The Unofficial FAQ of abav abavFAQ 1. Preface 2. Intro 3. Newsgroups 4. Encoding a. uu b. mime c. yEnc 5. Archives a. .rar/.r##/.part##.rar b. RAR recovery c. SFV files d. .ace/.c## e. .zip 6. Support Files a. .sfv b. .PAR/.P## c. .rev d. .nfo/.txt/.md5 7. Reposts a. How NOT 8. Newsreaders 9. Posting 10. Hentai 11. Subs/dubs 12. Formats/codecs a. vcd/dat/bin/ b. mpg(2)/SVCD c. linux 13. News servers 14. Software 15. Appendices a. About the FAQ b. Mirroring the FAQ 1. Preface This document attempts to answer the most commonly asked questions found in alt.binaries.anime.vcd (ABAV). It is intended to help newcomers ("newbies") get up to speed, and to serve as a memory aid and a form of continuing education to others. Newcomers to ABAV, even those experienced with the internet and usenet, are advised to read this document. Original Author: * SWong Current Maintainers/Editors: * Keikai, xo, Neuralblastoma Past Maintainers/Editors: * SWong * Or[Q]yman Original FAQ Contributors: * 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, Linux stuff, etc.) * TheMan (misc. on file formats and codecs) * Gorunova (reformatting, proofreading, pleas for sanity) Contributors: * Onakra * xo * Tobias Rieper * Keikai * Bogus Name * Myen * Neuralblastoma * Many more to be added (I apologize for the many omissions. This will be rectified soon.) Previous revision dates 2002-04-26, 2002-05-05 A copy of this FAQ is now available at: * http://abma.x-maru.org/abav/abavfaq.txt Other Notes Contributing Notes User contributions of additions, elaboration, and corrections to the FAQ are welcome! Before making a contribution for the first time, please read through the whole FAQ. Periodically, the maintainers will choose particularly relevant notes and add them to the main body of the FAQ. The note's author will be credited with the contribution. When transferring notes to the FAQ, however, it is sometimes necessary to edit them. When this is done, the credit will have an ed. following the normal credit. Thanks! Web Bulletin Board A web-based bulletin board is now available to supplement standard usenet posting for discussions related to AB(M)A(V). It can be found at http://abma.x-maru.org/bb/index.php. The Next Revision Not yet determined. 2. 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. 3. What is alt.binaries.anime.vcd? This group is for posting (X)VCD's(MPEG-1) and (X)SVCD's(MPEG-2)that are 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.) Two related newsgroups are ABMR (alt.binaries.multimedia.repost) and ABMAR (alt.binaries.multimedia.anime.repost). They are intended for reposting of multimedia files from any other multimedia newsgroups (for ABMR) or from ABAV (for ABMAR). If a potential post meets the charter requirements for ABMAR, it should be posted there. This prevents ABAV from becoming overloaded since new material alone requires a great deal of bandwidth. When requesting/posting fills: [Neuralblastoma] Fills are allowable in ABAV providing they do not exceed 150MB. Fills exceeding 150MB must be posted in ABMAR. What about full reposts? [Neuralblastoma] Full reposts are not permissable in ABAV unless it has been at least six months since the initial post. If it has been less than six months, then it must be posted in ABMAR. This keeps constant reposts out of ABAV which can be very annoying and disruptive. The daily posting limit in ABAV is very high, so if there are reposts and reposts of reposts (which only a few people want) constantly going on, the new posts (which everyone wants) will get pushed off servers too soon. If new posts get pushed off prematurely that prompts even more reposts, turning ABAV into one giant mess. Another solution for people with low retention servers who just missed a post they wanted is to get an Easynews account. $10 U.S. per month or 6gigs, whichever comes first. Retention is approx. 50 days. http://www.easynews.com You can find a lot of information on various anime and their number of episodes at: [Onakra] * http://www.anipike.com/ * http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rllew/andivots.html Also useful sites: * http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews/ * http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/listups/ A list of useful links maintained by AB(M)A(V) regulars is available on the abma.x-maru.org bulletin board at: * http://abma.x-maru.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=19 4. Encoding : uuencode and MIME Help! Why am I getting all this garbage text? [Akito, NetGear, ed.] Because Usenet was originally developed for communication of text messages, it is not possible to post binary data in its natural form. To overcome this limitation, several binary encoding methods have been devised to allow posting of binary materials to the Usenet. Below are explanations of several of the most popular encoding methods. uuencode On an older, less featured newsreader, you may see something like this: begin 644 filename.r10 M4F%R(1H\'`*6\.TD`#0````````"AZG2#@#4`V.%-`/8=?04"VD4%`%(.5R@4 M-14`(````$QO9%]S.R!787(@;V%V(#`Q+F%S9EDF==)\'"DO$1\'Y+\A.\3X) M5_AR06`T8P.$*?D_Z-.^5]TBHM0Y3I[/*P..M$R1J)2\%RVYKAU?;A7ULJ%I_ This is known as a uuencoded format. The "begin 644 filename" line and the fact that every single line starts with "M" is a good way to recognize uuencode. Any half decent newsreaders will automatically decode the file into binary formats so you would never actually see the code. So if you are having problems with the codes your best bet is probably get a new newsreader. Most news readers understand this kind of encoding and have the ability to decode the message back to its original form. See section 6 on good newsreaders for decoding. 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, 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. Originating on 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 (encodes) 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. MIME 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 (http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/), 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 ABAV 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 =) yEnc [xo, Keikai] This section is currently in its preliminary stages, more information will be added in the next revision. A good deal of additional information is currently available in the notes for this section in the annotated FAQ: http://abma.x-maru.org/faq/annotated/encoding.php yenc is an alternative to uuencoding for encoding of files posted to Usenet. A new decoder is required in order to process these files. Some news clients include native decoding of yEnc encoded files, however, many do not and will require some additional work and the use of an external decoder. Details and the status of client support can be found at http://yenc.org. Zen's web page hosts his excellent yEnc FAQ. This FAQ can be found at http://www.geocities.com/zenwebpage/yEncFAQ.htm and includes: * a consise explanation of yEnc * list and locations of news clients and binary posters that natively support yEnc * list and locations of manual encoding/decoding applications * possible workarounds and hacks for clients that do not have native support (including Agent) * links to many, many yEnc resources It is also important that posters indicate in the subject when posting any binaries encoded in yEnc format. More specifically, make sure the word "yEnc" appears somewhere in the subject, preferably in the description. 5. What's with the .rar, .r00, etc. files? Archive Formats What are .RAR, .R00, R01...Rnn AND part01.RAR...partnn.RAR files? (The RAR Archive Format) [Original Contributors, ed.] RAR files are compressed/split archives. Nearly everything in the newsgroups is posted in this format. This is done to make successful download much more likely and it makes reposts much easier. The files in both ABAV usually run from 240 MB+, and if these files were posted in a single post and even one part doesn't make it to somebody's server, 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 needs to repost one small part to fill it. Furthermore, RAR archive sets can be created with a recovery record which allows RAR parts, when damaged in certain ways, to be repaired by the RAR program itself. To decompress (dearchive) these archive sets, one must have every single part of the set. Use a RAR program to "unrar" these files. RAR programs can be found at: http://www.rarsoft.com for all major platforms, http://macrar.free.fr for Macs. StuffIt Expander is capable of simple dearchiving for Macs, as well. Posting unarchived files, or files archived in a non-RAR format (especially an uncommon one) is rather seriously frowned upon due to the negative impact on the groups. Continuing to pursue this course after being warned could result in letters explaining the abuse to the poster's news provider. There are two principle 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 unregistered version of WinRAR with authenticity information enabled, 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, in which case recovery method will not work and another repair method or replacement of the file is needed. 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. With the release of WinRAR 3.0, the author of WinRAR decided to use a new naming scheme for RAR parts. Instead of naming them .rar, .r00, r01...rnn, version 3 and greater will default to naming them .part01.rar, .part02.rar...partnn.rar. This behavior can be turned off when the archive set is created. (Under the Advanced tab, in the group entitled Volumes, enable Old Style Volume Names.) Currently, it is preferred group behavior to use the old-style volume names, but this is, as always, at the discretion of the poster. The primary reason for this is that some OSes other than Windows reportedly have issues with the new names. RAR Recovery Records [Bogus Name, ed.] Yet another good reason to use RAR archiving is the recovery record that can be included 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). If the archiver did not include recovery information, then it will try to reconstruct the archive. This is not the same as recovery and has a much lower chance of success (actually 0% usually, in the case of split files). There are some reports that the repair via recovery records no longer works in MacRAR. When the recovery record is unable to repair the RAR part, there are further steps you can take to repair the file. T. Rieper's excellent article explaining multiple steps that can be taken to repair RAR files can be found at http://riepersnest.tripod.com/rar/index.htm. Please note that RAR recovery records are not the same as RAR recovery volumes, which are described in the support section under recovery volumes. What are .ACE, .C00, .C01...Cnn files? (The ACE Archive Format) [xo] Files with extensions of the type .ace, .c00, .c01 are archive segments produced by WinACE, available at http://www.winace.com. A utility called unace is also available in source form for *nix operating systems at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/utils/compress/unace-1.2b.tar.gz WinACE is functionally equivalent to the RAR family of programs; however it uses it's own format, which is different and incompatible with the RAR format. Note that ACE-format archives can only be produced under Windows and can only be uncompressed under Windows and certain *nix operating systems.. Users of other platforms, most notably Macintosh (unless unace compiles under OS X), are unable to unarchive ACE formatted files. For compatibility's sake, the use of ACE is discouraged. What about .ZIP files? (The ZIP Archive Format) [Keikai] For a number of reasons, posting ZIP files and split ZIP files is strongly discouraged on ABAV. 6. Support Files Support Files What are .SFV files? [Onakra, ed.] 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 the RAR recovery records section on how to do this. If this fails you should make a request for a repost by using the guidelines for repost requests. 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.anime.repost (ABMAR) and alt.binaries.multimedia.repost (ABMR) which are other potential repost locations. The two 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: * nvCRV - The homepage for this has disappeared, but the program is still available from http://www.speakeasy.org/~theorb/nvcrc.exe * PdSFV - (Windows and linux version) http://pdsfv.isonews.com/ * CheckSFV - (Linux and FreeBSD version) http://www.fodder.org/cksfv/ * cfv - (operating systems support Python) http://cfv.sourceforge.net/ What are .PAR, .P01, .P02...Pnn files? (Parchive files) [Myen, Keikai, ed.] PAR files (also known as parchive files) are similar to SFV files in that they can check file integrity. Unlike SFV files, parchive files contain the checksum hash in the form of MD5 values instead of CRC-32 values. This greatly decreases the chance of two different files having the same hash and, therefore, makes them less likely to be in error. Furthermore, the parchive files test themselves for corruption. The primary function of parchive files, however, is that posters will usually also post *.Pnn files (where nn are numbers from 01 to 99) that are slightly bigger than the largest file in the archive set (adds <1K) that can be used to recover bad or missing files on a one-for-one basis. Because the Pnn files contain the information in the .PAR file itself, the .PAR file is not necessary to test or recover files. However, it is highly recommended that the .PAR file be posted anyways, as it is a small and efficient means for testing whether Pnn files should be downloaded, and it has a few advantages over .SFV files. The PAR client, when run on a PAR file (or any .Pnn file), will report the number of missing or bad files. If there are enough .Pnn files available, it will then recover the missing files. For more information on the individual clients used both to create parchive files and to recover archive parts using them, go to the individual client websites SmartPar: http://www.disc-chord.com/smartpar/Viewlet/SmartPAR_viewlet.html (Currently, the most common in AB(M)A(V)) FSRaid: http://www.fluidstudios.com/fsraid.html (FSRaid can handle renaming of files like Mirror; SmartPar cannot do this) Mirror: http://www.wehlus.de/mirror/restore.html (Discontinued) There are also command-line versions for DOS, *nix, MacOS X, and other operating systems at http://parchive.sourceforge.net/#clients For the technical details (not required reading), read the file specifications at http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=7273&group_id=3056 8 It is not uncommon to post both a .SFV file and a parchive set. Some people prefer to have a .SFV file as it can be opened in a text editor to verify what files should be in the set. It is usually preferred that you only include the archive set (RAR files) when creating the parchive set. Including support files (such as .nfo, .txt, .sfv, etc.) can cause problems. What are .REV files? (RAR Recovery Volumes) [Keikai] These files are current an inferior and proprietary version of parchive files discussed above. Therefore, one can recover damaged or missing .rar parts using RAR recovery volumes on a one-for-one basis. Currently, it is strongly urged that posters use parchive files and not WinRAR recovery files. The reasons for this are: * They are proprietary and require one to use a Rarsoft product (currently in beta-testing and has shown to have bugs with this feature) as opposed to giving the user a choice of tools. .rev files are a different format and cannot simply be renamed to parchive volume names and used with parchive clients. * Support for recovery is available to fewer operating systems. * They do not detect misnamed archive set and recovery files. * There is no small .par file equivalent which contains only the integrity testing data. * It is unknown if the RAR recovery process does all of the MD5 self-testing that parchive clients perform on parchive files (or if the file format is even capable of it). * Since the number of recovery volumes created is part of the name, it is uncertain if more can be created after the fact. RAR recovery records are a totally different feature and should still be used. They are described in the archive section under RAR recovery method. The naming format for these files is: Sample.partxx_yy_zz.rev Where xx is the part number of the last part of the archive set, yy is the total number of recovery volumes created, and zz is the number of this particular recovery volume. The only number that should change throughout the recovery set is zz. Recovery using RAR recovery volumes requires version 3 or later of WinRAR. More information regarding the use of RAR recovery volumes can be found at http://www.rarsoft.com/. What are .NFO, .TXT, .MD5... files? [Keikai] .NFO, .TXT: These files are generally plain text and can be read in any text editor. They contain whatever supplementary information the poster wants to include. This includes credits for the work done to produce the post, any special information about the file being posted or the post itself, and, most importantly, the posters policies regarding fills and reposts. Because of this, it is essential and expected that you read any accompanying .nfo or .txt file before making any requests either publically or privately. In many cases, you will be ignored or killfiled if the poster feels you have not read their policies. (Some posters, instead of or in addition to posting this file, post a 00/part with the post that contain similar information. If available, this should be read as well.) .MD5: This is a file identical in purpose to a .SFV file. Unlike an SFV file, the .MD5 files stores the file hashes as .MD5 values instead of CRC-32 values. However, .MD5 files are rarely encountered in AB(M)A. The .PAR file, from a file integrity checking standpoint, has the advantages of using MD5 hashes, but also has the advantage of self-examination for corruption. Therefore, parchive files should always be used for this purpose, often in conjuction with a .SFV file. 7. About repost requests Sod, some of these parts are incomplete! Most posters start off an episode post with a message. Usually the message has part number 00 in the subject line or something that identifies it as an info file. Read the 00/## or readme posts to see what the poster has to say before downloading. Some posters have a repost policy about when they'll start taking repost requests, or how to ask for reposts. Not following those instructions will usually result in your requests being ignored. It's amazing the number of people who seem incapable of reading something so simple. Please make the effort to read the poster's preferences if there are any. And please, don't make a request right after the posts are just finished. I've seen this often and it's bloody annoying. Usenet is somewhat quirky even at the best of times, and more often than not some parts of the same post arrives before other parts, sometimes more than a few hours apart. If some files arrived incomplete at your newsserver at first, wait a few hours (12 hours is a good guideline, even though I have seen file trickling in well over 30 hours of initial post) before making a repost request. Usually the missing parts would arrive in the mean time and make the request unnecessary. Unnecessary reposts would merely suck up more bandwidth and disk space on the newsserver, which will cause older articles to expire more quickly. Quite a few people had been making requests but not really getting the information through. Here is a guideline on standard repost request heading: Attn [poster]: Please repost [series] ep ## .r## or for multiple parts Attn [poster]: Please repost following parts of [series] And put the episode number and parts in the message body, don't post 10 separate messages with a request for a different part in each. That is annoying, it looks like vertical spam, and difficult for the poster to keep track of what's what and will probably get you ignored. The point is to make sure the poster knows exactly which part of which episode of what series you want to be reposted. And most importantly, don't forget to thank the poster. They are doing this on their time and bandwidth for no compensation. How NOT to make a request. or, doing any of these things will get you deliberately ignored or kill filed a. ALL CAPS - It looks like you're yelling. b. ########LOTS OF PUNCTUATION######### c. Nym-shifting: changing your pseudonym to pretend to be different people requesting the same thing. d. Most annoying of all, vertical spam: ############PLZ POST KAWAII GIRLS TIA!!!!!########### ############PLZ POST KAWAII GIRLS TIA!!!!!########### ############PLZ POST KAWAII GIRLS TIA!!!!!########### ############PLZ POST KAWAII GIRLS TIA!!!!!########### ############PLZ POST KAWAII GIRLS TIA!!!!!########### Some newbies post a request multiple times with some attention getting letterings, thinking that'll get somebody's attention and will respond to it. Well it gets attention all right. It gets deliberately ignored, or maybe even kill filed. e. Pestering the wrong person for repost. 2 words: bloody annoying, chances are the person you pester will not post your request even if s/he has what you want. It doesn't take very much effort to keep track of who posted what. HIWIH Posts [Neuralblastoma] f. HIWIH(Here Is What I Have) posts. These are amoung the most irritating type of posts on all of usenet. Someone will make a partial repost of something in hopes of another person filling in the gaps. Example: [Repost]#Ghost In The Shell#ALL I HAVE!! PLEASE FILL!!GITS.r00 [Repost]#Ghost In The Shell#ALL I HAVE!! PLEASE FILL!!GITS.r01 [Repost]#Ghost In The Shell#ALL I HAVE!! PLEASE FILL!!GITS.r03 [Repost]#Ghost In The Shell#ALL I HAVE!! PLEASE FILL!!GITS.r07 This type of post benefits no one. In fact it harms the group by wasting bandwidth/server space with a post that nobody can use. It is encouraged that if someone is need of fills/reposts that they simpley make a proper request in ABAV and specify which repost group, ABMAR or ABMR that they would like the reposts posted to. Anyone Willfully and knowingly making HIWIH posts, especially after being warned by others either in the group or by email, will result in being reported to their ISP or premium news provider. The persons' ISP or premium news provider will very likely respond by suspending usenet access as punishment. 8. What's a good newsreader Outlook and Netscape are both exceedingly crummy in handling binaries, definitely not recommended. Agent/Free Agent For windows, Agent (http://www.forteinc.com) is very good. It is not free though. The free version, Free Agent, is usable but lacks some valuable features like sorting by subject line. Agent Tricks and Tips [inc] A couple of things to know about Agent: 1. Combining segments from multiple posts/servers: In Agent, segments from a given Part can be retained in a work folder and later combined with other segments from a different post of the same part. Segments (or Sections) are the actual individual messages that are propagated by Usenet. You see them as something like foobar.r03 (4/16). This segment would be the fourth message of the sixteen that make up the RAR part foobar.r03. If you have an incomplete part (say, only 14 of 16 segments of foobar.r03 made it), they can be saved to a work area within Agent and later combined with segments from a repost of that part. (To make a work folder, be in the Groups/Folders window. Right-click and chose New Folder.) When you have segments to retain: + Select the RAR part that has the messages you are going to save. + Choose "Message / Split sections" + Select all the segments to save. + Do "Online / Get selected message bodies." + Right-click the messages and "Copy to Folder" Then, later, if the part is reposted, but is again incomplete, you can check if the segments missing from the first post made it, if they did, save them to the same work area. Once you have all the segments in the work folder. + Select all the messages that make up the part + Right-click and "Join sections" + Verify the order & "Join" The only requirement is that the poster is sending with the same segment size on both posts (and, preferably, with the same software & version). This method can, of course, also be used to combine segments of the same part post from different servers. 2. Missing messages Your server may be loading messages out of numeric ID order. By default, Agent just checks the ID of the last message you have and grabs headers from there on. If any new messages went on the server that has a lower id, you don't see them unless you do a "Get all headers." There is an option in Agent that can cure this: "Options / User & System / System / Server creates messages out of order" ==> 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 PAN (Pimp Ass Newsreader, Linux) [darkwire] 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. nget (*nix) [xo 2001-07-26] The author's brief description from the home page (http://www.azstarnet.com/~donut/programs/nget.html) reads: nget is a command line nntp file grabber. It automatically pieces together multipart postings for easy retrieval, even substituting parts from multiple servers. Handles disconnects gracefully, resuming after the last part succesfully downloaded. As a command-line client, it's not for GUI seekers or the faint of heart, but for those interested in automating the newsgrabbing process, it can be very powerful. The man page is very dense but thorough but those comfortable under Unix should be up and running with a little effort. 9. On posting... New posts are always appreciated. However, too many posts can push the older articles off faster than people can download them. A half a CD limit per day per poster seems to work well. Roughly half a CD instead of set amount of MB makes more sense since this a group devoted only to VCD/SVCD. Since VCD/SVCD are burned in mode2, a full CD is approx. 830MB. Posting more than 415MB in one day is allowed, providing it is still far from 830MB. This leaves the daily posting limit in a bit a grey area, but shouldn't cause any problems in the near future as ABAV is still quite small. Hopefully this will keep the amount of data manageable. The point is don't go nuts and post 1 gigabyte at once and expire earlier articles prematurely. Newsservers don't have infinite diskspace after all. 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. 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/. Power-post [Onakra] 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 at http://www.cosmicwolf.com/. Additional info on subject line and 00-files [Onakra] 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: MPG A file with the extension mpg. VCD or DAT A file with the extension dat. This is a form of a mpg file. SVCD 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 Sub A file with Japanese audio and English subtitles. 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. 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 music video. The OP and ED are the opening and ending of a episode or movie. Music video is usually a self-made music video 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. 10. What about hentai/porn? 10. Hentai Material [Original Contributors, Keikai, Onakra] Hentai material should not be posted to either ABAV. Hentai material is generally considered to be that which contains depictions of sex, whether censored or not. When borderline, or if the poster is unsure about whether the material in a potential post is hentai or not, an "Intent to Post" message should be posted to the group asking if the material is acceptable. A prompt reply from those who are familiar with the material and this subject should be forthcoming. The proper group for posting hentai anime is alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.anime (ABMEA). The ABMEA FAQ is maintained by Squared Root and is available at http://squaredroot.virtualave.net/. That means no hentai material in ABAV folks! 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. If some parents find their kids downloading porn from a non-porn newsgroup and complain to their ISP, most likely the ISP will simply stop carrying that newsgroup. This will ruin things for other people on the same ISP who also follow the newsgroup. So please be considerate. Another very important reason for excluding hentai is that, in newsgroup naming convention, newsgroups with sex-related material are designated with "erotica" or "sex". Since neither of these words are in "alt.binaries.anime", newsservers and ISPs will treat it as non-sex newsgroup by default. If the more strict service providers discover the existance of porn in ABA they will no doubt stop carrying the newsgroup. Just see the disappearance of misspelled/disguised warez newsgroups from the @home servers for a potential fate of ABA, or ask your news service providers what usually happens to "stealth" erotica groups. If ABMEA is not available on your server, alt.binaries.pictures.erotic.anime (ABPEA2) has been an acceptable substitute. Note there is no 'a' at the end of "erotic". Hentai anime is not appropriate in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime (ABPEA) which is home to hentai manga and pictures. ABPEA2 was a misnamed group and became, for a while, a convenient spot to post hentai anime, something which did not have an official home until ABMEA was chartered by Jiss with the support of several of the ABPEA2 regulars.. What series are NOT allowed in ABAV? Dragonball, Sailormoon, Tenchi Muyo, Pokemon. The reason? They all have their own groups: alt.binaries.dragonball, alt.binaries.anime.tenchi, alt.binaries.multimedia.sailor-moon, alt.binaries.pokemon These series were taking up far too much space in ABA/ABMA and were not wanted by many group regulars. For these reasons their own respective groups were created so as to lessen the traffic in the main anime groups. Posting these series in ABAV is an FAQ violation. If after being warned by group regulars either in the group(s) or by email a poster continues thier off-topic posts, they will be reported to their ISP or premium news provider. The ISP or premium news provider will likely respond by suspending the posters' usenet access. Please note that if your ISP does not carry any or all of the above groups, that is no excuse to post in ABA/ABMA/ABAV anyway. Off-topic is off-topic. An FAQ violation is an FAQ violation. This is your problem, not usenets' or anyone elses'. Don't be selfish! You can always simply send an email to your ISP requesting they add the group(s). Failing that you can subscribe to a premium news provider such as Easynews, Newsguy, Giganews, Newsfeeds, Airnews, Supernews and others. 11. 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. 12. On file formats and codecs Preface [xo - 2001-07-27] There is seemingly no end to the type of file formats posted, and each requires at least an understanding of which player can handle the format. It's also good to understand the limitations formats can impose. Some are "dead end" formats in that there exist no way to convert from it to another. Some are proprietary in that they only work on one platform, so users of other OS's are unable to enjoy files of that format. Some have low CPU requirements, while others will stutter badly without current hardware. And so on. Most of the information provided is oriented to the Windows platform, with some non-Windows notes intermixed. A Linux-specific FAQ-within-a-FAQ is provided by darkwire. 12c. Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) 1 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. Note: the information below mostly applies to MPEG-1; see the section on MPEG-2/SVCD for details on that format. See also the section on the MPEG-1 related VideoCD (VCD)/dat/bin formats. 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 3.0, 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. Linux 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. 12d. Video CD (VCD) [Gorunova] *minor edits by Neuralblastoma* 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. .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.com) if neither cdrwin or fireburner supports your cd burner. Go to http://cdrsoft.net for all the cd burning programs mentioned in this section. More on VCD/SVCD: [Neuralblastoma] VCD MPEG-1/SVCD MPEG-2 files should be burned with Nero, Fireburner, CDRWIN or other CD Writing program that has VCD/SVCD support. VCD's and SVCD's are best viewed(and meant to be viewed) on a TV. Many DVD players can play VCD's and SVCD's. To play SVCD's on your computer you need DVD playing software. Just the software, not a DVD drive. PowerDVD and WinDVD are the most popular. You need these because SVCD uses the MPEG-2 codec just like DVD's. VCD's and SVCD's are burned on mode2 tracks as opposed to mode1(data CD). Mode1 tracks have three error correction functions, while mode2 tracks have two. The one less error correction function allows for more space. A 650MB CD-R can hold up to 740MB when burned as VCD/SVCD and a 700MB CD-R can hold up to 830MB when burned as VCD/SVCD. VCDs and Macs Need mpg extension on Quicktime for Macs. 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. [Yugo Nada] 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. [xo] 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. Many of the more obscure codecs are not available on the Mac Linux 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. 12e. Super Video CD / MPEG-2 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 File Conversions and manipulations Fixing and converting MPEGS in Linux Grab vcdgear, its just like the windows version - http://www.vcdgear.com Typical uses, the "-fix" swith is optional, depends on situation. * converting pesky dats to mpgs: vcdgear -fix -dat2mpg input.dat output.mpg * fixing mpegs that had bad frame timings and the such: vcdgear -fix -mpg2mpg input.mpg output.mpg Linux mini-FAQ Note: before asking, please run the program in a TERMINAL window, so you can at least see the HELPFUL information that is being displayed, at the very least it can give a HINT to the culprit! I compiled avi-xmms/smpeg-xmms, but when I run xmms to playback mpg files it just opens the Open File dialog box again! It is highly probable that there was a version of xmms installed on your system before, and when you compile these plugins, by default it will install to the /usr/local subtree, instead of the /usr subtree. To find out where your xmms is, type whereis xmms If it says something like /usr/bin/xmms, and by default compilation stuff is put into /usr/local, which is a different PREFIX. Then /usr/bin is your PREFIX, see the question about compilation for further details. How come everything plays except VCDs? Either its a bad VCD, or the permissions for the cdrom device where not set correctly. Type: ls /dev/hd* This example is assuming your cdrom is Primary Master. brw-r--r-- 1 root disk 3, 0 Apr 27 1995 /dev/hda If it doesnt say this: su root chmod o+r /dev/hda Also if /dev/cdrom does not work, either link the /dev/hd? to /dev/cdrom, or if you are lazy just say /dev/hd? instead of /dev/cdrom, substituting the ? for the correct device letter, typically (a-d). I dont know a thing about compiling, but I dont want to use rpms etc! First, use the rpms =), it makes your life easier. If you are really insistant, here are the basic tips, please READ the INSTALL and README files for each package. Basic Compilation Instructions assuming you made it in the subdirectory the package untar-zipped to. ./configure --prefix=/some/starting/directory make su root make install ldconfig -v exit You can leave out the entire --prefix line if you want everything to get dumped into /usr/local, and this is where you can change it to --prefix=/usr if you want to install into /usr subdir How come you just talk about stuff from a Linux point of view, when there are many other *nixes? A majority if not all these packages, are capable of being cross-compiled over most popular unices, and they are even capable of being compiled under Windows. 13. Help! My news-server bites! What can I do? 13. News Servers Why are so many parts missing? Everything is incomplete! [Original Contributors, ed.] 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. ABA and ABMA 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. 14. 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 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 MpegTV viewer for Linux http://www.mpegtv.com/download.html Xanim http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html Zoom Player http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml PowerDVD http://www.gocyberlink.com/english/products/product_main.jsp?ProdId=28 15. Appendices 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) 15a. 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