QuickPar

[guidecca]

I burn movies fairly well on DVD's. But I use cheap DVD's. MP'3 don't work well on DVD's. Thats just my experience. I don't know if it is the media or the files. I just want to know how to eliminate the "bad file" choice. I "zipped" my mp3's with QuickPar. Now what do I do. I think it checked them for CR errors. I don't really know. Do I burn those file to DVD too or save them for backup. I'm lost. This is getting complicated.

Mike

 

[guidecca]

Possible solutions:

Spend an eternity learning about it.
Use up 10 or more cheap DVD's trying to make QuickPar and Roxio work.
Call in sick to work.
Tell the unemployment office you are still looking for work.
Go back to Google and do another search.

 

[Accord99]

QuickPar produces PAR2 parity files that can detect errors and fix them. What QuickPar typically does is to split a file, or a collection files, into smaller user-defined blocks. It then creates a number of recovery blocks, also user defined. Each recovery block can fix any one block in the files that is found to have an error. What you want to do is create a small amount of recovery blocks, maybe 10% of the total data size. You can put it on the DVD if you want to, QuickPar can detect if any of the recovery blocks have errors as well. Ideally, you want to set your block size so that each file is split into several blocks, as it is more efficient for recovery but this can increase the processing time. The QuickPar website should have all the info you need.

 

[guidecca]

Thanks! I will check out their website. I am kind of familiar with parity for fault tolerance for data but was not sure what QuickPar was doing. I tried to use CD Check yesterday. It is supposed to write zeros where it finds gaps/errors. It takes forever for it to do one file.

I just burned 143 mp3's and mpgs totaling about 4.43 Gb onto a DVD-RW. So far, they are playing without any problem. I've been playing with these files for so long that I have forgotten if I did anything to change them. I did moved the .PAR2 files to another folder on the HD so they didn't get lost down the rabbit's hole on a defective DVD-RW. Thanks again!

 

[VirtualLarry]

My preference is for SmartPAR myself (PAR1 archive format), if you are dealing with nearly equal-sized chunks.

 

[guidecca]

Is SmartPar more intuitive, easier to understand? I think I have the file but QuickPar was recommened on another thread in this Forum. Archiving my HD involves mostly copying mp3's, mpg's, .avi, and .txt files. It keeps me out of the street or stealing hub caps. 80 Gb doesn't last long. The DVD's have been my choice for archiving.

 

[Auric]

Err, if the disc becomes unreadable then recovery records shan't help anyway. If only some fail then given enough PAR files stored elsewhere they could be recovered. But they would still all have to be copied to the HDD first. Use the verify option upon the finish of burning.

 

[guidecca]

So, if I understand anything from this, I know that I should verify that the DVD works before deleting any files from the HDD. Either the DVD media or the files itself could be defective. QuickPar fixes files missing a byte or two as long as they are still on the HDD. If there is a cyclic redundancy error message while trying to open a file on the DVD and I deleted the files on HDD then:

1.

2.

I'm not sure...... sorry

 

[NightCrawler]

The point of QuickPAR is this:

You have a very large file which is hundreds of blocks, the odds are that only some of the blocks are going go bad or become corrupt sitting on DVD media, you don't want to create a 1:1 copy so you create 10% redundancy which will create some blocks you can use should that file go bad.

This is also very useful if you are downloading large files and the file is corrupt or missing blocks you can just download a few blocks and repair the file instead of re-downloading the whole thing. It's used on usenet a lot.