making my own 'new' rar and par2 sets

[rotuts]

Cheers

Ive had a request to upload a small QT file of 170mb 320 x 240 of a cooking technique.

I have MacPAR DL but Im not sure this would make the RAR's

can a seasoned vet point me in the correct direction and offer quide lines on the sizes that would best for this sort of thing for a file of this size?

its a 3ivx QT file

cheers

rotuts

[Case]

To create a RAR archive on Mac OS X,
get Gumby (free), SimplyRAR (free) or RAR for Mac OS X ($29 shareware).
And surely CLI variants can be found as well.

A popular segment size for RAR archives is/was 15,000,000 bytes on Usenet and FTP servers.

MacPAR deLuxe can generate Par 1/Par 2 files for you, tho'.

[rotuts]

Thanks! Im trying now SimplyRAR. I chose 10Mb sizes as my modem is a little show.

Im useing THOTH as my reader/poster.

is there a way to 'automate' the files for posting? I take it that each file is an attachment on one 'message'

is PAR2 better? the default seems to be '10%' redundancy, it that OK?

cheers again

rotuts

[Case]

is there a way to 'automate' the files for posting?

Osiris

is PAR2 better? the default seems to be '10%' redundancy, it that OK?

Par2 is more efficient; needing less bytes for same redundancy. It also generates smaller and bigger parity files, so people who need very little repair can do with a small download. 10% is considered enough for Usenet.

[rotuts]

Thanks!

but I haven't quite figured out how to change some of the defaults in "Osiris"

the newsgroup to post to Is the top? Ive be able to change that.

the second choice area by default is "Bill"

is this where I change it to my 'posting name" how do I do that?

body text is what goes in the 'text' of each section?

sorry for being so obtuse, but id like to figure this out and can's seem to find a 'help' at the web site.

cheers

rotut

[Case]

It's been a few years ("where did I archive a copy of Thoth?"), but I think it went something like this: -

the newsgroup to post to Is the top? Ive be able to change that.

Use the Edit NGs button to add a newsgroup name the the Osiris list. Use the same names as listed in the Group Window in Thoth. Only add those groups that you would like Osiris to post to. After closing, your new group should be selectable from the dropdown list.

the second choice area by default is "Bill"

That dropdown menu should list all available personalities from Thoth.

is this where I change it to my 'posting name" how do I do that?

You do that in Thoth. File > New Personality. (New Window) Edit Settings (6th button) Name, e-mail. OK. Add org, headers, sig if you wish. Save. Give Personality name. OK. Relaunch Osiris. New personality name should be in the list.

body text is what goes in the 'text' of each section?

There is a checkbox just below that, [v] Post body text only in first post.
A description of the 'attachment' would be nice.

[terryj]

to add a bit further to Case's suggestions:

When describing the attachment, you should create first a NFO file,
which is a standard text file ( if using Textedit, be sure to change
the default type to TXT, not RTF, as Windows users will not be
able to open it).

In the NFO, put the following info:

Name of File
File Type ( .mov, .mpeg,avi, etc)
File Size when unpacked: in MB please
Any codecs need to play file: VERY IMPORTANT
how many Pars in set : total number
how many RAR pieces in set: total number

and last
Do you do seed requests: Y/N

this will be the first file you upload. This way,
others who might be curious about your file,
only have to download the NFO to know if it is worth the
trouble ( on their end) to download.

Next, in your actual file description, you need to list the following:

Body of message: see NFO file for specifics.
File info in uploading:
Check the following boxes when prompted by Osiris:
( going from Memory here)
Number of files in post in Subject line: Yes
Name of File in subject line: Yes

That's aboout it. Oh, lastly, make sure to name all the files
with a same, uniform name.
Example:
You upload a video called " Seaworld_trip_march"

Your PARS should be:

Seaworld_trip_march.par2
Seaworld_trip_march.vol001+005.par

Your RAR segments should be:

Seaworld_trip_march.rar
Seaworld_trip_march.r00
Seaworld_trip_march.01

Your NFO should be:
Seaworld_trip_march.nfo.txt

This will line everything up in the subject line,
when reading news by SUBJECT, and insure to all
(both Poster and DL'er)
that they can SEE at a glance what pieces are
all up/complete or incomplete on their servers.

[rotuts]

Ive managed to create a personality in thoth that Qsiris sees

Ill work a little more at it and get back to you

thanks for such fine apatient help

BTW: if you know how to work with Thoth, on the left of the newgroup lists there is a little arrow. you click on it to the the 'counts' to open. Im assuming these are the parts of an srticle and I have to manually click on the arrow to open the counts and then I select them all to download a posts parts.

is there a wat to get thoth to open these counts for me? I think they are different than threads which i take it are replies to the original post.

if there are lots of parts to a mideo post, I have to manually open the counts to get thoth to download the totals.

hope you get my drift here

and when i get to Terr's excelt protocol ill get back.

I take it the NFO i create myself, then add it to the cue,

then get osiris to post on 'auto' the RAR and PARS ive made,

cheers

hope you can stand it to bear with me.

your patience is much appreciated.

rotuts

[rotuts]

update:

my test post in abtest worked fine.

Ill spend a little time figureing out the finer points that terr mentions and get back

thanks for such fine help

BTY although ive been useing thoth for years and MT-NEWS before that, are there more current newreaders for the mac that you might suggest?

I do vvery much like osiris though!!

cheers

hot dogs today?

rotuts

[terryj]

thoth is by far the best newsreader for the Mac.
Thoth has been put back into play by its creator,
Brian Clark. He is currently
accepting donations to get thoth 2.0 to market,
a problem he had before with earlier versions
of Thoth as shareware.

go here to read further:
Thoth 2.0 development

Some like Hogwasher, some like MT-News,
but for my money, Thoth has been and still is
the best Usenet client hands down.

[rotuts]

thanks terr

I agree aabout thoth Ill go and see if I can contribute

were you ablt to make any sense about my problem with the "counts" column and the fact that I have to manually open it for each part of a multi part binary for it to properly download

there must be some setting Im missing

any ideas

Ill see if I can support a new thoth

cheer and im now working on your "tips"

rotuts

[rotuts]

Terr

a little clarrification on the NFO file:

you are suggesting I create a text file that is an attachment, not information in the NFO post itself, ie information I type in the message body of thoth, is that correct?

if this is correct then the best short message file would be made with mac's TextEdit, and in my case the default seems to be TXT

Ill post a test of this in abtest

so attachment text file is preferred?

cheers

[Case]

BTW: if you know how to work with Thoth, on the left of the newgroup lists there is a little arrow. you click on it to the the 'counts' to open. Im assuming these are the parts of an srticle and I have to manually click on the arrow to open the counts and then I select them all to download a posts parts.
is there a wat to get thoth to open these counts for me? I think they are different than threads which i take it are replies to the original post.
if there are lots of parts to a mideo post, I have to manually open the counts to get thoth to download the totals.

You don't have to open the grouped parts to see all the parts in order to download. You can have the triangle in closed setting, select the segment and extract binaries (Cmd-B). All parts in the selection will go to the download queue, and automagically decoded and re-assembled to the segments that were originally posted (foo.part2.rar, etc).
The only things to look out for, are:
- incomplete binaries (marked with "<" in the count column); do these later when they are complete;
- replies from others that may be 'hidden' in the grouped parts; you can detect these when the count is larger than it should be (e.g. count is 7 for a post which should be (1/6) to (6/6));
- incomplete binaries that stay incomplete, should be downloaded with open triangle, individually selected, 'Extract binaries manually', and later repaired/completed with the par2 files.

[terryj]

Terr

a little clarrification on the NFO file:

you are suggesting I create a text file that is an attachment, not information in the NFO post itself, ie information I type in the message body of thoth, is that correct?

if this is correct then the best short message file would be made with mac's TextEdit, and in my case the default seems to be TXT

Ill post a test of this in abtest

so attachment text file is preferred?

cheers

the text file, that you create, will be your NFO file.
it will contain all the information I listed before.
You can create it with apple's TexEdit program,
so long as the default is set to save the file as
a (plaintext) .txt file, not as a (Rich Text Format).rtf file.

Thus, once saved, name it "nameofupload.nfo.txt",
and in your batch of files to upload, in OSIRIS,
it SHOULD BE the FIRST file uploaded, followed by
your RARs then your PARs.

The NFO text file will save you, and USENET itself
as it is considered good ettiquette, on numerous posts
asking you about your file type, codecs needed,
re-seeding policy, etc.

When I was a hardcore Usenet junkie ( 1994-2004),
NFO's were very necessry and a GODSEND.
Becasue it's far easier to download a 4kb txt file
read it, and decide if it was worth the hassle
to download 110rar pieces,
along with another 8par pieces, only to find out
I couldn't play the file.

Many will thank you for this effort.

[rotuts]

Terr

thanks. i aggee to spend time making a good text file, and put it first in the que with thoth as it matters a lot.

but I don't think as yet in my experiments Osirus does this.

i thinnk i just use thoth to make a new post, attach the file I make with textedit, the NFO,carefull so subject line matched what Osiris will generate

then use osiris

it adds the 'pieces' to my thoth tx file

then off i go

too bad i can't figure out that little triangle on the left to get thoth to open the 'counts'

but youve been very helpful

and cheers again

[rotuts]

Terr and others:

which should I pic for encoding? y-encode, UU-encode, BinHex, y-enc & MacBin

many thanks again

rotuts

[Case]

y-encode: modern 8 bit to clean 8 bit translation (needed for Usenet), resulting in smaller posts than uu-encode (~103% file size enlargement). Preferred encoding method now.
UU-encode: old-style 8 bit to 7 bit translation (133-140% file size enlargement).
BinHex: 8 bit to 7 bit translation that preserves both resource forks and data forks (Mac OS 7/8/9 files mainly). Useful for transfer protocols and filesystems that do not support resource forks. Not needed for RAR/PAR files as they have no resource fork.
y-enc & MacBin: a fancy combination to get small posts and preserve resource forks, I suppose.

[rotuts]

got it: y-encode!

[rotuts]

would it be remarkably rude to ask here for a program non unlike Osiris that can 'auro' post a series of jpgs ie comic books?

this is such a friendly forum, maybe we might look at comic books just this once as a series of video 'stills'

thanks

rotuts

[Case]

A newsreader is not a comic book reader. So wouldn't it be better to RAR or ZIP these jpgs before posting?
It's even a standard of sorts: .cbr for comic book RARs and .cbz for comic book ZIPs.
Even if you don't want to do that, what makes you think Osiris is not the right tool?

[terryj]

Even if you don't want to do that, what makes you think Osiris is not the right tool?

I second this question...
Batch making the Rars or .Zip files is as easy as
using Stuffit or whathaveyou...but since the end result
is THAT archive file, just as it works fine for Video RARs,
Osiris will work fine for Comic RARs....

unless your asking for an all-in-one solution from making
the archive to actual posting it to Usenet?
if so some of this can be done using Automator, but it
would be Automator to Stuffit then Automator to Osiris,
so you would still need Osiris....

[rotuts]

Cheerrs Terr and Case

Ive posted my first attempt in alt.binaries.tv

Im there stutorNSpls and the files are goodEats SquidPro. I did a 1 min test in "test" and that s3eemed to work as I downloaded that OK

unfortunatly the TXT file is a word document as that program only seemed to give me the text rich option or word.

if I may, perhaps Ill ask about that later>

Il wait to see if the recipient can get this.

He(She) is posting a lot of cooking TV shows now asn asked for one I have that H(S)he doesn't have so I thought id try as a project to learn more about posting.

Id like to learn more about 'personalities" to avoid SPAM?/Flames in the future too.

thanks

rotuts

[Case]

unfortunatly the TXT file is a word document as that program only seemed to give me the text rich option or word.

Apple didn't set that functionality in the Save dialog box . It's in: menu > Format > Make plain text. Only then can you save as TXT.

Id like to learn more about 'personalities" to avoid SPAM?/Flames in the future too.

a. I have not tested the "Anti-UCE address" personalilty feature in Thoth. I entered the same fake address in both address fields. (What the app doesn't know, can't be send out by accident.)
b. The protocol (RFC 2606) for non-functional fake e-mail addresses is xxx@yyy.invalid, which User Agents (e.g. newsreaders, e-mail programs) and DNS should recognize as invalid and not even try to send mail to.

[rotuts]

I finally got a response from my first and only so far RAR and PAR post, to alt.binaries.TV:

the file was SquidPro

'The episode played back just fine. I watched it the day after you
posted it. I didn't see any text file though. My newsreader filters
out small files too though, so it's possible I missed it.

If I'm remembering correctly, there was one odd thing about the
packaging though. I seem to remember the split RARs unpacking into
one large RAR, which then itself unpacked into the episode.'

does this mean anything to me in how I posted? I still have trouble getting the Mac TextEdit to post in 'plain text' and I think this post made the text file a word doc.

cheers and thanks

[Case]

"If I'm remembering correctly, there was one odd thing about the packaging though. I seem to remember the split RARs unpacking into one large RAR, which then itself unpacked into the episode."
does this mean anything to me in how I posted?

I noticed that, too. No biggy, tho', just unrar twice.
SimplyRAR has a checkbox to split the archive at a certain bytesize while it is being created. No need to create a RAR archive first, before splitting it up. Just drop a folder in the main window, tick the Split checkbox, set size, set compression (I'd use Store for no compression at already compressed content, for fast processing). Create.

I still have trouble getting the Mac TextEdit to post in 'plain text' and I think this post made the text file a word doc.

Type your text, Menu > Format > Make Plain Text (or Command-Shift-T), Save as.
When your TextEdit document is in plain text format, it shows without the styles and ruler at the top and in a monospaced font. Should be straightforward, I think.

[rotuts]

OK

textedit is set up as you suggested

thanks very much

rotut