submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by WatTyler@lemmy.zip to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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.

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[-] Unchanged3656@infosec.pub 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

If qBittorrent is not complaining about file errors you are in fact still seeding the original file. Especially on Linux file systems a file keeps being referenced as long as at least one application is still accessing it, regardless if you delete, rename or alter it. Once you close qBittorrent the 'old' file will be dropped though.

And at that point it won't be seeded anymore as it does not match the checksums that are stored in the .torrent file or were retrieved via a magnet link. If the client is not broken it should not be possible to seed corrupted or altered files.