ROOKIE QUESTIONS

[michills]

I am new to the Torrents and I have a few questions I could not find answers to on the site.

I'm using Safari on osX.3.8 with Azureus for my client

I have downloaded a torrent to an .avi file and my quicktime does not recognize it, any suggestions?

If I get a dvd file can I watch it on my computer or do I have to burn it? what are the file extensions for dvd files?

What is a normal download speed (i know they vary, but I am only getting about 10-15 kb/s...is that normal?)

Thank you!

mh

[U2Lynne]

We have no avi files on this site, so you shouldn't be trying to read them with quicktime. All the files are flac, shn, ape, or a VIDEO_TS folder (for DVDs0 which will include BUP, IFO, and VOB files.

You can watch a VIDEO_TS folder on your harddrive by using either the DVD Player that came with your OS or by downloading VLC from videolan.org. With either player, just tell it you want to open a VIDEO_TS folder and browse to the folder and select it.

Download speeds, and upload speeds, will vary with every torrent depending on the speed your ISP gave you, whether you forwarded your posts, how many seeds there are, how many leechers there are, and all sorts of other little things.

[michills]

Thanks!

My mistake, my AVI file was from somewhere else, good call.

Any idea why quicktime wouldn't recognize it? maybe it was incomplete...??

[RainDawg]

Quicktime is not an AVI player, it is a player for Apple's Quicktime Video Codec (I'm tempted to diverge into a temper-tantrum about the proprietary hell involved here, but that's a bit off-topic).

Lynne already mentioned VLC, and I second that endorsement. Not only will it pay the DVD files you'll download from this site, but will also play AVI files that you may have gotten from one of those "other" torrent sites ;).

[ffooky]

Thanks!

My mistake, my AVI file was from somewhere else, good call.

Any idea why quicktime wouldn't recognize it? maybe it was incomplete...??

You can get QuickTime to play a lot of AVI files by installing various components in /Library/QuickTime. A good place to start is here (http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/?521cmp=endivxmacen) but Google for "XVid quicktime" etc. Lynne's right to recommend VLC as it'll play more of them "out of the box" but if you ever want to burn any to VCD/SVCD/DVD (for whatever reason) you'll be able to use Toast to prepare them rather than ffmpegX etc.