Thread: How to Cross-Seed safely

Recently some members have been banned for ratio cheating, claiming to have messed up cross seeding. So here's how to do it, and more importantly, keep your account.

The most important section here is section 2. So Section 1(letter here) is about the specific genre, and section 2 is about safety.

Section 1() - Cross-Seeding - Thanks to ascariboy for digging this up.

Originally Posted by ascariboy

Lets say you have downloaded the torrent from Tracker 1 to C:\downloads

lets say the same torrent is there at tracker 2. download the the other torrent file. rename it and add it to utorrent as a seperate torrent. do not add the trackers from the second to the first torrent.

then when your adding the second torrent just change the directory to c:\downloads and then do a force re-check for the files. once all the files are accounted for in the second tracker then start seeding.

So that's how you cross-seed in the first place. Now in further detail:

Section 1A - Cross-Seeding Scene Torrents
What you want to do first is download it from a site with very fast pre times. Good choices are GFT and SCC, if you want to seed to sites like RevTT, TL, or possibly IPT. Sites like that all allow scene releases. The consistency of scene releases is constant among sites, with the exceptions that some do not have sample files always. So you may have to download a few MB.

A good option is to have AutoDL scripts for the faster sites, and then once it downloads you can grab it from the slower sites. The AutoDL is out of the scope of this tutorial, however.

So here's what you want to see in SCC:

Scrubs is a very popular torrent and right now has a nice amount of leechers. Let's snatch it. Now you should see this in your client (FYI this is Deluge, that's why it looks odd)

Make sure it's at 100% so you get as little download off the other tracker as possible. Now, let's go over to TL:

Cool, it's the same release. The size is a little different but that's normal.

Now, let it download the extra 10MB, and seed seed seed!

Section 1B - Cross Seeding Music Torrents
Seeding music torrents gets more difficult depending on the tracker. Waffles and What have lots of stuff that can be cross-seeded. Some smaller ratio-free trackers like CE also get content from Waffles/What so you can try that as well, but there is no guarantee. On music torrents, a 1KB difference is a big deal - not everyone has the same source. If it's FLAC, check the log files. Otherwise, make sure it's the exact same size.

Quick example:

Originally Posted by What.cd

EAC extraction logfile from 17. November 2006, 22:45 for CD
System Of A Down / System Of A Down

compared to

Originally Posted by Waffles.fm

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008

EAC extraction logfile from 30. August 2008, 14:18

System of a Down / System of a Down

The dates, as well as the format, is different. No, these cannot be cross-seeded.



The best way to build a ratio on music trackers is to upload, upload, upload.

Section 1C - Regular/Gen Torrents
Cross seeding regular torrents (non-scene releases) is a real pain. Unless the titles and sizes match exactly, it's better to just stay away.

Section 2A - How to Cross-Seed without feeling the wrath of the banhammer
First and foremost, never ever, never ever, NEVER, mess with the announce URL's. DON'T. The reason follows: If you upload 10GB to tracker A and 10GB to tracker B, both will see it as you uploaded 20GB. Yes, this is ratio cheating and it is very easy to detect.
Secondly, always make sure the torrent is listed in the client twice, as such:

Otherwise you, our your client, combined the announce url's, and... yea. It is very important it is listed once per tracker.

Section 2B - Warning for uTorrent users
You may get a message that says, "This torrent is already in the list of torrents. Would you like to load the trackers from it?" The only correct answer is: NO. NO, NO, NO, NO. Answering yes will just combine the announce URL's. :( You have to figure something else out. Sorry.

Section 2C - rTorrent users may want to see this post (click)

Section 2D - Clients
While most people use mainstream clients, trackers allow more obscure clients to be used, which have no real advantage over others... nevertheless, here is a list of clients known to work well (or which I have tested myself and work fine)

• uTorrent (if you can get past Sec. 2B)
• rTorrent
• kTorrent
• Deluge
• Azerus/Vuze (meh.)

Also, you should avoid Tornado/Transmission. I have had problems with them in the past randomly (in addition, I know a guy that was banned from TL because he cross seeded with Transmission. So be careful!)

Disclaimer: Use this guide at your own risk. While cross seeding is usually beneficial to your ratio, some mistakes may cost you your account.

@beepin - amazing tutorial for cross seeding..

For uTorrent what you can do is as follows

Lets say you have downloaded the torrent from Tracker 1 to C:\downloads

lets say the same torrent is there at tracker 2. download the the other torrent file. rename it and add it to utorrent as a seperate torrent. do not add the trackers from the second to the first torrent.

then when your adding the second torrent just change the directory to c:\downloads and then do a force re-check for the files. once all the files are accounted for in the second tracker then start seeding.

Warning
Some trackers keep a track of how much one has downloaded and how much one has uploaded. they have scripts and have ways of prevention of cross seeding methods like this. so be careful and before using this method read through your tracker rules carefully.

i have done this a few times successfully but will not reveal where for privacy reasons.

Great, but renaming doesn't ALWAYS work :(

Originally Posted by Beepin

Great, but renaming doesn't ALWAYS work :(

agree with you totally that renaming is not a guaranteed method but so far have tried this method 4 times and worked beautifully.

Warning:-
Cross-Seeding can be caught and i am not responsible if you get caught !

another way to cross seed safely is as follows

first of all to understand read the second post in this thread

Originally Posted by ascariboy

For uTorrent what you can do is as follows

Lets say you have downloaded the torrent from Tracker 1 to C:\downloads

lets say the same torrent is there at tracker 2. download the the other torrent file. rename it and add it to utorrent as a seperate torrent. do not add the trackers from the second to the first torrent.

then when your adding the second torrent just change the directory to c:\downloads and then do a force re-check for the files. once all the files are accounted for in the second tracker then start seeding.

Warning
Some trackers keep a track of how much one has downloaded and how much one has uploaded. they have scripts and have ways of prevention of cross seeding methods like this. so be careful and before using this method read through your tracker rules carefully.

i have done this a few times successfully but will not reveal where for privacy reasons.

then instead of using the same torrent client to cross seed. use two different torrent clients to cross seed where in each client you put only one torrent.

for example

i downloaded the torrent from tracker 1 using uTorrent

i cross seed the torrent to tracker 2 using BitTorrent

much safer way to cross seed as mentioned because

Originally Posted by Beepin

Great, but renaming doesn't ALWAYS work :(

this because if the torrents uploaded to both trackers are the same they have the same hash and renaming makes no difference and the announce urls will be combined.

so using the same torrent for different trackers on different torrent clients solves the problem.

before one attempts this experiment please check which torrent clients are allowed by the tracker and which are not.

Warning:-
Cross-Seeding can be caught and i am not responsible if you get caught !

this is a great tutorial wish i saw one of these when i first started out.
this should definitely help keep a few people from getting banned from cross-seeding mistakes

to add the URL's combined for me once didn't know what this was or how i did it at the time, i didn't even realize it happened intill i was almost banned for it, but it happened. So i suggest looking through your torrents URL's every once in awhile and make sure they haven't combine.

Well I have found out another best way to cross seed torrents safely without renaming the torrents.Here is what we have to do:
Suppose you have downloaded a torrent from tracker A and your seeding it,now you want to cross seed it to tracker B. Download the torrent file from tracker B and save it in a location different to where tracker A torrent is stored,by this way when you open the tracker B torrent it will be added as a different torrent and it will complete hash check and seed automatically with no risks involved and the torrent names need not be changed!

Note: Just make sure you hav unchecked the "store .torrent in" option if you are using uTorrent or else when you open the tracker B torrent file it will be automatically copied to that selected folder with a different name.

Great tutorial mate, sometimes with music torrents I get pretty confused, messing up things, but now I got the point, thanks a lot :)

Cross-seeding in rTorrent is straightforward.

1. Download .torrent from tracker A
2. Move .torrent to 'watch' folder
3. rTorrent will start downloading the data files
3. Once download is finished, it switches to 'Seeding' state
4. Download same .torrent from tracker B
5. Make sure the .torrent file name is unique from the first one
/* If you use firefox you will have the option to auto-download certain file types and auto-rename a file if it already exists. Check the Tools->Options->Applications menu */
6. Move .torrent to 'watch' folder
7. rTorrent will start hashing files.
8. When done, it will switch to 'Seeding' state
9. You should now have both .torrents listed on the view window


rTorrent will NOT:

1. Allow you to change the announce URL of the .torrent file
2. Let you combine the announce URLs of same .torrent files


Things to watch out for when cross-seeding in rTorrent:

1. It may not be obvious to others but you need to finish downloading all the data files of the first .torrent before loading the second .torrent. If you try to load both .torrents at the same time or one after another even when the first .torrent is not 100% finished yet and both are linked to the same download directory, those data files will end up corrupted.


2. When you finished downloading all data files of first .torrent and it's currently on seeding state, and then you try to load second .torrent downloaded from another tracker without renaming it first, what will happen is rTorrent will stop seeding the first .torrent and it will set the state of that .torrent into 'Inactive'. That .torrent will not seed anymore. The workaround is to remove the .torrent from within rTorrent then re-load the first .torrent by copying it to the 'watch' folder.