Can we have a checksum thread?

[Kirk Hamster]

Many shows comes without fingerprints of any kind. Some of these shows are also corrupt. I was wondering if there would be an appropiate place where people could come together and compare checksums for such shows.

The sad truth is that with the amount of raw data us guys are pushing around, the statistics are against us. We will end up with unplayable shows if we don't checksum our stuff. One show might have one error that does not matter, but then something happens during transfer and we now have two errors in the show. A third error might be the one that screws up the file header information instead of just creating a click among millions of samples.

Personally I have divided my collection into three main parts:

* Shows that comes with ffp/md5 and verifies 100% in TLH
* Shows that comes with ffp/md5 and does not verify in TLH
* Shows that comes without ffp/md5

Also i have subfolders for shows where there are both ffp and md5 checksum files and one of the two does not verify,etc

* We should think up a standard way to checksum DVD's too.

I have mentioned this before and an automated system to do this would a daunting task. Doing it in the forums might also be very cluttered and hard to read when the topic reaches 10+ pages. (like the Want List thread, etc)

Maybe we can make it obligatory to upload a checksum file with audio torrents so that users can download it and compare manually. Then maybe at a later stage someone can modify the seedbox and have it inspect a torrents files, extract them and check files automatically.

But just having a checksum file available for all shows would be a huge thing.

Maybe someone has better ideas?

It would be a Good Thing ™!


cheers

[Alexander2010]

That programm can it do?

[Kirk Hamster]

That programm can it do?

If you're thinking that TLH can md5 DVD's, yup it can. It's just that almost no DVD's comes with checksums. I, for one, would gladly use TLH for DVD fingerprinting too. I was just thinking that maybe someone knew of a tool that 'everyone else' uses for DVD's.

Lets just take one example (Just throwing an idea out, i'm not trying to start a 'mother of all checksums thread' here!)

I just MD5'd the show "13-08-1994 - Saugerties, NY, USA - 1XDVD - PRO - Author Unknown". It comes with no fingerprints.

f2360b662bfd58edc3c7a977bf111ab9 *VIDEO_TS.BUP
f2360b662bfd58edc3c7a977bf111ab9 *VIDEO_TS.IFO
196d82e1f7afacc6ea4f4a1caa0dbc2f *VIDEO_TS.VOB
77b7683177d7023bd9f2e70162ac9aad *VTS_01_0.BUP
77b7683177d7023bd9f2e70162ac9aad *VTS_01_0.IFO
c68451fdfdac21f22238535301e7ea48 *VTS_01_0.VOB
d24fd2d4027caf9ff6906b2d9912908f *VTS_01_1.VOB
8739b26b2c7bcbaa56721a88452d9d82 *VTS_01_2.VOB
98b5b37d1b6cadb9ab60b0edc87e8042 *VTS_01_3.VOB
72e5d73831b50f4ed2b633c43adbcfdd *VTS_01_4.VOB

So for this example, I know i was on the original thread with the original seeder, so i'm pretty confident that these sums would match the original seeders own checksums if he did it. The only way to make it better than this is if the seeder also is the releaser or can contact the transferrer/taper/releaser and get a fingerprint of the original data he has.

Let's say that in 6 months, that thread is gone and someone requests a re-seed. Now we are not so sure anymore about the quality of the seed. The re-seeder might have faulty media to upload from, and no-one would be the wiser unless it doesn't play at all or unless someone did an MD5 when it came out first.

1. Let's just say a lot of people comes to the same checksums. Maybe we could have a Reddit-style post voting system for special threads like this so that they could vote for the post with the checksums that seems most likely to be correct.

2. When people come to different checksums, we can discuss where we got the torrent etc and try to find out who got it from the original seeder. That show is more likely to be uncorrupted than someone who got the show further down the line. In this way we can almost pinpoint where something went wrong, and warn that user about possible corrupt harddisk/cd/RAM etc.

3. When people discover they have a broken file, we can use some sort of single file tracker/hosting to upload and download 'proper versions' of single files rather than everyone re-downloading entire shows. This is the way it was done in the days of IRC (might still be); one main channel for downloading full releases, a secondary channel for repairing broken .RAR files. (this is the reason a lot of movie and application releases comes in 79MB .RAR chunks)

Any thoughts ?

[norbinho]

i have no experience with all that, just saw these things on some other sites and didn't know what this should be...it looked complicated and i didn't care.

can you explain how/with which program one can do these fingerprints and where one can get those programs. thank you.

[Kirk Hamster]

i have no experience with all that, just saw these things on some other sites and didn't know what this should be...it looked complicated and i didn't care.

can you explain how/with which program one can do these fingerprints and where one can get those programs. thank you.

Certainly.

There is a free program called "Traders Little Helper" (TLH, for short) for Windows, which is a interface put on top of some Open Source audio tools ported from UNIX/Linux.
I've been using this for a few years, and I know a lot of people are already using and swearing by this.

This is their own description of the program:

"Traders of lossless compressed audio files (e.g. ape, flac, mkw, or shn files) have to handle a lot of different applications to decode, encode, create/verify checksums, fix sector boundary errors, or create torrent files. Moreover most of the tools used are command-line programs requiring a deeper knowledge of how to use various parameters. Trader's Little Helper bundles the most important features of those applications in one single easy-to-use frontend."

This tool can verify existing checksums against a set of files and create checksum files out of data files.
It also does a lot of other neat things, including FLAC/WAV encoding,decoding and re-encoding as well as detecting fake FLAC files.

It is really easy to use. Generally you can just drag and drop files into it and it will suggest some appropiate actions for you.

Here is a screenshot of TLH's option-configuration; it should give you an idea of what this program can do.



Here is a link to it's website (it is hosted by the same people that runs at etree.org i believe but dont quote me on that)

Hope that helps!

cheers,
Kirkhamster

edit: typo
edit2: another typo, and: Download the tool and copy some shows over to a temporary folder and play around with it. I find it quite intuitive to use. It will register fingerprint file associations so you can just right-click a fingerprint file, choose "Traders Little Helper...." and it will verify at the click of a button.

[norbinho]

thanks a lot for your detailed explanations...i know this program and i have installed it on my pc (can't remember what i used it for hehehe)...will check this out soon.

[deadone]

id def be interested to see this happen on releases here.
alot of sites i use require this on all releases in audio and dvd so all those who download your torrents can verify the release is exactly the same as the source you are seeding.
if there are no md5 files then the torrents wont add to the tracker/s

Mick

[unforgiven]

I use this programm very often on mine server and trades online, IMO introduce and use it on the tracker for Audio and Video here, to make sure the files are all checked and completed after a DL, and burning will not give errors of missing or corrupt files , iff not used you can loose discs after corrupt burning and missing parts of shows..

A must have for all of us.

JW

[pimpachu2001]

Have to second Kirk Hamster here. I was very surprised when joining this forum that a notepad info file and an md5 are not required for all shows posted.

I've been using it for years, and the minimal time it takes to add a fingerprint check to ripped folders are more than made up for by the avoidance of future headaches when you play back these files and they might prove to be corrupted since the get-go.

[Krzych]

I can offer my help and upload all md5s I've created till now. Indeed, that's a good thing to check your collection's health. But this I realized after several unplayable shows.