Getting your fansub onto the web

[himm]

Hi.
So I have a complete series I've fansubbed, and I want to release it in a batch (I didn't release them one by one). I've uploaded them to some popular direct download sites, and am now looking to release a torrent.

My understanding is that to create a torrent, you first create it in your torrent program, adding a list of public trackers you're going to use. Then you submit it to the major torrent "hubs", (say, Animesuki, Tokyo toshokan, etc) then you just sit around seeding for the first few leechers.

But the thing is, my internet connection has a very low upload speed, so until there are a few seeds, download speeds will be very slow. How do groups get their files seeded quickly in the beginning?

[Dark Shikari]

I have a pretty crappy upload speed as well. Mine's 50KBps, though when I released my last sub, I was at a location with 100KBps. Still pretty bad.

There were 400 leechers in about an hour and over 4000 downloads in two days.

Low upload speed isn't a big issue. Just leave it running over a night or three. Clearly, if you were able to upload it to a direct download site, you can upload it on Bittorrent too.

Just remember to turn on Initial Seeding/Super Seeding.

[TGEN]

Groups have distro which seeds torrents initially. Copy the file(s) and the .torrent to machines with a fast internet connection, and seeding normally happens automatically.

[Vide]

If you are the lone seeder you can use super-seeding to make the most out of your connection to get out a full copy as soon as possible.

Else as TGEN says, many groups have people that take care of the distribution.

Shouldn't worry too much about the speed though, there are plenty of torrents being seeded on low upload connections, people just need to have a little more patience when they download.

[checkers]

Originally Posted by himm

My understanding is that to create a torrent, you first create it in your torrent program, adding a list of public trackers you're going to use.

Only use one tracker. Multiple trackers fragments the swarm, and the only advantage is redundancy in case one of them dies.

But the thing is, my internet connection has a very low upload speed, so until there are a few seeds, download speeds will be very slow. How do groups get their files seeded quickly in the beginning?

Find someone who likes the series and has a fast upload. What series is it?

[Exias]

Originally Posted by checkers

Only use one tracker. Multiple trackers fragments the swarm, and the only advantage is redundancy in case one of them dies.


Find someone who likes the series and has a fast upload. What series is it?

$20 says checkers tells you to ask me to distro it for you. It's all people do nowadays. ;_;

[ffdshow]

As people mentioned, it could be done by seeding from a high speed connection, normally it's from a server.

You may get your own server from as low as €8/mo to $200/mo. Alternatively, you may try to ask someone to help you in distro. There are some advantages and disadvantages. Most importantly, you should think about the group's donation policy, the seeder's IP privacy and the efficiency in release.

Damn it! Not only I said something crap, I wasted a few minutes on something useless too. :/

People should get a life and don't waste time on this post. (Same go for me)

[himm]

Thanks for all the advice.
Truth is, I have a few more episodes to finalise before everything's done. I'll be seeing you later.

[Hiei-]

Yeah, you can always ask if someone can help you distro it.

What sites did you use to upload them ? (Megaupload? Rapidshare? Others? True HTTP DDL?)

Anyway, if it can help you, I'm okay to help you seed it a few days (I have a 100mbits dedicated server) once you'll have the torrent ready (I will just need to know where to get the files from).

Why that? Well, I just like to help when I can.

So, feel free to send me a private message whenever you want.

[Starks]

Is super-seeding needed for a single seeder with 8Mbps upload?

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Starks

Is super-seeding needed for a single seeder with 8Mbps upload?

My understanding is that super seeding will always help, no matter what your upload bandwidth is, as long as you are a single seeder.

But with an upload that fast it probably won't make too much of a difference overall. I think it would depend on the speed of the peers you are uploading to. If you have a few fast peers it probably would be pretty irrelevant but if you have a whole lot of slow peers it might help considerably.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Starks

Is super-seeding needed for a single seeder with 8Mbps upload?

Super-seeding is rather pointless unless you have a limited upload speed or have a transfer limit/overage plan. The only point of it is to minimize the upload of the initial seeder and shift the burden onto the initial peers. The torrent protocol is smart enough to handle initial seed situations when there is an excess of bandwidth.

[Vide]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

My understanding is that super seeding will always help, no matter what your upload bandwidth is, as long as you are a single seeder.

Super-seeding will actually be much slower if you have a high-speed connection.

But you might want to use it still if you want to upload as little as possible and still get a copy out.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Super-seeding is rather pointless unless you have a limited upload speed or have a transfer limit/overage plan. The only point of it is to minimize the upload of the initial seeder and shift the burden onto the initial peers. The torrent protocol is smart enough to handle initial seed situations when there is an excess of bandwidth.

Super-seeding is useful when you want to minimize the amount of time it takes to get the entire file out onto the internet. Then, of course, you want to turn it off.

It avoids the situation where you end up uploading a file 3 or 4 times over before every chunk has been uploaded once.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Super-seeding is useful when you want to minimize the amount of time it takes to get the entire file out onto the internet. Then, of course, you want to turn it off.

It avoids the situation where you end up uploading a file 3 or 4 times over before every chunk has been uploaded once.

Superseeding is to minimize the bandwidth, not the time it takes.* Unless you are extremely bandwidth limited and it is an issue to upload a piece multiple times, it will take longer. The BT protocol is (usually) smart enough that it will hand out both new pieces and old pieces simultaneously.

*Using the minimal amount of bandwidth does not equate to using a minimal amount of time because it does not constantly pass out data.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Superseeding is to minimize the bandwidth, not the time it takes.* Unless you are extremely bandwidth limited and it is an issue to upload a piece multiple times, it will take longer. The BT protocol is (usually) smart enough that it will hand out both new pieces and old pieces simultaneously.

*Using the minimal amount of bandwidth does not equate to using a minimal amount of time because it does not constantly pass out data.

I've never encountered a case where I was the first distributor of a file and my upload wasn't maxed, with or without super-seeding.

[Tofusensei]

I dunno, I've found it useful when I am very strapped for time, on a slow connection, and need to get at least 100% of the file out there in time as quickly as possible. In those cases, superseeding comes in handy.

(Think, if you're on a laptop on wifi in a cafe that's about to close down, or something )

Seems to me superseeding gets to that 1.00 level faster than non-superseeding. Does that make sense?

-Tofu

[Quarkboy]

Look, there is a pretty simple way to stop this debate, let's be brutally specific:

bittorrent is a protocal where a peers make requests to each other for parts of the files they don't have. The seeding peer gets to decide which requests it fullflls and which it doesn't (based on a variety of parameters).

What superseeding does, in a nutshell, is DE-prioritize any requests it receives for pieces that have already been sent to some other peer. I.e. once a piece has been transferred to someone else, any other incoming requests for that same piece are sent to the back of the line.
You can see that when you are a single seeder this clearly has the effect of getting a complete copy of the file uploaded to the cloud faster than usual seeding.

However there are drawbacks to this, if you think about it. If the superseeder doesn't get any requests for parts of the file it hasn't already sent, it may not maximize the superseeder's bandwith. This can happen is the superseeder has more than enough bandwith to spare to upload to all the peers.
Also, if the downloading peers are all on slow connections, the individual pieces you have uploaded to them may take a long time to spread around to the rest of the downloading peers, which will increase the number of "de-prioritized" requests you get, which again can cause you to fail to maximize your upload bandwidth.

If you wanted to, it'd be pretty easy to set up a toy-model simulation of these effects to graph exactly when superseeding would end up being faster than non-superseeding, as a function of total number of leechers and average bandwidth of leechers.
There might even be an analytical solution is I worked out the differential equations involved .

[cyberbeing]

The main drawback I see from superseeding is on torrents with multiple files. I would go as much to say never use superseeding if the torrent contains more then one file. Superseeding prevents people from requesting parts from only a certain file. For example, if you are seeding a 26 episode batch torrent, most people may only want episode 26, but until the seeder distributes episodes 1-25, the person will have to wait.

There is also a minor drawback on large swarms where peers drop out. Once a peer the superseeder has sent a part to disappears, that part will cease to exist until last part is sent.

My guidelines would be:
Upload <5Mb/s use superseeding on single files if you desire.
Upload >5Mb/s superseeding may be somewhat pointless.

If you don't want to seed more then 1 to 2 copies of a file before disappearing, superseeding may also be helpful.

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

This can happen is the superseeder has more than enough bandwith to spare to upload to all the peers.

In the real world, this situation pretty much never occurs.

We sub some real unpopular crap in Live-eviL (stuff that never reaches 1000 downloads for the life of a torrent) and I max out 100 Mbit pipes doing the initial seeding for the few leechers who actually care. I'm not sure how it does it, but bit torrent is an incredibly efficient protocol.

That being said, superseeding reaches 1.00 quicker than non-superseeding will. So there is your answer

-Tofu