How To Guide - FAQ's.txt
How To Guide - FAQ's
(No rules, No guidelines, just Frequently Asked Questions)
1) Q: What is the CRC file for?
2) Q: How do parts get "corrupted"?
3) Q: What are these numbers in parentheses at the end?
4) Q: How can you tell how many parts are in these movies?
5) Q: JAS isn't adding the most recent files..
6) Q: Is JAS and the 000 file the only way to join parts?
7) Q: What's wrong with the 323 and 386 files?
8) Q: When I save the 323 file in Netscape it comes out larger than the
rest, therefor corrupt.
9) Q: What about these AVI, RM, MOV and MPV extensions.
10) Q: What is a DivX movie and how do I play it?
11) Q: There seem to be allot of missing parts, are the posters not posting
them all?
12) Q: What are the .bat files for?
13) Q: Will parts that don't match in size work together?
14) Q: Why are the movies split into parts in the first place, can't you
post a whole movie at once?
15) Q: Why do people only post 30 to 50 parts a day?
16) Q: I'm used to (01/55) type split, why don't you all split movies like
that?
17) Q: Is there any way to automate the download process ?
18) Q: I have WebTV, can I view the movies?
19) Q: Why are my repost requests going unanswered?
20) Q: Some movies won't play right even with all the parts.
-----
1) Q: What is the CRC file for?
A: JAS uses it to check the integrity of all the individual parts.
When you go to join the parts, it will spot corrupt parts and notify you
before
it joins them. So if you have all the parts and the movie doesn't play
right, you
know which parts to replace. JAS v4.9.11 is the only joiner that supports
CRC. Just
download the .CRC file to the same folder as the rest of the movie parts,
JAS does the rest.
Get JAS at:
http://www.mpeghelp.com http://thempegfiles.da.ru/ {Thanks the boyz}
http://mediasite.de/toy4boys {Thanks Toy4Boys}
http://www.sathanasprime.de/TOOLS/tools.html {Thanks Dumbo Elephant}
http://www.fortunecity.de/village/abba/29/englisch/bilderfilme/jas/jas.html
{Thanks Gayboy Norderstedt}
http://www.jas-etc.com/ {Thanks aDOM}
-----
2) Q: How do parts get "corrupted"?
A: Sometimes during the upload or the download of a part something happens
that
causes the part to loose a few bytes or sometimes gain a few bytes. If bytes
are lost, data is
lost, which could cause a movie to not play properly.
-----
3) Q: What are these numbers in parentheses at the end?
A: If files look like this:
andy.mpg.001(1/2)
andy.mpg.001(2/2)
refer to your newsreaders help file for 'combining' or 'joining multipart
messages'. In Outlook,
highlight the 2 parts and go to "message" and then "combine and decode".
these 2 parts need to be joined and then saved as one whole part.
A: If files look like this:
andy.mpg.001 (1/1)
if both numbers on either side of the slash are 1's, don't worry about it, a
certain
auto posting program adds (1/1) to every post it makes.
-----
4) Q: How can you tell how many parts are in these movies?
A: By using JAS and the 000 file. JAS will tell you what parts are missing,
just look at the number of the last missing part.
-----
5) Q: JAS isn't adding the most recent files..
A: All the movie parts need to be in the same folder (including the .crc and
000 files). The
joiner programs and bat files will only look for parts in one folder.
-----
6) Q: Is JAS and the 000 file the only way to join parts?
A: JAS {Thanks Singularity} and the 000 file are the easiest way to join the
parts,
but there are other ways (other programs/DOS batch files), these ways are
described in
"Sorcerer's HOW TO VIEW GUIDE" {Thanks Sorcerer}. It's a HTML page that
covers
every aspect of collecting the movies here and is available on Toy4Boys site
http://mediasite.de/toy4boys {Thanks Toy4Boys}.
-----
7) Q: What's wrong with the 323 and 386 files?
A: In every movie the .323 file will come out as an 'internet telephony' or
"conferencing utility dll" file and the
.386 file will come out as a 'virtual device driver' file, both with strange
looking icons.
There is nothing wrong with these parts, they will work just fine as is.
The Windows operating system associates these extensions with different
programs. Just as it associates the .mpg extension with Windows Media Player
and .txt with Notepad, it associates the .323 and .386 extension with other
programs.
-----
8) Q: When I save the 323 file in Netscape it comes out larger than the
rest, therefor corrupt.
A: After the 323 is downloaded, "open attachment" > "save to disk" > place
it in
folder with the rest of the parts....it's now the same size as the other
parts.
-----
9) Q: What about these AVI, RM, MOV and MPV extensions.
A: Any movie with an .AVI extension will need *every single part* to play
and
will play with most any player. Any movie with an .RM extension will require
Real Player to
play, free version available at www.real.com Any movie with an .MOV
extension should
play with your standard Windows Media Player, if not you may need to get the
free version
of the Quicktime player http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ An MPV
extension
should play with any mpg player (it is an mpg video only file, no sound
track).
-----
10) Q: What is a DivX movie and how do I play it?
A: It is a type of .AVI file. You'll need a player or codec that supports
DivX:
BSplayer with DivX support
http://bsplayer.cjb.net (thanks Jim)
Playa player, this player has even been said to play DivX movies with parts
missing.
http://www.divx.com/download/downloadlist.php?typeid=2
If you don't want to use another player then you can download and install
codecs to
make Windows Media Player work.
DivX codecs
http://www.divx-digest.net/software/encode/APmpg4v1-702.exe
http://www.divx-digest.net/software/encode/divx_311alpha.exe (thanks
T-A-Q)
-----
11) Q: There seem to be allot of missing parts, are the posters not posting
them all?
A: Most of the posters here do a great job of making sure all the parts they
post make it
to at least one server. If you notice allot of missing parts, 99% of the
time it is your
news service that is missing the posts. You might consider paying for a
premium news service (most here do). http://www.Newscene.com ,
http://www.UseNetServer.com , www.Giganews.com , http://www.Altopia.com
and
http://www.Uncensored-News.com are some good ones and they keep you
anonymous
as well.
Take a look at this web site, it has a nice comparioson to the popular
providers. http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/providers/providers.html
(thanks Terminator)
Of corse, there is such a thing as a "repost". Ocasionally someone will
request a bunch of
random parts that they need to fill in the gaps of a movie and someone else
will post them,
but you can spot this, as the word "repost" or "fills" will be in the
subject line.
-----
12) Q: What are the .bat files for?
A: The batch (.bat) file is an alternative way of joining the parts. Save it
to the same
folder as the parts and just double click it. Please note that (A) .bat
files can contain virus's and
should be used with caution and (B) .bat files are much slower, with big
movies, than joining
programs like JAS.
-----
13) Q: Will parts that don't match in size work together?
A: No. The very last part of a movie, the 000 and CRC files are the only
ones that
should be smaller. Sometimes a movie will be posted many times and the
different
posters may split the movie into different sized parts, you need to have all
the
same size parts. JAS will check the size and show the wrong sized parts as
"corrupt".
-----
14) Q: Why are the movies split into parts in the first place, can't you
post a whole movie at once?
A: Not really, because of UseNet (newsgroup) limitations. Most news servers
have a file size
limit. Most limit the file size to something under 800k. Therefor if you try
to post anything
bigger than that, without splitting it, the news servers will reject it.
A 500k movie could be posted, but it will play for only about 2.9 seconds,
witch isn't time for much. I've seen one movie posted that played for over
an hour,
it was over 800mb total, over 1,500 600k parts had to be posted, you can't
post something
like that all at once!
-----
15) Q: Why do people only post 30 to 50 parts a day?
A: Again, do in part to UseNet limitations. Some pay servers have the hard
drive space
to hold months worth of articles, but many people can't afford a pay server,
or are young
and don't have a credit card. They rely on their ISP's news service, which
usually doesn't
hold articles but for a day or two. Some news services allocate a certain
amount of their hard
drive space for each newsgroup, some limit the number of articles they
store. So if to much
is posted it will push older articles off the servers, which leads to more
and more parts being
reposted, which leads to more and more parts being pushed off the
servers...........
Another answer would be; that some people have lives. If you only have a 56k
modem and a
job and maybe some type of social life, then 30 to 50 parts a day of one
movie would be all
you could handle.
-----
16) Q: I'm used to (01/55) type split, why don't you all split movies like
that?
A: Some of the movie files are so large that splitting them like that would
be impractical.
The (01/55) type split is split and joined by your news reader, which wasn't
designed for
large files.
Secondly, there is a huge benefit to the 001 type split over the (01/55)
type split. With the
(01/55) type you can not save the individual parts, which means, that if
your server is missing
any of the parts, your out of luck. You can't just ask for part (52/55) to
be reposted, the
poster would have to repost the whole movie again. But with the 001 type
split, you can save
each part as an individual file, so if your missing parts, you can ask for
reposts and keep
collecting parts till you have them all.
-----
17) Q: Is there any way to automate the download process ?
A: There are better newsreaders than Outlook Express for large batches of
downloads.
Xnews http://xnews.3dnews.net is a free one. With it you just highlight
a group of files,
hit one key to add them to a " queue" list, then hit one key and they all
download, one right
after the other. I've also used Agent http://www.forteinc.com (there is a
free version) with it
you just highlight a group of parts and hit one key to start the download.
Also, both Xnews
and Agent can be setup to automatically save the files to your hard drive.
Two newsreaders I
haven't tried yet, but hear are good ones, are NewsPro (there is a free
version)
http://www.usenetpro.com and MicroPlanet Gravity
http://www.microplanet.com
-----
18) Q: I have WebTV, can I view the movies?
A: I am not totally clear on the reasons why, but no. From what I've heard
the newer WebTV
systems have a hard drive, which is good, but you still can not install any
programs on it, which
is bad. The movie parts have to be joined, which requires a program.
-----
19) Q: Why are my repost requests going unanswered?
A: Allot of possible reasons; your request might not have propagated to the
reposters server
(they never saw it); sometimes a request simply gets overlooked; a poster
may have posted
you request but the same circumstances that caused you from getting the part
in the first
place happened again. Whatever the reason, the appropriate thing to do is to
wait a few days
(or more) and ask again.
-----
20) Q: Some movies won't play right even with all the parts.
A: Stripping the sound from the movie will usually get it to play correctly,
even those pesky
.dat's like kdv17 and rbv16serge (even if parts are missing!).
MpgSplit is a DOS based program that does just that: http://jas-etc.com
http://mediasite.de/toy4boys
Instructions for MpgSplit:
-1)Create a folder on your hard drive, name it "MpgSplit", download
MpgSplit.zip and unzip
it to that folder.
-2)Move the mpg you want the sound stripped from to the MpgSplit folder.
-3)Open a DOS Prompt (start button/programs/MS-DOS Prompt)
you will see:
C:\Windows>
type in:
cd c:\mpgsplit
NOTE: single space only [cd(single space)c:\mpgsplit]
(where "c" is the drive letter), hit enter.
You'll see
C:\mpgsplit>
-4)Type in:
fix rbv01
NOTE: single space only [fix(single space)rbv01]
replacing "rbv01" with the name of the movie you are working with,
(NOTE: the movie name can not exceed 8 characters)
-5)hit enter, you'll see a bunch of A's and V's fly across the screen.
It could take quite a while to process, your computers speed and the size of
the movie will
determine how long.
When it stops it's done, "X" out of the DOS window.
You'll see 2 new files in the MpgSplit folder, one with a .mp2 extension and
one with a .mpv extension.
The MP2 can be deleted, it is the sound file. The MPV is the new video only
file.
NOTE: as with anything you make changes to, it's always a good idea to view
the changed
file before permanently deleting the original MPG).
NOTE: mpgsplit will NOT put the sound back on. Only use it if you can
live without the sound or have other means of replacing it.
NOTE: this program COPIES when it splits, you need to be sure you have
enough hard
drive space.(a 100mb movie will need another 100mb to copy).
NOTE: once it kept repeating "(unexpected start code)" over and over, if you
see this and
don't see the A's and V's fly by, then you'll have to X out of the DOS
window,
MpgSplit can't fix that movie.
If you have any additions, questions or corrections, feel free to ping or
email me (lurker00@hushmail.com ).
lurker
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