The BitTorrent protocol lets you find and download massive (and small) files from the internet – here’s how to do it and where to get legal torrents.
In our how to rip anything series, Jenneth Orantia and Mike Le Voi show you how to (legally) copy, rip or download virtually any form of media so you can enjoy it permanently.
The BitTorrent protocol has become synonymous with piracy, but over the last year it’s also witnessed the arrival of dozens of BitTorrent sites with legal downloads, which have fantastic content, ranging from public domain movies and TV shows to software and Linux distros.
These sites are also safer than illegal ones. There is less likely to be infected software and you’re not going to be targeted by copyright holders and their investigators, who have shown they’re not backing away from the fight to punish people who download copyrighted content. Here’s a quick guide to finding legal torrents, such as high-quality videos and other multimedia files on the net so you can play them on your home theatre system.
uTorrent: popular, free and easy to use.
Getting started with torrents
First of all, you need a broadband internet connection with a high data transfer quota, as downloading torrents can eat an entire month’s quota in a matter of days.
Find BitTorrent client software that allows you to download files. One of the best BitTorrent clients is uTorrent, which is free (no adware or spyware) and can be downloaded from
www.utorrent.com. There is now also a version for Mac users. We like uTorrent because it’s a small download and even runs on a netbook.
Find a legal torrents site (see below). These are sites that maintain indexes of torrents (trackers) that track which computers have the files you want. So torrent sites don’t have any content; they just point to the computers that have it. When you download a file using BitTorrent, it’s being gathered bit by bit from several peers and reassembled on your computer.
Using torrents
Go to a torrent search engine (such as
www.clearbits.net) and enter the name of the legal content you’re looking for. If the content is available, you’ll be prompted to download the torrent file. This isn’t the actual file you want to play, but the small tracker file that tells your torrent client (ie uTorrent) where to find the file. Download it and then open it with your client.
Your torrent client will then attempt to locate and commence downloading the file. Be patient as it can take several hours to download large files, particularly if there are only a few peers with the file. While files from legal torrent services should be safe, it’s best to always check the file with antivirus and antispyware software. Avoid illegal content. At worst, there’s a greater risk of it carrying a nasty payload of spyware or a virus, and at best you could download a multi-gigabyte file only to find it’s empty or doesn’t play.
Once you’ve downloaded the movie, you’ll need a media player in order to be able to watch it — we recommend VLC, which is open source, free and supports just about every codec (video file format) out there. You can download the latest Windows, Linux or Mac version of VLC from
www.videolan.org.
Secret tips for faster torrents
The main thing to know about downloading is how to identify which files will download faster. Typically a search of a torrent search engine may turn up several versions of the same file from different places. The one that will download the fastest is the one with the biggest number of seeders. You get this information in the columns next to the file in the torrent search engine, which will show the size, number and upload date of the files in the torrent, and the number of seeders and leechers.
The last two are the most important. The seeders are users who have a complete copy of the file for others to download and the leechers are users who are currently downloading it and have portions of it for others to download as well. In the BitTorrent protocol, once you start downloading bits of a file, other users — known as peers — can start downloading those bits from you.
The theory (and genius) of BitTorrent holds that the more popular the file, the faster it will download. Since more people are downloading it, each file also has more people (peers) uploading it. But more important than total number of seeders and leechers (known as the swarm) is the ratio of seeders to leechers. Torrents with the most seeders and least leechers will download the fastest — primarily because seeders have their entire bandwidth devoted to uploading the files, whereas leechers are both uploading and downloading. So in theory, a torrent whose swarm contains 20% seeders and 80% leechers will download more slowly than one in which there are 40% seeders and 60% leechers.
Ideal number of torrent downloads
It’s tempting to open up dozens of torrent downloads in a torrent client and leave them downloading for the next few hours. But too many torrents means all open connections and requests will max out your bandwidth and not be serviced properly. The ideal number of concurrent downloads depends on your speed. Clients such as uTorrent feature a speed test which recommends the ideal number, but there are also a number of BitTorrent calculators that will work out the ideal number of simultaneous downloads you should make for your speed. A popular one is
http://infinite-source.de/az/az-calc.html.
Cap your speed
A BitTorrent connection has a channel for uploads and downloads. When you start downloading a file, the BitTorrent protocol takes it from a seed (another user on the network with a full copy), but as you download portions, it lets users (peers) start downloading parts of it. It’s best to tweak your upload/download ratio so your upload speed is about 80% of total bandwidth.
Legal torrents
Thankfully, there are now countless sites offering legal downloads. The fun is in finding the good stuff among all the eclectic content. These listed below are just a few. While some of the content appears a bit tame at first, you’ll be rewarded if you’re prepared to search them thoroughly, because you’ll inevitably find plenty of worthwhile (and legal) material to watch on your TV, PC or portable.
ClearBits Carries torrents of everything from books and software to movies and sound samples and loops. Books include classics like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Wuthering Heights, while in the videos section, Citizen Engineer is an interesting series about open-source hardware, electronics and art, with tutorials — even for things such as SIM card readers.
bt.etree.orgIf you love recordings of bands or artists in concert, this is the site for you. It’s provided by the etree.org community for sharing live concert recordings. The quality of the downloads is excellent and the site has a strong community. The great thing about this torrent engine is that it looks and behaves just like a classic torrent site, making it a great place to learn how to download torrents.
Public Domain TorrentsThis is a smorgasbord of free content, particularly old movies ranging from action and drama to comedy and sci-fi (with great stuff such as Teenage Zombies and Attack of the Giant Leeches). You can also get just about the entire set of Charlie Chaplin movies.
MininovaUntil a year ago, Mininova linked to pirated content. Now everything still works the same, but the content is now legal after various lawsuits brought against it.
JamendoEasily one of the best places to find free and legal music torrents published with Creative Commons licences. With over 46,000 albums and 300,606 tracks, Jamendo is heaven for anyone who wants to hear independent or up-and-coming artists.
Game UpdatesA massive site full of legal torrents which cover games patches, demos, mods and games trailers.
ViewCave TorrentsHas a decent number of movies and documentaries, with titles such as Arachnophobia and The James Dean Story and just about every Hollywood News entertainment report ever shot.
Legit TorrentsPretty much like the others, and features the Dick Tracy serial from 1937.
VuzeLots of HD files of media ranging from music and movies to audio books.
VODOA movie distribution network where movie makers upload content and get a share of donations from downloaders. Has a pretty good range of indie stuff.