|
|
|
|
 |
How to submit movie info
I've received a number of e-mails recently from people asking how to submit new entries for the movies page, so here it is.
First of all, this is no easy method as it takes a considerable amount of time to do (it's a hard graft tbh). It's likely not the easiest method in the world either, but is how we've managed to get the page together so far. I'm not sure how other similar sites handle the submittal of new data, but I can tell you that this method doesn't use any fancy database or streamlined data entry processes, =) so it requires a bit of effort to contribute the necessary info. I think it only takes a small number of willing people to add a file or two on occasion to create a useful page for all, so I hope some people can find the time and send in the data. I'll endeavour to add the movie info I receive as quickly as I can so long as I'm not too busy with real life stuff, and providing I don't get overloaded with submissions.
Thanks to everyone who takes the time to submit.
1. Watch the Movie First
First thing is you gotta make sure you have the full movie file and have watched it through, this is so any problems with the file can be taken into consideration on the movies page (audio sync errors, incorrect aspect ratio, bad visual errors, blockyness in scenes, etc).
2. How to find the HASH#
a. If you have the movie file already on your harddrive and shared on WinMX, then to obtain the HASH# of the file you can enter a chat room and browse yourself by right-clicking your username in the channel username list. Then just double-click your own file that you want the HASH# for, this should flick you over to the Transfers window as you're about to download the movie file from yourself! At this point click 'Cancel' in the Transfer window to prevent it from starting, then right-click the file and select 'Find Alternates'. This opens a new search window and displays the relevant HASH# for the file, it will also provide verification that other users on the network have the same identical file as yourself as the results roll in. At this point copy the HASH# data to a file (notepad, wordpad, etc).
b. If you don't have the movie already shared on WinMX, you can use this method instead. Right-click the movie file in Windows and select 'Properties', take note of the precise byte size of the file and copy it into notepad/wordpad/blah.
Note: The green bit shown here is the movie byte size...
Size: 698 MB (732,852,224 bytes) Size on disk: 698 MB (732,855,638 bytes)
Now run a search on WinMX for your movie title and look for the same file listed that has the identical file size as noted down, this should pretty much guarantee that you've located the same file as your own version. Now you need to select the search result that matches your file and click to download it, this should flick you over to the Transfers window. Now select the download in the Transfers window and Cancel it, then right-click the file and select 'Find Alternates'. This opens a new Search window and will display the appropriate HASH# for the file. Make a note of the HASH# in your notepad/wordpad file.
3. Codec, Resolution, Filesize and Time
I just learnt of this program through an e-mail I received that makes things a lot easier, called GSpot and available from the main download section of www.doom9.net. The program displays most of the necessary details for the AVI in one easy step, simply open the AVI file into GSpot and note down the highlighted areas shown below.
AVI filesize in bytes. Video CODEC required. Frame resolution in pixels. File duration in hours/minutes/seconds.
4. Quality Rating
When I initially made the movie page I felt it would be bad to have an overly high amount of '4 star' and '5 star' rated files. To prevent this I tried to make the ratings scale around the 'best to worst' examples of files generally available on the networks. This means that a file rated at only 2 stars is not necessarily a 'really bad file', it just falls into a category that suits the overall quality. I think many people will tend to try and rate too many files as 5 star, when in reality they should be less in order to help distinguish the good rips from the really good rips. The problem is that if too many files are rated as 4 or 5 stars in quality when they don't really deserve it, then the accuracy of the information on the page falls, as they'll be no way to easily distinguish between the various file qualities. I hope that folks will take this into consideration when rating the files, hopefully the guide below will help a bit.
***** 5 Star Rating - These are movies with a great picture quality, great sound quality, no blockyness during action scenes that attract attention, no bad visual encoding errors, good resolution choice, close to full 80 minute file size (730,000,000 bytes) per part, etc. These are just movies that look like they've had someone who knows what they're doing encoding them. :-)
**** 4 Star Rating - These 4 star rated movies are still of a high quality, but with minor annoyances that separate them from the 5 star rated movies. These are sometimes movies that get slightly blocky in high motion scenes (often CBR rips), albeit minor blockyness, maybe a slightly blurry picture quality, noticeably poorer sounding audio, occasional video errors that corrupt the display in parts, either too low or high a resolution, also 29.970fps movies (an unnecessary reduction in overall quality as a result of not converting to 23.976fps), etc. Just anything really that is worthy of a reduction from 5 stars.
*** 3 Star Rating - These are the 'hmm' kinda quality movies. They could be a poor picture quality, or maybe problems with audio to video synchronisation, wildly incorrect aspect ratio, bad video errors that cause playback to fail/stop, bad audio, small file size (way below the respected 730,000,000 byte size), etc. I'd also place the better quality MPG VCD movies here, which can be quite good looking when played back on a TV setup, but can't really compare to the quality of a 4 star DVD rip, especially when played back on a PC display.
** 2 Star Rating - By default I placed all cinema cam rips as 2 stars as they tend to be a low picture quality, certainly below even a poor DVD rip, hell sometimes you even get people walking past the screen as they go for popcorn/toilet/etc hahahaha. These could also be what appear to be VHS rips, often a similar low quality to the cinema cams, or poor quality MPG VCD files. These files are often the initial versions of the latest pre-release movies that appear on the networks before a higher quality source becomes available, such as DVD screeners and release DVD's.
* 1 Star Rating - It takes a special kind of rip to get this rating. This is one step up from a black screen with no sound for 2 hours, the kind of movie where you need subtitles to understand what's being said, even though it's in your own native language. But then again if this movie had subtitles they'd appear as nothing more than strange shapes that appear on screen for no apparent reason. A single star is an award in itself. =)
5. Final Note
A lot of the above seems really in depth and complicated as hell, but at the end of the day the page is just a list of movies for folks to visit that helps make choices a bit easier, so don't take it all to seriously! If you still feel up to sending in some new entries please do, as hopefully it'll go to make for a good index of what's out there on the network for everyone to use. Enjoy.
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
|
© 2002 db (ericb pour la traduction française) | Contact |
||||||||||||||
