Hi all,

Oftentimes, video files I download only include six-channel audio (i.e. 5.1). Using Tdarr, I transcode the video files and create a stereo audio channel from the surround channel.

At present, qBittorrent seems to seed these re-encoded files without complaint but if I force a recheck, it’ll overwrite my newly-encoded files with the original. I’m concerned that my seeding these altered files is ‘harming’ the pool somehow but I am not sure?

An easy solution to this would be to keep two copies of each re-encoded file on my hard drive, so I watch the version with the stereo audio and seed the original. However, I do not have a lot of storage and would ideally minimize the copies I have of each file.

So, to sum-up, I suppose my question is: am I harming the torrent pool by seeding these altered versions? Or, if I want to be a responsible torrenter, do I need to keep duplicate versions, at least until my share ratio is 1:1?

Thanks.

EDIT:

Thank you to all those who took the time to comment and upvote. I’ve setup a ‘pipeline’ for seeding unaltered originals.

  • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
    20·
    6 months ago

    My understanding is that if you change the contents of a torrent you’d have to create a new torrent to seed the result. You can’t change the contents of a torrent and expect other people to receive the modified files via the original torrent. Your client will be doing a checksum and realizing its local files are corrupt (due to your changes) so replacing them with good copies.

    So create a new torrent with the modified files and an explanatory title, and seed that.

    • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      27·
      6 months ago

      In fact, this is actively worse than doing nothing at all. Remote peers will download a block, see that it’s corrupted, discard it, and blacklist op for sending them bad blocks.