MystMan's Guide to VCD Posting
version 1.0

Introduction

This is a step-by-step guide which will educate, explain, and enlighten all Windows users.  Even those who have been posting regularly for a while might find some useful tidbits.  That said, this document is by no means thorough.  It is intended for those who have some idea as to what they're doing.  As time permits, I will expand each step to include more detail.

For those who have been posting regularly, please skim this document but pay attention to the points at the end.  Many miss these nuances of posting.

Step 1: Get Software

You will at least need the following:

Step 2: Preparation

If your CD has the typical MPEGAV, SEGMENT, etc. folders, it is most likely in the proper VideoCD format.  If there is anything in the SEGMENT folder, you have most likely have "VCD Extras".  This may consist of extra video, still pictures, and/or menus viewable when being viewed in VCD mode.  In this case you should really post as a disc image.  Otherwise, just post the DAT file.

Preparing a DAT

Check to make sure it works.  Either watch it in its entirety, or slowly skim the file using Xing or a similar program (Media Player is a poor choice for skimming).  Nothing sucks more than downloading a movie (including hunting down missing parts) only to discover the damn thing doesn't work. ;-)  Skip to Step 3.

Preparing a Disc Image

Check to make sure it works.  Either watch it in its entirety, or slowly skim the file using Xing or a similar program (Media Player is a poor choice for skimming).  Nothing sucks more than downloading a movie (including hunting down missing parts) only to discover the damn thing doesn't work. ;-)

Insert the VCD you wish to post into your CDR drive (preferrable to CDROM).  Make sure it's the same drive you used when watching skimming the movie.  In CDRWIN, click the third button ("Extract Disc/Tracks/Sectors").  Select your CDR.  Select a location and filename for your image.  Click START.

If you get an "Unable to read DATA sectors 297 to 323..." error as soon as it starts reading, the VCD in question was most likely burnt using Adaptec Easy CD Pro or some other similar program.  Some readers are more sensitive than others, so some people may encounter this problem while others may not.  If this happens, you can click the "Ignore" option under Error Recovery, then click START again.  As it reads, it will say it found 7 errors.  If it finds more than 7 errors, there is in fact something wrong with the VCD and it should not be posted.

Step 3: RAR

Make sure you have plenty of room on your hard drive (at least the size of your VCD image).  From Windows Explorer select either the DAT or both the BIN/CUE, right-click, and choose "Add to archive...".  Then...

  1. Select a filename (do not use spaces!).

  2. Compression method: leave it at Normal.

  3. Volume Size: 5,000,000

  4. In the Archiving options, select these checkboxes only: Create solid archive, Put authenticity verification, Use multimedia compression, Put recovery record.

  5. In the Files tab, select Do not store paths.

  6. Click OK.  This will take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the VCD image and the speed of your computer.  Using a Pentium III 450, on average it takes about 25 minutes for about 600MB.

I can not stress the importance of using the compression option.  While sometimes RAR will hardly reduce the size at all, it can often (and does, for me) reduce a VCD by up to 100MB (average is around 50MB)!  If you're posting to Usenet, this can save the Internet not just gigabytes, but TERRABYTES of bandwidth.  And no.. I'm not full of shit.

Step 4: The Support Files

Make an SFV

It is important to make an SFV.  When someone unrars the disc image and WinRar tells them something is corrupt, with an SFV they can determine precisely which part is bad.  Upon running WinSFV, simply find the folder which contains the RAR parts and tell it to create a table.

If perchance you used smaller RAR parts than 5MB and it went into the t## extensions, you will need to select those files manually in WinSFV.

Make an NFO

Using an NFO generator (or a template), make sure you include, at the minimum, the following:

Make still images from your movie

You should make 5-10 vidcaps (still images) so people will have a better idea whether or not they want to download the movie, and collectors will be able to tell if they already have the movie under a different name (this happens alot, actually).  Try to take caps from throughout the movie, and try to avoid too many closeups.

If you don't know how to make vidcaps, try using VCDCutter.  Simply load the movie, scroll through the scenes, and hit "F4" whenever you want to capture.  To set the default format as JPEG, click on View, Options, Extract.  In the "Extract Frames" box, select "Save as jpg".

If you would prefer Xing MPEG Player, you can save a snapshot by hitting CTRL-E.  The downside to using Xing is your files will be saved as BMP instead of JPG.

Make the Support file

Either ZIP or RAR up all the vidcaps, the NFO, and the SFV.  Name it something meaningful, such as VCDTitle_support.zip.  It's usually nice to have the beginning of the support file named the same as the rar files - it makes for easy finding in a long download directory.  ;-)

Step 4: Posting

Usenet news servers limit the size of articles which can be posted.  But if someone by chance successfully posts a large article on their local news server, other distant news servers may not carry the article due to its size.  Different servers have different limits.

You might not be aware of this, but when you download a large file (such as a 5MB MPEG) from the Usenet newsgroups, you are in fact downloading multiple articles.  Many people don't even realize this because all the good newsreading programs will automatically join the multiple articles together as headers are downloaded.

So, how do you post a big file and split it up into multiple articles?  It depends on your posting program, but any good one will support it.  Whatever program you choose to use, set your article length to no more than 500K (approx. 8000 lines).  313K (approx. 5000 lines) may actually be the optimal setting.

If given the option for encoding, use UUE, not MIME.

If you need to split your posting sessions into multiple days, make sure you post the SUPPORT file with every batch you upload. 

Here are some more specific tips for various programs.  If you can provide posting procedures for other software packages, it would be greatly appreciated.

News Blaster (a.k.a. News On Rocketfuel)

Since the sole purpose of this program is to post binaries, most options are downright obvious.  A few important tidbits you might need to know:

NOTE:  News Blaster is in fact a decendant of Autopost.

Xnews (thanks to SGI)

Step 5: Reposting

Of course everyone has their own policies.  Good posters will either do reposts and/or have their posts availble on FTP/IRC.

If you plan to strictly do reposts to the newsgroups, I strongly suggest the following policies:

 

NUANCES OF POSTING

These are frequently-overlooked aspects of posting.

1.  Check your movie before posting.  Make sure your movie has few - if any - glitches, and make sure it doesn't hang.  Even if you don't watch the movie from start to finish, you can skim it rather well using programs like Xing (Media Player is horrible for skimming).

2.  Post your .RAR file along with the support files - FIRST!!!  This way people can view the NFO, vidcaps, and beginning of the movie without needing to wait until the entire post is complete.  Remember, if someone has the first few rar files, they can unrar and view the beginning of the MPEG/DAT!

3.  Don't put spaces in your filenames.  They can cause problems with some news software, and when people using such software repost their renamed parts it only compounds the problem.

4.  You don't have to ZIP a RAR when reposting.  People do this because when they repost a rar part that has already been posted, it may never show up.  This is because the news server sees it as a duplicate post and it gets rejected.  A very simple way around this is to add some unique text to the message body, such as "This repost was requested by Joe Blow.".

5.  Check your posts.  After each day you should check to see if your posts made it to as many servers as you can.  First check your own - and make sure you verify each and every rar part is there and is fully in-tact and they don't have short line lengths.  Then if you have access to any major news servers (such as Newsguy), check there as well.  If something didn't make it there, rest assured many people will need reposts - and it's easier to nip it in the bud than to let people request/repost parts for weeks/months after the original post.