Archive for the ‘BitTorrent’ Category

Resume Interrupted Downloads with BitTorrent [Shortcuts]

Thursday, July 29th, 2010
While lots of us are pretty big BitTorrent users, we still use our browser to manage most of our downloads. If your download gets interrupted, though, reader KayDat shows us how you can continue downloading it with BitTorrent. More »


uTorrent for Mac Upgrades to Beta, Gets Interface Overhaul [Updates]

Monday, May 17th, 2010
Mac only: uTorrent, the most popular BitTorrent client on Windows, has moved from alpha to beta for OS X, boasting a completely native Mac client with a brand new interface. Most Mac users are probably happy with Transmission, but the lightweight uTorrent is definitely worth a look—not only is the new UI much better than the old one, it's much nicer than Transmission's if you download a lot of torrents at once. Furthermore, uTorrent can definitely compete with Transmission on lightness, while still having some of the more advanced features of something like Vuze (though Transmission continues to gain advanced features with each update). If you're a recent Mac convert looking for a more familiar torrent client, or just a heavy downloader unhappy with Transmission's more minimal UI, the new uTorrent beta is definitely worth a look. More »



BitTorrent - ?Torrent - Transmission - File sharing - Windows

ClearBits Is a More Usable and Fun LegalTorrents [Free]

Friday, April 23rd, 2010
The idea behind the previously mentioned LegalTorrents was good—a centralized, free, and legal BitTorrent search engine and tracker. It lacked in organization and immediate appeal, however. ClearBits is LegalTorrents' new version, and its got great stuff, and even no-software-needed downloading. More »


Folx is a Feature-Rich Download and Torrent Manager for Mac [Downloads]

Friday, April 16th, 2010
Mac only: When it's time to download something via BitTorrent, most Mac users manage their torrents with the popular client, Transmission. Folx offers almost all of Transmission's features, but adds quick torrent adding and a download manager for your browser. More »


Automatically Organize Your Downloaded, *Ahem*, TV Shows [Automation]

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Ed. note: We've shown you how to automatically download your favorite TV shows before, but even if you've got your downloads automated perfectly, there's still a little matter of organization. Productive Geek forum member ejf071189 details how he automates his TV-download organization.

I used to use uTorrent's RSS feature to automatically download shows via this guide (see "How do I use the RSS feed in my client ?"). This allowed me to automatically have shows downloaded into appropriate folders, which are monitored by XMBC which scrapes thetvdb.com to add the shows to its own library. While XBMC was able to identify episode information with the naming system the torrents used, I preferred to have the episodes better organized using TVRename. Every so often I would run TVRename and scan my library for files that had to be renamed and rename them.

There were problems with this method, though. The obvious problem was that I would have to remember to run TVRename, which really wasn't that big a deal. The bigger problem was that depending on when XBMC scanned my TV folder for new media, if the files were renamed with TVRename, XBMC would then have to rescan the file with the new name, leading to dead files and dupes in library view.

Here's the method I used to resolve the issue:

1. Download TVRename 2.1.1a6 here. The 2.1.1 line of TVRename is the only one that supports command line arguments. The 2.2 alphas are supposed to have this feature reimplemented but development is currently on hiatus.

2. Reconfigure utorrent's RSS feature to download all shows to a folder outside of the folders XBMC monitors. This could be a generic download folder or a subfolder called "Unsorted TV Shows," for example.

3. In the "Finding and Organising" tab of TVRename, add the same folder that you set utorrent to download your shows to as a search folder.

4. Add your shows to TVRename with settings like this.

5. Create a batch script in the C:\Program Files\TVRename directory called "rename.bat" with the following command:

tvrename.exe /renamingcheck /renamingdo /missingcheck /fnocheck /fnodo /quit

From the TVRename forum: "That will make it check for files needing to be renamed, then rename them, then check for missing files, do a finding&organising check for them, move/copy the files found, then quit. Add "/hide" if you want it all to happen without the window coming up"

6. Go into the task scheduler or other scheduling app and add a new task that runs this batch file at intervals to your liking.

Now files that go into your downloads folder will periodically be sorted into your library with appropriate names and in the corresponding season folders (TVRename should create a season folder when necessary), and will only be scanned into XBMC with the correct name.

Automated TV Show Organization [Productive Geek]