Easy guide to download a movie and how to make it work!

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:06 pm

Hello dear reader, I suspect that you just as me are a big movie lover but have some trouble with getting everything to work. I’ll try to collect everything that will make the thought you have about downloading a movie to a working one. Since this post is posted in this site’s forum I’ll aim it towards this site, but the main things are similar or the same at any other torrent site. I will also use µTorrent , Firefox and VLC media player in the examples.

I'll use a movie called Dead Man Drinking as the example movie in this post.

First thing you’ll have to do is to open your web browser and get yourself to this site Isohunt , but since your reading this I suspect your already here. Enter the name of the movie you’re searching for in the Search box, in this case “Dead Man Drinking” and hit “Enter”.

Now you’ll see a lot of different so called torrents which at least claims to be the movie you’re looking for.

Generally you just have to look at the green alternatively red text that is located left of the torrents name to be sure it’s good torrent, if it has many comments and just as many + stars it’s usually a good torrent that will give you a working movie in the end.

Another thing that you need to check is if the torrent you want to download is seeded, in other words uploaded by others so that you can download it. This is shown under S , if the number is below 1 you are better of looking elsewhere.

There are many “Types” of movie releases and there are many ways to rate them, many like to write A (as in a udio) = 1-10 and V (as in v ideo) = 1-10 – “A8 V7” to rate the release, however many tend to confuse if they are rating a specific type quality or the general movie quality, so this can some times be missleading. Also worth to keep in mind is that a release that might look great on a computer screen might not look as "great" on a 50 inch 1080p TV.

Video Sources (Types):

CAM

A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this wont be possible, so the camera may shake. Also seating placement isn't always ideal and it might be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there's text on the screen, but a lot of times these are left with triangular borders on the top and bottom of the screen. Sound is taken from the onboard microphone of the camera, and especially in comedies, laughter can often be heard during the film. Due to these factors picture and sound quality are usually quite poor, but sometimes we're lucky, and the theater will be fairly empty and a fairly clear signal will be heard.

TELESYNC (TS)

A telesync is the same spec as a CAM except it uses an external audio source (most likely an audio jack in the chair for the hearing impaired). A direct audio source does not ensure a good quality audio source, as a lot of background noise can interfere. A lot of the times a telesync is filmed in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera, giving a better picture quality. Quality ranges drastically, check the sample before downloading the full release. A high percentage of Telesyncs are CAMs that have been mislabeled.

TELECINE (TC)

A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the reels. Sound and picture should be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio, although 4:3 telecines have existed. TC should not be confused with TimeCode, which is a visible counter on screen throughout the film. Most R5 releases are Telecines.

Rx

Typically these are high quality Telecines intended for the East European market (released in Russian language only) to combat piracy in that region. Ironically, these movies then have the English audio track from another source (such as a CAM) dubbed over them and get released. Until recently these releases have been tagged as R5 but we're starting to see similar sources from other regions tagged as R3 or R6. The number is derived from the DVD region the source came from.

SCREENER (SCR)

A VHS tape, sent to rental stores, and various other places for promotional use. A screener is supplied on a VHS tape, and is usually in a 4:3 (full screen) a/r, although letterboxed screeners are sometimes found. The main draw back is a "ticker" (a message that scrolls past at the bottom of the screen, with the copyright and anti-piracy telephone number). Also, if the tape contains any serial numbers, or any other markings that could lead to the source of the tape, these will have to be blocked, usually with a black mark over the section. This is sometimes only for a few seconds, but unfortunately on some copies this will last for the entire film, and some can be quite big. Depending on the equipment used, screener quality can range from excellent if done from a MASTER copy, to very poor if done on an old VHS recorder thru poor capture equipment on a copied tape.

HDTV

Commonly used to tag high definition TV rips.

DVD-SCREENER (DVDscr)

Same premise as a screener, but transferred from DVD. Usually letterbox format but without the extras that a retail DVD would contain. The ticker is not usually in the black bars, and will disrupt the viewing. If the ripper has any skill, a DVDscr should be very good.

DVDRip

A copy of the retail DVD and should be excellent quality with no markers/tickers. DVD screeners are sometimes mislabed as DVD rips.

WORKPRINT (WP)

A workprint is a copy of the film that has not been finished. It can be missing scenes, music, and quality can range from excellent to very poor. Some WPs are very different from the final print (Men In Black is missing all the aliens, and has actors in their places) and others can contain extra scenes (Jay and Silent Bob) . WPs can be nice additions to the collection once a good quality final has been obtained.

BLURAY

Blu-ray Disc (also known as BD, BDRIP or Blu-ray) is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the standard DVD format. Blu-ray discs are in high definition format and as such are the best quality source commonly available.

More info about various movie terms can also be found here.

When you found yourself a torrent that’s looking good it’s time to download it! Press download and place the .torrent file at a place you like, perhaps in the same folder that you later on will download the movie in, so you later on have everything bound to that movie in one folder, but organize as you you like.

Client

Now you’ll have to get a BitTorrent client, this you’ll use to download your movies with using the torrent file you downloaded before. I would recommend that you used µTorrent . To get µTorrent to run as effective as possible you can have a look at the recommended preferences settings in this sticky .

Go to where you saved the torrent and open it, or “add a torrent” from inside the program itself and select the torrent you want to use. Now you might want to select what files you want to download, you might not want anything else except the actual movie, just deselect everything else then.

Choose where you want your final download to be saved, would for example be a great idea to save it next to the torrent in the folder you created before so you easily can find it afterwards. Now you should successfully have added a torrent for download, the program will give you all the info you need, such as for example how much time that is estimated before the download is finished.

When you’re done downloading the movie you can remove the torrent from the program by selecting the finished torrent and hit the big red X labeled “Remove”, however as it is considered good etiquette to “seed/upload” the movie (or any other torrent for that matter) a while so others can download the movie as you just did, might even be so that if you don’t your so called “Share Ratio” will drop to a point where you won’t be able to download everything you want. A good rule is to upload as much as you downloaded.

So the movie you downloaded won’t play? That’s because you need to use either a media player that can open all the different movie formats or a codec pack that will make it possible for you to use the existing player to play the movie. With GSpot you can find out what codecs you need to play your movie. You’ll find the different codec packs in this sticky , I do however recommend that you use VLC media player or SMPlayer instead, it’s simpler, will open every movie you’ll want to watch every time and have many if not all functions you’ll need from a media player.

Worth noting is that there’s a lot of fake movies out there, generally speaking most movies that are compressed or requires passwords to extract is just fakes, some movies only tell you to download a specific player to work, never ever do this! However when reading the comments of a torrent don’t be alarmed if someone shouts out fake, it might just be someone that hasn’t read all the useful information that this forum offers about how to download a torrent and using the files that you end up with.

To learn more about how to spot fake movies and .torrents you can click here.

Updated 22-07-2011
Image fix 24-02-2011

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:21 pm

nice post...very well planned

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:56 pm

There we go, updated, as the time is 05.55 over here I probaly has a spelling or gramar error in a place or two... Razz

Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 7:26 pm

nice post... very useful

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:49 pm

Hi,
Thank you!

Really helpfull!
I probably skipped some of your suggestions?
I have the movies downloading but the time it is taking is really slow!!!!!
It has been downloading for 2 days and only about 11% of 38+ gb.
It shows it will take anywhere from 1 sk to 4 wks. Wow!!
Any way to speed it up???

Rath150 Embarassed

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:57 pm

May I start by asking what speed your connection have? 38GB is quite alot and it might not be anything you can do to speed it up.

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:32 pm

Okay, that helped alot, but when i go to make a DVD, I get an error. I downloaded it exactly the way you said. When I go to START, Windows DVD maker, I select the movie, click on add, click on the movie and then I get an error that says:
0 files could be added
1 file could not be added, (then it gives the file location, and says that the file is not valid or corrupt.

What do I do from here. Any help would be appreciated.

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:00 pm

moochie101 wrote:

Okay, that helped alot, but when i go to make a DVD, I get an error. I downloaded it exactly the way you said. When I go to START, Windows DVD maker, I select the movie, click on add, click on the movie and then I get an error that says:
0 files could be added
1 file could not be added, (then it gives the file location, and says that the file is not valid or corrupt.

What do I do from here. Any help would be appreciated.

First off, make sure you are using a dvd-r with enough space (standard 4.71 gb should be enough for most everything), but that should be just common sense. I can't think of any real solutions off the top of my head, though. Make sure the file is not read-only (uncheck the box in properties, though I am not sure this will help you at all) and try changing the default burn speed to something a tad smaller (you should do this anyway).

To be honest, windows dvd/movie maker have proven to be less than reliable to me in the past. I googled the problem and found this so you might want to look into that and see if your problem is just because it really is a file format that doesn't work.

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:23 pm

You are amazing!!!! thank you so much. I downloaded the decoder and it worked! I can't thank you enough!!!

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:49 pm

moochie101 wrote:

You are amazing!!!! thank you so much. I downloaded the decoder and it worked! I can't thank you enough!!!

I'm glad I could help Smile

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 6:50 am

ohhh buddy nice job,its really helpfull for those who are wandering here and there for this.............

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 9:24 am

Just a heads up if you do not download 100% of the content in the .torrent( that means if you just checked off the movie and not the others) the tracker will keep on lableing you as a leech...Just a fyi.

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:55 pm

Really it is helpful and details by using step by step explaining. but many the files i need to download is big so do i accelarate the download ?

Thanks A Lot

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:40 am

Hello Sued,

Need some help from you. I downloaded fast and furious 4 a couple of times but it asks for a Qvee player, the second time it was a .rar file, and it had a password. Can you please send me a link where I can download a good copy of this movie and watch it...

Await ur reply.
Lance.

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:46 am

lancecloth...those files are fake...go read HOW TO SPOT A FAKE in the forum..it will save you time