Download Movies & TV Shows: Rookie's Guide to Bit-Torrent

note: Since this post has been put up, mininova has been shut down. www.thepiratebay.org, and www.torrentreactor.net are good alternatives.

I’m always hearing friends, family, randoms, saying they wish they knew how to download movies or television shows off the internet (for free). While there are some pretty good sites for streaming – and many television networks actually upload new episodes to their website after airing the night of, or soon after – it’s not the same as having a large library of all your favorite shows and movies available at your finger tips. The added disadvantage to all of these streaming sites (legal and illegal alike) is that they usually sacrifice quality; that, and the added loading period makes this quite the arduous process. As such, the following guide should set you in the right direction to start downloading to your hearts content.

Try to follow these steps as best you can; at the end of this article you will find video tutorials which will guide you through this process, from beginning to end.

Step 1: Downloading your Bit-Torrent client.

To download torrents, you’ll need a client (you) program that is used in conjunction with these files to download your content. www.utorrent.com (UTorrent) is the most popular Windows XP/Vista (PC) application, but if you’re a Mac OS X user, you’ll want to download www.transmissionbt.com (Transmission). For utorrent, click download and run the installation file, once everything is finished, you’ll find the shortcut on your desktop. For Transmission, download the *.dmg file, once it’s open, copy Transmission to your applications folder, and run it from that location.

Step 2: Downloading *.torrent files

mininova - The ultimate Bittorent source!

When you ‘bit-torrent’, all you’re doing is downloading & uploading from a network of users who have interests similar to your own. The way you tell your client program (uTorrent or Transmission) what it is you want to download, is by finding the proper ‘index’ or torrent file. So, if you want to join that network and start downloading, you’ll need the torrent file linking you to the network of that specific file(s). The best way of doing this, is going to ‘torrent websites’ which have search-able libraries ready for you to browse.

www.eztv.it

Two of the best full-content, public websites are www.mininova.org and www.thepiratebay.org. I don’t personally use the pirate bay, but it comes with strong acclaim, and if I can’t find what I’m looking for (rare) I’ll take a look there as well.

I personally download more T.V. shows than anything else, and to keep track of what’s new, I use www.eztv.it. EZTV is handy because they always list what new shows are airing on that specific day, and usually are quick to upload their torrents. They’re what you call a 0-day site (uploads are made a few hours after the episode airs), so if you miss an episode of House or Lost, you can log-on to EZTV a couple hours later, and find the torrent to download it.

A quick side-note: different torrent sites have different specialities. Some focus only on television shows, some just movies, and some do movies, software, books, and the whole lot. Some require registration, some require invitations, and some are just public to anyone and everyone. If you keep to Mininova and EZTV, then just ignore this note; once you become more of torrent guru, you can start exploring elsewhere, not that you’ll need to.

Step 3: Finding the best torrent.

Sometimes search returns won’t always bring you what request. Sometimes they’ll even bring you returns that you won’t want. Variations in files such as type, quality, size and language will become an issue if you’re not careful. You won’t want to download something with poor quality, or quality that exceeds your needs, or file types that are problematic.

• File type: Make sure you’re downloading files that are *.avi; don’t download *.mp4 or *.mov files – they’re usually pre-iPod formatted files with smaller resolutions which will look bad on a full-screened computer.
• File quality: You’ll find that some files will have jibberish in the file name. Things like 720p, HDTV XviD-LOL, AC3 5 1 are descriptions that are usually placed in the file name, referring to video or audio quality. 720p implies a higher resolution, XviD a codec being used to compress file size while maintaining quality, and AC3 5 1 referring to 5.1 surround sound capabilities.
• File size: There is an easy guideline for new television shows that are being uploaded daily: You should have about 175MB for a show that airs in a 30 minute time-slot, and 350MB for a show that airs in a 1 hour time-slot. For movies, it varies since some movies run for an hour and a half, and some run close to two or two and a half. Sometimes you won’t have much of a selection, and you’ll have to download a 700MB movie hoping it’s good quality – if it’s a shorter movie then chances are good, but if you’re downloading something like The Dark Knight – a movie that runs for more than 150 minutes, you’ll be sure to exceed 1GB for a good quality download.
• Language: Be careful not to download hastily, you might find that your file names are including suffix’ such as ITA, GER, RUS referring to the dubbing of audio – there’s no option to change language once your download has been made.

The last, but arguably most important criteria to consider when searching through torrents, is the amount of seeds (uploaders) and leechers (downloaders) to consider. The more seeds the more people you have uploading the file(s) for you to download. More means faster speed. The more users, the more ‘healthy’ the torrent is; you’re more likely to finish the transfer quickly thanks to higher speeds.

Adding to uTorrent

Download this torrent!‘ – on EZTV, just make a direct choice on the front page and it will start your download). The torrent files are tiny, (usually within 100kb) so they should download quickly, once that’s done, you execute (double click) the file and if you’ve installed and run your client properly once before, you should notice that your torrent client opens up automatically and runs the pop-up I’ve displayed, prompting you to add your new torrent to the queue.

Adding to Transmission

Once added, you’ll notice that after a couple minutes your download speed will start to climb; usually it’ll be slow to begin with, but as you connect to more and more peers (seeds and leechers), it will steadily increase.

One of the greatest limiting factors on your download speed, will actually be how much you’re currently uploading. It’ll seem a little contradictory to the process to be stingy, but you want to limit your upload speed while you’re downloading to get the best performance out of your internet. The simplest way to think about it, is to imagine your download and upload bandwidth as a large pipe, and if your upload is reaching it’s potential, there’s no room left for your download speed to do the same (upload takes priority in this scenario). To avoid limiting your download speed while you’re torrenting, you will want to limit your global upload speed. If you set your client to a global limit (usually to 20kb/s), no matter how many torrents you’re running simultaneously, your overall maximum upload will not surpass 20kb/s; your client will determine which torrent gets how much upload, and you won’t have to worry about it. It’s good practice to upload at least 20kb/s, I’ve noticed that when I’m more generous with my upload, my download will be rewarded by the tracker (the server that governs the connections between all seeds and leechers). To get a good idea of how much you can afford to upload without limiting your download, visit www.speakeasy.net/speedtest, choose a location close to yours, and observe the results.

Setting your limits in Transmission

To be safe, set your upload limit at least 10-20kb/s below your maximum if you’re only torrenting; if you’re using your computer and surfing the internet and doing other tasks at the same time, you’ll notice considerable lack of speed. Set your torrent download maximum 100kb/s below your potential, and upload 30-40kb/s below your potential, and you should be able to surf with minimal disturbance.

Setting your limits in uTorrent

I feel an imperative to encourage you to keep your torrents running after they have completed downloading. Once you reach 100%, you will become a seed, and peers that connect to you will only be those who have yet to complete the download themselves. Keeping your torrent running after completion, sustains this process and allows it to thrive – makes the content available to more people; after all, you would not have this content to share had someone not made it available to you in the first place. It’s good practice to seed until you’ve reached a 1.00 ratio (uploading and downloading equal). However, you should be aware of your monthly bandwidth allocation before you start mass-uploading or mass-downloading.

A couple years after the internet became a big deal, internet providers quickly realized that people were abusing file sharing, and they started limiting how much you can download and upload in a month (your bandwidth limit). For a novice user, this limit is hard to surpass; but for an avid torrent user – a whole different story. Make a good balance of give and take, make sure that you’re not surpassing your limits, but don’t be stingy and close your torrents as soon as they’re complete, a selfish world can’t sustain itself – remember the 1:1 ratio!

Step 5: Enjoying your content!

The last little part is just running your media. Sometimes there are special codecs, or you’re forced to download strange file formats for obscure movies that were encoded years ago. The most popular application to run various kinds of audio/video files, is called VLC media player. It’s supported on all Windows and OS X platforms, and is available on their website, www.videolan.org, in the downloads section.

Associating *.avi files with VLC in OS X

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the application (on Windows, just run the installer, and click next until you’re finished. On OS X, open the *.dmg file, and copy ALL of the contents into a folder named VLC in the applications folder), you’ll need to make sure that files are being associated properly. This means that when you’re double clicking a newly downloaded *.avi file, VLC launches automatically instead of whatever native software that would run these files. Lucky for you Windows users, VLC will automatically change the association, your job is done, feel free to enjoy whatever it is that you’ve downloaded; for OS X users, you’ll have to follow one last step:

Find the downloaded file, and open the file’s properties. You can do this by either right clicking, and choosing ‘Get Info’, or holding the Apple Key and then pushing I. Once this is done, under ‘Open with’ click the drop down, choose ‘Other…’ and find the VLC application, choose, then make sure before you close the dialog, hit “Change All” so you won’t have to do this for each individual file.

In addition to this guide, I’ve posted video tutorials which show me (from start to finish) setting up and downloading using the clients described above. If you’re on OS X click here, if you’re using Windows click here.

Hopefully this guide has been more than just useful for you; if you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact me.

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