welcome to the Digital Delivery forum

[Mark Suszko]

I wonder if there is a way to harness the technology used in torrenting files for our special purposes? Probably create more security issue than it is worth, I guess.

[John Davidson]

Sorry, it’s called DMG Chop.
Check it out.
https://www.soft32.com/download_192750.html

The torrent idea won’t work – you’d need several hosts across multiple locations feeding simultaneously, not multiple computers at a single location. Chop DMG will break a 3 gig file into multiple files of whatever size you want. All you have to do is make a disk image out your file in Disk Utility (a DMG), then run DMG Chop on it to break it into as many smaller files as you need. Upload your files via YSI. When all files are downloaded on the other end, the user only has to click the first file (which should have a name like 30spot-open me) and their mac will rebuild the original file – nobody on the receiver end has to install anything. This works – and you don’t have to get some insanely expensive T1 line.

If you’re on a PC, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t do PC’s. Try kicking it.

ps- I have no idea why my subject changed earlier to that HDW subject. Sorry!

[Chris Blair]

John Davidson wrote: When all files are downloaded on the other end, the user only has to click the first file (which should have a name like 30spot-open me) and their mac will rebuild the original file – nobody on the receiver end has to install anything.

The problem you’re likely going to run into with stations and cable systems is that most of their systems are automated…people are not involved and trying to convince a station to give your file special treatment will be difficult if not impossible. Not to mention if they’re using Telestream’s Flip Factory, adManager or Traffic Manager software…they’re all Windows only.

We can’t even get stations to implement Telestream provided fixes for the field reversal issue, which is just a tiny, simple plug-in that Telestream will provide and help setup for the station.

The reason? It would mean setting up a special watch folder for these problem files…which the stations and cable systems refuse to do. And believe me…we’ve asked…in fact we got telestream to figure out the problem by sending them several of the files stations were having problems with….within an hour they emailed back and said that there was nothing wrong with our encoded files, but that some of their presets for playout servers did indeed reverse the fields (usually a 720×480 to 720×486 conversion issue or vice-versa). They said it was an EASY fix…but the station would need to set up that special folder since the plug-in wouldn’t need to run on “non-problem” files. The stations refused (several)…saying they couldn’t do that because their engineers and IT people wouldn’t allow changes to the system (despite the fact that it FIXED a glaring problem with the quality of their spot playback).

Perhaps some networks would be willing to do something like DMG chop for a program length file, but my guess is many would not, especially if they’re PC based with Telestream products as well.

We’ve researched this issue of speed since the early part of this decade when we first started FTP’ing spots (2002 to be exact)…and there is no good, affordable solution that we’ve found works for both the sender and the receiver when it comes to files over about 250MB.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog

[David Johnson]

Bob,
I haven’t done any speed comparisons with the similar options like YouSendIt, but https://www.filedropper.com offers a 5Gb limit rather than the 2Gb limit at YouSendIt and most similar sites I’ve seen.