I'd like to learn more about torrents. Does anyone have any recommendation on an active forum board I could join? Thanks, David
posted by davidaugust111 to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Mininova, Suprbay (offshoot of The Pirate Bay).
posted by purephase at 6:49 PM on April 29, 2009

What about torrents do you want to learn? If you feel comfortable, post your problem here: 99% of bittorrent problems are firewall/port forwarding/ISP related. BTW, your best chance for boards about specific subtopics are usually forums on torrent sites themselves, and for technical issues visit the forums on the site of your chosen BT software.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:58 PM on April 29, 2009

There are some good private torrent sites, most of which specialize in particular areas (e.g., music, tv, movies, etc.). Most are invite-only. If you know somebody who belongs to one of these, you might ask them for an invite.

And, as noted above, questions about particular pieces of software can usually be best answered in the software forum.
posted by box at 7:18 PM on April 29, 2009

Response by poster: Well, my specific problem that I wanted to ask about is that occasionally I have dropouts, or skips in the music I've downloaded. For example, earlier this evening I downloaded an album where 10 of the songs are perfect, but two of them have this problem. When I look at all the graphs and info on my BitTorrent software, it says that 100% of everything has been downloaded. The graphs are solid blue. But I can't imagine that those bad bits are on every seed and peer out there without some comment or complaint being registered on the download page.

At least with BitTorrent, I can't force a re-start on a completed torrent; it's grayed out as a choice. So I don't know what to do short of deleting everything and trying again, even though it's only "missing" (if that's the correct way to say it) a few bits.

So that's my specific problem, though I would like to be generally more familiar with the capabilities of the whole system.

Thanks again to everyone!
posted by davidaugust111 at 7:59 PM on April 29, 2009

Hm, well there is the possibility that the files you downloaded just have errors in them, I've never really heard of a problem like that being caused by a bt service. Try changing clients maybe? See if that does anything.
posted by dead cousin ted at 8:07 PM on April 29, 2009

"Verify downloaded parts" should be available. Or stopping/removing the download (not the data) & re-adding the download. Or installing another client & redoing the download to the same location - it will detect any errors.

Or you could listen to it on another player & seeing if the problems persist.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:14 PM on April 29, 2009

Response by poster: I couldn't find anything like a "verify downloaded parts".

The mp3 plays with the same errors regardless of player (I use MediaMonkey, but it does it in in Media Jukebox or Windows M.P. as well).

I will try installing Azureus since it seems to be popular.
posted by davidaugust111 at 8:34 PM on April 29, 2009

The Bittorrent protocol has provisions for constantly checking the integrity of downloaded data and re-fetching data if it determines a block is bad.
It performs these hash checks whenever you resume a download or complete a download, so chances are the data you downloaded was damaged before it was seeded out to people the first time.
The only way to get cleaner data is to re-download from a different source.

The above linked FAQ should provide guidance, as well as minin_va's
posted by ijoyner at 11:37 PM on April 29, 2009

Azureus is great. But I think that you're downloading material that has been transformed through some kind of rip or transfer. It's sounds like it has been damaged during the tranfer itself : the fact that no one is complaining is maybe a sign that this kind of errors occurs frequently with that type of process.

I do not use trackers whereupon copyrighted material is present, for a variety of reasons. One of them is that you can't really obtain what you're looking for in a satisfying format.

Nevertheless, I use some trackers to download music that isn't copyrighted :

Dimeadozen
trader's den
Tapecity
Hungercity
Zappateers
mindwarppavillion
zomb tracker
bt.etree.org

there are others, but maybe it's not the kind of thing you're looking for.
posted by nicolin at 11:44 PM on April 29, 2009 [4 favorites]

My suggestions are two-fold.

1) Switch torrent clients. I really like utorrent. It has a lot more features than Bittorrent does, or at least it did 3 years ago when I switched.

2) Stop downloading MP3s. You can get much better quality by looking for FLAC files or AIFF files or OGG or Monkey's Audio or what have you.

Personally, I use a lot of the same trackers that nicolin uses. But for searching torrents I've found the best search engine is btjunkie.org
posted by wabbittwax at 7:20 AM on April 30, 2009

Response by poster: I installed Azureus/Vuze, and it's a whole 'nuther thing to get used to. But I re-downloaded the particular album/torrent and it all came through fine. I'll have to learn about it. It didn't ask me which files I wanted before starting, and that's important as I often only want a song or two out of a multi gigabyte download. I assume it's in there somewhere, just some time spent.

I do try to stick to quality when available; FLAC or OGG, but otherwise 320/192/vbr mp3 or there is nothing at all. I rip to FLAC, and when I get smart enough to create some torrents will offer those.
posted by davidaugust111 at 10:56 AM on April 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

So... how long have you worked for the RIAA, David?
posted by _Skull_ at 9:53 AM on May 1, 2009

Stay with Azureus and get to know the ins and outs. I recommend the Classic UI. Find their open support here:
http://forum.vuze.com/
and more than you ever want to know here:
http://azureuswiki.com
Be sure to install IP filters, like this list
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/level1.gz

Happy sharing.
posted by sugarbx19 at 1:11 PM on May 1, 2009

Response by poster: Thank you everyone, the Vuze has been working well, and I figured out how to choose which files on occasion instead of the entire torrent. This is good since I work for the RIAA and know which ones they monitor :)
posted by davidaugust111 at 1:43 PM on May 30, 2009