A Guide To Posting In ABMA

(under construction - A rewrite of Lanky's guide)

In detail:

The recommended format of the Subject: line is: Author - Title [x of x]

e.g. Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue [01 of 20]

Examining the filename and the reasons for this sort of format.....

1. Tom Sharpe or Sharpe, Tom:
   Both are acceptable. Better than just Sharpe or TS etc.
   
   
2. The separator "-":
   A dash is pretty much standard. Occasionally a "~" (tilde) is used.
   
   
3. The title:
   Which should be exactly as on the cover of the book (i.e. include the "The" if it is there).
   
   
4. Keep it short.
   Headers of more than 50 characters or so start to disappear beneath other columns on a downloaders screen and the end of the header may never be read.
   
   Be aware that in PowerPost, if you put the filename followed by "$F" you will repeat the filename, so watch for unnecessary duplication.
   
   
5. Numbers. Do not start a Subject: line with numbers (even if they are part of the filename).
   

Subject header starting with numbers rationale:

Starting a Subject: line with the author's name followed by the title allows newsgroup users to "stack" the listing of headers in alphabetical order by author.

The part number e.g. [13 of 20] allows the above author/title order to be further optimised in a logical order.

Never, ever start a Subject: line with the part number, or any number. The reason for this is that the order of headers will be affected by anyone else (including you if you post multiple books) using part numbers at the beginning. E.g.:

[01 of 25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[01 of 33] Agatha Christie - Sex In Bangkok
[01 of 15] PG Wodehouse - Extreme Skateboarding For Beginners
[02 of 25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[03 of 33] Agatha Christie - Sex In Bangkok
[04 of 15] PG Wodehouse - Extreme Skateboarding For Beginners
...and so on

Filenames starting with numbers rationale:

File naming is a subjective personal preference so these aren't hard and fast rules. They are common-sense suggestions that may have not occurred to you.

Uploading and sharing your files are just one step in the equation. You may have uploaded the files from one folder on your hard drive. You must be aware of the final step in the equation, i.e. people will be downloading your files. One thing you may not have considered though is that most people download books in bulk from several different posters. The upshot of this is that they usually end up with one folder full of files. They then have to sort out those downloads in an organised way. You can help them with a bit of forethought on your part.

Be mindful of the way you name your files in relation to how others do it. Here are some recommendations...

Obviously, including author and title should be a given, and to differentiate one file from another some numbering reference should be used, e.g. disk number, chapter number, track number etc.

Do not be tempted to put the numbering reference first though. If you do, for similar reasons stated above, a folder full of files can become a nightmare to organise. The file-managers of various operating systems all default to displaying files in alphabetical order. This means that any files with names starting with numbers will be at the top of the list, with no differentiation about author etc. All the files that begin with a 1 will be together, so will the ones starting with 2 etc.

Additionally, whenever using number references consideration should be given to using leading zeros, e.g. 01 (when there is a maximum of 99 files), 001, 002 etc (when there is a maximum of 999 files).

The reason for this is that some software/operating systems distinguish between "1" and "01" when ordering numerically. This means that all number with a "1" as a first numeral will be grouped together, e.g. 1,11,111

Without the use of leading zeros this can happen:

[1-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[10-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[11-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[12-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
.
.
[19-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[2-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[20-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
[21-25] Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue

...etc, but if a leading zero is used then all software/operating systems will count in the correct sequential order.

It is also recommended that filenames not be too long. Different operating systems have different maximum file name lengths. It is also the case that different operating systems have different maximum path lengths, e.g. Windows NTFS has a maximum path length of 256 characters. So if you have given your filenames a lengthy filename, when downloaded onto a system that has a smaller maximum some of the characters (not including the extension) will be lost which can have an effect on how the files are ordered in a file-manager

Other Subject: line contents:

It is acceptable behaviour to use some standard acronyms in the Subject: header to impart extra information such as a new rip (NR), uploading someone else's rip (NMR not my rip), a repost (RP), answering someone's request (By REQ) etc. The trick is to impart as much clear information as possible whilst using the minimum amount of characters as possible.

Some other important abbreviations can also be helpful such as Abr or Unabr (meaning abridged and unabridged respectively).

Obviously not all posts will be files being posted, there will be several variants of text only posts including making requests and replying to other posters' comments.

Making Requests:

When making a request it is helpful to understand that what you are actually doing is asking someone you don't know to go to the time, trouble, effort and expense to give you something that you either want or need. Accordingly you should make your request in a polite and respectful way. Obviously this isn't a rule that must be obeyed, but on the other hand if you don't then the chances of you having your requests answered are minimal!

There are several simple ways to make requests, and there are a few ways that you really shouldn't. An example of a straight forward request is:

REQ: George Bush - Holidaying in Iraq. Many thanks.

or

Any chance of someone posting an Enid Blyton flood? Cheers.

Basically there is no set way of doing it, but so long as it's clear, to the point and respectful then it will be okay.

What you shouldn't do is:

• Demand,
• Be churlish/aggressive,
• Disrespectful,
• Make repeated requests.
• Do not use all caps.

The first three should be obvious, but the last two may need some explaining.

Making repeated requests so that the Subject: header shows a block of your requests is a no-no. It's considered to be demanding, rude and irritating, as such there is little chance of you getting yoru request filled. Likewise and all caps headers is considered to be shouting, these are called "Billboarding", and similarly they will also most likely go unanswered. Shouting at people to post your a book is not the best way to go about it!

.NFO files rationale:

Do please include an info file. The majority of downloaders these days want/need to know far more about a book that just the author and title.

It is very helpful indeed to most downloaders to have an info file, so let them know what you know about the book. This should contain as much basic info as you can and suggested topics are:-

Book title
Author
Narrator(s)
What number in a series
Fiction or non-fiction
Mystery, Thriller, Love story, Maritime tale etc
Abridged or not
Number of files
Explanation of the filenaming method
Quality of the recording (bitrate etc)
Synopsis of the book
Reposting policy
Any other technical or helpful info available, like no. of CD's, how (who) ripped etc.

It is always advisable to make the .NFO file the very first file to be posted when you post a book. They are only small text files and can easily be downloaded quickly so that the prospective downloader can make an informed decision as to whether he wants to download your book or not.

.NFO files are simple to create, they are just plain ascii text files. The easiest way to do it is download one from someone else's post and simply edit it to reflect your books settings. Any text editor will do the job. Just make sure that your line-lengths are set to about 72 characters.

Good sources for gaining information on the description sections of the .NFO file can be found at Amazon (US) or Amazon UK, Fantastic Fiction or the producers of the audiobook (eg Booksontape, Harper Audio
etc).

Most info files have the .nfo extension, but they can also be named with a .txt extension.

MS Windows' default file association for .nfo files is to open System Viewer. This is an application that is rarely used by anyone so it is quite safe to change the association to your favourite text editor or NFO viewer.

The easiest way to change the file association is to right-click (shift-right-click on Windows versions prior to XP) on the file and choose "open with" from the submenu. Allow the next submenu to open then choose "program". If your preferred text or NFO viewer is in the list shown to you then choose it and tick the box at the bottom to "always open" that file extension with your selected program. If the program you want isn't in the list just click "browse", find the executable of the program you want then follow the on screen instructions.

Audio Quality:

In the days before broadband became so common it was usual for rippers/posters to use 32kbs/22kHz as the standard settings for books. The reason for this was that file size was kept small (approx 6Mb per 30 mins) and so could be downloaded in a reasonable time over a 56k modem. The problem was that audio quality raged between barely acceptable and god-awful.

These days with high speed connections file size isn't quite as important, but the more die-hard collectors are starting to value sound quality over filesize.

When ripping CDs (or tapes) the first thing to go should be the dual channel of stereo. If there's only one voice then stereo is somewhat redundant. Some will argue that if it's stereo on the CD then it should be stereo on the rip. Actually this is a misunderstanding of the way audio is contained on a CD. The Red Book standard for audio CDs doesn't actually support mono. So what happens is that if youw ant a CD to be in mono it has to be mono sound on the left channel and the same mono sound on the right channel. Now the whole idea of compressed audio is to get rid of audio data you aren't going to hear to enable the filesize to be as small as possible whilst maintaining quality. It should be obvious now that retaining a stereo MP3 of a single mono voice is a waste of filespace.

The next thing to take into account is the sample frequency. CDs themselve contain audio sampled at 44.1kHz. This means that it can support an audio frequency range of about 20hz - 20kHz. Now there are some who argue that this is far more than necessary to cover the frequency range of the human speaking voice which is in the range of 85hz to 8kHz (roughly speaking). The problem is that when using lower sample frequencies, e.g. 16kHz or 22kHz some of the harmonic frequencies above 8kHz are lost. The human brain and hearing is optimised for listening to human speech. It's no coincidence that the frequency range of the voice is right in the middle of our total frequency range. The upshot being that we are very sensistive to voices and our brains react when something that should be there is missing. It isn't aleways obvious that we aren't hearing something but it can manifest itself in various ways such as "I can't seem to quite get into that book", "I liked the story but there was something not quite right about the narrator". The upshot of all this is that it is recommended that you leave the sample rate as it comes off the CD, i.e. 44.1kHz.

The single biggest thing that can affect quality is the bitrate you select to rip at. Should it be 32kbs or 48 or 56, or should it be 96, 128 or even 256 or the maximum of 320kbs. Well the first thing you need to ask yourself is how much audible data are you prepared to throw away? The smaller the bitrate the more data is lost. It's lost because the smaller the number, the slower it can move data from the file to the player.

Without going into too much detail, and taking liberties with absolute accuracy the easiest way to understand bitrates is to use a radio analogy. The following is based on mono sound:

Relative sound quality

• 32kbs = AM Radio
• 56kbs = FM Radio
• 64kbs = CD Audio

Now, I hear you ask yourself, "I'd heard that 128kbs is roughly equivalent to CD audio?". well yes it is... for a stereo source such as a music CD. Please bear in mind that the sound quality of a mono file at 64kbs is identical to the sound quality of a 128kbs stereo file. Remember, you've thrown away a channel so the necessary bitrate halves.

A lot of people convince themselves that they can hear the difference between an audiobook ripped at 64/44 mono and say, 96/44 mono. Well if they can they are either fooling themselves or they are listening to a lousy rip. You could certainly hear the difference if you were listening to music, but at 64/44/mono there is very little audio data being lost when encoded a human voice.

The moral of this is that the accepted quality vs size standard of most of the experienced posters/ripper is to rip at 64kbs at 44.1kHz in mono.

Another question to ask is to normalise or not to normalise.

<<<<< Old below here>>>>>>

A common MP3 quality in a.b.m.a. has a bitrate of 64Kb/s and a sample rate 44KHz.
Now, a bitrate of 32 Kb/s and sample rate of 22KHz gives a poorish audio quality
but results in a small file.
A rip of 128 Kb/s; 44KHz; & Stereo produces an unnecessarily large file.
Spoken-word quality is not much improved after 64Kb/s and stereo is usually wasted.
So a compromise between quality and size might be:-
48 or 64 kb/s bitrate; 44KHz sample rate; Mono
There is lots of software about which will convert bitrates downward to reduce
file size. Converting to higher bitrates DOESN'T WORK as the necessary information
is not there and no quality increase is obtained.

4. Do include PAR files

PAR files are used to repair incomplete or otherwise corrupt posts and PAR software
is available FREE from lots of googled places like http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
Even the best servers have hiccups and they necessarily deal with poorer servers who
have more hiccups. So parts of files get lost in the ether somewhere and the downloader
faces incomplete files. These incomplete files are next to useless usually, unless
accompanied by PAR files. PAR FILES ARE EASY TO DO (I promise you), after a bit of
practice - but this applies to everything. (95% of posters can do it, so you can too)
A tutorial can be found at http://www.quickpar.org.uk/Tutorials.htm.
So it is essential that PAR files are included with every post or folk will not download
because of incompleteness and a poster's work goes for nothing.
It has been suggested that one set of PAR files be done for the whole audiobook and not
several sets, one for each CD or tape, for example. This would make downloading easier.

5. Do practice posts in alt.binaries.test or similar until you get it right.

Even fairly simple software requires some practice until all of its foibles are known.
And Do ask in the group if you have problems. There are lots of experts (ie folk who
have overcome the probs you have) and many solutions.

6. Use a proper nickname.
No need to attach name address and phone number, but folk like to put a name to users.
Make it polite and unique.


Please DO NOT do the following:-

1. Do not use filenames and headers which are meaningless and/or confusing on their own.

ie 001a.mp3, tspb01.mp3, 01.01.258.mp3, CD15.mp3, tape1.mp3

Numbers are especially confusing more so if the header STARTS with a number and if two
posters use similar numbers on the same day or one poster uses the same numbers twice for
different books on the same day(or even the same week or month), then much confusion and
frustration ensues. Again these files can be sorted out but it means meticulous renaming,
not always possible at around midnight of a long day.

Numbering systems which even just overlap can lead to complete loss of an audiobook as
one of them is partially overwritten by the other at some stage. Most downloading software
will not overwrite but they may make matters worse by renaming with bracketted numbers like,
001.mp3 and 001(2).mp3 and 002.mp3 and 002(2).mp3 not to mention multi-server software which
can and does download both simultaneously and thus it depends which part of which is finished
first as to which gets the brackets. Miss out the leading zeros and ... well - delete the lot.

2. Do not post non-MP3 files

Everyone is getting more and more computer savvy as time passes, but still there are folk
who cannot convert from one format to another and lots of folk who can but don't feel that
they should be asked to. So don't post MP4, M4a files and the like in this MP3 group. If you
can't or won't convert to MP3 don't expect others to convert to MP3.A note posted in an mp3
group that an audiobook has been posted in IPOD format or similar in another newsgroup would
certainly be appreciated by most people and will annoy no-one.

I suppose this is a time-limited DON'T as software development is sure to produce readers
which will play all formats soon.
A common non-MP3 file format is RAR, which is a widely used compression (zip type) program.
There is no need to use RAR or Winrar on the mp3 files in a.b.m.a. because there is little
or no benefit and an extra conversion step to go wrong.
For video and DVD groups where there are hundreds of large files, RAR might be OK but not here.

3. Do not attempt to place your post at the top of the page by starting the header with
symbols like !"@#() etc

This behaviour is fairly common, slightly confusing and egotistical, therefore annoying to
some/most. Comments like (NMR)(Not My Rip) can go anywhere in the header, its not essential
info. It can go at the front without the brackets I suppose..... Better still stick incidental
info like that in the info file.
More informative is (NR) (new rip). Not always a newly released audiobook but indicates
something new.
Headers starting like !!!!! are usually accompanied by annoying (close to spam) screeds like
HERE IT IS AS PROMISED, GRAB IT WHILE YOU CAN etc......MP3
There's not much can be done about purposeful annoyers, billboarders & spammers. They will
always be around and abusive messages to them often doubles their pleasure. Worse yet, they
can post very good, long awaited audiobooks.

4. If the post is not in English, say so in the header.

WENN DAS BUCH NICHT AUF ENGLISCH IST, BITTE ANGEBEN, WELCHE SPRACHE IN DER ÜBERSCHRIFT danke soviel
INDIEN HET BOEK NIET IN HET ENGELS IS, ALSTUBLIEFT STAAT DIE TAAL IN DE RUBRIEK (KRANTEKOP)dankuwel
IF THE BOOK IS NOT IN ENGLISH, PLEASE STATE THE LANGUAGE IN THE HEADER thank you so much.

It is usually easy to see non-English posts, but sometimes it isn't. Robin Cook has
several books spoken in Dutch, for example, which sometimes use English looking titles.
Downloading an audiobook in a language you can't understand is obviously a complete waste
of time and thus annoying. 95% of audiobooks in a.b.m.a are in English so that is the
default language in use here.

A section on Downloaders.
1. Get good software, usually the latest freeware, shareware, otherware and update it.
So you can be self sufficient and sort problems out yourself (then give advice to others).
Software Needed:- Newsgroup reader, file manager, an MP3 file joiner/splitter/editor/renamer
A list of recommended software is in the FAQ below.
2. Requesting audiobooks
a) use a simple format such as
REQ Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue (no brackets around REQ)
b) try not to be picky or specific in details unless it is important.
like, read only by President Bush, or 196 KB/s bitrate for my Ipod
c) Ask but once a day or less. Multiple requests for the same book are usually ignored.
d) Post something yourself, posters are usually accomodated quickly.

When REQUESTING Please Don't put the REQuest in the Header of a book which you are posting,
it makes the header far too long and confusing.

e) Say thank you if your REQ is filled.
f) Do not be abusive about a post. The poster may well have been doing his/her best.
Point out the fault as you experience it (it may be your server) and ask for a repost or similar.


Useful Links
www.quickpar.org.uk/ PAR software and tutorial.
www.quickpar.org.uk/Tutorials.htm

www.powerpost.cjb.net/ Uploading software

www.amazon.com/ Sources of data for info files.
www.booksontape.com/

www.mp3-faq.org/tips/bookssubfaq.html Information about Binary Newsgroups and Usenet in general.
www.binaries4all.com/index.php
www.slyck.com/ng.php Slyck's Guide to The Newsgroups - Intro

Suggestions for amendments and additions are welcome. Just post them in the Group.

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