Use
Xnews because it is simple yet powerful. |
Step
6 has the following sections:
See Figure 1
which is referred to throughout this tutorial.
Introduction
to View, Play, Use Binary Files
Top - Table
of Contents
|
Does
your ISP's news server have poor content and retention?
|
|
Affiliate goes here
|
|
|
After you
have downloaded, decoded and extracted (decompressed) your binary
material, you now have to figure out how to use it. This can be a
challenge at times, but once you figure it out, you are good for most
of the material because there are "standards" used by most posters.
There are
many types of material that you can obtain from the newsgroups.
Multimedia
file types include the following:
- Video
- Most movies are MPEG format with a few flavour-of-the-day compression
codecs used. Codecs are popular for a while and then a new codec (see
below) will come along. WMV or ASF movies are rarely used for movie
posts. RM (Real Media) format is sometimes found for TV programs but I
have rarely seen a movie in that format. Quicktime (MOV) is
occassionally found.
- Graphics and Photographs
- JPEG, GIF, PNG, WMF, BMP, and ICO files.
- Audio - mostly
MP3
There are
also lots of other types of binary material including:
- Software
- eBooks
- Video Games
Each of
these is covered in more detail in the following sections. However,
there are lots of different ways to process the stuff you get from the
binary usenet groups.
Generally
speaking, the NFO files which accompany the post will provide all the
information you need to view, play or use your binary material. Also,
you can read other people's questions or post your questions about how
to view, play or use the binary material.
Watch
Your Video Top
- Table of Contents
Ok, this is
where things can get kinda hairy. Theoretically, all you need to do is
download, decode, decompress and voila you have a file viewable AVI,
MPEG, ASF or RM file which you can burn to a CD if you want (see
below).
However,
there is a potentially long list of stumbling blocks:
- Do you have the right "CODEC"
(instructions for your media player to play the that particular
encoding format)? More on CODECs below.
- Are your sound card, video card,
speakers, RAM, CPU all configured and of sufficient quantity or quality
for that particular format of video?
- Do you
have the right video player? For example, SVCD requires DVD capable
video players, MOV format files require Quicktime, etc.
When it
comes to learning how to play your newly downloaded movie:
- Read the NFO file (see Step 5: Download
from Binary Usenet) that accompanied the post.
- Read other people's questions in
that newsgroup related to that post.
- Only after exhausing all other
avenus should you ask the person who posted it. While there is a sense
of customer service by many posters, don't rely on it too much.
- Be vigilant, learn all you can on
your own.
- Do a Google Groups search.
I am not
going to go into detail about your sound card, video card, speakers,
RAM, CPU being all configured and of sufficient quantity or quality for
that particular format of video. I have briefly covered that in another section on multimedia
internet services such as radio and voice over internet. However, most
of the video formats today require at least a Pentium II or higher
processor with 32 MB + RAM.
Finally,
one of the best sources on the WWW for everything about video is VCDHelp.com.
Go there for details on playing, copying and burning VCD, SVCD and
DVDs. You won't be dissapointed.
CD
File Formats Top
- Table of Contents
Very often
the binary material you get from the binary usenet will be
"pre-packaged" (into yet another layer of formatting) so that it can be
directly burned to a CD for use in a CD or DVD player or to be stored
on CDs.
This a
"customer service" feature so you don't have to convert an MPEG file to
a CD format yourself. Aren't these people posting wonderful!
You will
have to be aware of the CD formats which are identifiable by their file
extension and include: iso, bin, ccd, nrg most commonly. Each file
extension and formatting corresponds to specific programs which must be
used to re-format the CD format to a format usuable on your harddrive.
- nrg - Nero
- ccd - CloneCD
- BIN - Win CDR, ISO
Buster
- ISO -
ISO Buster
Some
general notes:
- You must use CloneCD for ccd files
and Nero for nrg files.
- There are a variety of software
programs that can convert between BIN and ISO formats.
- ISO Buster can extract an MPG file
from ISO image files and a whole lot of other useful things. Very
useful program.
VCDHelp.com
also has all the details on copying and burning VCD, SVCD and DVDs.
Codecs Top - Table
of Contents
A codec is
a method of compressing video so that a video file can be as small as
possible while still retaining high quality.
|
Does
your ISP's news server have poor content and retention?
|
|
Affiliate goes here
|
|
|
It is
interesting that there are "brands" of codecs that have been
established in the binary Usenet. These have largely been developed by
independent programmers. One in particular, Divx, has recently made the
jump from "hacker" to "corporate" status and is now being adopted by
industry. This is probably a good example of why "open source" use of
copyrighted material has some value.
Some of
these posting groups are really well established and sometimes seem
corporate in their organization and results (except for the fact that
they are posting someone else's movie).
There are
really only a couple of commonly used codecs although they change
occassionally. You can learn more about codecs and where to get them
from at VCDHelp.com.
You will
also see MPEG formats being used including VCD and SVCD. You can learn
more about these on VCDHelp.com.
View
Picture Images Top
- Table of Contents
Most of the
images you will find are jpeg or jpg format. You'll also find gif too.
Because these files are generally small enough they are usually not
broken up into parts like the much larger movies and other video.
After you
download and decode images you can just use any image viewer to see
them just by double clicking on the file in Windows Explorer or opening
it using the open dialogue in the image viewer.
One of the
most popular image viewers is called ACDSee which views all image
formats. Go to download.com to get it.
Hear
Audio Files Top
- Table of Contents
Music files
are almost always MP3s. MP3s are also not big enough to be broken up
into parts. So all you have to do is find them, queue them up and
download and decode them. Then you can use your favourite MP3 player or
multimedia player. My favourite MP3 player is Winamp. Go to download.com
to get it.
Read
eBooks Top
- Table of Contents
eBooks are
generally on one file, and often only one segment in size depending on
the format. Because the files are so small, they are usually on your
ISPs news servers in complete form if the ISP purposely limits the size
of binary files on its news servers. They do this to keep you from
using up bandwidth downloading and uploading binaries to their news
server.
eBooks come
in a variety of formats including:
- Palm Database format (PBD).
- lit = Microsoft Reader (LIT) format
Microsoft Reader
- pdf = Adobe Adobe PDF (.pdf)
- MobiPocket (.pdb)
- iSilo (.pdb)
- TomeRaider (.pdb)
- Gemstar (.rb)
- However, often eBooks are in txt,
rtf , Word doc or HTML format.
Use
Software Top
- Table of Contents
Of course,
there is a ton of software posted in the binary usenet groups.
Everything that you have learned in this tutorial is entirely
applicable to obtaining software.
However,
there are additional steps required to use the software, but usually
the NFO file provides all the specific instructions you will need.
|
