--Unofficial FAQ for alt.binaries.anime and alt.binaries.multimedia.anime. This document attempts to answer the most commonly asked questions in these two newsgroups. It is intended to help newcomers ("newbies") get up to speed, and to serve as a memory aid to others. Newcomers to alt.binaries.anime and alt.binaries.multimedia.anime are advised to read this document. Written by: The Most Unfriendly SWong, Akito (uudecode/uuencode/MIME), Severin (NewsGrabber), Bogus Name (Rar recovery method), "Supernice" Inc (Agent tips), Moomoo (Realtext), NetGear (some addition to uuencode and file formats), darkwire (resources on Virtual dub, various players, codecs, converters, and Linux stuff, etc), TheMan (misc on file formats and codecs), Gorunova (reformatting, proofreading, pleas for sanity) Previous revision dates: 2000-03-11 2000-03-12 2000-03-16 2000-03-22 2000-03-30 2000-04-06 2000-04-25 2000-05-06 2000-05-11 2000-05-21 2000-06-07 2000-09-21 2000-09-23 2001-02-11 2000-02-22 This is an ongoing work, constructive criticisms welcomed, volunteer writers are very welcomed, someone who can do a better job is even more welcome. All flames go to /dev/null. A webified copy of this FAQ is now available at these URLS: http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/abafaq/ http://www.geocities.com/alt_binaries_anime/ [url will be changing] ----- Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 2. What are alt.binaries.anime and alt.binaries.multimedia.anime? 3. What's with the .rar, .r00, etc files? 3a. Rar recovery method. 3b. What are SFV files? 4. Help! I'm getting all this garbage text! 5. About repost requests (Sod, some of these parts are incomplete!) 5a. How NOT to make a request. 6. What's a good newsreader? 7. On posting... 8. What about hentai/porn? 9. What about subs/dubs? 10. On file formats and codecs 11. Help! My news-server bites! What can I do? 12. Where was that software again? 13. Appendices. ----- 1. Introduction Before asking any question or making requests, read this FAQ and any messages from posters. Most of the regular posters are much more friendly and helpful than I am so they are usually happy to help out, but seeing the same questions over and over again is just annoying. A Mini-faq is posted by Netgear on a regular basis with enough information to get most newbies started. This big faq has not just technical info on how to use newsgroup for downloading, but also have notes on netiquette and hopefully helpful information on various things that crops up on the ng every now and then. ----- 2. What are alt.binaries.anime and alt.binaries.multimedia.anime? According to the charter of a.b.m.a. (ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.binaries.multimedia.anime.Z): This group is for posting any multimedia file (any format) that is anime related. The file may be a commercial, trailer, music video, opening movie, ending movie, special, or entire episode or movie of anything specifically anime related, including free fansubs which are widely unavailable to most people (check legal issues in your area, it is beyond the scope of this proposal to cover the vastness of fansubs.) While alt.binaries.anime is a "rogue" newsgroup, the same definition can be applied to it. "Rogue" newsgroup means that whoever created the group didn't go through the proper channels in newsgroup creation. Hence there is no charter or control message for it, so quite a few newsservers refuse to carry it. A related newsgroup is alt.binaries.multimedia.repost. It is intended for reposting of multimedia files from any other multimedia newsgroups. We often use it for anime reposts to prevent the first two from getting too busy. You can find a lot of information on various anime and their number of episodes at: [A Janssen] http://www.anipike.com/ http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rllew/andivots.html Also useful sites: http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews/ http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/listups/ ----- 3. What's with the .rar, .r00, etc files? Rar files are compressed/split archives. Nearly everything in the newsgroup are posted in this format. This is done to make successful download much more likely and it makes reposts much easier. The files in both a.b.a and a.b.m.a usually run from 50mb+, if these files are posted in a single post and even one part doesn't make it to somebody's server, then the file is useless. When the files are split up, the chances of the individual files arriving intact are greater, also, even if some of the parts didn't make it, the poster only need to repost one small part to fill it. To uncompress these archives, you need to download every single part. Use a rar program to unrar these files. Rar program can be found at: http://www.rarsoft.com for all major platforms, http://macrar.free.fr for macs. Posting unarchived files, or files archived in a non-RAR format (especially an uncommon one) is frowned upon and may cause people to not download your file, not to mention flames in your direction. There are two kinds of error messages as you unrar a file: 1. Invalid or corrupt authenticity information In this case, it merely means that the poster used an unregged version of winrar, so that the error recovery data is not saved. Usually this is not a problem and the file should extract just fine. Unless if the files fail the crc check when checking with sfv (see 3b), in which case recovery method will not work and a repost is required. 2. CRC error In this case the files are actually damaged. Check the file size against the other files of the same archive. Sometimes it is possible to repair the file if the error recovery data is present. Other times, especially if the file is short by a few bytes, repair will not be possible. 3a. Rar Recovery Method [Bogus Name] Yet another good reason to use rar is the recovery record in the RAR file. In winRAR, highlight the affected R?? file, select the Commands menu and click Repair Archive. Then rename the resulting archive to the name of the corrupted archive (after first renaming or moving the corrupted archive). All should be well. Another site with good explanations on rar files is at http://www.freepicgirl.com/nero-x/ 3b. What are SFV files? SFV stands for Simple File Validator and is used to check files if they became corrupt after transfer. It does this by doing a CRC (cyclic redundancy check). The poster generates this (text)file with a SFV-generator and the downloader checks it with a SFV-program to see if there are any problems. After the check it displays which files contain CRC-errors and therefore are corrupt. If a file is corrupt the first thing to do is try to repair it. Since most archives are created with a recovery record you should first try to repair the file yourself. See (3. What's with the .rar, .r00, etc files) on how to do this. If this fails you should make a request for a repost by using the guidelines in (5. About repost requests (Sod, some of these parts are incomplete!)). Before you do however first check the newsgroups to see if it was reposted already or if there are already outstanding request(s) for it. Don't forget to also check alt.binaries.multimedia.reposts (ABMR) for reposts. The programs: The 2 most used programs for SFV are WinSFV and QuickSFV and are fairly easy to use. Most SFV's generated can be checked by the other SFV programs. One exception is WinSFV. The first line for this program must always include: ';Generated by WIN-SFV32' otherwise it won't work properly. The only FAQ for WinSFV that exists at the moment is in Dutch. It is supposed to be translated to English, but the page hasn't been updated in a while. It does have a small section in English with the 3 most asked questions. It also offers the latest version (1.1a) for download. It is located at http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/winsfvfaq/ The official page for QuickSFV is http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Mouse/4668/index.html and always has the latest version for download. A nice feature of QuickSFV is that it can generate SFV's compatible with WinSFV. That means it generates the first line that must be included for WinSFV in a SFV-file. QuickSFV can be downloaded from: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Mouse/4668/ Other SFV generators/checkers are: nvCRC http://members.home.com/animeh/info/info.html PdSFV (Windows and linux version) http://pdsfv.isonews.com/ CheckSFV (Linux and FreeBSD version) http://www.fodder.org/cksfv/ ----- 4. On uudecode/uuencode, and MIME. (Help! I'm getting all this garbage text!) [Akito, NetGear] On an older, less featured newsreader, you may see something like this: ------------------------------------------------- >begin 644 filename.r10 >M4F%R(1H'`*6\M-14`(````$QO9&]SM5_AR06`T8P.$*?D_Z-<^5]TBHM0Y3I[/*P. Checked. Agent will then check for holes in the message ID list. Obviously slower, but you won't miss anything. Free Agent doesn't have this option - instead you have to open a newsgroup with the "download all headers in selected groups" command. Another site with good explanations of how to use Agent is at http://www.freepicgirl.com/nero-x/ NewsGrabber [Severin] For people with access to more than one news server, NewsGrabber, [shareware, currently $17 and it's worth it IMHO] from TronTech at www.news-grabber.com carries the Severin Seal Of Approval. While not as easy to use as Agent or News Express this thing is AMAZING in that it can piece together complete posts from parts gathered from any of the servers you tell it about. ex: a 15 part article, with M1Jax having 1, 4-6, and 14; M1Naples having 1-3, 11, 13-15; M1Pompano having 7; AirNews having 1-6, 8-10; and EasyNews having 8-15 is complete from NewsGrabber's point of view. @home users may find this particularly useful, since I understand that all of their news servers are available to all of their customers. Xnews [Meep Meep] A excellent newsreader for binaries is Xnews, available at http://xnews.3dnews.net - It is currently freeware. It works best as an on-line browser, which is fine for people who have constant-on connections (cable, dsl, etc). It can be a little bit cryptic to use at first, but the manual is very clear. For downloading binaries, parts can be downloaded and held in an 'archive' while you are waiting for the rest of a post, and assembled afterwards (this really helps on @home servers, where early parts of a post usually expire before the last parts of a post). A newer feature is the 'q-archive' which does not download parts but can let you queue up article parts across multiple servers and then download them. Very cool (and space efficient). Keygens/serials can be found at http://astalavista.box.sk/, use at your own risk. Other good newsreader with no one writing a review on them so check them out yourselves: Newsbin http://www.newsbin.com Newsrover http://www.newsrover.com Linux Newsreaders (darkwire) PAN (Pimp Ass Newsreader) http://www.superpimp.org/ This is the newsreader I use for all my NG sessions under Linux. It is very similar to XNews and Agent and seems to have taken the best features from both. It is currently a work in progress, and requires a fair amount of memory and resources to run. Since it is beta, it does segfault occasionally, or gets a hung thread. But otherwise, I use it as my *only* newsreader, so I rely on it solely for all my news needs. ----- 7. On posting... New posts are always appreciated. However, both a.b.a. and a.b.m.a. are very high volume newsgroups. Too many posts can push the older articles off faster than people can download them. A 100-150mb limit per day per poster seems to work well. It has been suggested that 300mb is ok as well since it will allow the posting of an entire mpg. Hopefully this will keep the amount of data manageable. The point is don't go nuts and post 6-700mb at once and expire earlier articles prematurely. Newsservers don't have infinite diskspace afterall. Also, it is highly recommended all posts be rar'd into parts. See section on rar for explanation. There is no firm rule about how big each part should be. If the parts are too small, it will make files management more difficult, as there are more parts to take care of. If the parts are too large, it will make download and upload (refills) time much longer. I have seen parts as small as 4mb to as large as 20mb. Personally I lean toward the smaller size since missing parts take less time to upload and download for the modem users. There will always be people who want to get their hands on a popular series. Some of these are requested frequently. It is probably a good idea for a new poster to ask about what was posted recently to avoid reposting something that was only posted merely days ago. There are always newbies who just discovered Usenet and there will always be people who just missed or catch the end of a posting cycle. However, if we keep posting and reposting the same thing we'd never get to any new stuff. For newbies who want something they just missed, the only thing I can recommend is be patient and wait a few months and see if anyone is nice enough to repost the entire series. To say the same thing in short sentences: - Newbies want lots of stuff, especially popular series. - Old-timers are tired of the popular stuff and want new things. - Everyone wants fills and reposts of stuff they missed. - News servers have a limited amount of disk space. - Higher traffic causes shorter article retention. - Shorter retention means we have to download more times per day, or make more repost requests. - More repost requests means higher traffic. Basically we are constantly fighting the disk space limitation. Some servers are more limited than others, so to keep most people happy we have to try to limit posting to a level where things won't scroll off too fast. It's not possible to satisfy everyone at once until all news servers have infinite disk space. Lastly, a number of more popular series are available on the web for downloading, you may find some treasures by a simple quick search on any search engine. Here is a guideline on header labels on posts: [series] ep ## (format/sub or dub) file ## of ## For large posts that takes several days, a "Day # of #" should be included as well. Some newsreaders do not properly thread binary messages unless the message number part of the subject line is at the end. You should set your posting software to put the message number after the file number. I also recommend a readme post of some sort (sometimes file 00/##) describing the series, how many episodes are there in total, and a repost request policy if you are so inclined. Also, if the post is a repost, repack, or parts fills should be indicated as well. The repack part is especially important. Every now and then there are folks who help out the original poster of a series by responding to repost requests so that the poster can move on to other things. And sometimes this involves repacking the files. Stating that the reposts are repacks is important so that the downloaders would know that the repacked parts would not be compatible with the previous posts. (If you re-rar an episode, more often than not the new rars can't be mixed with the old ones and still be decodable.) It is highly recommended that auto-posting software be used for posting since nearly all postings require multiple parts. Whatever posting software that you decide to use, it is important to set the line number per message to below 9000 lines. Anything higher would very likely to result in the news-server rejecting your post. Agentpost is a program that is used with the Agent newsreader software and can be found here: http://www.skuz.net/madhat/ There is another thing about posting that affects @home users in particular ever since the 200mb per day per user posting limit was imposed. Current newsreader and newsposter will uuencode the files and post it automatically. The process is transparent and is never seen by the user. The problem is that uuencode process will increase the size of the file by nearly 37% or so. Since the process is transparent nowadays the poster don't know how much data they are actually uploading. So when a poster tries to post a 140mb file, over 200mb of data was actually uploaded. So @home posters hit the daily upload limit sooner than they realize. Power-post [A Janssen] Another automatic poster for binaries is Power-Post 2000 (PP2K). This fully automated poster is highly recommended and very popular because of it's ease of use. You have to set a few simple options like newsserver, user/password and newsgroups where to post to. The only thing you'll have to watch is the 'Default Max Lines Per Post'. As indicated earlier in this section this shouldn't be set higher then 9000, and 7500 seems to be the most used value. Just leave all options on automated tasks at their default values. Now all you have to do is add your RAR-parts and SFV to the queue and select the newsgroup where you want to post to. Make a subject heading that includes the necessary information and optionally (but recommended) include some information that would be posted as the first message in the post known as the '00-file'. See (Subject lines and 00-file) for information on this. It is important that you include the filecount, total filecount and the filename with parameters. For the counters this is $1 and $2 and for the filename it's $F. Do not make these yourself as there could arise problems with your post. Most newsreaders combine the different sections of a part together so you should use the $F and make sure the last character of your archivename isn't a space. If you would have a 'part .rar' most readers can't combine it automatically and downloaders must do it themselves manually and this is time consuming and not necessary. After all this you can start posting and PP2K will handle completing your post by reconnecting when necessary, etc. Your first post should be to alt.binaries.test This is a testgroup where you can see how things turn out. Just do everything like you should do (rars, sfv) with a small file and see how it works. If all goes well and looks good, then you can start posting to the regular newsgroups. PP2K can be found on http://net-toys.8k.com/ Additional info on subject line and 00-files [A Janssen] In order for people to understand what a post is you should include a few essential things in your header. Of course what it is, the name of the post, the episode number, if it is spread over a few days such as 'Day n of m' and the format of the post. Most used values for this are: AVI: A file with the avi extension. This would typically be a DivX or MPG4 encoded file. DIVX: A file with the avi extension and encoded with the DivX codec. MPG4(V3): A file with the avi extension and encoded with the MPG4 (version 3) codec. MPG: A file with the extension mpg. VCD or DAT: A file with the extension dat. This is a form of a mpg file. S-VCD: A file with the extension mpg. This is a special format and usually can't be watched with MS mediaplayer. See svcd info in the file format section RM: A file with the extension rm which is called a Realmedia file. ASF or WMV: A file with asf or wmv extension. See for information on these fileformats section (10. On file formats and codecs). Sub: A file with Japanese audio and English subtitles. Sami: A separate file for providing subtitles for AVI files. See the (Subtitles) section on how to use) Rt/Smil: Separate files for providing subtitles for Realmedia (RM) files. See the section (Subtitles) on how to use. Raw or Jpn: A file with Japanese audio. Dub: A file with English audio. C-sub: A file with Japanese audio and Chinese subtitles. C-dub: A file with Chinese audio. Of course some combinations of these are possible like [DIVX, Sami] or (RM, C-dub, rt/smil). If no language is given for the subtitle-files it can be assumed they're English. Values like this are usually in the header with brackets or parenthesis and separated by commas. Other acronyms you could find are OP, ED and MV. These stands for opening, ending and musicvideo. The OP and ED are the opening and ending of a episode or movie. Musicvideo is usually a self-made musicvideo which features anime. Other things you could encounter are TV, OVA or OAV. TV is self-explanatory and means an episode as it aired on Japanese television. OVA and OAV mean the same thing and stands for Original Video Animation or Original Animation Video. These episodes were made directly for Video/Laserdisc/DVD and so were never on television. Usually OVA's have a bigger budget and feature less episodes and therefore have a bit better quality. It's possible for OVA's to have a storyline before, after or in-between the TV-series of the same show. A few examples of some subjects: [DAT, Sub] bakabakashii OVA ep 1 - [03/16] - Day 1 of 2 - bakka.r02 //a bit too much? :-) Sugoi TV episode 13 of 13 (rm, rt/smil) file 33 of 33 sugoi.sfv harahetta (raw) - file 1 of 30 - hh.r00 Besides a good subject with the necessary info it is also useful to include more specific information in the first message of your post. This typically called '00-file' could include other information on the post like for example: posting schedule, reposting procedures and schedule, screensize, filesize, archivesize, framerate, summary and other text about the post, etc. ----- 8. What about hentai/porn? The charter of a.b.m.a. specifically states: Things that should not be posted in alt.binaries.multimedia.anime: - pictures: they belong in alt.binaries.pictures.anime - sounds/music: they belong in alt.binaries.sounds.anime - general anime discussion: belongs in the rec.arts.anime* newsgroups - hentai/erotica material - non-anime material That means no hentai stuff on the a.b.m.a. folks! Now, while a.b.a. is a rogue newsgroup and hence no charter, and technically no rules on hentai stuff, I (and most regular posters, it seems) feel rather strongly that hentai should be kept off from it as well. This is not because of any self-righteous puritanical reason. It is because of the fact that quite a few ISP's, newsservers will not carry erotica/porn newsgroups for puritanical reasons. If some self righteous parents find their kids downloading porn from a non-porn newsgroup and complain to their ISP, most likely the ISP will simply stop carry that newsgroup. This will ruin things for other people on the same ISP who also follow the newsgroup. So please be considerate. One may argue that since a.b.a. has no charter so there oughtn't be any restriction on this sort of thing. However, there is a good reason for treating a.b.a. as a non-hentai newsgroup. In newsgroup naming convention, newsgroups with sex related material are designated with "erotica" or "sex", since neither words are in "alt.binaries.anime", newsservers and isps will treat it as non-sex newsgroup by default. If the more puritanical service providers discovers the existance of porn in a.b.a. they will no doubt stop carrying the ng. Just see the disappearance of misspelled/disguised warez newsgroups from the @home servers for a potential fate of a.b.a., or ask your servers providers what usually happens to "stealth" erotica groups. For people who do want to post this sort of thing, For now I recommend posting to alt.binaries.erotica.anime, or alt.binaries.hentai. Those two groups have hardly any traffic, it'd be interesting to see how they hold up to large multimedia binaries. Posting to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime is not recommended. The denizens of that ng seems even more concern about bandwidth than we do. Recently H anime were being posted to alt.binaries.pictures.erotic.anime (no "a" in erotic!), check that one out. Some users recently started exploring the possibility of creating a group specifically for anime hentai. Stay tuned on this one. ----- 9. What about subs/dubs? Anime purist fans (myself included) are not all that thrilled about dubs and much prefer to watch subtitles with the original Japanese dialogue. Nevertheless dubs are still anime and most definitely belong in both newsgroups. I highly recommend posters to indicate clearly whether their posts are subs or dubs (see posting headers guideline) so that people like myself would know what not to download. Non-translated episodes are also posted. These should be identified with "raw" or "jp", or "csub" for the ones with Chinese subtitles. ----- 10. On file formats and codecs Popular file formats including .rm, .mpg, and .asf. .rm RealMedia RealPlayer can be obtained from http://www.real.com Again keygen/serials for the Plus version can be found at http://astalavista.box.sk/ Of all the popular formats, .rm gives the best compression for the same length of video. There had been people who complained about lack of quality of this format in comparison with others, however, in the hands of a capable encoder with a good machine, .rm can be very good. Also, there are good reasons for using .rm: 1. Not everyone has a high-speed connection, even cable is slow with the u/l caps on @home. That makes posting large files nearly impossible. Also people with slow connection will have a better chance of getting the smaller .rm files. 2. Diskspace-- not everyone has a 20gb drive. I like to collect enough files of the same series before burning a CD. With incomplete posts, broken files that are the daily realities of Usenet, having a gazillion incomplete episodes on my harddrive would take out a lot of space. Also, even if every posts are perfect, a considerable of blank cds will be needed. For instance, the Nadesico series has 26 episodes (standard length for most anime series), it fits on 2 cdrs when in .rm format. If it were in something like mpg it'd take maybe 8-9 cdr's. Now multiply that with the number of series that's been posted in the past, the number of series that's currently being posted... That's a lot more cdr's to buy. .Rm is a nice compromise between file size and quality. There is an extension for subtitles for .rm format known as RealText: RealText section [Moomoo] What is RealText subbing? RealText is a simple way of subbing rm (RealMedia) format videos. Instead of adding subtitles directly to the video, RealText subs are played in a separate panel at the same time as the video. A posting of anime subbed using RealText would consist of 3 files : - Video file (.rm extension) - RealText subtitles file (.rt extension) - Synchronization file (.smil extension) How to watch a RealText subbed anime? To watch a RealText subbed anime, open the .smil file using RealPlayer instead of the .rm file How to sub an anime using RealText? There is a good explanation of RealText and a tutorial here http://www.lunaarts.com/realtext/index.html .mpg Mpeg format Most general format there is, plays on any platform. Best quality video, period (well, provided the encoder knows what he is doing and the source video is also high quality). The major drawback is that the file size is huge. Can be played by Windows Media Player that's bundled with Win9x. SVCD format Also has .mpg extension, but it's in mpg2 format and can't be read by the more common media player programs. You will need a software dvd players such as windvd http://windvdzone.cjb.net powerdvd http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/pdvd_down.html sthdvd (don't have a link for this one) Elecard http://www.elecard.com About VCD posts (.dat, bin/cue) [Gorunova] Lately there has been an increase in the popularity of VCD posts. People post episodes in .DAT or .BIN/.CUE format that some CD burning software can write directly as a VideoCD. VCD posts are okay because the picture quality is great, and people who don't want VCD can convert to other formats using VCDgear and VirtualDub etc. However, VCDs are big (650+ megabytes) and so they should be spaced out over about 4-5 days in order to avoid drowning the newsgroups and pushing off everyone else's posts. Please have some consideration for the people on short-retention servers. .dat files are just mpg converted to vcd formats, any players that plays mpg1 should be able to play them. bin/cue is a cd image format, you will need programs such as cdrwin, fireburner to burn these. Nero also supports bin/cue, but not very well. It is possible to extract files out of a bin/cue image file with isobuster or vcdgear (http://www.vcdgear.net) if neither cdrwin or fireburner supports your cd burner. Go to http://cdrsoft.net for all the cd burning programs mentioned in this section. Need mpg extension on Quicktime for Macs. [From Yugo Nada] Not all files with the .mpg extension can be viewed with Quicktime. When people pull .dat files off of VCDs they usually just change the file extension to .mpg, but they're still .dat files. Quicktime cannot play them directly. Mac users must use a dat2mpg program called VCDGear from http://www.vcdgear.com/ Mac users can go to http://www.versiontracker.com for software. WMP is fairly buggy on Macs. Sound rarely syncs in full screen mode. [Addition from xo] Just for accuracy, QuickTime *can* play (most) .dat files directly under MacOS, but how well it does so appears to depend on the hardware. Perhaps the video card or cpu speed: it won't play well on my older Mac but the same dats played fine on 2 G3 class machines I tried them on. Not all AVI codecs are available for the Mac. Indeo(R) Video 3 Indeo(R) Video 4 and Indeo(R) Video 5 are available on the Mac. You are correct in that many of the more obscure codecs are not available on the Mac For Linux, check http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/mpeg/mpeg_encode.html for Berkeley MPEG Tools. Encodes and Plays. Many other utlities out there. Check freshmeat.net. [TheMan] Also, see mpegTV http://www.mpegtv.com/download.html Unfortunately it requires a $10 for the "full-featured" version, although a free version is available. The free version includes a time-limited demo of the "full-featured" version (mtv), *AND* includes a unlimited command line version (mtvp). It can play in regular size, zoomed, and FULL screen. It even plays the Tylor movie mpeg that many where unable to play, and VCD (/dev/cdrom, or set by environment variable). Biggest difference in the 2 versions is the availability of a GUI interface to the registered version, fine tuning video, tracking, and fine tuning audio. Questions about mpgs (TheMan) Q. I don't like having all these MPEG parts of a movie. I hate having to watch 10 mins of video then having to open another file! Can I make a 1 big MPEG? A. First off, you don't have to join together a huge MPEG in order to play back a movie continously without human intervention. You can get a nice software player (haven't looked, haven't bothered), or get a DVD player software such as PowerDVD or WinDVD to do it. Both of those softwares support playlist playback. So you can queue up all those MPEGs and then just play them back. I have found WinDVD's playlist playback to be better though, with less noticable interruption during file changes. Some very smart people out there have figured that they can "join" together those many MPEGs into one by using the DOS command "copy /b mpeg1.mpg + mpeg2.mpg bigmpeg.mpg". This goes the same with trying to use WinZip to zip up all the MPEGs in store mode. What is the problem with this? It will seriously screw up the MPEG playback hardware or software because the I/P/B frames are no longer in order. Whats worse is, if you use WinZip to join them, you will have a PK header at the begining of the file. Very smart indeed. I KNOW Media Player can play them back fine, but thats because Media Player is very forgiving. Many other players and editors out there do not. Try sticking the "MPEG" into VirtualDub and you can hope it can crash. If you really want to join together the MPEGs into one, use a utility to do it properly. One that I know of is MPEGJoin, and that can be found at http://extra.newsguy.com/~theprof/Readme.html. Please ensure that when joining the MPEGs that they are the same in spec (bitrate, interleaving, etc). If you join together a MPEG of different specs, some weird stuff can happen. This utility will join together the MPEG by properly interleaving the frames so that it will be compliant to the IEC/ISO spec (whatever number that is) and thus players and utilties will be able to handle the resulting file with little or problem. Q. How come I can't play the MPEG I copied off of a VCD? other than Windows Media Player won't open it! A. If you copied the DAT file straight off of a VCD, and renamed it to .mpg, then that is why you are getting those error messages. Basically, what happens when you burn an MPEG as a VCD is the authoring software (EZCD, Nero) inserts/pads some extra info to the original MPEG on the fly during the burn. The resulting DAT file on the VCD will have a 10-30% size increase (bloat if you think of it). But anyway, because of this extra padded info, it can confuse a crappy MPEG editor or player. The best practice is to actually "dat2mpg" convert it so that you can revert the DAT back to an original MPEG form. You should *always* do this if you have downloaded something off the net (here on aba or abma, or some site) if the person claims it was from a VCD. Do a dat2mpg no matter what so that you can check to be sure it is really an MPEG before you actually do something with that file, such as burning your own VCD. This util, VCDGear can be found from http://www.vcdgear.org. VCDGear 2.0, which was recently released has a GUI interface. While for some of you people who may prefer a command line interface, can use VCDGear 1.5, which was released not long ago also. .asf Active Stream Format Can be played by Windows Media Player that's bundled with Win9x. Window Media for Macs will play .asf, as far as I know the player for Mac is fairly buggy. A proprietary video format from Microsoft. The quality of a well encoded asf can rival that of a mpg at considerable smaller size. However, there are several major drawbacks: 1. It is a Microsoft proprietary format, it will definitely play on a Windows machine. It will play on a Mac by a buggy player (from what I learned so far). At the moment I don't know if it will play on a Linux machine at all. Video in this format cannot be shared by all downloaders. 2. You need a fairly high end machine to play it well. On my awesome state of the art Pentium 200 (no MMX) machine, asfs plays like a bad slide show. Even the highly compressed .rm format plays way better on it. Remember that not everyone can afford to get the latest PIII whatever machine. [From Brad via email] There's a fairly new library called avifile that plays DivX and .ASF files, among others, on Linux (it uses some emulation code from Wine to run the Windows codec DLLs). It's at http://divx.euro.ru/ . Performance seems to vary a lot depending on the file, but it works with at least some of the files. There's a movement amoung most encoders to move away from this format because of its proprietary nature. Also, since there is zero support from Microsoft on this format, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to repair an asf file when it is damaged. Questions about asfs (TheMan) Q. Why does the sound come first then I see the mouths moving in the video? (or vice-versa) A. In this case here, you computer is not fast enough to handle MPEG4V3 properly. This symptom usually means you have enough dropped frames to get the video and audio out of sync. You can try these few things to see if you can get the playback to be in a tolerable rate (remember you will still get dropped frames). 1) try closing down ALL programs, that includes your RC5DES, SETI@home, whatever. Make sure you have a bare bones Windows running except some necessary things such as audio control. 2) In Windows Media Player, while the ASF is opened (good idea to pause playback), click on File, then click on Properties. Then click on the Advanced tab. You should see in there the Microsoft MPEG-4 codec in the top box where it says "Filters in use", doubleclick on it. You should see the CPU (Picture Quality) slider. Move it all the way to the left. Close down this box, then resume playback and see how it goes. In most cases you should be able to watch the ASF full screen. If your system is only a P200 or something, then maybe you are stuck playing it in a little 1x or 2x size window. .avi Audio Video Interleave Can be play by the Media Player bundled with Win9x. Can be play by Macintosh with QuickTime player. Works just like Media Player. It's codec based. Now Microsoft could have created a MAC codec for QuickTime so that MPEG4 and ASF's worked, but you know how Microsoft is. [NetGear] A somewhat more obscure format than the previous three. If done right, the quality of this format can be very good at a small size. There is a huge drawback for this format though. Several different codecs exists for avi's. If the encoder use a codec that the user does not have, the file will not play unless the user finds the codec and install it. This option is available to Windows users only. It is not known if Macs and Linux user can play avi's with the more obscure codecs at all. So while it is a high quality format, users of platforms other than Windows will not be able to enjoy it. Most popular codec: MPEG4V1-V3 (default with Windows Media Player) MPEG4V3(Beta): [darkwire] AVI mp43 format, also used in ASF --------------------------------- Windows Media Tools http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/technologies/tools.asp#Downloads Windows Media General Infos http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/default.asp Windows Media for Mac http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/download/macintosh.asp This is MS version of the standard mpeg4, most of the time mplayer2 will try to *find* this code by contacted MS, but will result in a failure, which is the problem for most people. The version I have found to work is contained in the package wmtools.exe, beta 4.0 The important file is MPG4c32.DLL version 4.1.00.39.17 MPG4C32.DLL version 4.00.3688 is the last version (as of most recent revision of this faq) that supported MPEG4V3 AVIs. In other words, this was in the final beta of Windows Media Tools. 4.00.3845 and up will cough up an error message to you if you try to play an AVI that's done in MPEG4V3. [TheMan] New versions on the MS homepage *WILL NOT* work AT ALL, I have tried this over the weekend (04-22-2000), the version available on MS homepage is wmtools.exe, release 4.1 Installing a new version, then uninstalling, and reinstalling old version, will not work, because windows decides to keep the newer codec file, you can fix this by running the old wmtools.exe, waiting till it finishes decompressing the files, then digging through the 'temp' directory for MPG4c32.dll (NetGear also made an account and put up a copy of it on this site. http://homepages.go.com/~mpeg4/fxmpeg4.zip) Just download this zip, it is 4.00.3688. Don't even have to bother with trying to find an older version of WMTools to "rip" the file out. You can install the latest version of WMTools, then "patch" it with that older DLL. Since that DLL is beta, if you have problems with some weird side effects such as weird color bursts after decompressing the AVI or ASF, then you know why. The codec has never crashed on me or gave me any serious problems other than some weird color effects sometimes when working with the decompressed AVI. [TheMan] DivX(hacked MPEG4V3) also has .avi extension: [darkwire] http://divx.ctw.cc This is a hack of the MS mp43 format, supposedly, the *standard* versus the bastardized MS version. Files that are divx or mp43, both have avi/asf extension, essential what happens is that the FOURCC identifier is changed, from DIV3(4)<->MP43, but essential the data inside the file is the same. Read next point AVI<->DIVX convertor -------------------- AVI<->DIVX convertor homepage http://members.xoom.com/cheekyb0y/ac3decode.html Link for download http://members.xoom.com/cheekyb0y/divx2mp4.zip This tool rewrites changes the 4CC code from mp43 to div3 or div4, or vice versa. I have been able to play div3/4 files with a rewritten to mp43 4cc, with MS mp43 codec, although sometimes the results are not as pretty, there are some purpling artifacts occasionally, but in a pinch situation, you can convert back and forth. VirtualDub homepage http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub/index.html Freeware avi/asf manipulation software VirtualDub filters http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub/virtualdub_filters.html This section has the file subtitler.zip, which can be used to read a SSA (unzipped) file and overlay it on an asf/avi file, the output will be an avi file as well. Avi/smi files [A Janssen] It recently became possible for anyone to make subtitles for raw AVI episodes by using MS SAMI. The extension for these files is smi. They must have the same name as the video and be in the same directory. They then can easily be viewed with MS mediaplayer. How you can watch the video+sub together: In Microsoft Media Player 6.4 : In menu 'View' check the item 'Captions' Microsoft Media Player 7 : In menu 'View' go to the sub-menu 'Now Playing Tools' and check 'Captions' One disadvantage of mediaplayer is that you can't watch the video with the captions in full screen. There are currently two programs that can display them in full screen. They are the (Korean) program AviText and DVlaD. AviText takes the subtitles and places them inside the video while DVlaD uses mediaplayer (must be installed) and displays them at the bottom. The quality of the text in the subtitles are a little smoother in DVLad. If you want to make SAMI's yourself you can use a texteditor or one of these programs which make it a little easier by including more automation in timecodes, etc.: SubSync or Magpie. Make an announcement that you're working on a translation of episode n for series xx, so that nobody else is doing the same thing. This can prevent a lot of aggravation and time-loss. All these programs (and more useful info) can by found on Zen's website at: http://www.geocities.com/zenwebpage/ Offical site for DVlaD adn SubSync: http://users.pandora.be/vlad/subsync/ Offical site for Magpie: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/ncam/webaccess/magpie/ Some general information on SAMI: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/sami/ select view/captions in the menu to see the subtitles. The .avi and the .smi files must have the same names. Linux Stuff [darkwire] ----------- mp43 and most new avi wrapped codes wont run under Linux, neither will ASF. Solutions: ::Mpeg-1/Rm will play under Linux, requires (glibc2 / libc.so.6) Smpeg + SDL http://www.lokigames.com/development/smpeg.php3 RealPlayerG2 Beta http://www.real.com -- it's listed as beta under the other regular players on the same page Xanim http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html -- Can play some older AVI and QT formats natively, currently looks un-maintained :: For playing ASF / AVI latest / or latest crap codec from MS VMware http://www.vmware.com/download/download_linux_pre.html -- Virtual Machine x86, can install windows 9x, NT, 2k, whatever =) -- then install the same tools as if under a real windows sessions -- this requires some change in perception, between real machine and virtualized machine ----- 11. Help! My news-server bites! What can I do? Short answer: Get a new news-server. Long answer: Get a new news-server. If your news-server hardly ever get any complete parts, no amount of repost will help. The best solution is to spend money to subscribe to a premium news-server. See alt.binaries.news-server-comparison for more extensive information. For those who are financially challenged, there are free, open news-servers out there. This is not a good solution. A.b.a and a.b.m.a are both very high volume newsgroups. Open news-servers usually cannot handle the large volume for long. Chances are if you find an open news-server it will either go down, or be closed not long afterwards. For more information on where to find open news-servers, see alt.free.newsservers. If you don't get either of the newsgroups mentioned, go to www.deja.com. Special section for @home peeps: The following 3 servers are particularly reliable in terms of new posts and completeness. news.rdc1.on.home.com news.rdc1.sfba.home.com news.rdc1.sdca.home.com The following 2 servers have much longer retention time (5-6 days) than others: news.rdc1.tx.home.com news.kenner1.la.home.com @home users are lucky in that they (unofficially) get access to ALL @home news servers. Access to servers other than your default one is throttled - you can only open about 5 connections to each one, and the data rate on each one is limited - but it's still a very useful way to look for missing parts. There is a list of @home servers that occasionally gets posted. Ask for it if you can't find it with a web search. If you are willing to make the effort to check three or four high-retention servers, you will probably end up making about 4 or 5 times fewer fill/repost requests. It's polite to make a reasonable effort to find the files yourself before imposing on someone to repost them for you. ----- 12. Where was that software again? This section collects the download information for the software mentioned in this FAQ. Note some of these URLs may be out of date. If nothing shows up, try a web search. Tools: QuickSFV: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Mouse/4668/ RAR: http://www.rarsoft.com (for Windows and some other OSes) http://macrar.free.fr (for Macs) Mac DAT->MPG convertor: http://www.versiontracker.com Berkeley MPEG tools for Linux: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/mpeg/mpeg_encode.html VCDgear: http://www.vcdgear.com/ MpegJoin: http://extra.newsguy.com/~theprof/Readme.html AVI/DIVX convertor: http://members.xoom.com/cheekyb0y/ac3decode.html VirtualDub: http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub/index.html V-dub filters: http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub/virtualdub_filters.html Newsreaders: Agent & Free Agent: http://www.forteinc.com NewsGrabber: http://www.news-grabber.com Xnews: http://xnews.3dnews.net PAN: http://www.superpimp.org/ Posting programs: AgentPost: http://www.skuz.net/madhat/ PowerPost: http://net-toys.8k.com/ Video players: RealPlayer: http://www.real.com MpegTV viewer for Linux: http://www.mpegtv.com/download.html DIVX/ASF player for Linux: http://divx.euro.ru/ Xanim http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html Codecs etc: Mpeg4 support for Windows: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/technologies/tools.asp#Downloads http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/default.asp Mpeg4 support for Mac: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/download/macintosh.asp Hacked DivX codec: http://divx.ctw.cc Smpeg codec for Linux: http://www.lokigames.com/development/smpeg.php3 ----- 13. Misc. Batch file for deleting trailing underscore: [Inc] Here's what the bat I have used for quite awhile. Note, it is pointing to the directory where Agent puts the anime parts I dl - change to suit yourself: DEL_UNDL.BAT c: cd \media\anime ren *.???_ *.??? If you want to go to different directories it would be easy enough to change the path to a parameter ( %1 ) that you could pass within the Shortcut, one for each directory you use. The only bug is if you try to rename to an already existing name, the bat aborts entirely. Also, the whole thing can be one statement if you prefer (and with the variable): ren c:\media\anime\*.???_ *.??? or ren %1\*.???_ *.??? called like: DEL_UNDL. c:\media\anime ----- Files rename under *nix [Astrogeek] Most MS Windows users take for granted the GUI's ability to easily deal with any kind of file name. Basically, what you see on the screen doesn't really matter as long as you know what it is... click-click, done. However, when posting to any forum in which interaction with other operating systems is a possibility, the use of more standard filenames should be considered. For example: [Anime Group] Kewl Anime.rar Looks just like that on a UN*X directory listing, for example. But it must be referred to as follows from the shell: user@puter:/animeDL$ \[Anime\ Group\]\ Kewl\ Anime.rar Not pretty, and definitely not easy to type quickly in a shell without TAB completion. In addition, when attempting to uncompress these files, the following error results: user@puter:/animeDL$ unrar e \[Anime\ Group\]\ Kewl\ Anime.rar UNRAR 2.50 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-99 Eugene Roshal No files to extract user@puter:/animeDL$ _ In my experience, filenames with brackets, braces, non-English characters, and funky stuff in general do not work with the command line unrar utility. Since RAR is the compression format used in alt.binaries.*.anime, and the command line unrar utility is the only native method for unarchiving these files under Linux/UN*X AFAIK...you get the idea. These files must be renamed to be used. To summarize: [K-Rad Gruppe] Killer Anime.rar = YUCK K-Rad Gruppe Killer Anime.rar = *COUGH* (but it works) KRG_KillerAnime.rar = better krg_killeranime.rar = even better (if you're super nice :-)) krgkanim.rar = 8.3 format, the best compatability. Any OS that _requires_ this format probably cannot view your files anyway...this may be redundant. Filenames _within_ the RAR files are another issue. I have not yet run into problems with any software besides unrar. However, if you want to be nice, it probably wouldn't kill anybody if you used a clean filename. Windows and Linux/UN*X users CAN get along if we just try a little bit :-) (PLUG) Please use DivX ;-) and not patented MS codecs! (END_PLUG) ----- A more verbose explanation of uuencode: Here's what this means "begin 644 filename.r10". Save this uuencoded text as filename.r10 with permissions 644 (that number is a Unix code that means let everyone read the file, and let the owner modify it). You may also occasionally see messages encoded using some other system such as Base64. The principle is the same. Usenet was designed to transmit messages containing only printable letter, digits and symbols. Binary files like anime episodes containa wider range of data, so that data has to be transformed into text before posting it to Usenet. Uuencode, also aka uuencode/uudecode, is one of the popular forms of binary file distribution along the realms of passive file distribution. (Meaning it's not done in real-time, files are sent but received later, not instantly). Email and newsgroup messages are of such type. Originated from UNIX systems, (thus the UU means Unix-to-Unix) it is used by users who wish to send binary data to others who are using software that's not capable of processing binary code. Something like this would be a unix-based email client like PINE. Basically how uuencode works is that it takes whatever binary attachment you are sending, it may be a WinRAR archive, an .rm or some executable; and translates (encode) that file into a HUGE string of text garbage that only someone with the decoder can convert back to the original form. This way, it simplifies the transmission as no special protocol and/or software is needed. (Nearly all computers can do text transfer without problems. I say nearly because there is always some exceptions to the rule in the world of computers - just look at Windows) In summary, uuencode is simply a utility if you wish, that translates binary code into encrypted text to be sent: 1) Over a medium that cannot process binary transfers. 2) To a individual using software not capable of receiving binary attachments. Now for MIME... (this is the uglier one as it involves Windows and Mac OS...) Raw codes of MIME looks something like this: ------------------------------------------------- If your mail reader is text-only >This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > >------=_NextPart_000_004B_01BF8C4A.98F7ABE0 >Content-Type: text/plain; > charset="big5" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -OR- if your mail can read MIME encoded mails but can't handle the file type >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Content-Type: multipart/mixed; > boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000C_01BF8499.08997280" >X-Priority: 3 >X-MSMail-Priority: Normal >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 >X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 ------------------------------------------------- Again, current newsreaders will decode MIME automatically like uuencoded files. MIME, aka Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension, is an extension of the original E-mail protocol (an agreement between computers that data of such type [email] will be transferred using this set of specifics) to exchange different types of data. (Such as webpages, audio, video, and of course, text files) How it works is that servers sending the transmission will insert MIME headers into the body where it instructs the client on HOW to handle the binary data that's to follow. Say it may be a webpage, then the client knows to launch the web browser to handle the attachment. (Or RealPlayer for those anime .rms ^_^ ) Currently only so many MIME types are registered on the Internet Assigned Number Authority (more info? you're on your own), as new file formats are surfacing as the days go by, the Internet MIME databases will be updated accordingly and YOU as the user, will need to download the appropriate software and update your computer so they can handle such files. Fortunately most installation programs take care of this for you on most platforms. (Called file associations - ie: files with .RM extension will be handle by RealPlayer, .HTM - web browser, MP3 - Winamp...etc) In summary, MIME is a string of instructions inserted at the beginning of any web transmission that instructs the client receiving this how to deal with the binary attachments that's to come. By equipping themselves with the associated software, (which is usually widely available on the Internet) users will not have to hunt down software every time they receive a binary attachment. Now, I've stripped down the definitions to avoid the complicated techno jargon, there is MUCHO to know about MIME but that I think is beyond the scope of this FAQ. There are numerous documents out there floating on the web on MIME and can be easily found using a search engine like www.google.com The main difference between MIME and uuencode is that MIME is more user-friendly to newbies as it takes the guesswork out of the user on what software is used to deal with this piece of binary code. But uuencode is computer-friendly as it does not require fancy software to be able to receive such type of information. Uuencode is the most preferred transmission type because most newsgroup servers will not handle binary transmissions therefore MIME is not recommended here at a.b.m.a. Make sure you are using a reader that is capable of uuencode or else you might have some complaints (or nasty comments from our "respected" SWong) coming your way =)