Nogami.Senkou.Com v2.0

Last Update - Sunday March 11, 2007 10:08 PM

Index:

Charter (from newgroup config message):

    The purpose of this group is to allow fans of Japanese pop music who do not reside in Japan, access to material from both established j-pop groups, and newcomers alike.  Importing from Japan is expensive, so the main goal of this group is to allow people to preview musical material before committing $30-50 per import CDs.

    If you're downloading from this group, we'd like to think that you like Japanese Pop music and would support the artists and studios that create/publish it.  If you find a new artist that you like here, please BUY some of their CDs or other materials to support them.  Everyone likes to get something for free, but I'd like to think we're fans that support the artists we enjoy so much.

Acceptable Postings:

    As this newsgroup is part of the alt.binaries.* hierarchy, postings of binary files are encouraged!  As there is no other newsgroup for conversation purposes, on-topic (Asian pop music) conversation is permitted.

    Requests for media are also encouraged!  If you have heard of a group/singer, and want some samples of their songs, be sure to request them!

    While this group was mainly created to help with a significant demand for Japanese pop music, music from other Asian countries is  acceptable - in moderation ;)

    Messages should be in English when possible, although track lists and other media may be posted in S-JIS/EUC encoding for Japanese Character sets.

Other J-Pop Sources:

    While this FAQ mainly deals with the ABSJ newsgroup, there are other sources for J-Pop music and videos.  Probably one of the most valuable is the WinMX filesharing network.  Unlike Kazaa, Morpheus, and others, WinMX appears very popular in Asia, and lots of Asian music and videos are available on the network.  You can download the free client at: www.winmx.com.

Encoding Formats:
    This section reflects a mainly PC-based software selection, while many of the formats are cross-platform, only PC links are provided as I am unfamiliar with software for other platforms.  If you have software links you'd like added, please post a notification in the newsgroup.

    The following encoding formats are suggested as being the most popular, and the highest quality.  When possible, posters to this group are encouraged to use one of these formats:
 

For Audio Files:
    Wherever possible, audio encoding should be directly from CDs, by way of digital audio extraction software.  This type of software digitally transfers the audio from the CD to the encoding software without using a soundcard, and provides the best audio quality.

    Before sending to this newsgroup, posters are encouraged to preview their encoded material to ensure it's free of sound errors such as "pops and clicks" which result from incorrectly configured ripping/encoding software.
 

For Video Files:

    Due to the large size of video files (often 20+mb), posts should be pre-compressed, and split with an archiving utility.  This allows other newsgroup members to retrieve the post, even using dialup connections, without having to restart if the connection fails.

    The most popular archive/splitting utility in use right now is RAR, which is available as a free shareware version at www.rarlabs.com.  There are versions for most major computer platforms, it compresses files very well, and is easy to use.  Most archives posted require at least RAR version 3 or higher to extract - you may not be able to extract the files if you are using an older version.

When compressing files with RAR, here are some suggested settings:

http://www.divx.com

You can download the free version if you are just interested in playing back videos.  If you want to encode your own videos, you may wish to use either the ad-supported "Pro" version, or pay for the no-ads "Pro" version.  Information on creating videos with DiVX can be found here: http://www.doom9.net or http://www.divx-digest.com/

http://www.ligos.com/

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia

           http://www.real.com/

 

For Graphics:

SFV Files

    It is suggested that posters utilize a .SFV checksum file for multipart posts so that people downloading the files can check that no errors were introduced in transit.  In order to do this, you will need software to create and verify .SFV files:

    The basic idea is that after you have all of your files ripped/encoded/zipped/RAR'ed, etc, you run SFV to create a checksum file for everything you are sending.  In essence, the SFV software will read each file and create a "signature" for the file, so that if it is modified or damaged, when a person checks the .SFV after downloading, the signature won't match the file(s) and they will know which files have errors in them.

PAR Files

    A new file format called PAR has taken Usenet by storm since mid-September, 2001.  PAR files are, in essence, a software RAID recovery format which allows a set of PAR files to recover all, or parts of damaged files in an archive set when they cannot be restored by any other means.  It works like this:

Creating PAR files (when uploading files for others)

1. A user creates a set series of archives ("file.rar" through "file.r20", for example)
2. The user runs the PAR creation program (Mirror / SmartPAR / FSRaid)
3. An additional number of PAR files are created (usually around 20% of the number of the original files is a safe number)
4. All original archive files, and the PAR files are posted

    When a reader downloads the files, if the files themselves are broken, they can get the PAR files to recover whichever pieces they need without the original poster needing to repost different sections for each person having problems.  One PAR file can recover any one missing or damaged file section.  Multiple PAR files can be used to recover larger chunks of the missing files on a 1 for 1 basis.

Using PAR files (for recovering bad files when downloading).

1. The user downloads the PAR files
2. The user  runs the PAR restore program (Mirror / SmartPAR / FSRaid)
3. If enough PAR files are available, the damaged/non-existent archives are recovered.

  I highly recommend using FSRaid to work with PAR files for Windows PCs.  It's free, very fast, extremely user friendly, and is frequently updated by the authors.  It also fixes files that have been named incorrectly, and restores the proper filenames necessary for archive extraction.

yENC Usenet encoding

    Most of Usenet exists in a 7-bit form.  Which is to say that rather than 256 possible characters being used to represent posted articles, only 128 bits are available.  The result is that binary files (which use 256 bits internally) cannot be directly posted.  They first need to be encoded so that all 8-bit characters can be represented in 7-bits.

    The most common form of Usenet posting until recently has been simple UUEncoding.  While very easy to implement and encode/decode, it's not a terribly efficient encoding technique and generally causes file sizes to increase by approximately 30% (instead of downloading 1mb for example, you'd be downloading 1.3mb).

    In mid-2001, a new encoding technique called yENC was introduced to Usenet, dramatically changing the way people posted binary files.  Instead of the 30% increase by UUEncoding, yENC results in a more reasonable 2% or 3%.  The downside to yENC posting is that the new file format was incompatible with many established news software readers (and caused much angst amongst people who are attached to their news reading software that was not compatible).  Fortunately most news software now supports yENC, and for that reason yENC posting is welcomed on alt.binaries.sounds.jpop.

    If you have an older news client which is not compatible, you can download a "yENC Proxy" which will transparently decode yENC posts.  It is available here:

Spammers and Off-Topic Material:

    People cross-posting SPAM (advertising), and other off-topic material will have "Complain:" messages posted whenever possible.  These messages contain all necessary information to be forwarded to the offender's Internet Service Provider.

    These messages should be email-forwarded to the address included in the "Complain:" message.  By forwarding these messages to the proper source, you will help to get the offender's ISP account cancelled, and keep this group as clean as possible from off-topic clutter.

Readers are welcome to promote their own J-POP websites, however they are also encouraged to post the announcement as part of an on-topic file/graphic ;)
 

How To Post:

    The easiest way to send and receive posts is using the Forte Agent newsreader software.  The full version is a commercial package, however you can download the full version and use it with a reduced feature set for free:

http://www.forteinc.com/

    While the full version, Agent (currently version 2.0) has many additional features for filtering spam, sending email, and much more, the free version contains everything that you'll need for retrieving and posting messages/files.  The free version does not support yENC encoding, so you'll need to use a 3rd-party yENC decoder, or a yENC Proxy.

    As with all posting programs, if you are going to post a binary file, it's recommended that you try a sample post to "alt.test", or "alt.binaries.test" before sending to the real newsgroup.  Try downloading the file you posted, and make sure it works properly.  If you upload stuff that doesn't work, or otherwise clutter up the group, you'll make a lot of people very upset...

    Posting songs using Agent is quite simple, however a few minor configuration details are suggested:

    Open the Group/Properties (or Default Properties) menu selection, and select the "Send Files" Tab.  Recommended settings are: