March 17, 2009 by sharky
Maintaining a good ratio at BitMeTV can be arduous, especially for those who don’t own a seedbox. Even TVTorrents.com is tricky for new users, since there’s a minimum 1:1 ratio on the site, making it rather difficult to get started. Here’s how to seed (reseed) downloaded individual TV episodes to season packs, even if you’ve changed the paths and/or names of the files.
This tip is explained in two segments, depending on whether the previously downloaded TV episodes are the same name & location, or not. We explain how this works from torrents from public trackers; or if you only have a few episodes of a particular season, in which you’ll become a partial seeder.
Preface: Seeding TV Episodes From Public Sites to Private Trackers
For individual episodes of regular-definition mainstream TV shows, fortunately there are only a handful of TV scene groups who continuously "win" the race to put out the episodes first. They are: LOL, 0TV, NoTV, XOR, FQM, 2HD, NoGrp, Caph, and FOV. (There are others, but these are the main groups). This is important to note, since public torrent sites mimic private ones. An episodic search - for example "Lost S03E19" - at Mininova will yield just one "best choice" XviD torrent, belonging to just one of the aforementioned groups. It is rare to find two groups (LOL and 0TV) releasing the exact same episode, and usually only occurs in the event of a nuke or a proper. So it’s fairly easy to ascertain exactly which release a private tracker will also be hosting for a similar torrent.
Files that are archived (RARs) — 0day/general trackers (TL, RevoTT, IPTorrents) do not unrar (extract) the TV episodes (*.avi’s) in their torrents; they are left intact as the scene originally released them. However, on public trackers, lately the trend is inclined towards finding the episode already extracted and playable, with nothing more than the *.avi file in the torrent. This is largely due to "uploaders" such as EZTV & VTV who extract the releases - the new version of the torrent out trumps even its scene counterpart, in terms of popularity (although scene-release ‘RARsets’ are still commonly found in older episodes).
In any event, unrarred TV episodes found on public torrent indexers are perfect for seeding (reseeding) to private TV trackers, since RARs are not allowed on most TV-only sites (including BitMeTV, TVTorrents.com, Tv.Torrents.ro/Freshon.tv, BtN, TV-Vault.me & TVTorrentz.org). The actual file names of individual episodes are not important; these can still be seeded on private trackers even if you manually renamed the files to organize them, or if this was already done by a torrent site. (see Part II).
Part I (Basic): Reseeding Same File Names, One Location
This quick method assumes that you’ve already downloaded several (or all) episodes for a TV series, and want to seed them to an existing ’season’ pack on a private TV tracker. For this method to work they have to be identical to the files in the torrent on the site (that you wish to seed to) and that the file names haven’t been changed in any way. This method works well with private-to-private reseeding (also known as preseeding, or cross-seeding).
1.) First, put all the single episodes for the season into one folder. The folder name is arbitrary, since we’ll be changing the download (or seeding) folder in µTorrent anyways.
In the ‘Dexter S03′ example above, these were the ‘best’ releases found on Mininova for each episode. In addition, they were also the only XviD ‘hdtv-rips’ found on private 0day trackers for each. Below is a look at TorrentLeech’s Season 3 Pack (although we should note, this TL example won’t work directly as-is to a TV tracker such as BitMeTV, since TL’s are still in RARs). More importantly, the release group for each episode is consistent across multiple trackers.
2.) Find the season pack that corresponds precisely with the episodes. For example, BitMeTV’s Dexter S03:
3.) Download the .torrent, and open it in µTorrent (but do not start it yet). The "Add New Torrent" popup window will show you the properties for the new torrent, including the path where it is to be saved. (TIP: This should open by default, but if you have changed it you can get it back by going to Preferences > Directories and making sure that the box "Always show dialog on manual add" is checked). Next, change the download path by clicking the [...] icon - and browse to your folder in Step 1. Click OK once found.
You can either just start the torrent, or do a "Force Re-Check" back in the main tasks window - µTorrent will now do a hash check to make sure that they are the same. Once completed, seeding should commence (although you may have to download some small parts).
Partial Seeding With Select Episodes
This can be done before or after you change the folder path in Step 3.
Part II (Advanced): Using the uTorrent "Relocate" Feature
In versions of µTorrent 1.8 and up, uTorrent’s "Relocate" feature allows you to seed different files in a torrent from different places. For example, if you have files in a torrent on different drives, or different locations on the same drive.
Not only that, but it also supports seeding of files with different names, as well as different locations (at the same time). The catch here is, they must have originally been the same files. An example is if you changed the file names from their ’scene’ names for organizational or structural reasons - such as for burning to DVD - but want to keep seeding them without renaming them back. Another helpful application for this is that some trackers (especially public ones) may change the names of the extracted video files in a scene release. You’ll be able to seed these releases to a private tracker, regardless of their file names - without having to first find out the official scene name of the release, either. Here’s how it’s done:
1.) Assuming you already have some (or all) of the TV episodes for a season torrent, download the desired torrent, and open it up in µTorrent. Important: Do not start the torrent, make sure to uncheck the "Start torrent" checkbox, but add it to µTorrent’s main task window (by clicking ‘OK’). If desired, you can de-select files here in the "Add New Torrent" window before clicking OK, although this can be done later in the "Files" tab before starting the torrent.
2.) Back in the main window, click the "Files" tab in the bottom list. If you don’t see it, press F5 on the keyboard - this will display the "Show Detailed Info" tabs.
3.) Click on a file in the torrent list, right-click and select "Relocate…".
4.) Now, two things can be accomplished - you can either browse to a different file name (for selecting a similar file - i.e. one that you renamed), or you can browse to a ’same’ file name (in a different location); or a combination of the two. The example below, we did both (by changing the path and selecting a different file name, all in the same "Relocate").
After selecting "Relocate" for the first file, we browsed to a different file name in a different directory; to a file that is now called "Dexter - Season 3 Ep 01.avi". Click "Save" to complete the seeding change.
Back in the "Files" tab, you’ll notice that the file name is now different, as well as the seeding path:
That’s it! Start your torrent as usual, let it hash check, and ultimately seed your renamed files.
Note: If you’re changing file names for multiple files, you’ll need to do each file individually (repeat steps 3 & 4 for each). However, if the file names are remaining the same, but you’re only changing the seeding path - you can highlight all files and select "Relocate…" and browse once to change the path for all.
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