How to play movies that are .tar files?

[Fagatron]

I've downloaded some movies, and they are '.tar' files. I searched for information about '.tar' files, and I found out that they're some type of zip file for UNIX... is that right? Anyway, I'm using Windows, and I don't understand how to turn these things into watchable movies. Can someone help me?

[talkinghand]

I've downloaded some movies, and they are '.tar' files. I searched for information about '.tar' files, and I found out that they're some type of zip file for UNIX... is that right? Anyway, I'm using Windows, and I don't understand how to turn these things into watchable movies. Can someone help me?


all you have to do, is unarchive it with your favorite compression program. (i recomend WINRAR)

you extract it, and play.

badabing badaboom

then you sit back with the popcorn.

[rebirth]

WINRAR or WINACE will work...it's actually NOT UNIX it's a windows/Mac OS file

[origin]

correct, a unix based compression system that good for us winRaR understands so just grab winrar and un archive it and you will have a movie file .avi or mpeg :) @rarlabs (http://www.rarlabs.com)

l8

[shawners]

.tar files are off of SHAREAZA, the make the file that way so you can view contents of RAR, zip, or avi and movies. Im not sure if after it gets downloaded if it puts it together, or rename the file back to original source.

[tackdaddy]

there are to many damn file formats that people use for movies,it took me a hour to find out how to play a OGG file and you need all these freakin codecs,it is a big headache sometimes.

[Fagatron]

I think I figured out how to do it now. I was using Winzip, and it wasn't workin for me. I tried Winrar like you guys suggested, and got one of my movies turned into an avi file. Thanks for the help. I was avoiding downloading these files because I didn't know how to work them, but now I can download all I want! Thats good, because about half of the movies I find on IRC are these crazy tar files.

[qman]

WINRAR or WINACE will work...it's actually NOT UNIX it's a windows/Mac OS file

Wrong. Please do not spread false information. A quick search on google would have done a lot for you and this poster who started this thread. I could state in my own words but I won't. I am lazy. Here you go:

What is a tar?
TAR is a UNIX command that allows you to create a single archive file containing many files. Such archiving allows you to maintain directory relationships and facilitates transferring complex programs with many separate but integrated parts that must have their relationships preserved. TAR has a plethora of options that allow you to do archiving and unpacking in many ways. However, for the purpose of unpacking CGI applications, the commands will be fairly simple.

PS...like everyone said, you can use winzip, winrar(what I use), or many other file compression programs.

[nasrules]

.tar files are off of SHAREAZA, the make the file that way so you can view contents of RAR, zip, or avi and movies. Im not sure if after it gets downloaded if it puts it together, or rename the file back to original source.

Completely and utterly wrong, shawners. As mentioned above, they're a *nix archive.

[eivioolla]

there are to many damn file formats that people use for movies,it took me a hour to find out how to play a OGG file and you need all these freakin codecs,it is a big headache sometimes.

Try VLC, it plays almost any video file without any external codecs. DVD, mpg, xvid, divx, ogm, mkv... you name it. :)

-edit- lol forgot the important part: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[shawners]

when i USE shareaza, to preview the rar file, or zip files, it turns it into fragments of .tar files, and has two or three of them, one thats in the beginning, one at the end, and the missing pieces arent there.

[Fagatron]

I NEED HELLP AGAIN!! Somehow I did it that first time and got it to work, but this time all its doing when I try to extract it is turning it into a folder with a bunch of files inside. And then when I try to extract that, it just keeps copying the same folder everywhere. Can someone guide me through how to do it with Winrar?

[cpugeniusmv]

http://forum.sharereactor.com/viewtopic.php?t=165816

[Ken17625]

It's an archive file. Winrar can handle it just fine.

You really don't "need" to know anymore than that, in this case (though knowledge can't hurt).

Step one - Extract a file/directory/etc.. (s) to a specified or default location using Winrar.

Step two - There is no step two.

[Fagatron]

I think I finally got the files extracted, but it turned into these two files:

vcd-TitleOfMovie1.bin (542 MB)

vcd-TitleOfMovie1.cue (1KB)

whats a .bin file?

[Malicious Intent]

Time for you to get to google my friend. There is lots of help on .bin and .cue files.
EDIT: Cause I'm so nice I searched for you:
http://www.fasttrackcentral.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2305&highlight=bin+cue

[talkinghand]

damn, you just can never play your file can you...

ok, to do this, you gotta get a program to mount this cd image, which a bin file is...

i recomend alcohol 120% it costs money, but i think you can erm... handle that...

OR

you can get this wonderfully helpful program called VCDgear. it just turns the bin/cue file into a mgp file. then you can compress to divx or whatever. but i really love vcdgear unless you wanna keep your file as a vcd(videocd) which it is, which can be burned and played on many dvd players.

[wonderboy2005]

i think we need a guide on this. just think of all the headaches it would prevent. i know i really could have used a guide when i started getting these types of files..

i will start on one... if anyone has any relevant info that should be in a guide, please post...

[Malicious Intent]

Good job Wonderboy2005. Check the link that I posted, it has some good stuff. It runs through both burning and mounting.

[wonderboy2005]

Good job Wonderboy2005. Check the link that I posted, it has some good stuff. It runs through both burning and mounting.

that link you posted goes to a forum that requires you to sign up in order to view its contents. im not going to sign up just to read, so could you post a copy of what you were refering to?

[wonderboy2005]

well, here's what i have so far of this guide:


Downloaded Files Guide

So you downloaded a file. Now what do you do with it?

THis depends on the type of file you downloaded.


1)Audio: first off, you will have to determine the type of file you downloaded. find the directory that the
file was saved to.

A)Archived files: .zip, .rar, .tar, .ace, .7z, .tar.gz

I)If the file(s) you downloaded are of this type, you will need to uncompress them. There
are many utilities that allow you to do this. some reccomended programs are:

Windows:WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com/) - shareware
7-zip (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/) - freeware, opensource

Mac: winrar for mac (http://www.rarlab.com/) - shareware, command line only
Stuffit expander (http://www.stuffit.com/win/expander/index.html) - freeware

Linux: Winrar for linux (http://www.rarlab.com/) - shareware, command line only
*most linux distros come preloaded with archiving/decompression capabilities


II)Usually, once an audio archive is uncompressed, the resulting files are directly playable
by your computer. the files will usually be in the one of the following formats if this is
the case:

mp3, mp4, m4a, wma, ogg, mpc, ape, wav, ecetera...
note: a nearly complete list of audio file formats can be found at
(http://www.globalmusicresource.com/basics/basics2.html)

III)If the file(S) in question fit into one of the catagories above, your computer should be
able to play them automatically. all you need to do is double click on the file you want
to play. There are many alternatives to the default media players on your computer. some
reccomended media players are:

Windows: Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/)
foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/)
QCD player (http://www.quinnware.com/index.php)

Mac: *itunes media player is a very good media player that is preloaded with all recent macs

Linux: XMMS (http://www.xmms.org/)


IV)sometimes archived audio files will come with extra files that aren't audio. some of these files can
be helpful. for example:

.pls and .m3u - these are playlists. double click them, and your media player will play all the files that were in the archive it came in

.sfv - this is a hash file - that is, if you have a program that will handle it, you can verify that the files were not corrupt or sabbotaged.

.nfo and .txt - these files give information about the release group and the file(S) you downloaded

.jpeg, .jpg, .bmp, etc. - these are images. they usually are of CD covers, inserts, etc.

B)multiple compression Archives: Many times you will find that a single archive, when uncompressed, will produce many more files, such as filename.001,
filename.002, etc or filename.c01, filename.c02, etc.

I) these files will almost always be the same size, usually about 15 megabytes each. the reason for this is how they were originally distributed.
many times, these files are obtained from newsgroups, which usually limit filesizes to 15 MB. as a result, files larger than 15MB need to be broken up.
many archiving programs can do this, and produce files such as the examples above.

to extract these files, double click the original file. you can determine which file is the original by looking at the extentions of the files.
if one of the files that is the same size is a rar or zip or tar or any of the archive formats above, this is likely the original file. if
no file exists, then try the one that comes first in alphanumeric order (that is, alphabetically and/or numerically). this should produce the desired files.

C)Unarchived files: mp3, mp4, m4a, wma, ogg, mpc, ape, wav, ecetera...

*** see II) - IV) under Archived files


2)Video: Videos and movies come in a massive variety on filesharing networks.

A)Archived videos: as with archived audio files, movies and videos usually come in one of the following formats:

I).zip, .rar, .tar, .ace, .7z, .tar.gz

1) to open these files, see I) of the archived audio section, as the methods for extracting the files are the same.

The resulting file(S) could be one of many formats:

avi, mpeg, mpg, ogm, etc. - these are ready-to-be-played files.

II).avi, .mpeg, .mpg, .ogm, etc. - as stated above, these are ready-to-be-played files. before you can view these videos/movies though, there are a few things you will need:

1) a video player:

Windows:BSplayer (http://www.bsplayer.org/)
Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/)
Media player classic (http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/)
VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

Mac: VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

Linux: VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

2) the proper codec(s):

Windows: if you are fortunate enough to be part of the <90% of computer users who use a PC, this should be relitvely painless.
you will most likely want to make it easy and just install virtually every codec you will ever need at once. there are a couple options for this:

Nimo's codec pack: (http://nimo.titanesk.com/modules/freecontent/index.php?id=1)

Klite codec pacK: (http://doa2.host.sk/codecs/)

Mac: VideoLAN should play most video formats without any extra software, but if it doesnt play the file you want, you might want to search Google.com

Linux: VideoLAN should play most video formats without any extra software, but if it doesnt play the file you want, you might want to search Google.com

3) any other needed software:

in the case of xvid and 3ivx encoded movies/videos, you may have problems with the colors of the video. if this is the case, you may need the ffdshow filter
availible from (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/)

if you do not know what codec your file is using, you should be able to find it using a program called gspot availible from (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/download.html)


III) image files: .bin/cue, .iso, etc.: these are files meant to be burned to a CD or DVD. usually, they are either a form of a VCD or a DVD.

1)burning these files: to burn these files, you will need a program that supports the burning of images.

Windows:Nero (http://www.nero.com/us/index.html)
CloneCD (http://www.clonecd.net/)

Mac: toast (http://www.roxio.com/en/products/toast/index.jhtml)

Linux:

2)playing these files without burning:


3)Software:

A)Archived Software:

B)Software Images:

C)Unarchived Software:

I)Executable installations:


4)Games:

A)Archived Games:

B)Game Images:

C)Rips/Executable installations:

[cpugeniusmv]

don't forget .r00-.r99

and the oh-so-cryptic .001, .002, .003, etc.

might be good to cover .nfo too :)

[wonderboy2005]

don't forget .r00-.r99

and the oh-so-cryptic .001, .002, .003, etc.

might be good to cover .nfo too :)
they are in there :)

see B) under audio for the .r00-.r99, etc and IV) under archived files under audio for the .nfo and other random files....

[Malicious Intent]

Sorry, I thought you were doing a .bin and .cue FAQ.
Very brave of you trying to tackle all filetypes in one.

Fasttrackcentral stuff on .bin and .cue (sorry that the formatting is lost:

How to use bin/cue files:

What are they
Bin files are image files of the CDs you are trying to get. They are created from various programs. Cue files are basically something that tells burning software like Nero where and how to burn these files. They aren't always needed but they do make things easier.

Note: You do not need to burn bin files to use them. READ ON for more information

How to burn them
The following steps are written by dead frog
Here's what you do (using Nero, using "Frogland" as example).

-Download CDmage and check the bin for errors first. If it finds some it will attempt to correct, but the chance of burning a copy with errors is now higher.
-Open the .cue with notepad and make sure the filename on line 1 matches the filename you're trying to burn. If you want to reduce the chance of 'line 1' errors, change the filename (and the one in the cue) to something like frogland.bin, instead of one with redundant info like frogland.ripped.by.frogga.sharereactor.(FTC).share _or_be_disconnected.bin


- Do the filenames match now?
- Are you sure?
- Put cue and bin in the same directory
- Start Nero, select "Burn Image" from the 'file' menu (or Recorder, Burn Image in newer versions of Nero)
- Find the directory with the cue (and bin) in it.
- Click on da cue
- Change your burning options (simulation, etc) and click write
- It burns. You're done!

A quick way to do bin/cue files is to skip to step 5. If it doesn't work then it means that the cue file is incorrect or you don't have the bin file in the same folder as the cue file.

From this point you can just fix the cue file by opening it notepad(read furthur down) or you can try burning the bin file in Nero with the same "burn image" command. Select the bin file and burn it as "data mode 2". I like using the cue file so I don't use the second option all too much.

If you only have the .bin and are missing the .cue
Try out this program, it'll allow you to create a .cue for the type of .bin file you're dealing with.

No CD burner? Lack of disks? Want to test before burning? Too lazy to burn that disk? Daemon tools may have the answer.

Mounting an image:

Right-click on the Daemon-Tools trayicon
Select Virtual CD/DVD-ROM
Select Device [?:]
Click Mount
Browse and select the image you wish to mount
Click OK or double-click on the file to mount

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unmounting an image:

Right-click on the Daemon-Tools trayicon
Select Virtual CD/DVD-ROM
Select Device [?:]
Click Unmount

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enabling Protection Emulations:

Right-click on the Daemon-Tools trayicon
Select Emulation
Click on the desired emulation to enable
Note: You can find more information about CD Protections by clicking here


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fast Dump:

Daemon-Tools' "fastdump" feature is used to speed up the image creation of Safedisc 1 & 2 protected CDs and is also the first step to create a backup of a Safedisc 2 protected CD.

Enable safedisc emulation
Install the game you want to backup
Start the game, and wait until the safedisc check is over (you usually see a splash screen while it is safedisc checking)
Exit the program and do NOT remove the CD
Run your burning program (a list of suitable burning programs can be found here)
Start image creation or copying
You might see a list of errors for up to 20 seconds, which is normal

[wonderboy2005]

im starting to realize how massive of a guide this is going to become. i just scratched the surface on some of these topics, while others i have left blank, yet its well over a page already, probably 2 pages.

well im done for tonight... im tired.

[Fagatron]

Hey guys I just downloaded another movie, and this time its an .XV file. I searched Google, but I can't find much on it.
Anybody know how to play these things? I tried playing it with Videolan, but no luck. Anyway, the name of the file
looks like this:

TitleOfMovie.special.extended.version.dvd.ac3.xv

BTW thanks for the great help so far!

[Fagatron]

Oh, and thats what it turned into after I extracted it with Winrar.

[cpugeniusmv]

well...

i was going to go to www.filext.com

but i guess they're having problems...i'll keep checking

[wonderboy2005]

try tacking .avi to the end of it, then try to open it with videoLAN. if it doesnt work, no biggie... you can just delete the .avi part

[Miniver]

First of all you don't need to do anything to a bin file to play it. Just load it into videolan and it will play fine. You don't need to convert it, you don't need to mount it as an image unless you need it to play on something else. The .xv extension is just someone being stupid the file is obviously encoded in xvid mpeg-4 and using ac3 codec for audio, make sure you have the latest version of the k-lite codec pack http://doa2.host.sk/codecs/ and rename the end of the file to .avi and play away. http://www.doom9.org has a lot of good information that would be good for you to browse also http://www.afterdawn.com

[gorphon]

you can also always just burn the .bin to disc. pretty simple really. if you use nero just click on cancel to exit the wizard then go to 'recorder' on the top toolbar and scroll down to "burn image". after that you simply point the program to the *.cue file you downloaded and it will automatically burn the .bin to disc. additionally, you might be able to extract the file from the .bin using a program such as isobuster.

good luck dude.

[WackoTacko]

http://zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=22106

just scroll down to the .bin .cue section

[hawkburn]

Dude, this thread is old as hell. Of course, I didn't know that until I saw that cpugeniusmv had linked to a ShareReactor forum post :) Just thinking that one day my children will not know the joys of SR brings me to tears.

[adidas_os]

The .bin/.cue files are disk image files. They represent one image not two. You need a burning program like Nero to burn the image onto a CD. Or you can use a program like UltraISO to just extract the file(s) to your hard drive.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Theres really no need to try and help in this thread anymore, its 8 months old. If they have not figured it out yet I'm sure they gave up. This is why I hate it when this happens.

[WackoTacko]

yes... i noticed after i posted and felt pretty dumb... sorry for bringing it up, i just got a link from another thread and didnt look at the date.... sry