Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with bittorrent

Combining partial bittorrent downloads.

pompomtom — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:54:21 -0800

Can I combine two partial bittorrent downloads? (OSX Leopard, Transmission) I have two part-downloaded files, each obtained with Transmission, on different macs. I'd like to combine. Is there any way to do this that doesn't involve the data going out over my 'net connection to the swarm? It's the end of my billing month, and my data allowance is all gone.

How to make my LaCie 5big NAS better?

Señor Pantalones — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:55:32 -0800

LaCie 5Big NAS hacks/modifications/tricks? Just got a 5Big NAS (5TB) running RAID5. Has a built-in torrent client but it's pretty weak. Any way to hack it to run a linux distro of Transmission or Vuze, something like that? Any other tricks that make this box better (aside from "spend $1500 more and get a readyNAS")

Thanks!

A legal and moral question about downloading...

twine42 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:39:11 -0800

A moral question about downloading... Downloading a box set TV series is bad. I get that. Legally wrong.

To me, downloading a TV program such as Top Gear (ie, a program on a free-to-view channel) is legally dubious but morally okay since I would have been freely and legally able to record it off the TV when it broadcast.

My question is this - what about programs which will be released on DVD in the future...?

On one hand, they were broadcast for me to download and record freely. On the other hand, it won't be long before doing so would be the equivalent of downloading from a box set.

Which way does the moral compass point...?

What's a similarly-functioning alternative to mininova.org for finding torrents?

chudmonkey — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:18:31 -0800

What's a similarly-functioning alternative to mininova.org for finding torrents? I have loved using mininova in the past because it has a nice, simple layout and easy-to-find comments for each torrent which always help determine reliability. However, the people behind that site have adopted some new policies lately and a lot of the torrents I'm interested in don't stay listed on the site for long anymore.

I don't really enjoy using The Pirate Bay, and it seems they are on a similar path now/soon anyhow. Isohunt is familiar to me, but that site is leaps and bounds behind mininova in terms of simple usability, and hardly anyone comments on torrents there.

I use the private site TVTorrents to find TV shows (and yes, I have a few invites available, please feel free to ask me.) and I'd be very interested in finding similar sites that have a specific focus like movies or music.

To boil it down: what's your favourite torrent indexer/tracker and do they make it easy to navigate and evaluate torrents?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and/or advice!

I need to host lan torrents for a lanparty coming up.

Chamunks — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:41:32 -0800

I'm looking at an efficient way to distribute large files to multiple computers over my lan, I need to know how to do this and whats involved. I was thinking that since I have a dedicated server in my home that hosting the files via private lan'd bit torrent would be the weapon of choice as the file transfer speed increases exponentially. My server is running a version of ubuntu so whatever software I will need must run in ubuntu. The clients downloading the files will probably be running windows boxes so Utorrent can be used and would be preferred. Are there any specific things that I need to turn on in Utorrent to do this via lan or will it essentially be seamless as long as the tracker is my server? These file transfers need to go as quickly and as hassle free as physically possible. I need to be able to either access this tracker via http or ssh as it has no video card installed at this time. I can XDCMP into the box aswell as its on a lan its secure enough for what xdcmp is used for.

I have thought about running around with usb drives but I just installed gigabit lan cabling and hardware throughout my home so this would be MUCH faster if I could set this up once and essentially forget it. Also this dedicated server needs to host and track the torrent files.

Why is there an Intel advert in my downloads folder?

Andy Harwood — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:03:52 -0800

Yesterday I found a mysterious mkv file in my Azureus downloads folder. I opened it and it turned out to be an advert for Intel. I promptly deleted it but it showed up again the next day. Has Intel started putting adverts in bittorrent files?

The sound from a movie download comes out of two speakers, but what about 5.1?

skylar — Mon, 04 May 2009 03:29:35 -0800

These days a lot of movie viewing takes place from digital files sitting on a computer and downloaded from BitTorrent. In this environment, is it worth having a 5.1 type surround sound audio decoder? Do most of the movie files on BitTorrent come encoded as multi-channel surround sound these days? And to output 5.1 digital surround from a computer what does one need? A special sound card? Some kind of surround sound decoder separate attached to the computer via its optical out?

Help me port forward with my new router, please!

proj — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 11:44:40 -0800

Bittorrent hell with new router! Vital statistics upfront:

Macbook running OS X 10.5.6.
Actiontec GT701 Cable Modem (Qwest).
D-Link DIR-625 Wireless Router.

I was just forced to buy a new router. I got the D-Link listed above. I have never had a problem forwarding ports before and have always had great bittorrent speeds. This is not my first, second, or even third router over the years. I have never had a problem opening up ports on any of them. Not anymore. The only change that I have made lately is with the router.

I have my computer set to this IP. I have the router forwarding port 50000, like so. Port-checking utilities tell me the port is still not open. Vuze/Azureus says that it is able to open up a connection to that port -- at first. However, all of my connections say yellow (no incoming connections) and Vuze says it is firewalled. Speeds are quite slow on this transfer, though I did a test download of a Knoppix distribution and got speeds of about 270K/sec, although the light/face stayed yellow.

If I place my IP in the "DMZ," it still happens. If I connect directly to the cable modem, I get green lights all around and Vuze says that NAT is OK. I am pulling my hair out here trying to figure out why this is happening.

Seeding torrents on new computer

cgs — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:30:16 -0800

I recently changed computers and want to continue to seed a bunch of torrents, but have lost the original tracker files. What can I do? I transferred over the actual (large) downloads but deleted the original torrent tracker files long ago. Aside from trying to find and download the trackers a second time, is there anything I can do?

Thanks for your help!

Kraftwerk is just out of my reach!

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:49:38 -0800

How can I change file extensions on a group of files "in bulk", specifically from .flac to .mp3? Keywords: iTunes, Mac, OS X. I just downloaded the entire Kraftwerk ouvre via BitTorrent. Hooray. However, are of the files are ".flac" and I need to change them to .mp3 to be able to add them to my iTunes library (right now iTunes won't add them). There are over 60 songs in the BitTorrent file. Any way can highlight all of them and change all of the file extensions at once?

Thanks!

Leggo my torrento

Brodiggitty — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:02:52 -0800

Why have my torrent downloads suddenly stopped? Is it my ISP? If yes, are they allowed to do that? So I was about 70 percent into a large torrent download when my download cut out. I recently switched to utorrent 1.8.1. I used to use BitTornado all the time on the same computer/isp so I tried downloading some torrents using bittornado again. No dice. uTorrent shows lots of available peers (200+). It connects to none.

This doesn't seem like a throttling, but a complete pulling of the torrent plug. Yes, I read this question. I don't see how it could be my router because I had no problems until the other day, when it just stopped cold. Internet is working fine otherwise.

I have an "unlimited" plan from a local, smallfry isp in a small, isolated Canadian community. Can they legally block my service in this way if that is what is happening? I can't see it being anything else.

And yes, I see the irony in asking if I have legal recourse when, in all probability, I'm illegally downloading files.

Ugly bittorrent ratio needs a facelift

alitorbati — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:03:31 -0800

Is there any software of Mac OS X that will protect my bittorrent seed/leech ratio? I'm looking for something like GreedyTorrent, but for mac. Obviously, freeware is preferred but I'm willing to hear any suggestions. Please don't use this post to encourage me to seed more. I seed as much as I can on one of my computers but my mac just won't do it.

Also, can anyone suggest any reasons that my mac is extremely finicky about seeding any torrents I get from what.cd? I'm using Transmission, if it matters.

Thanks!

How to record streaming presidential debate?

maus — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:42:09 -0800

How can I record a video stream from CNN this Friday? I follow US politics and elections like other people follow professional sports, and there's a playoff tomorrow that sounds like it's going on whether or not one of the teams shows up. Unfortunately, I have play rehearsal tomorrow night and will be unable to watch it. I don't have cable TV, and was planning on watching it on CNN's or Fox's stream. Is there a simple way to record it for when I get home? Alternatively, is there a reliably-seeded bittorrent tracker for political videos like this?

How to stop torrents at work?

numlok — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:13:20 -0800

I'm sure this question will not make me the most popular student at the dance, but is there a way to identify (via IP) machines running BitTorrent clients within an internal network (ie. work)? My company has around 50 employees, and the old, "Please don't torrent at work" doesn't seem to be doing much good anymore. It brings our email and web browsing to a near standstill, and dropping by the "usual suspects" is not only tiresome, but doesn't seem to find all the sources of traffic any longer. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Detect bandwidth throttling?

ao4047 — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:59:49 -0800

We suspect our ISP is shutting down our internet connection when we use a BitTorrent client and/or throttling bandwidth. Is there any way to detect this? We have Comcast and I know about the legal stuff but wanted to be able to detect it ourselves.

Torrents are slowing down my Firefox!

zardoz — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:54:58 -0800

Whenever I run Transmission on OSX, my Firefox browsing slows to a trickle, or simply stops altogether. I have an iMac running OSX 10.5.3, and I use Transmission to download torrents, and less frequently Limewire. About a month ago I moved to a new house and a new ISP, an DSL line with a 4500 kb/s download, and about 800 up (in Tokyo). My download and surfing speeds aren't as fast as my previous place, but it's still quite fast.

Recently, though, whenever I fire up Transmission and/or Limewire, my browsing just stops. Sometimes not completely, but only if whatever I'm downloading is itself just a trickle. (This isn't OS specific: I use BootCamp and have the same problem when booted into Win XP, using uTorrent and FF). The strange thing is this problem just cropped up about a week ago, and surfing while downloading worked fine when I first got the connection going.

I've read some other posts about this problem, but still can't figure it out. I've installed Carrafix, for example, but at least at the time of this writing (and perhaps never), I don't understand it. I'm only moderately computer literate and the whole "bandwidth throttling", "bottlenecking" stuff is new to me.

I don't really know what to do. Others have suggested cfosSpeed, but it's Windows only and I mostly use OSX--is there a Mac equivalent to this program? Any other tricks or suggestions?

How to fix windows premissions for torrented files

Four Flavors — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:10:39 -0800

Torrented files can't be read by a remote machine until they are cut/pasted. Why, and how to fix it? I have 2 computers, one of which downloads torrents. The completed directories can be seen by the other computer, but clicking on them gets an 'access denied' error. Moving the directory somewhere else, then moving it back where it was causes the error to go away. This happens long after the file is done & the torrent stopped.

What could be causing this? I use uTorrent, in case it matters. The torrents are downloads of movies I already own on VHS from various trackers. Both machines are windows XP boxes, in the same workgroup. Both users have admin rights on their respective machines, and the share allows all users full access. No users are set to 'deny'.

Help with Bittorrent port fowarding

nivekraz — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:40:46 -0800

Just got Verizon FIOS and the wifi access point sucks. So I disabled the wireless portion on the fios router and plugged in a linksys wifi router. Wireless is now kick a** but my bittorrent is slow. I need help with port forwarding. The fios router is 192.168.1.1/24 and the new access point is 192.168.1.2/24 with the wireless network being 192.168.2.0 and the computer I want to torrent on is 192.168.2.101. On the fios router (.1) I have set port forwarding for port 65473 to forward to the linksys(.3). Then on the linksys, port forward for 65473 to computer (.2.101).

>> Fios Router 192.168.1.1 > Linksys to Fios Interface 192.168.1.3 > AP 192.168.2.1 >MacBook 192.168.2.101

This doesn't work. If I plug into fios router and get into the .1.1 network, it works. How can i get wireless bittorrent working?

Fios router is an Actiontech MI424-WR. Wifi is Linksys WRT160N.

My house of (network) cards has tumbled

puddpunk — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:00:34 -0800

I live in a house with 6 other internet hungry people. Help me cater for our needs! I live in a very connected household but I can't find a consumer router to cater for us. We have 4 laptops, 2 desktops, 1 NAS, 2 ps3's and 2 xbox360's in our house and I need help to find a solution that works.

Currently we have a fairly beefy ADSL connection and Belkin N1 wireless modem router sitting on the end of it to share with everyone. The game consoles are frequently used for online gaming (both PSN and Xbox Live) and there is often heavy access going on from the desktops/laptops (Web surfing, downloading, music/video streaming and some bit torrent).

When a lot of connections are created (i.e. p2p, joost) and a fair throughput is heading through the router (like to and from the NAS) it will often buckle and cause a small 5-10s outage, killing any transfers. Otherwise the Belkin N1 is almost perfect.

I have access to a WRAP board running an older version of m0n0wall which I have found to be very stable but gives me lots of problems with the game consoles because it lacks (and developers refuse to implement) UPnP.

I understand that UPnP isn't a great protocol and I always prefer to run a tight ship. BitTorrent isn't a problem because you can specify the ports to advertise on the client and match them on the router. However the game consoles lack this customisation and so far I have found NO solution to be able to use multiple console online services behind one NAT machine (bar buying more IP addresses and 1-to-1 natting them)

Does anybody have a solid solution to replace my Belkin N1 router, I would love to use the WRAP board I have and use the Belkin as an access point only.

So in short, my requirements are:
1) Can support heavy loads and many connections
2) Support UPnP (or another solution to allow Xbox/PS3 to play nice behind the router)
3) Wireless N support and decent legacy wireless support too

A bit on bittorrents

barrakuda — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:04:13 -0800

Can someone explain to me the magic of bittorrents? How do they work? How are they different from programs like Limewire and Kazaa? What's the deal with seeds and peers and how can you optimize your downloading speed (i.e. how to make it quicker)? Finally, which are the best sites where you can find downloadable files? Thank you.

What's the best way of distributing a DVD over the Internet?

amcewen — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:37:06 -0800

What's the best way of distributing a DVD over the Internet? I'm thinking probably bittorrent for transmission, but what format? ISO? A set of VOBs, etc.? Basically, I decided to make a DVD of some of the excellent TED Talks to give to a friend - I figured a DVD would be better as it wouldn't require him to sit in front of his computer to watch them.

As the TED Talks are creative commons, I thought other people on t'Internet might like a copy and so I'm looking at how to share it with everyone.

I'm trying to make it easy for people to use (it's going to be tricky enough if they have to install a bittorrent client), so want to distribute it in a format that can be burnt to DVD easily on Windows, Mac and Linux. Preferably where I can provide a short set of instructions and pointers to suitable software for each platform.

The easiest for me would be a mirror of the DVD structure - so AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders containing .VOB files - but I've also come across ISO files or .CUE/.BIN files.

Which should I pick? (and if it's one of the latter, does anyone have any recommendations for software to create them on Windows XP?)

peer to peer folder sync

matholio — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:12:10 -0800

Can anyone recommend software to syncronise files between multiple servers ? I have staff creating multiple large files, >1gb, daily and I need to share them with multiple organisations. (medical research data, medical research institutes, univercities, etc)

I'm considering using bittorrent and handrolling a solution.
Scan a folder for new files, auto seed new files, check other servers for their new autoseeded files.

When staff want to commit a data file for synching, they would just move it to a specific folder and wait for the servers to sync overnight.
An enhancement would be a webpage for staff to tick boxes, to publish data, queue for syncing, etc.

As far as I knopw the data will be static, once it's created it won't change, there will just be more of it.

It would be nice to have some reporting functions too.
Platform would be windows or linux.
Encryption during transit would be nice.
Estimated new data is 15gb day.
Initial seed would be 1,000gb+ (may post harddisks to start off)
Server locations are global.
Bandwidth not a huge problem, academic networks will be used.(keen to be efficient though)

If there is a existing solution, I'd like to hear about it.

I considered PowerFolder, but the techs there say it doesn't doesn't support multiple sources. I'm really looking for something that support multiple sources at a block level.

If there's an obvious way to do this, I'm missing it.
I'll admit I like the idea of using bittorent for legitimate purposes, but that should not be the driver.

Is there more to TV online than iTunes?

dpcoffin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:28:15 -0800

I wanna download TV to watch on my TV; where do I learn... How?

OK, I’m liking iTunes for commercial-free TV viewing a LOT, and gonna go for an Apple TV (don’t really care about the movie rentals so far; Netflix working fine for that...) but hating how little seems to be available, how I can’t tell when or where any given show is going to be available, willing but not geeky or young enough to understand how to use bitTorrent or Usenet or even Unison, or make sense of any online “explanations” so far found, don’t know if there’s any way to get streaming episodes to be viewable or worth viewing on my HD TV...Sheesh, I guess I’m Lost. And on a Mac, btw.

Where’s my downloading for duffer dummies resource and/or my one-stop overview of legal options and offerings while I wait for this industry to get its act together?

US TV Shows in Japanese? For free?

splice — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:43:21 -0800

How would I go about finding torrents or downloads of popular TV shows dubbed in Japanese? I have been reading alljapaneseallthetime.com and find the method described very interesting. This method involves immersion in Japanese language materials. The author recommends getting materials you are already familiar with so you can generally follow what is going on even if the dialogue is in Japanese.

The problem is that now that I am looking for a few shows in Japanese, the prices are simply bowling me over. $200 for a season of DS9? No, really? And I would be buying a few of these? Uh-huh.

Movies are not so bad and I am not worried about them. They seem to be respectably priced and I can afford them. But the meat of what I want to watch is TV shows I know and love; Star Trek, CSI, Stargate, etc. I already own those shows in english and it grates how I would have to shell out essentially triple the money to get the same shows with Japanese dialog.

Can anyone advise? I already know where to find Japanese TV shows, with or without subs, but I am really looking for US TV shows dubbed in Japanese (sans subs, unless I can disable them). I am handy enough that I can navigate Japanese pages although I will not understand most of the content.

Hope me Obi-wan Kenobi, you're my only help!

Help me design my torrent management system.

christonabike — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:04:28 -0800

I'm looking for tips, tricks, hacks, scripts, and ideas for managing torrents using Linux. Here's what I would like to be able to do:

Automated unpacking. If a torrent contained a zip, rar, etc it should be unpacked automatically.

Automated move on completion. Move music, television, and movies to their appropriate folders. This can probably be done by looking at file type and size.

Continued sharing after a file is moved. Is this even possible? I use some torrent sites that require share ratios, plus I want to be a good file sharer and give back. What if the files are further organized by Amarok?

Remote downloading. I want to be able to go to download a torrent from anywhere. I've already got Apache and PHP setup.

Other cool things. I want to do as little hands on torrent management as possible. Are there scripts that automatically download things with high scores on MetaCritic, Pitchfork, etc? Can I setup a script to automatically download new episodes of a show when they get hosted? I want to know about them!

I think most of this can be done using shell scripts and CRON jobs, but I figured there may already be existing tools.