Creating videos for torrent uploads - Any suggestions?

[tuprox]

I'm considering using torrents to distribute video files that would only be important to a few hundred people and I would use a Seedbox that I have to host the files. These files are mp4's or mkv's of a season of a specific sports team (non-professional).

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to do this. The files will be about 500-900MB each and I want to package them as a season, of 10-15 games. What is the bet way to do this? I see some "release groups" making each file into 50+ rar files, but I don't want to really deal with that as I don't see a benefit, unless there is something that I am not seeing.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[DB83]

The size of your 'customer' base does not matter.

The status of the sports team does not matter.

Copyright will exist in the original video. If you do not possess that then distribution is not legal.

[tuprox]

The size of your 'customer' base does not matter.

The status of the sports team does not matter.

Copyright will exist in the original video. If you do not possess that then distribution is not legal.

It is legal to redistribute, it's for the fans and from the producer of the film

[jman98]

tuprox is in the US. For all we know he could be wanting to upload high school football (American football) videos that somebody made with a personal camcorder. This may not necessarily be illegal or violating copyright. Hell, I wouldn't even rule out the possibility that it's videos of some children's sports league either and there's no way copyright is involved there.

The reason people split up files into 50+ rar files is that some people do not have reliable internet connections and their connection will drop right in the middle of transfer. Using smaller size files gives those people a better chance at successful download. Also, you really should create PAR files to go along with your RAR files. I'd suggest creating PAR files to allow people to recover up to 10% of the downloads if they have problems. If you don't know what PAR is then do some research and then you'll understand the 10% suggestion. I have never created a torrent so I have nothing else to suggest.

[DB83]

jman98,

I never suggested that the 'service' was illegal but in most countries, and I would have thought that the US is no different here, copyright, in its strictest definition, exists without any form of registration to the original creator of the work.

So even if this is some children's sports league then the producer (not in the holywood sense) ie who shot the video automatically owns the copyright in the work.

Now the inference in the OP's reply is that the producer has granted permission so all does appear to be well. Even so, if I were in that situation, simply to cover my own tail, just in case the producer suddenly changed his mind for whatever reason, to get that permission in writing.

[aedipuss]

I'm considering using torrents to distribute video files that would only be important to a few hundred people and I would use a Seedbox that I have to host the files. These files are mp4's or mkv's of a season of a specific sports team (non-professional).

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to do this. The files will be about 500-900MB each and I want to package them as a season, of 10-15 games. What is the bet way to do this? I see some "release groups" making each file into 50+ rar files, but I don't want to really deal with that as I don't see a benefit, unless there is something that I am not seeing.

Anyone have any suggestions?

the biggest advantage of using rar is that you can create par recovery files also. rather than having to download the complete 500-900mb again they could use small recovery files.

[Island_Dweller]

(As long as it's legal...)

If you're using torrents, I'd think par files are not needed or required. Most torrent clients have a crc-check function and you can stop/resume your download at will. Even if your connection cuts off or the power goes out, you can do another crc check afterwards and the torrent client will re-download only the affected parts. Just seed your mp4/mkv files and tell your friends/ colleagues to use utorrent. Easy as pie.

(Again, as long as it's legal...)

[deadrats]

I never suggested that the 'service' was illegal but in most countries, and I would have thought that the US is no different here, copyright, in its strictest definition, exists without any form of registration to the original creator of the work.

copyright law here in the US is a tangle web of crap that will drive you crazy. in the most basic sense, copyright starts existing from the moment a work is created, but in order for one to sue the work must be registered with the copyright office; there was a recent case where a large porn producer tried to sue thousands of defendants for illegally sharing a scene featuring a popular blond porn star, the cases where dismissed when it was discovered that someone at the porn company had neglected to register the movie, thus no legal action could be taken.

then there are broadcast rights, where one party owns the rights to the work but another party owns the rights to broadcast it and that leads to all sorts of legal fights.

copyright needs to be heavily revised, make it applicable for a short amount of time, say 10 years during which time commercial exploitation is only possible by the copyright holder and after that have it pass into the public domain.

[diprotic]

I'm considering using torrents to distribute video files that would only be important to a few hundred people and I would use a Seedbox that I have to host the files. These files are mp4's or mkv's of a season of a specific sports team (non-professional).

Torrents are a great way to distribute large files to many people, provided those people know what torrents are and how to use them. Most people I know have no idea what a torrent is, much less how to open ports on their router in order to get them working.

If you use torrents, I recommend that you have some training materials ready (maybe just an email with some informative links to existing guides).

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to do this. The files will be about 500-900MB each and I want to package them as a season, of 10-15 games. What is the bet way to do this? I see some "release groups" making each file into 50+ rar files, but I don't want to really deal with that as I don't see a benefit, unless there is something that I am not seeing.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I have a few suggestions:

1. Keep the total filesize as small as possible. Your season of up to 15 games at up to 900MB each could reach ~14GB, which is pretty large. Consider transcoding at the lowest bitrate that results in acceptable quality.
2. Distribute the torrent with each game as one video file, named as descriptively as possible (teams, date, etc) Use descriptive metadata, too!.
3. Consider adding a copy of VLC for Windows and Mac to the torrent, with instructions for installing it. That way, your fans will have a quick and easy way to watch them if they don't have the proper software already. I'm pretty sure you can distribute VLC binaries without permission from VideoLAN, but check with them to be sure.
4. Release groups have packaged warez in split-up RAR files for at least two reasons: 1) RAR compression makes the files smaller; and 2) split RARs make it easier to resume download of a very large file if the download gets interrupted (it's much easier to re-download a single 50MB file than the entire multi-GB release). IMO, you don't want to use RAR. First, video is already compressed, so it will not improve filesize significantly. Second, (un)compressing RARs takes time, especially on large files. Third, RAR is a non-free format, and most people are unlikely to be able to decompress RAR. Fourth, the torrent protocol already splits files into pieces and checks them all against hashes, which makes resuming downloads effortless and automatic. Hence, RAR is completely unnecessary in your case.
5. Check, double-check, and triple-check everything before posting your torrent. It would suck to get a huge swarm of seeders/leechers to find that game 6 is missing the last 10 minutes.