Yesterday I touched on How To Get Started With Torrenting, today I will further explain common terms you may encounter as well as where to get started with private trackers. I cannot post web addresses here as it is firmly against the rules of several private trackers but what I can do is post a reference to r/trackers here, where they keep a somewhat updated list. As I stated in yesterday's post, an issue you may run into on a private tracker is that the content you are looking for is not available, that's where specialty sites come in handy. If you cannot find what you are looking for on your private tracker of choice, let's say sports, then you can be sure that there is a private tracker that specializes in just sports, if you only care about football, you can find one that only features that.
On a public tracker you could download the file and be on your way, a frowned upon practice dubbed hit and run, but on a private tracker you are required to seed that torrent after you have downloaded it to help others leech from it. You may have to seed for a designated period of time, at least 48 hours or just simply seed back the ratio you have downloaded, example being if you download a 1GB file then you should upload at least the same 1 GB. That brings us to ratio requirements which vary by trackers but typically want you to have uploaded more than half of the data that you have downloaded, keep in mind that if you are trying to get onto a more elite private tracker then a 1.0 ratio is not that impressive. Some private trackers will have torrents designated as free leech where you can download the torrent and not have it count against your download total, effectively a ratio booster. So, I guess your big question is how do you get onto a private tracker?
Some private trackers allow you to go to their site and sign up, this could be one of your best options for getting started and can also be a stepping stone for getting into the better private trackers available if they require proof of your ratio.
Private trackers may hold open enrollment, a temporary designated period where you can sign up for that tracker without an invite.
Invite only trackers are exactly that, you will need to be invited to join and unless you personally know the person inviting you, you may have to provide proof that you can understand how a private tracker works. Some of the more elite private trackers may only issue invites to their donors, people that donate money to the continued operation of the site. There are several levels of elite trackers, some of which you may have to take a quiz to be accepted to.
I feel at this point you understand the legality of torrenting; the difference in private and public trackers; how to set up your computer to start torrenting; where to look for private trackers and understanding common terms you may encounter in torrenting. Also, TorrentFreak is a great source to keep up with the latest news in the torrenting world.
I should preface this by letting you know that the act of torrenting itself is not illegal, it is specifically the content which is downloaded that could make you torrenting something illegal. People that have downloaded copyrighted material through torrenting have been arrested and owners/operators of sites that support torrents containing copyrighted material have also been arrested. However, more often than not downloading copyrighted material could lead to a stern letter from the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) or Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA) or potential lawsuits from the aforementioned Associations.
Think of BitTorrent as a way of transmitting files across the internet; a torrent as an indivdual file; torrenting as the act of downloading files. Files that are transmitted can vary in size from a single .jpg which is a couple of kB's in size to entire video libraries which can be hundreds of GB's in size. With the speeds that BitTorrent is capable of, a full movie will take a few minutes to download given there are enough people sharing the file. Sharing the file is not only uploading a file to be downloaded but also supporting that file after you upload it so others can download that same file, you in this case would be a seeder while the person trying to download that file would be a leecher. If you upload a file to a tracker site and do not in turn seed that file then nobody will be able to download it but if you upload it and seed then others can download from it and become seeders as well, after they have finished the download. This video gives not only a basic overview of BitTorrent, it also double as one of the worst commercial advertisements ever made.
With a basic understanding of what BitTorrent does and also the concept of needing seeders to allow downloads for leechers, let's discuss how to get started with torrents. There are mimimal hardware capabilities required for torrenting with possibly only a hard drive large enough for your downloaded files, an inexpensive external hard drive will work just fine for this. What you will need to make torrenting possible is a torrent client, of which µTorrent is currently the most popular outside of China. After you have a torrent client that enables the file sharing, you need to know where to look to get files that you can torrent. The Pirate Bay is one of the most widely known magnet link sites which we will label a public tracker meaning anyone can access it. The process after finding a torrent you like is as follows: click the download link to have that file load in your client; click the button to accept that torrent being added to your client; opening the file after the torrent has finished downloading; an optional step may be needing to unzip the file so you can access it. Public trackers will give you a huge selection of content to choose from with an equally as large number of peers seeding and leeching, the downside to public trackers is that there can be a public record of what your IP address has downloaded. A more secure way of torrenting would be from private trackers which usually require signing up, and in more elite private trackers, the need to be invited.
Acceptance into private trackers could also require proof that you are not only familiar with
torrenting, but you are also a person that seeds more than you
leech, or ratio requirements. Private trackers give a little more piece of
mind but they can have wait times associated with downloads, not have
enough seeders for downloads or just not have a particular download you
are looking for. I feel that is more than enough to give an overview of what
exactly torrenting is, next time I will get into the more advanced terms
and options associated with torrenting.
I don't really think they are that good quality of gifs, but they are easy to make and it prevents me from having to search for a gif when I feel an online exchange will be enhanced by them.
I changed the gif size to Large for this post.
A copy of the video, youtube link... : This should be a no brainer, if you are going to make a gif from a video than you need a copy of the video. You could download a copy from you favorite tracker or you could just find a copy of it on the internet.
YTD Youtube Downloader: If you prefer not to torrent your shows I would recommend making sure you have a downloader that works with the particular site, YTD is free and it works on several sites including multiple NSFW ones.
Windows Live Movie Maker : If you have Windows than you should have this, I did not know this existed on my computer until I specifically searched for it almost two years after I bought my computer. Your video will not be able to be turned into a gif after this step unless you make sure you Publish Movie or Save Movie and not Publish Project in WLMM.
Add the video to WLMM
Edit the start/stop time, gifs under 5 secs work effortlessly with makeagif and imgur.
makeagif.com: I registered an account to eliminate their watermark, it also raised my size cap from 2MB to 10MB.
imgur.com: I registered and account and it increased my cap size. it also allows you to group your gifs into much larger albums. Imgur is an optional step.
This is definitely not the best way of making gifs and I don't believe it's the quickest but in the end it's free.
