FAQ

Mostly based on CrasH's DC++ Newbie Tutorials from Duefo. Updated and expanded.

Video Questions

Why does my video has sound but no video, or vice versa?

Why does my video play upside down?

Most video files need things called codecs to read the information in the file. If you don't get any picture or sound from a video file then it is most likely because you haven't got the right codec installed. The most common ones are listed below. To install them, just click the links and then run the program once it has downloaded. It is recommended that you install the FFDShow codec last. Installing the FFDShow codec will also fix problems you may be having with video appearing upside down (When installing, select all but DivX3).

Video:
DivX 5
FFDShow
Xvid

Audio:
AC3
Ogg Vorbis

Other:
Matroska Playpack 1.02
Subtitles
Vob Sub - Used with the Ogg Vorbis interleaver above to play dual audio .ogm files

Why is my video all green?

This is most likely because you have an older version of Xvid installed. You can correct this problem by installing the newest version of Xvid here.

How do I play .rm files?

.rm files are Real Media files. They can be opened in Real Player One Gold.

How do I play .ogm files?"

.ogm files are basically the same as any other video, only they are encoded with the Ogg Vorbis interleaver. Download the interleave and install it. Once you've done that you can open the .ogm file in Windows Media Player. If they files are dual audio then you will need the Vobsub pack to choose which audio and subtitle tracks you want.

General DC++ Questions

For problems with searching and downlaoding please see the Help Guide here

What is hashing?

File hashing is where DC++ scans all of your files and assigns a specific ID to each of them. This feature is designed so that when you do a search for alternate sources on a file you are guaranteed to get that file, rather than a different file simply named the same. On previous versions, matching a non exact copy of a file was a major cause of corrupt downloads

How do I get onto external hubs?

Basically if you are on campus you cannot use external DC++ hubs. Although you may be able to get ontot he hubs using stunnel or ssh tunneling, you will only be able to download from other people on resnet. As such, twofo is the only hub where there are uses you can connect to.

If you are on campus, click the "Public Hubs" button (top left of the screen, the icon looks like a flatscreen and a wire) and you should be given a window with a list of hubs, and two boxes at the bottom. The left text box allows you to enter and word and search throw the hubs for a specific thing. The right box allows you to enter a specific hub address lists. Since the default address list has not worked for a couple of years now you will likely want to add your own addresses in that do work, such as:
http://www.awenet.info/hublist/PublicHubList.xml.bz2
http://hub2list.redirectme.net/PublicHubList.xml.bz2 If you have a specific hub address you can go to this by pressig Ctrl + Q or going to File -> Quick Connect, as you will most likely have done the first time you went on twofo.

File Types Questions

How do I use .bin, .cue, .img, iso, and .cdr files?

All of the file types listed above (with the exception of .cue files) are Virtual CD's. This essentially means that they are a file that you store on your computer that contains all of the information that would normally be on the CD. .cue files are used with .bin files to identify the information on the CD, although they are not necessary.

To use any of the file types above, first download and install Daemon Tools. Once you've done this, a red icon will appear on your start menu on the right. Right click this and go to "Virtual CD/DVD-ROM..." and then "Device 0: [F:] No Media:...", and finally "Mount image". This should bring up a small bo where you can locate the .bin file (or likewise), and then click "Open" to load it. If you now go into Windows Explorer you will see the CD mounted in an extra CD Drive. Open that and you will be able to access the information.

How do I use .rar files?

.rar files are similar to .zip files. They are an archive of information that has been compressed to reduce the size of the file (and hence the time it takes to download them). You can open them using Winrar, and extract the contents of the archive to a folder.

How do I play VCD format movies?

These movies are in .bin files, so to play them first install Daemon Tools and mount the image (as described above). Once this is done, go into Windows Explorer, onto your C: drive, into "Program Files", and then finally into the "Windows Media Player" folder. Double-click on mplayer2.exe, and then when it's loaded go to "File" and then "Open". Browse to the CD Drive where you mounted the Shrek 2 or Troy image, and go into the "MPEGAVI" folder. In the drop down list below the file browser, select "View All Files", and then in the file browser double-click on AVISEQ1.DAT. The movie should then play.

General Questions

Why can't I delete a file?"

Due to a codec problem, sometimes Windows will not let you delete a video file even though it is not being used. To correct this, download and install Nero, and then start it up. Click to make a new DVD or CD, but instead of actually making one, locate the file you cannot delete in the right hand file browser. Click on it and press delete, and it should be gone.
Otherwise you will either have to kill the explorer.exe process and delete through the command prompt or reboot your computer to delete the file.

How do I do <such and such>?

Where can I find <download>?

For the first one, try asking Google. Type in your question and you'll most likely get a decent response. As for where can you find things, use the search button. That's what it's there for. If you don't find anything then there's a good chance no-one has it. Try using Google again to see if you can find it as freeware.

When is the next episode of <series> out?

You can find the release dates for tv shows at www.epguides.com. If it's not listed there then it hasn't been scheduled for TV yet or the episode the week before was the series finale.
You can see a detailed list of shows airing this week/month at http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/

Tutorials

BitTorrent

As with Public DC++ hubs, if you are on resnet you can pretty much forget about torrenting. Don't try it as it won't downlaod fast IF it connects and will likely get you cut off by ITS. If however you are off campus then please read on

Bit torrent is a program very similar in looks to the Internet Explorer download window. The basic theory behind it is that someone will place a "torrent" on the internet, and as more people download it they will also share that torrent to the rest of the internet. As long as there are still users uploading the torrent, you will be able to finish the download. Torrent files are usually placed on large archive websites such as Suprnova, Torrents.co.uk, and Torrent Reactor. Once you have installed the bit torrent program, you just go to one of those sites and click on a torrent link for the download to begin. In the spirit of Bit Torrent, it is requested that you keep the download window open for as long as you can once the download has finished so that the file can be distributed to other users.

Note that you will get nothing like the speeds you see on Duefo. The best I have ever gotten is about 200kb/s, with an average of 60kb/s, although older torrents only usually go at about 1-7kb/s. To get the most speed out of a torrent, you are probably better using the Bit Tornado client, which is in my opinion better. It allows you to minimise the download window to the system tray, and also tends to get better speeds. However Bit Tornado uses a lot more resources than the official Bit Torrent client so if you are only going to be getting a few torrents or you have a low performance PC then you should stick with the official client. Bit Tornado munches a lot of RAM.

NOTE: For those of you who decide to use Bit Tornado, remember to set your upload slots to maximum to get the best download speeds. This allows you to connect to more "peers" (users who haven't finished downloading the file) and since you are uploading faster you will also download faster. This is because the download speed in Bit Tornado is proportional to the upload speed. As a final note, don't forget to set the little yellow light to display green by going into "Preferences" and ticking "Force icon to display green when firewalled".

DC++ Scripting

Scripting is where a user makes a set of preset text, so that if a common question comes up in the main chat it can be easily answered using the script. For most scripts, when they are activated they will display a line of text with the user name of the person you are talking to at the beginning. For example you were most like sent here by a scripted command, stating "%[nick], go to http://10.3.1.158/newbies.html for answers" where %[nick] represents your DC++ nickname.

To start making your own scripts, in DC++ go to "File" then "Settings", then the "User Commands" section, and finally the "Advanced" sub-section. You now have the option to add, change, or remove a script. Since you probably don't have any so far, click "Add". A list of options should appear. Here we are going to make a basic script the same as the one used to send you here. Once you know how to do this you can adapt the script however you want.

The first thing to do is to select the "Chat" check box in the "Command Type" area. Also make sure that you tick "User Menu" in the "Context Menu". You should now see that you can type in the three boxes below. The top one is the name of your script. This can be whatever you want, but it's probably best if you give it a name which best describes the script. In this case, we are going to name it "Newbie Page", so type that in the top box. Now go to the "Command" box and type in "%[nick], go to http://10.3.1.158/newbies.html for answers". The %[nick] will display the nickname of the person you are directing the script to, however this will be explained in a second. More commands like this are listed on the right of the scripting box, so try them out. You can leave the "Hub IP/DNS" box empty, so now just click "OK".

Now to use your script, go back to the main chat area and right click on the name of anyone in either the user list or the actual chat. You should see your script is at the bottom of the list, and by clicking it you will send the script to whoever you right-clicked on. The script will be seen by everyone in the chat, but the user name will be displayed at the beginning of the script (this is why we used the %[nick] command earlier). That's basically all there is to scripting, so try out different things to make your own scripts. Just remember to use them responsibly, and not to repeatedly spam the chat with useless information.