"Gordon" wrote in news:12h60t4em63vec0
@corp.supernews.com:

Uh, how do you view those movies?


You'll need a few tools, due to the nature of the text-only Usenet, which
was never intended for binary file transfers.

First, you need a usenet client, the program you download with, that will
recognize the messages are linked together to form a binary file and link
them automatically in a single thread. It also recognizes what encoding
scheme was used to split them up into individual messages, convert them to
text and post them in usenet-compatible pieces. I use Xnews, which is
freeware from http://xnews.newsguy.com/. Xnews also allows you to que up
as many encoded message groups as you like so it can download and decode
them and put them where you tell it to on your hard drive while you're
gone, automatically. Just click on the Q field of the file list and a
number appears, the order it's going to use to decode and store files in X
newsgroup.

Now, what's stored on your disk in the case of music newsgroups is ready to
play unless something went wrong or something was missing. However, movies
are way too large, from 700MB to 1.5GB, to send out all at once and expect
everything to show up correctly all over the planet. Usenet has flaws and
loses things, individual messages that make up all those pieces. So, to
combat this problem, files are split up into more manageable pieces with
several different programs. The splitter programs, themselves, have become
very intelligent and error checking. The best one is called WinRAR from
Rarlabs.com. This program is not free, but you can download and use it for
a month for free. Get it from www.rarlabs.com and install it on your
computer. It not only will split huge files into smaller pieces, but it
also stores information in all the files allowing it to do a bit-by-bit
test to see if there's anything wrong with pre-rar'd files it gets. (It
also does zip files and other formats commonly used on the net, an added
feature.)

As you'll notice, the movies are made up of many pieces, the pieces made up
of many messages, each. Xnews, on the fly while downloading, combines the
messages into pieces with extensions like .part01.rar, part02.rar or .r01,
..r02 and so on. All rar parts are exactly the same length except the last
one which is shorter, helping you identify any one that's missing
something. Also, Xnews, itself, creates a little text file with no length
and no data whenever it goes looking for the next message and doesn't find
it, then goes on, continuing to download and decode a message set that's
too short....BUT RECOVERABLE! If you look at a string of messages in a
movie and see an extra file that looks like, for instance:
07 - t05_0.mp3__yEnc_CRCerror_part_15.txt
with 0 bytes length, just a filename, it means that when Xnews went
demanding part 15 of 07 - t05.mp3, the message body didn't exist for one
reason or another on your news server. My example file also has another
added message to not only the error files but the original file just before
..mp3 where it has _0 or _1 or _2.mp3. This means there's another file on
my hard drive with the exact same filename.ext as the one it was trying to
decode and it added _0 to the first duplicate, _1 to the second duplicate,
etc., warning me of the duplicates from my stupidly marking the same files
over and downloading them again. It never stops the downloading doing
this, so you get all the files, anyway.

So what? If something's missing, it's toast, right? No, it's not! Along
with the movie, the poster posted other files called PAR or PAR2 files.
PAR means parity. These are error correcting files that operate on the
whole set of rar files and perform something akin to digital magic that can
repair some god-awful strings of errors, even whole missing PARTS! All you
need is another program that operates on PAR files. I use QuickPar,
another free program from:
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
If WinRAR pops up and error code window saying something is bad wrong with
the set, and you have PAR files, simply close WinRAR to free the set and,
once Quickpar is installed of course, double click on the shortest par file
with the extension .par or, if even it is missing, one of teh par or par2
files with the lowest numbers towards the end. These files look like:
sm3-cd2-apl.vol001+40.PAR2
which happens to be the first real parity file to correct CD2, Superman 3
from alt.binaries.movies.divx
Once you doubleclick on one par file, Quickpar rapidly appears and doesn't
even wait to say hello. It immediately starts inspecting the rar set for
errors, one file in order at a time, displaying any that have even a single
bit out of place. Click the checkbox for automatic recovery over on the
right side of Quickpar's running window and it will start error correcting
the stack of rar files (or whatever files this par group has in it), as
soon as it's done checking them all, every single bit. Once Quickpar tells
you how long it took to fix the problems (it's very proud of being fast,
Quickpar is), Run Winrar on PART01 or r01 again and it will complete its
task, decoding all the rar pieces, assembling them all into the original
movie, be it divx or mpg or avi or whatever it started out to be and
putting it where you told WinRAR you wanted it just before clicking OK on
it.

WARNING - NEVER, EVER, EVER DOWNLOAD .EXE, .COM, .DLL OR ANY OTHER PROGRAM
FILE FROM USENET. IF YOU OPEN WINRAR AND IT LISTS ANY RUNABLE FILE THAT IS
NOT A MOVIE, A PICTURE OR TEXT FILE LIKE PDF.....DO NOT RUN WINRAR ON THE
FILE...DELETE IT! There....you've been warned. SOBs post nasty virus
files on usenet, every day. The movie and music newsgroups are really
quite safe from them, but the porn newsgroups are loaded with nuts who want
to "get even" in their warped little ways.

Ok, we marked all the message parts, all the rar files, downloaded them and
ran Quickpar on them to fix missing or scrambled bits then assembled them
with Winrar......but Micro$not's video player or Real Video or whatever
simply player you run will still not play these files....why? The answer
is simple, they don't have the codecs needed and MS or Real.com are not
going to let you have them because you are a pirate and need to be
punished. Now what? We'll need a player that can play ANYTHING...all of
it....with its own hacked codecs. That player comes from some French
students and is called VLC, the Videolan Client. It's freeware from
http://www.videolan.org/ It is ported to Windoze, MAC, Linux and many
other operating systems. Download and install your favorite OS version.
Make it your default player. Problem solved. Dispite massive attempts to
get VLC off the net and away from you, they have, so far, survived a
terrible onslaught from the media conglomerates, for obvious reasons. It
even plays the encoded formats and ignores their attempts to install
scrambling software on your OS to prevent you from playing anything!

Once VLC is installed, simply doubleclick on your movie or music files and
it will play them, beautifully, even on a less-than-bleeding-edge
computer....(c;

Once you get the learning curve behind you how to do this, and there are
manuals online for all these programs to help you, Downloading the
subsequent files becomes a terrible obsession. Your hard drives are always
full, no matter how many and how big they are. You'll spend more time
burning DVDs than watching movies, sometimes doing both simultaneously so
you don't miss anything! Racks of DVDs will line your walls, the inside of
your closets, fill up chairs, the floor under your feet, that spot where
the couch used to be! It's just as bad as BOATING!

RUN WHILE YOU CAN!.....(c;