where does the tracker get the pre-times?

[DaMan05]

i'll use monday's ep of Heroes as example. on Chronic, it was upped at xx:20:54 and the pre-time says 1 min 44 sec... that would put the pre-time at xx:19:10

on RTS, the pre was 18 secs. and it was upped at xx:25:05... making the pre-time xx:24:47

even tho i rilly dont care bout a 5 min difference, my actual question is: is the line that says the pre-time on trackers inputted by the uploader to the site, or is it automatic via the NFO or someting?

thanks :D

[RTFM]

Pre times are usually taken from a pre db (database of pre information and time)

[BLaZiN]

its a good question rite, until recently i was askin the same question to myself. The way i see it now is like this....it goes on a site any site and the first to get the file (im guessing) becomes the pre-time, then u get a pre bot or whatever grabbing it, so the first site it comes on becomes its 0.0.00 time and any site which gets it after it becomes so much after pre, as it goes as im writing this it dont sound to plausable but its my theory as to how a pre time is found otherwise where does the pre bot grab the file from - who nos :P

another post to my count :D

[joyntkid]

oh, another thread for all the "ex-sceners" to come in and bash everyone.
pretime is not based on whatever site gets it first, its based on when the pre-db says the group released it.

[Mugur]

And why are those differences? Different pre-time db's from different sites?

[eLucid]

The differences are due to a variety of reason. I know for a fact that the RTS pre time that was listed was incorrect (it was more like 1 minute 30 seconds). Each site also has it's own unique server time which can differ by a couple minutes.

A pre time is entered in a site's predb after the release group first releases something onto their affiliated topsites. Torrent sites almost always get their content from topsites, and that's why they never have 0sec pre time.

[pimpy112]

was the pre time in in CET

drwxrwxrwx May 8 04:19 Heroes.S01E21.HDTV.XviD-LOL

its when the group issues a "site pre Heroes.S01E21.HDTV.XviD-LOL" comand on all the sites they affilate simutaniuously, moving the rip from there private directory to the public dir. You can see that actual upload time by looking at when the group actually started moving the files before pre.

-rw-r--r-- 1 May 8 04:17 heroes.121.hdtv-lol.sfv
...
-rw-r--r-- 1 May 8 04:18 heroes.121.hdtv-lol.r23

[Melvinmeow]

The PRE times should always be the same. Im guessing RTS doesnt have a real pre DB which inserts the pretime. They probably have a field where the uploader manually inserts the time. So quite litterally the times will probably be off if this is the case.

The pre time is announced from the release group itself. Sometimes the release is on the server for a few minutes or a few days. Depends on the group and whats being released. The pre time is displayed when the group officially releases the file. (Not necessarily when the first topsite gets it complete. They could pre it after 200 sites have already had a it a day if they really wanted to.)

Technically speaking the pre times should always be the same even if the sites are using differant time zones.
3 Minutes is 3 minutes no matter what time zone your in is it not?

[Buggyme]

The differences are due to a variety of reason. I know for a fact that the RTS pre time that was listed was incorrect (it was more like 1 minute 30 seconds). Each site also has it's own unique server time which can differ by a couple minutes.

A pre time is entered in a site's predb after the release group first releases something onto their affiliated topsites. Torrent sites almost always get their content from topsites, and that's why they never have 0sec pre time.

You meant the RTS pretime for Heroes?

If you do, I know that they got it off a predb, but it's the predb itself is probably wrong since the pretime was so fast (18 secs). Furthermore, ScT had it at 16 secs.



The PRE times should always be the same. Im guessing RTS doesnt have a real pre DB which inserts the pretime. They probably have a field where the uploader manually inserts the time. So quite litterally the times will probably be off if this is the case.

Even if that's so, as long as the system time is synchronized with 'real' time, it should be ok.

[Night0wl]

There seem to be inconsistency between trackers in the system time. I think that could very well be the reason for the difference in pre times

[naturallrandom]

The PRE times should always be the same. Im guessing RTS doesnt have a real pre DB which inserts the pretime. They probably have a field where the uploader manually inserts the time. So quite litterally the times will probably be off if this is the case.

The pre time is announced from the release group itself. Sometimes the release is on the server for a few minutes or a few days. Depends on the group and whats being released. The pre time is displayed when the group officially releases the file. (Not necessarily when the first topsite gets it complete. They could pre it after 200 sites have already had a it a day if they really wanted to.)

Technically speaking the pre times should always be the same even if the sites are using differant time zones.
3 Minutes is 3 minutes no matter what time zone your in is it not?


Your wrong, I bet you have never pred a rip in your life. The pre time is when the command "site pre blah_blah section" is issued using pftp with pre patch or some tool similar. This time is captured by either scripts on the pre site directly or a bot in a site chan. The group doesn’t just decide hmm this time sounds good for an official time lets announce our official time to the word.

The process is the following for TV at least. While a show is airing you have your capper recording the show in segments breaking them up at commercials or some other convenient time. He uploads the segments as he makes them while the show is still on air to a rip/encoding box. Once the show is done and all the segments have been uploaded they are merged and encoded on the remote server. The server is powerful and on a fast connection. This allows the pre time to be earlier since they do not have to wait for the show to end to start uploading. Once its all done on the rip box it is then spread to the groups private directory on there affil sites by a so called "pre whore". Once it’s been completed on all the affil sites and the pre whores is ready he issues a command that moves the rip from the private dir to the public dir all at the same time on all the affil sites. This is called a pre and corresponds to the pre time. Once it’s public, then racers spread the rip to all the other sites as fast as possible and it eventfully works its way down to p2p and torrents.

[mikechrobot]

yeah, the pretime is when the file is announced by the group, but i think that it can't be that a group pres a release and releases it to topsites after a few days like Melvinmeow said, i think it's when the topsite releases it, and the differences are there because sites use different topsites as their pre time, one might use a topsite which is affiliated with groups A and B and another one with group C, in that case, the first topsite is bound to get the release from group C later than releases from groups A and B, that's where the difference comes from. But i think that there should be one predb which all the sites access and that pred stores pres from all the topsites, so there would be no differences

natural, your statement that segments are uploaded to automatic encode boxes is wrong because there is no person in the world who can stop and start recording right when the commercials start/end, that why you need to edit the commercials out of the rip, which requires manual work

[Cheffy]

Im amassed how fast things go now.
When i used to fxp things for sites, i had sites from 0sec to 1hour pre sites.
1 hour pre would mean that you could not upload anything older than 1 hour.
And this was actualy rather hard "work". you kinda needed to camp your computer just waiting for stuff to get pred so you start sending and earning some credits.
Now everyone get access to torrents like 1min pre. and you have to take into the time it takes to actually make the .torrent as well, so basicly some the uploaders needs to be the owners of ftpsites. Since its almost impossbile to leech and then create the .torrent, and then upload the torrent in under 1 minute.

[Melvinmeow]

The PRE times should always be the same. Im guessing RTS doesnt have a real pre DB which inserts the pretime. They probably have a field where the uploader manually inserts the time. So quite litterally the times will probably be off if this is the case.

The pre time is announced from the release group itself. Sometimes the release is on the server for a few minutes or a few days. Depends on the group and whats being released. The pre time is displayed when the group officially releases the file. (Not necessarily when the first topsite gets it complete. They could pre it after 200 sites have already had a it a day if they really wanted to.)

Technically speaking the pre times should always be the same even if the sites are using differant time zones.
3 Minutes is 3 minutes no matter what time zone your in is it not?


Your wrong, I bet you have never pred a rip in your life. The pre time is when the command "site pre blah_blah section" is issued using pftp with pre patch or some tool similar. This time is captured by either scripts on the pre site directly or a bot in a site chan. The group doesn’t just decide hmm this time sounds good for an official time lets announce our official time to the word.

The process is the following for TV at least. While a show is airing you have your capper recording the show in segments breaking them up at commercials or some other convenient time. He uploads the segments as he makes them while the show is still on air to a rip/encoding box. Once the show is done and all the segments have been uploaded they are merged and encoded on the remote server. The server is powerful and on a fast connection. This allows the pre time to be earlier since they do not have to wait for the show to end to start uploading. Once its all done on the rip box it is then spread to the groups private directory on there affil sites by a so called "pre whore". Once it’s been completed on all the affil sites and the pre whores is ready he issues a command that moves the rip from the private dir to the public dir all at the same time on all the affil sites. This is called a pre and corresponds to the pre time. Once it’s public, then racers spread the rip to all the other sites as fast as possible and it eventfully works its way down to p2p and torrents.

As a matter of fact I acctually do know what I am talking about A few people could probably vouch for me as well.
I am acctually more involved with some groups more than noobs like you would think.
Wont mention the names cause its not really anyones buissness.
The release time is really determined by the group itself and not the topsites admins.
EXAMPLE: I have a new release... I send it to an affil topsite...
It stays in my groups hidden folder. Many times this group would race the file from their hidden folder on topsite 1 to topsite 2 and down the line to a few topsites they affil on.
When the group/racer decides its time he will announce its release on any of the sites he sent it to... which would then be the pre time.

BTW I am unfamilar with how the TV cappers do their thing. I dont do tv.

Also the comment about the files being on sites a few days before being pred was just an example. Normally they arent sitting there more than an hr. It really depends on whats being released and how hypded up they are expecting the release to be.

For example something like Blah film from 2004 could be pred littlerally right after it is complete on 1 topsite. Where something like Spiderman3 would probably be sent for 30 - 60 mins to a bunch of topsites and then pred once its complete in a few places.


Im amassed how fast things go now.
When i used to fxp things for sites, i had sites from 0sec to 1hour pre sites.
1 hour pre would mean that you could not upload anything older than 1 hour.
And this was actualy rather hard "work". you kinda needed to camp your computer just waiting for stuff to get pred so you start sending and earning some credits.
Now everyone get access to torrents like 1min pre. and you have to take into the time it takes to actually make the .torrent as well, so basicly some the uploaders needs to be the owners of ftpsites. Since its almost impossbile to leech and then create the .torrent, and then upload the torrent in under 1 minute.

Youll find alot of the racers dont even do it manual anymore ;)
Its mostly all automated now.
You can setup scripts to monitor pre chans and when it notices specific details you set to watch for...
Example: Diamond in the Xvid cat... it knows to search on all the topsites your on and if it finds it send it from topsite 1 to x topsite that your racing for.

Also.... Doesnt matter if your using a REAL pre DB or a ma and pa liquor store one... the pre time should be the same on every pre db... even if there is a time delay say ,ma and pa get the announce 5 mins after the first site it should still adjust it accordinly so it showed it pred the same time.

Neither one of the sites mentioned are using real pre db in my opinion. They probably are in some sort of pre chan and are marking the times manually based on when they see this site announce its out. Just cause ma and pa announces it at 5:04 in their pre chan doesnt mean it came out 5:04 thats just the time their prechan announced it. ;)

[DaMan05]

alright!!! thanks for the input guys... love the debate :D