Question about QuickPar. Screenshot attached.

[ibzomie]

For someone who knows more about QuickPar than I do, here is a screen shot from QuickPar for a movie clip that I downloaded.

You can see that there are several complete files, indicated by the green blocks, but everything else is incomplete. All available par files were also downloaded, apparently successfully, but I'm not absolutely sure, because they apparently are not indicated by green blocks, but simply listed.

Can someone tell me: Is this a result of the files being corrupted when they were uploaded? Or is it more likely something that happened when I downloaded the files? Bottom line: is there a way to fix this? Or not?

Is the fix simply to ask the poster for more par files, or is something else going on?



Thanks

[ibzomie]

Please excuse me for replying to my own thread, but I left out a main reason for posting it.

I've seen incomplete files before using QuickPar. I know that the green blocks indicate a complete file, the red blocks indicate missing files, and the orange(?) blocks indicate incomplete files. But usually there is only one orange block for each incomplete file. Why, in this case, are there multiple orange blocks for the same file?

And is it fixable at my end? Or is it simply a case of not enough par files to facilitate a repair?

Thanks.

[johns0]

Not enough pars so it's not fixable.

[Krispy Kritter]

There are limitations to what can be fixed with PAR files. Regardless of whether or not you have PAR files, you need at least a majority of the material to be valid. From your screenshot, you have 5 complete files and 19 incomplete files. PAR files will NOT fix that. If it was 19 complete and 5 incomplete, then yes, it could likely be fixed, depending on the number of PAR files present.

[qz3fwd]

For someone who knows more about QuickPar than I do, here is a screen shot from QuickPar for a movie clip that I downloaded.

You can see that there are several complete files, indicated by the green blocks, but everything else is incomplete. All available par files were also downloaded, apparently successfully, but I'm not absolutely sure, because they apparently are not indicated by green blocks, but simply listed.

Can someone tell me: Is this a result of the files being corrupted when they were uploaded? Or is it more likely something that happened when I downloaded the files? Bottom line: is there a way to fix this? Or not?

Is the fix simply to ask the poster for more par files, or is something else going on?


[Attachment 32589 - Click to enlarge]

Thanks

This is what (1) paid usenet servers are for, and (2)paid fill servers with complete archives to fill in the missing pieces.
For example I have giganews as primary and blocknews as fill.
As files get old, they start losing pieces of data on the usenet server, so incompletes are a fact of life-it is called retention. Also even for new uplaods there can be missing bits and that is why par files were created, but PAR files can only recover a percentage of missing blocks from the complete posting.

[Bjs]

Yes, in general ask the poster for replacement files only if they can verify the missing files are intact first ... most are happy to lend a hand.

Generally Par is used to create a backup set of files for verification ... unless it contains an exact duplication of the file or file set it is completely useless and takes up valuable space.

[johns0]

It's not a matter of how many incomplete files you have compared to complete files have,you can have 50 out of 50 incomplete files and still have enough par files to repair them as long as not too many bits are missing in each file,the op files have way too many bits missing so it's best to get the complete files first from another source.

[lingyi]

It's not a matter of how many incomplete files you have compared to complete files have,you can have 50 out of 50 incomplete files and still have enough par files to repair them as long as not too many bits are missing in each file,the op files have way too many bits missing so it's best to get the complete files first from another source.

Hang on, this is going to be tricky!

To clarify, the number of 'missing blocks' (in this case 605), represents the total number of missing Blocks of the complete file. The complete file is comprised of of 907 blocks, of which you have 302, leaving 605 to go.

The short answer to the question "Is the fix simply to ask the poster for more par files, or is something else going on?", is "something else is going on".

When you download from Usenet, Parts (i.e. <filename>.r00, <filename>.r001, etc) are downloaded in Blocks and an orange block (in Quickpar) is missing some file Blocks. The missing Blocks could be because they're actually missing from the Part (either was never there when the original Part was uploaded, missing from the particular Usenet server you're using, or corrupted during download*).

*I think this is is why there are "sub" blocks (in your case orange, though it even occurs with green blocks). I believe these are self corrections when there are transmission errors during the download.

As stated above, there are three (possibly more that I can't think of) reasons for an incomplete Part:

(1) During the original upload, there may have been transmission errors which means the uploaded file was never complete in the first place. This can only be confrimed if you're able to contact other people who have tried, but been unsucessful in downloading the complete file.

(2) The Usenet server you're on doesn't have the complete Parts. Again, errors occured during transmission to or archiving on the Usenet server / provider you're using.

(3) There were transmission errors while downloading.

Reason (1) is straightforward, either the file is complete or it isn't.

Reason (2) requres switching to another Usenet server / provider. Different servers may have different complete Parts that yours doesnt. You'll have to mix and match between what's available on Server A and Server B.

Reason (3) brings us to what you can do with what you have right now.

Even the best Usenet servers have transmission errors during download. Assuming the original upload was complete and the entire Part is on the server, you can download the incomplete Part multiple times, letting QuickPar combine the multiple downloads.

You don't have to download the complete Parts since you'll never get additonal blocks from them. Just download the Incomplete Parts and save them to a different folder than the original. Also download all the Par files since they may also be incomplete.

From your original folder, open the original files as usual, then use the Add button to add the second (third, fourth, fifth, ...) downloads. There will be an additional indented orange block (in QuickPar) below the original

Click on AutoRepair and QuickPar will add any blocks that are available in the second (third, fourth, ...) download. You'll see the "Need xxx more blocks" count go down and eventually the orange QuickPar block will turn green. As long as you see the number of needed blocks going down, keep downloading the Parts that are orange. Sometimes you may have to try downloading at a later time, even days or weeks because the particular transmission errors causing the incomplete Parts may be during that particular time period.

A bit about PAR files. Each PAR can repair a limited number of incomplete or missing blocks. Large multi gig files will have multiple PAR files, each being able to repair the number of parts in their filename. Asking for additional PAR files will make no difference (for that particular set of Parts) since all the repair data is already there (assuming the PAR isn't corrupt).

[johns0]

What you say won't work if there are no more parts that can be added from the original d/l.just much easier to find a post with more complete files.

[lingyi]

What you say won't work if there are no more parts that can be added from the original d/l.just much easier to find a post with more complete files.

I agree that finding a better post is the best option, but sometimes there isn't another post available. If that's the case in the scenerio you gave above, unless the file is resubmitted to Usenet, it will never be complete as stated in my post above " Reason (1) is straightforward, either the file is complete or it isn't. "

[johns0]

If the op got the files from the usenet and was using a crappy server then there's no way the poster will do any fills if they are mostly complete on good pay servers.