Who knows about .rar, .bin, .dat files etc?
Discussion
As you can probably tell from the above I've started experimenting with a few downloads from usnet. However, I've yet to see anything as none of the files seem to dao anything! Has anyone got an idiots guide on how to successfully turn these into .avi or whatever that I can use?
Frustrated of Surrey.
Frustrated of Surrey.
RAR is a compression archive that is typically used to split large files into multiple small files..
you download all the RAR files and then 'extract' the files within using WinRAR
.Bin file is a CD image, an exact copy of a CD, in a single file
.dat can be many things, sometimes a Video, sometimes a Data file, in this example, i'd expect a cr4ppy video.
Google will tell you all this..
HTH
J
you download all the RAR files and then 'extract' the files within using WinRAR
.Bin file is a CD image, an exact copy of a CD, in a single file
.dat can be many things, sometimes a Video, sometimes a Data file, in this example, i'd expect a cr4ppy video.
Google will tell you all this..
HTH
J
Carrera2 said:
I've got winrar but could use a few pointers on using it.
Thanks.
You will either have a lot of .rar files, or one .rar and the rest .r01 .r02 .r0x etc
If the former, then right click on Filename01.rar and choose to 'extract here'
otherwise right click on the .rar file and do the same.
.Bin files either need to be burnt to CD, or, mounted using an application like Daemon Tools / Alcohol 120%
WinRAR will extract .rar files, once installed it'll be on the right click context menu.
.bin & .cue files are usually found together, they're a complete map of a CD or DVD and you do often need both (especially in the case of VCR and SVCD), Nero Burning ROM (or any other decent burning program) can dump these on a disk for you. If it's movie and you just want the mpeg content then vcdgear can rip the video from either the original .rar's or the .bin/.cue. Make sure when doing this in vcdgear that you select the option to 'fix' the video.
.dat is a generic descriptor for a data file, without know what it's part of you aleged to be I can't help on that.
.bin & .cue files are usually found together, they're a complete map of a CD or DVD and you do often need both (especially in the case of VCR and SVCD), Nero Burning ROM (or any other decent burning program) can dump these on a disk for you. If it's movie and you just want the mpeg content then vcdgear can rip the video from either the original .rar's or the .bin/.cue. Make sure when doing this in vcdgear that you select the option to 'fix' the video.
.dat is a generic descriptor for a data file, without know what it's part of you aleged to be I can't help on that.
Ok, my turn.
RAR is a compression format that is an alternative to ZIP. Large downloads (anything over 20MB or so, and sometimes less) are typically split into multiple files to make them more "bite size" for every piece of hardware and software that has to deal with them on Usenet. And when you are talking about an 8GB DVD rip, this is a very good thing. As a Usenet downloader, the number of RAR files there are per set or how they are split makes absolutely no difference to you - you just get every file in the set, and extract whatever is in them.
Click on these links for a good but brief explanation of what RARs are and do and WINRAR, the most popular Windows program for handling them.
BIN files can be many things, but are most usually data CD images contained within a set of RAR files. They normally come with a companion CUE file of the same name (which is just a simple text file you can open in Notepad if you're curious or if you need to edit it). To deal with them, you can burn them to a CD using any popular disc burning software (including Nero). The quicker way though is to deal with them directly on your hard drive:
If the BIN file is an image of a VCD or an SVCD, you can download VCDGear which will extract the MPG file(s) directly from the BIN into a folder of your choice. The other way to deal with them locally is to get a program (one of the best and simplest is Daemon Tools) that will create a virtual drive letter on your computer that pretends to be a physical DVD drive to Windows, and then using the same program you can "mount" the BIN file to the drive letter. So in effect you are "burning" the image to a CD, but without actually having to do so on a physical CD, if you see what I mean. This method will allow you to deal with all kinds of CD images, not just VCD or SVCD ones.
DAT files again could be loads of things, but I suspect the DAT files you are seeing are on VCD images. If so, these are the actual video files. You can use either VCDGear or Daemon Tools above to get to the movie, or just open it directly using Windows Media Player (do a force open - a DAT file is just a bog standard MPEG1 MPG movie file with some additional header information for standalone VCD players).
Ok, now some additional stuff you may or may not know which will help you in your Usenet travels.
Many times you will find that the RAR sets you download are incomplete or damaged. The majority of RAR sets produced these days include recovery files, which act as very clever generic filler to plug any holes within your damaged RAR set. Read all about them here. This is absolutely necessary reading.
Another thing - how are you actually choosing which files to download? If you are doing it the traditional way of downloading headers from newsgroups and browsing through them, you need to stop that right now. Go to Newzbin, pay them a quid a month and get instant downloads courtesy of their indexing service. Never spend time waiting for headers to download ever again. Usenet for me went from okay to this-is-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread for me when I discovered Newzbin.
And finally, if you are not paying for access to a premium server, you may want to consider it. Giganews is the dogs, and for US$25 a month you get an Unlimited account that is guaranteed to max out your bandwidth. They also have near 100% completion (which means that you are unlikely to ever find a broken RAR set if they were uploaded properly in the first place) and 90 days retention, which means that anything posted stays on their servers for three months. By comparison, you'd be lucky to get a week's retention on newsgroups offered by your ISP.
I think that just about covers the lot. Post if you have any questions.
The learning curve is a tiny bit steep compared to simple P2P services, but stick with it. There is simply nothing better than Usenet for heavy downloaders.
RAR is a compression format that is an alternative to ZIP. Large downloads (anything over 20MB or so, and sometimes less) are typically split into multiple files to make them more "bite size" for every piece of hardware and software that has to deal with them on Usenet. And when you are talking about an 8GB DVD rip, this is a very good thing. As a Usenet downloader, the number of RAR files there are per set or how they are split makes absolutely no difference to you - you just get every file in the set, and extract whatever is in them.
Click on these links for a good but brief explanation of what RARs are and do and WINRAR, the most popular Windows program for handling them.
BIN files can be many things, but are most usually data CD images contained within a set of RAR files. They normally come with a companion CUE file of the same name (which is just a simple text file you can open in Notepad if you're curious or if you need to edit it). To deal with them, you can burn them to a CD using any popular disc burning software (including Nero). The quicker way though is to deal with them directly on your hard drive:
If the BIN file is an image of a VCD or an SVCD, you can download VCDGear which will extract the MPG file(s) directly from the BIN into a folder of your choice. The other way to deal with them locally is to get a program (one of the best and simplest is Daemon Tools) that will create a virtual drive letter on your computer that pretends to be a physical DVD drive to Windows, and then using the same program you can "mount" the BIN file to the drive letter. So in effect you are "burning" the image to a CD, but without actually having to do so on a physical CD, if you see what I mean. This method will allow you to deal with all kinds of CD images, not just VCD or SVCD ones.
DAT files again could be loads of things, but I suspect the DAT files you are seeing are on VCD images. If so, these are the actual video files. You can use either VCDGear or Daemon Tools above to get to the movie, or just open it directly using Windows Media Player (do a force open - a DAT file is just a bog standard MPEG1 MPG movie file with some additional header information for standalone VCD players).
Ok, now some additional stuff you may or may not know which will help you in your Usenet travels.
Many times you will find that the RAR sets you download are incomplete or damaged. The majority of RAR sets produced these days include recovery files, which act as very clever generic filler to plug any holes within your damaged RAR set. Read all about them here. This is absolutely necessary reading.
Another thing - how are you actually choosing which files to download? If you are doing it the traditional way of downloading headers from newsgroups and browsing through them, you need to stop that right now. Go to Newzbin, pay them a quid a month and get instant downloads courtesy of their indexing service. Never spend time waiting for headers to download ever again. Usenet for me went from okay to this-is-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread for me when I discovered Newzbin.
And finally, if you are not paying for access to a premium server, you may want to consider it. Giganews is the dogs, and for US$25 a month you get an Unlimited account that is guaranteed to max out your bandwidth. They also have near 100% completion (which means that you are unlikely to ever find a broken RAR set if they were uploaded properly in the first place) and 90 days retention, which means that anything posted stays on their servers for three months. By comparison, you'd be lucky to get a week's retention on newsgroups offered by your ISP.
I think that just about covers the lot. Post if you have any questions.
The learning curve is a tiny bit steep compared to simple P2P services, but stick with it. There is simply nothing better than Usenet for heavy downloaders.
, thanks for taking the time to type it all out. I've bookmarked this page now and no doubt i'll return to it a few times! Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff