Saturday, 23 October 2004
Too tired to get on the court? Still have an itch for badminton? No problem. Just grab a snack and sit back while you watch the pros do it.
The purpose of this guide is to help anyone interested in downloading videos of great badminton matches, and related content such as coaching tutorials.
The channels which offer video downloads vary widely, and range from web download from World Badminton, to the current de facto method of peer to peer sharing. Many independent websites will also offer downloads from time to time, though the viability of these sites are questionable as the bandwidth demand is so large that they often are forced to close in short time.
This guide will help you through the steps needed to get eMule up and running. Other distributed peer to peer systems such as BitTorrent will not be covered here due to the lack of widespread badminton content avilability on them, but of course you are free to explore these other channels if you desire.
eMule Quick Start
We will first go through the minimum steps you need to get eMule going on your system and begin downloading badminton matches. The later sections are there if you are interested about issues such as improving your download wait times or getting the codecs needed to play the videos.
- Download eMule from here
- Follow through with the installation. The default settings in the wizard will suffice for your first time use. You can reconfigure everything if you so wish later on from the preference menu.
- Start eMule. You will now have to connect to a server before you can begin searching for content from the network. Press "Connect" and wait for confirmation that you are hooked up to a server.
(Tip: Connecting to a server with the largest number of files will give you the highest chance of a match initially. You can sort the list of servers based on the number of users, files, or speed. Your favourite servers can be automatically connected to on startup if you add them to your "static list" by right clicking on them.)
- You're now set to go! A switch to the search pane will now allow you to type in a search for any available badminton content. Here's an example return from typing in "badminton".
To download just double click on the file that you desire. Once you have selected the files you wish to download, you can switch to the "Transfer" panel to check the progress of each file. For a good overview of what the colour bars progress indicators mean there, you can check out this page.
Managing your Downloads
Now that you have selected a number of matches you want, there are a number of finer details that you might be interested in.
- Locating your directories - You may wish to relocate the default directories where eMule saves your files. This is found in the preference menu. Even when a file has not been downloaded completely, eMule creates a place holder of the same size as the eventual file in the temp directory. Just be sure to locate these directories at a location with enough space.
- Some useful areas on the eMule help site
You can visit the help section on the eMule website for the complete list of answers to your questions.
Why is my download so slow??
eMule works on a reward quota system in which the amount of time you wait for a download, as well as the speed of your feed is proportional to how much you give to others. The popularity of the files you share also affects this rating. In short, if you raise your upload limit speed, stay on longer, and share very popular files, your own download speed will go up accordingly as well. Over time as you share more, your credits as stored on other users' machines will give you a better position in the queues, and also give you a faster download.
So leave the files that you share in the download directory, keep your client on, and turn up that upload limit, and you will be able to enjoy your videos a lot faster.
You can find more tips here.
I can't play my video, or I don't hear anything?
Your system may not have the necessary files needed by your player to decode the video. The common formats include DIVX, and XVid. You may also need codecs just for audio on occasion. You can get all the needed installer files for these formats here:
Sharing your files
There are two ways for you to share your videos. Whatever you have downloaded already is automatically shared with everyone when eMule is on. Since eMule does not download in a linear sequential manner, you will be sharing various chunks of a file to anyone who wants it as you yourself wait for the file.
When you decide that you want to give back to the community and post a new file, you can simply place the file into your default download directory. eMule does not rely on file names to generate the ID to a file, and will automatically generate a new eMule link for the file if it is new on the network. It's that simple to share!
File Naming Convention for Sharing Badminton Matches
In an attempt to make it easy to identify the matches being shared, Badminton Forum users have come up with a standard file naming convention which is commonly seen on eMule. Please take a quick minute to rename your file to assist your fellow badder in enjoying this great badminton resource.
badminton-<year>-<tournament>-<event>-<stage>-<side1>-<side2>-<games>.avi
Event are : MS/WS/MD/WD/XD or MS1 if for team event.
Stages are : Final/SF/QF/R3/R2/R1/GrpA/GrpB/Grp1/Grp2/ etc.
Team events such as TC/UC/SC can be <stage>-<event> instead.
Team events such as Asian Games can be <team>-<stage>-<event>
Side1/2 can be one person or if a pair, separate by _ : eg. Rasmusssen_Paaske
Example:
badminton-2003-WC-MD-Final-Rasmussen_Paaske-Wijaya_Budianto-g1.avi
more complex ones are team events:
badminton-2004-TC-GrpA-MS1-Kuncoro-LinDan-g12.avi
or:
badminton-2002-AG-MenTeam-Final-MS3-Person1-Person2-g123.avi |
