The Guide to Posting Binary Attachments to UseNet

Required Apps

WinRAR – http://www.rarlabs.com/download.htm
QuickPAR - http://www.quickpar.org.uk/Download.htm
PowerPost-A&A - http://powerpost.cjb.net/

The reason I recommend PowerPost Assert & Alain because its still in development and has a array of features that the classic PowerPost does not such as multi thread uploading and advanced settings.

Optional Apps Cool Beans NFO Creator - http://www.coolbeans.ws/download.shtml
QuickSFV - http://www.quicksfv.org/download.htm
Gspot - http://www.headbands.com/gspot/download.html


Step 1

Right, lets begin. First of all you want to split your file into a set of RARs. In this case the example is a typical 700MB XviD/DivX DVDRip of a film. Right click your file > add to archive and use these settings:



The reason for the compression method to store is that most avi files cannot be compressed much anyway so its effectively pointless setting it to best because it just wastes your time and the time of the guy extracting it at the end.

The purpose of the volume being split is so that its easily posted and downloaded from UseNet and missing blocks can be easily repaired using QuickPAR PAR2 archives, just posting the full 700MB is not acceptable. 15,000,000 is ideal for files from 150-2100MB after that you may think about increasing the size to 20,000,000 or in the case of uncompressed DVD Rips 50,000,000.

After pressing ok this screen should appear:



That shouldn't take long depending on your compression level and file size.

Now after that's done you should be left with a set of RAR files of your movie and the original file as well:



Right that's Step 1 finished.
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Step 2

This is the QuickPAR stage of things, this the making of recovery blocks for your RAR files this is for those on UseNet providers with a low completion rate or just general mistakes with posting/downloading.

Now before you begin this it may be an idea to move your movie file to a different location to avoid confusion when creating recovery volumes and posting your files. You don't have to.

Load up QuickPAR and you should be at the main menu screen:



Then click add files and add the set of RARs you have just made, Ctrl-A to select all of them, be sure to get them all:



Click open, they should now all be in the QuickPAR source files menu:



Now use these settings:



Ensure that the Restrict block size to multiples of UseNet article size is ticked because this increases the chance of someone being able to repair the set of RAR archives. The recovery file size is best set to Variable (limit to size of largest data file) because when someone is missing an entire file, they can download one of these corresponding large files and know that it will contain exactly the right amount of recovery data of one complete RAR file.

The redundancy slidebar can be set anywhere between 10 and 20% depends how many recovery volumes you want to offer, but I usually go for around 10%. If requested you can always post more when required.

Now click create, the time this takes depends on the size of RAR files and how many recovery volumes you wish to create.



When its succeeded click exit.
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Step 3

At this point you can create a SFV checksum file using QuickSFV or you can do it at a later stage automatically from within PowerPost-A&A if you want to do it that way skip to Step 4. If you wish to do it now using QuickSFV follow these intructions:

Select all of your RAR archives of the initial movie file, not the PAR recovery volumes just the RAR files, make sure you do not include the first par2 file at the top of list, right click and click Create .SFV File, this menu should now appear:



By default the sfv filename will include the name of the first RAR archive, you can remove this, it is unnecessary.

This window should now appear:



When done click OK. You should now have an SFV file in your directory containing your set of RAR archives and PAR2 recovery volumes.

To test your SFV file double click it and will load in QuickSFV or QuickPAR and it should check all the RAR archives and state:



Great for now. Now moving on to the NFO creation part.
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Step 4

No doubt you know what an NFO is but for those who don't its a file used to give information about the file you are posting. Some typical information for a movie file could be the full title, IMDB rating and link, audio and video codec, audio and video bitrate, a plot synopsis, cast etc.

Load Cool Beans NFO Creator and begin filling in the details you know. To get information for audio/video files use Gspot, load it up and drag your original file over it to get its information.

Here's what my NFO for Enter The Dragon would look like:



At this stage I would like to give out a BIG FUCK YOU too all those people who do not provide NFO's or samples with their posts and those who remove the Generated with Cool NFO Creator footer even though they use it.

Now for the actual posting.
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Step 5

Load YENC-POWER-POST-A&A-V11b

To begin with click the Setup icon located in the top left corner of the Window underneath the File menu:



Fill in your details in the menu, in the NNTP News Server box type your providers address eg news.giganews.com or whatever yours is. Set the connections to whatever you want, depends on how many your server allows and whether you want to be downloading from UseNet at the same time because if you wish to do that be sure to leave your chosen amount of connections open so that you can upload and download at the same time.

Click the headers tab and fill that in to your requirements:



Now click the Newsgroups tab, at this point you must decide what is an appropriate group for your post, in this case alt.binaries.movies.xvid seems a likely candidate, base your Newsgroup choice on the content of your post for example a DivX movie could be posted to alt.binaries.movies.divx. A CD Image of a Game / App could be posted to alt.binaries.cd.image etc. Here is a list of popular ones, http://www.slyck.com/ng.php?page=4

Below is a list of some commonly used newsgroups on my PowerPost-A&A:



Now on the program tab I use these settings:



You can use the default value for Default Max Lines Per Part or use 5000 as I do which is better for posting large amounts of binary attachments.

Now, click ok and go to File > Add files to Queue or Ctrl-Q. Select all files of your movie, that is all RARs, PARs, SFV and NFO:



They should now appear in the add files window:



In the subject header template you may write whatever you want, the titles, perhaps a request of your own, a greeting or fuck you message, its up to you.

Now in the Newsgroups tab select the Newsgroups you wish to post to. In this case as I have explained I will be posting this to alt.binaries.movies.xvid as it is the correct newsgroup for the content I am posting i.e. a XviD movie. Now, conveniently we now come onto the issue of crossposting, that is the act of posting your files to multiple Newsgroups, this may well be acceptable in your own little world but not on UseNet, I wouldn't post to more than 2 groups maximum and then only if it was definitely acceptable for example a big release that you are the first to have, extremely unlikely but plausible.



Leave the prefix tab how it is unless you wish to add something.

On the file order tab I would recommend putting your NFO and SFV file highest top priority. Usually this can be done by pressing the Sort.PXX button but if not just drag them up or repeatedly click (tap enter) to move up. Like so:



On the checksums tab if you did not choose to create an SFV file earlier using QuickSFV check the box that says Generate .SFV file. No doubt you will have also noticed the generate PAR and PAR2 files some people prefer to do it this way but I find it messy and you do not get a chance to properly check and verify your files before they get posted. Also you may wish to generate an NZB file for those who do not have access to NewzBin:



Now, click OK and your entire file list should appear on a Matrix style green on black background. Go on, admit it, it makes you feel like a haxx0r:



Right, that's it. Click file > start posting, allow it through your firewall and go to bed. Wake up in the morning with a load of Post Accepted messages under the Posting Result tab.

Well done.