Thread: My tutorial on how to cross-seed to Waffles.fm

Is it even possible? Yes, but it takes some time and work. Once you get the hang of it the only thing that will slow you down is the time it takes to download the files from another source.



Note: cross seeding is the hard way of to build up a buffer at Waffles, this is a guide to people who refuse to upload their own content or can't afford a seebox. Before you take the time to read this guide I suggest that you learn about all the other techniques to survive on the site mentioned here: How to become PU in Waffles.fm
Throughout this tutorial I'm assuming that you already know what cross-seeding is and that you know how to do it safely even if I might be repeating a few things about that. So you should have read How to Cross-Seed safely

I'm sure there are a couple of things mentioned here that apply to even other trackers but this tutorial was entirely written to be used with Waffles.fm

My experience:
(This was before the freeleech week we had a short while ago)
My upload speed: 1Mbit/s. Actual max rates: 90-95 KB/s.
Uploaded: 5GB in 1.5 days. (pretty impressive in my opinion)


FINDING POTENTIAL TORRENTS TO SEED:
Waffles has some nice features that you can use to verify that cross seeding will succeed.

For one thing, the search functions, you can re-arrange the torrents according to the number of seeders and leechers, size, time added etc. There are a couple of things to pay attention to:

1. The numder of seeders, should be zero, we don't want to fight against other seeders. If there are no competing seeders we will be able to upload 100% the size of the torrent.
2. The number of leechers, at least two, the more the better, (if it has only one, chances are the peer has already left), but you should make sure that they really are seeders and not partial seeders. This you can do by clicking on 'See full list' where it says 'Peers' on the description page of the torrent. This should expand the view and show you information of the other seeders/leechers including how many percentages everyone has completed. My rule is that it is okay if they have under 50% completed, but better if they are at 0%.
3. The file size, we are not interested in torrents under 200MB, because it will won't be worth the time, in my opinion.
4. Age, more than a week, just to make sure the original uploader doesn't start seeding it when we thought it was not being seeded. If you are really quick you can choose even the newer torrents, but remember that every minute of delay is against you, if the file is let's say 1GB and it could take you 15 minutes to find and download the torrent from somewhere else, there's a big chance when you come back that the torrent has been seeded and all the work was for nothing.

You can arrange the torrents according to only one factor at a time, it's best to choose either seeders or size. The bigger the torrent the better, because the more we could possibly seed. Then we have to browse though the pages and look for torrents with no seeds and a few leechers. If you arrange according to the number of seeders (starting from seedless torrents of course, click a second time on the up-arrow to reverse the order) you need to look for the number of leechers (2 or more) and the size (larger than 200MB). Last thing to do is to verify that the torrent wasn't added just a few moments ago and then check that the leechers really are leechers.

Another thing is to use the tag 'scene' or simply search 'scene' to find scene releases, that's because scene releases should be easiest to find in other places.




OBTAINING THE FILES:
Test with different key words when you make searches, not only the entire torrent name, though that would be even better if you managed to find it that way because the release should be identical and the files should be the same.
The best place to find torrents for cross seeding is ruTracker. It's in Russian but you can use google's translation plugin to translate it to another language.
Other music trackers will help you from time to time, Music-Torrents, CoExist, MTN, Libble and similar should help you find some releases.
General trackers, the bigger the better the chances, demonoid, IPT etc. Why not even pirate bay if you're not too concerned about safety..
If you can't find the torrent there's still a chance that the files are hosted by a file sharing service like rapid share, megaupload, file sonic, upload.to etc. Use google and add one or more of these file sharing service providers to your search and you might find what you are looking for.
After this it depends on how desperate you are, give up or use eMule, DC++, limewire or other 'unsafe' applications.
Remember that you are not going to find everything, if the release is original, non-scene or just internal you should not be able to find it elsewhere unless it was stolen from waffles.

Waffles tracks more than just music, you will find sample libraries and virtual instruments, so you can use AN or PAT and other trackers with that kind of content to cross seed those files. Waffles has some e-books and audio books that you can find on e-learning trackers. You can even find common applications and operating systems at Waffles that can be found on almost any general tracker. There's a chance that you had some of these files on your computer all along so you'll save time not needing to download from somewhere else and then it doesn't matter even if the torrent had a couple of seeders from before. I later noticed that I actually had almost 200GB on my hard drives of the same content that was being tracked by Waffles.

Things to check before you download the file:
The format, it's not enough that you got the correct CD or the correct album if the format is not the same, if it's supposed to be a flac then a mp3 version won't do and if it's supposed to be 256kbit then 320kbit won't do.
The date, there's a small chance that for instance a concert is played in the same place and with exactly the same songs being performed as the year before. But if it isn't the same concert then the recorded files can't possibly be the same.
The size, the same or almost the same, if you have the opportunity view the individual file sizes then check them, because at Waffles you can view the individual file sizes by clicking on 'See full list' where it says 'Num files' on the torrent details page. Every big file should be exactly the same size, it's not a big deal if we are missing a CD cover image or nfo-file, that only means we will be able to rehash the file only to about 99%. If you can only get hold of packed files and won't be able to tell the individual file sizes you can test your luck and download the files and check it out. Since mp3's and flac's are already compressed files, there's a chance that a rarred version of the same files is actually a few kilobytes bigger, so don't be fooled by thinking that the total file size must always be identical.




THINGS TO CHECK ONCE YOU HAVE OBTAINED THE FILES:
In your torrent client, open the torrent taken from waffles and make sure its target folder is pointing to the same folder where you have the files. If possible, un-check 'start download' or just stop the torrent right after it has been added. Then perform a 'rehash' or 'recheck' to verify the files. You should get to at least 80% (if the torrent is dead we won't be downloading that missing 20%, but if the torrent was revived and that happened we could still be pretty certain that we manage to seed more than we leech), usually 99% or even 100%. If for some reason you get 0% there are still a couple thing to try. Check that the file structure (file paths) is identical, you may have to move files to another subfolder, maybe create a new folder or rename an existing one. And finally there's a chance that you have to rename the files (they can still be identical otherwise), it could be a dot, a hyphen or space missing somewhere, maybe the artist name is missing entirely or something like that, it could even be case-sensitive so make sure all the letters that need to be capitilized really are capital letters. That's all the steps I can think of doing and if it doesn't help, then you have to live with it and try another torrent. It is quite possible that someone has used the same source and encoded the files using the same compression level resulting in exactly the same length and size, but was using another compression algorithm so the files were in fact not the same, unfortunately.