slaingod

So this is a note to all of the uploaders of the world.  Your efforts are much appreciated…but…I do have a few gripes about some of the more annoying and time consuming aspects of poorly uploaded files. All of these fall in the ‘if you spend the 30 seconds to do it, then you will save hundreds or thousands of other people that 30 seconds and the added frustration’ category.

 General

• It is OK to use spaces in file names. No, really.  If you are using an OS that doesn’t handle spaces in the filenames, then you probably aren’t reading this blog. Underscores (_) are NOT spaces.  There was probably some rational against using spaces in file names years and years ago, but that ship has long since sailed.  The ONLY possible issue I could see is if you are using bash or some other shell that escapes spaces with a slash (\).  Or maybe you have a MIRC server script that is older than you are.  There really is no excuse.
• When creating PAR2 repair volumes, do NOT put other crap into the volume set that isn’t part of the final product.  That means, I shouldn’t need to have an SFV, and NFO, a 100mb sample file, or any other garbage besides the RAR files to get my download to repair.

MP3s

• If you are going to go to the trouble of uploading MP3s somewhere, have the decency to put accurate id3 tags in the files. Seriously.  It just wastes a ton of time for a ton of people to have to redo them.
  
• It is a good idea to upload par2 files with your mp3s, so people can fix them.  This mostly means NNTP these days, since p2p does a good job of validating these days.
• If you do upload par2 files, then please name them appropriately…don’t name them .par2.  Because, sadly this seems like a common issue, and you just end up with overwritten par2 files.  Or ‘D.par2’ isn’t really helpful either.
• Rip your stuff at least at 192 VBR.  That’s pretty much the sweet spot for size/quality.  Go higher if you want, but definitely don’t upload stuff at 128 CBR.
• Don’t tag your mp3’s with spaces between the characters. ‘R E D   H O T   C H I L I   P E P P E R S’ is not really helpful.  Maybe it’s a UNICODE thing, but how often do you actually see unicode in id3 tags?
  

Movies

• Along with the spaces thing…File names no longer need to by 8.3. You can use literally hundreds of characters if you want.  ‘tia-ree.iso’ is sooo not helpful. Why not just name it ‘Resident Evil Extinction.iso’ instead?  Then we won’t have to waste time mounting the iso’s and opening our media players just to see what it is. I have no problem with including a group name in the filename, just make the whole thing actually useful.  ‘Resident Evil Extinction.DVD9.TIA.iso’ is fine too.
  
• Do NOT ask me to join some IRC channel just so I can find out what your 5GB upload actually is,  I like the idea of being able to go somewhere and request something, and think it is a handy way to add value to some of the larger USENET groups, but still, just leeching shouldn’t require me to join an IRC channel.
• Don’t release a 9GB HD rip of something.  If your encode went over, then suck it up and reencode it to DVD9 size (which is more like 8GB).  Same with 5GB files and DVDR size.  Maybe in another year or so, when harddrives are 10 cents a GB, that would make less non-sense, but until then, lets stick to the program.
• Don’t have your release NFO files have spaces between everything: ‘h t t p : / / u s . i m d b . c o m / s o m e t h i n g’ just pisses everyone off since the are just going to have to type the name now anyway rather than deal with the spaces.
• This one may just be me, but I actually prefer RAR volume sets that have ‘part001’ in the name, only because it means that the only RAR file you care about, the first one, shows up first in a directory listing, rather than what happens with ‘R01’, etc.
• Learn how to post in USENET so that the files are ordered properly in an alphabetic list!  Starting your post with [001/100] is not acceptable. It just leads to dozens of uploads being ignored. Always put the title of your upload first, like ‘The Bourne Ultimatum.rar [001/100]’ so the files stick together and are easy to select without having to use search filters.
  

TV

• Consistency in naming would be nice. ‘tds’, ’the daily show’, ’the.daily.show’, ’daily_show’: just go with ‘the daily show’ and be done with it.  ‘s01e21`, ‘01x21’, ‘121’: Executive decision here, go with s01e21.  It isn’t any better or worse than the others. but just stick with one.
• Don’t put the episode name into the file name, unless you are releasing an entire season at once, especially on bittorrent.  Everyone’s uTorrent RSS feed regular expressions break if you start throwing stuff other than the show name and episode number in there.

These are all minor things, I know. But like so many ‘little things’ in life they add up. So take this with a grain of salt, but it’s something I needed to say. :)