What the heck are fingerprints anyways?

[P.J.]

I see them up... I've copied and pasted them up... but what are they? How do they get fingerprints and what do you use them for?

[dcbullet]

Checksums Demystified.

[P.J.]

Checksums Demystified.

That was way too technical. I still don't get it. I just delete all those extra files when I get a torrent. I just worry about the flac or shn files.

[dcbullet]

They allow you to tell if the files you have are the same as the files that someone else has are the same.

They also allow you to tell if the files you have downloaded with no errors.

Is that simple enough?

[P.J.]

But I get files that have errors all the time with fingerprints. At least they are like ripped from CDs or CD-R that have scratches.

[uninvited94]

Phil?!?

http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=65027

[U2Lynne]

Think of fingerprints as, well, fingerprints of your own fingers. They are unique to you and each of your fingers. Well, each track in a show has a unique fingerprint. So, if you have a list of these fingerprints and drop this list into an application such as Traders Little Helper, it will check to make sure the files you have are the same as the ones in the fingerprint list. This is good to make sure your download completed correctly or that after you burned the files onto a disc that they are still OK.

You may want to look at our FAQ - Md5 Checksum Types (http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/faq.php?faq=audio#faq_md5)

[Five]

That was way too technical. I still don't get it. I just delete all those extra files when I get a torrent. I just worry about the flac or shn files.
the trouble with doing that is if you want to trade you have no information about the show to give, no way to differentiate your version from better or worse versions. and you're only saving 3k or so of disk space :hmm:

But I get files that have errors all the time with fingerprints. At least they are like ripped from CDs or CD-R that have scratches.
if they're ripped with EAC (exactaudiocopy.de) or similar as required at this site, the errors can often be corrected by re-reading the sectors... something 99% of ripping progs don't do, they just write the data, never worrying or checking for errors along the way. EAC also provides error reports that can be saved as a log file which you can look at to check if there were any bad scratches on the disc.

of course if the scratches were on previous copies of the disc or get into the flac files somehow at the end then the fingerprints will serve to identify the flawed set ... then when you search for a better version you can compare your fingerprints to the new set posted and if they read the same then you can save yourself time re-downloading the same shit.

did you download a lot of files that have errors in them from here? what shows?