Bilin My Love

Sounds very interesting, thanks for posting. But: you should think about converting this to a different (more compressed) format, using a codec like Xvid or DivX. 3.8 GB is way too big for a movie of that length. These typically have like 700MB - 1.3GB max.

loninappleton wrote a nice guide on how to re-compress and shrink video files: https://onebigtorrent.org/phpBB.php?page=viewtopic&f=3&t=2361

yes, please.

a smaller version would be best.

looks like an interesting docu too

Both versions would be best but I do like having the option of downloading the .vob DVD files as they burn MUCH faster than re-encoding .avi's. Plus, the .vob's usually have the original menus, subtitles, and extras maintained.

Quality is always appreciated (but we should try not to exclude those with low-bandwidth/dial up)

Having the vob files is nice, but when after 24h we got no seed and peers with 44MB downloaded max, that's a problem?

To the uploader: please leave your client open to seed permanently (24/7), and upload at maximum capacity at least until one person has finished the download and starts seeding. That's the way it's done. Otherwise what tends to happen is people get frustrated, drop out of the swarm, and everybody (mostly you!) just wasted their time.

I think I oughta put up a couple of guidlines on how to seed properly, and link them prominently right from the upload form. This kind of thing just happens too often..

"To the uploader: please leave your client open to seed permanently (24/7), and upload at maximum capacity at least until one person has finished the download and starts seeding. That's the way it's done."

Way to slam down that iron fist, sir! Tell these people - nay - dictate to them, exactly what to do and how to do it. That's the way the world works.

When I post here, I do it because I want to make this work better for everyone. And I do it on top of 40h+ of unpaid work per week on this site.

This is not about free expression. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way. Like tightening a nut: you turn it clockwise, there's no room for personal creativity or freedom of choice.

If posting a piece of advice is "slamming down that iron fist" for you, you don't have a lot of experience with iron fists, my friend.

People who use the local tracker often seed huge files at a very low speed. That happens because people don't know better and leave other torrents on, or unwittingly have their client limit the upload.

Here's the point:

If you seed a torrent the right way, hundreds of people will complete the download within a relatively short period, and you'll have a lively swarm for a considerable length of time after that.

If you seed a torrent improperly, you upload 2-3 times the amount of data (because of peers dropping out early), after three weeks like 5 people have finished downloading, and the torrent is dead.

BTW JodyM: I just abused my awesome powers to sign you up for comment email on this torrent, hope you don't mind.

"This is not about free expression. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way. Like tightening a nut: you turn it clockwise, there's no room for personal creativity or freedom of choice. "

Interesting "logic". However the analogy is a bad one. This isn't like tightening a nut. You see things in black and white, "right" and "wrong", but I don't see it that way. You insist that the "right" way for someone to seed a torrent is to have their computer on and torrent client running 24/7. What if they can't do that? Are they doing something "wrong"? I'm happily downloading this video, and I don't care if it takes 2 months. Somehow, I managed to live 35 years without this DVD, and somehow, I'll manage to continue living, if I get this in 2 months, or if I never get it at all. If this person seeds for 10 minutes a day, so what. I'm just not the kind of person that sees this as something worthy of complaining about. Doing that may actually cause people to not want to upload things here, fearful of some leader shaking their finger at them, telling them how wrong they are, that they should have done something differently - like telling them they should have converted the file to something smaller in size - which is a terrible idea, to those of us who don't mind waiting for a high quality video. The only words I have to say to the uploader are, "THANK YOU".

I don't care that you signed me up for receiving comments about this. I certainly wouldn't say you're doing something "wrong".

BTW - I'm not here to engage in silly discussions like this, I'm here to help the file sharing community - that's why I'm upping the smaller version of this video.

"I don't care if it takes 2 months."

well, maybe the people in bil'in care how many people get to see that DVD.

i suspect the uploader wants to get out the word about bil'in, and maybe get some people to take their asses off the couch and do something about it.

if you want bittorrent to achieve that for you, there's ONE, repeat: ONE right way to do it, and apart from other things, you have to seed at maximum capacity from the first second, with as little interuptions as possible.

if you don't care how many people you reach, then really there's no right or wrong. you can do whatever the hell you want. you can mis-label it, you can make it 20 times the size needed, but as michael albert says, you might as well go to the beach then

i'm not here for these discussions either, but sometimes you gotta have them, apparently.

@ Martin:
I'll be looking for your guidelines on 'Proper'Seeding. I'd like to know a better way to seed. Personally, I've been bapped on other sites for poor seeding techniques, but no info on how an ideal seed is accomplished. I'm taking your offer as a helping hand rather than a fascist fist. so thanks.

i appreciate that a lot, anonmaus

i'll let you know as soon as i've put something together, won't take long. it's only a couple of easy points you have to watch out for, really.

and.. i'm done with the guide: https://onebigtorrent.org/phpBB.php?page=viewtopic&f=2&t=2451

OK, I should probably let it go, but just because it illustrates my point about the right/wrong way of seeding a torrent so well:

It has now been more than 6 weeks, and while more than a thousand people viewed this page and more than 200 downloaded the .torrent, only 2 people ended up finishing the download, and the torrent is now dead.

Again, I'm not trying to trash-talk the uploader or anything, I'm just pointing out that if you watch out for a couple of things (https://onebigtorrent.org/phpBB.php?page=viewtopic&f=2&t=2451), your time and effort will be much better invested.

"only 2 people ended up finishing the download, and the torrent is now dead. "

Sorry, but you're mistaken. Perhaps the site is showing you wrong statistics, but I know that more than 2 people completed the download. I completed the download, and watched at least several others complete it also.... when I saw that there were plenty of seeders I stopped. I recently started seeding again, while there were also a couple of others who have now dropped off and it now looks like I'm the only seeder, with one leecher. Anyhow the torrent is alive and I'll seed for anyone who is patient enough to wait for this great doc.

BTW, I can't believe the remark you made previously, trying to shame the original uploader by making him feel guilty, as if he doesn't care about the people of Bilin because he uploaded a high quality DVD rip. You can't possibly mean the words that you said. Anyway, as I noted earlier, there was a smaller version uploaded, so there's nothing to bitch about.

OK, the stats say 4 people completed now. The tracker might not catch one or the other completed download, but it's never far off. At any rate, it's save to say that only a handful of people have completed the file.

"BTW, I can't believe the remark you made previously, trying to shame the original uploader by making him feel guilty, as if he doesn't care about the people of Bilin because he uploaded a high quality DVD rip."

I didn't say the uploader doesn't care, I don't believe that at all. I'm saying that, by extension, YOU don't seem to care. If you're saying that it's generally fine if it takes 2 months for a piece to download, you're saying you don't care how many people get to see it. There's no way around that.

I'm sure the uploader cares quite a lot about the size of the audience -- if not, why would she/he go make the effort in the first place? In fact, reaching many people was probably among the primary goals of seeding. So what's wrong
with giving a few pointers so that he/she can achieve that goal?

And to repeat, I wrote a guide on how to get there: https://onebigtorrent.org/phpBB.php?page=viewtopic&f=2&t=2451

Martin, you quite obviously don't say things that you mean. That's the nicest way to put it. Go back and read your own post:
"if you don't care how many people you reach, then really there's no right or wrong. you can do whatever the hell you want. you can mis-label it, you can make it 20 times the size needed"

That is clearly a jab at the uploader - he's the one that created the torrent file and uploaded it here. He's the one trying to reach people, you're the one telling him he did it the WRONG way, and that there is "ONE, repeat ONE right way to do it." That's just asinine. The same amount of people that could grab this video in 2 hours could also grab it in two months. There is only one thing that could prevent them from doing that: impatience. If you actually believed in anarchist principles, you wouldn't tell other people what to do. It's not even as if you were offering an alternative way to do something, no, you were offering the "one" and "only", "right" way, any other way is just "wrong". Of course you'll disagree with me, because you just don't understand what I'm saying. It's all good though, I know you mean well.

The most likely reason for the low completion statistics showing, is that this tracker often has problems, and many times file transfers are completed via DHT, which reports no statistics to the tracker (download completions, share ratio stats, etc).

"That is clearly a jab at the uploader"

At that point of the thread, it was very clear that we were talking in abstract terms (i.e. about the process, not the particular instance).

"The same amount of people that could grab this video in 2 hours could also grab it in two months."

Yeah, but the fact is that they don't. Taking 2 months to seed a torrent will result in very little downloads. And if pointing out a fact is violating "anarchist principles", we're on the bus to crazy-town.

"If you actually believed in anarchist principles, you wouldn't tell other people what to do."

See, that's the problem with the way the understanding of "anarchist principles" has been diluted, to a point where you can refer to them to do anything, even negate laws of nature, if only you do it in the name of fighting authority.

It is an empirical fact that if you seed torrents the way I described it, you end up with more downloads. Even if the tracker were off by 5 times (which it isn't,and it has had very little downtime over the last half year), it would still be only a handful of downloads.

To illustrate, here's a torrent that's been seeded the proper way: https://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/3632/Peak-Oil--Ian-Crane

It's been on the remote tracker for roughly 3 days, and has 12 completed downloads already.

So you're really fighting windmills here. If in this matter you're defending "everybody's right of doing it their own way", that's like defending somebody's right to, I don't know, drive their car only in the reverse gear for lack of better knowledge -- it will take that person forever to get where he wants to, he'll be wasting a whole lot of gas, and end up with a stiff neck. If you were to crack down on somebody who tried to advise that person otherwise, it wouldn't be defending anarchist principles, it would just be stupid..