How to play movies that are .tar files?

**Fagatron** · January 29th, 2004, 03:48 PM

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** · January 29th, 2004, 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by 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?

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** · January 29th, 2004, 04:20 PM

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

**origin** · January 29th, 2004, 05:40 PM

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

l8

**shawners** · January 29th, 2004, 06:57 PM

.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** · January 29th, 2004, 07:33 PM

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** · January 29th, 2004, 10:35 PM

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** · January 29th, 2004, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by rebirth

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** · January 29th, 2004, 11:30 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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

**eivioolla** · January 30th, 2004, 01:18 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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** · January 30th, 2004, 06:20 AM

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** · January 30th, 2004, 11:04 AM

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** · January 30th, 2004, 11:08 AM

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

**Ken17625** · January 30th, 2004, 12:18 PM

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** · January 30th, 2004, 03:04 PM

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?