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Thursday, October 29, 2015

BitTorrent Sync 1.4 Gets Simplified Folder Sharing, Redesigned UI

BitTorrent Sync 1.4 was released recently and it features a revamped sharing workflow which makes it easier to share folders with others, along with a redesigned user interface.

In case you're not familiar with BitTorrent Sync (BTSync), this is a tool that can be used to synchronize files between computers using the BitTorrent protocol, available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, NAS and mobile devices.

Because it synchronizes the files directly between computers (so without using cloud servers) and the connection is encrypted with AES-128 in counter mode, using a unique session key, BTSync is advertised as a highly secure way of synchronizing your data. However, because the application is not open source, many will argue with this statement.

More about BTSync.

With BitTorrent Sync 1.4, sharing got a lot easier: you no longer have to use Keys (formerly called Secrets) to give others access to folders, though that option is still available. Now you simply send a link to the person you want to share the folder with, he/she clicks it and BTSync walks them through the remaining steps (if any).

For each folder you share, you can select if you want to give the other(s) full read / write access or read only, you can set the link to expire after a period of time, set the link to only be used a number of times and finally, you can choose to share a folder only after you approve the peers:

One note though: in my test under Ubuntu, using the share link directly doesn't work (the browser doesn't recognize the btsync protocol) but there is a simple work-around: in the BTSync web interface click the link icon on the right and paste the link there.

Besides the major change in the way sharing works in BTSync, the latest 1.4 release also comes with a completely redesigned interface, which you can see throughout the screenshots in this article.

Download BitTorrent Sync

The BitTorrent Sync (with GUI) unofficial Ubuntu PPA and Debian repository have not been updated to the latest version at the time I'm writing this article. If you don't want to wait, grab BTSync by using the download link below.

Download BitTorrent Sync (for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and NAS) | AUR (Arch Linux)

To use BitTorrent Sync on Linux, extract the downloaded archive and double click the "btsync" executable - nothing visible happens when double clicking it because BTSync runs in the background and on Linux, it's controlled through its web interface. Then, open a web browser and enter the following address: http://localhost:8888 - the BTSync user interface will show up, asking you to create an username and (optional) password and then you can start using it:

For an open source alternative to BitTorrent Sync, check out Syncthing.

seen @ lffl.org

Peerflix: Stream Torrents With VLC Or MPlayer Via Command Line

Peerflix is an experimental video streaming BitTorrent client for Node.js. The tool can be used to stream video torrents via command line and play the stream with your favorite video player, such as VLC or MPlayer.

Peerflix supports supports setting the maximum number of connections, changing the port, loading subtitles and more.

The application even supports streaming torrents with multiple video files, although I'm not sure if the video files are played in order (if you try it, let us know in the comments).

Peerflix is actually what Popcorn Time uses under the hood, but you can use it separately so you can stream any video torrent and use any video player you want.

Install Peerflix in Ubuntu

Peerflix should work with most Linux distributions, but the instructions below are for Ubuntu only. For other Linux distributions, install Node.js, then install Peerflix using "npm install -g peerflix".

1. To install Peerflix in Ubuntu, firstly you'll have to add the Node.js PPA and install nodejs:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

2. Next, install Peerflix using the following command:

sudo npm install -g peerflix

Update -> Arch Linux users can install Peerflix via AUR: stable | git.

Optional: Firefox integration (via Pinguy)

Pinguy shared some tweaks for integrating Firefox with Peerflix for both regular torrents and magnet links. Using these tweaks, you'll be able to open torrent files and magnet links from Firefox with Peerflix and directly play them with VLC.

Below you can watch a quick video I recorded a few minutes ago, demoing Peerflix (with VLC) streaming torrents directly from Firefox:

(direct video link)

To set up these tweaks, use the instructions below (requires VLC).

Setting this in Chrome is more complicated, here's an example.

1. Firstly, install vlc, xterm, python-libtorrent and wget:

sudo apt-get install vlc xterm python-libtorrent wget

2. To be able to open torrent files from Firefox and play them with VLC via Peerflix, use the commands below:

wget https://raw.github.com/hotice/failsdownloads/master/Torrent-Video-Player -O /tmp/Torrent-Video-Player
sudo install /tmp/Torrent-Video-Player /usr/local/bin/

Then, open your web browser and click a video torrent. When it asks what app to use, select Other and browse for /usr/local/bin/Torrent-Video-Player

3. For Magnet Links support, use the commands below:

wget https://raw.github.com/danfolkes/Magnet2Torrent/master/Magnet_To_Torrent2.py -O /tmp/Magnet_To_Torrent2.py
sudo install /tmp/Magnet_To_Torrent2.py /usr/local/bin/
wget https://raw.github.com/hotice/failsdownloads/master/Magnet-Video-Player -O /tmp/Magnet-Video-Player
sudo install /tmp/Magnet-Video-Player /usr/local/bin/

And just like above, open Firefox, click a magnet link, select Other and browser for /usr/local/bin/Magnet-Video-Player

Using Peerflix

Using the extra tweaks above, you basically don't have to do anything else. But if you want to use Peerflix manually (for instance, to use your favourite video player), here's a quick guide.

To stream a torrent with Peerflix and play it with VLC, use the following command:

peerflix http://some-torrent/movie.torrent --vlc

(replacing "some-torrent/movie.torrent with the link to a video torrent file)

Example:

peerflix http://download.stefan.ubbink.org/ToS/tears_of_steel_1080p.webm.torrent --vlc

To automatically play the video in MPlayer instead of VLC, use the following command:

peerflix http://some-torrent/movie.torrent --mplayer

If you don't want to use VLC or MPlayer, simply don't append "--vlc" or "--mplayer" to the Peerflix command. Example:

peerflix http://download.stefan.ubbink.org/ToS/tears_of_steel_1080p.webm.torrent

Then open some video player like Totem for instance, select to open location and enter the location displayed by Peerflix ("http://192.168.1.6:8888/" in my case - see screenshot above).

It's also worth mentioning that you don't have to use a torrent link - you can use Peerflix with a locally saved torrent file too:

peerflix somevideo.torrent

Peerflix also supports setting the maximum number of connections, changing the port, loading subtitles and more. Here's the complete list of options:

$ peerflix --help
Usage: peerflix torrent_file_or_url [options]

Options:
-c, --connections  max connected peers           [default: 100]
-p, --port         change the http port          [default: 8888]
-i, --index        changed streamed file (index)                   
-t, --subtitles    load subtitles file                             
-q, --quiet        be quiet                                        
-v, --vlc          autoplay in vlc*                                
-m, --mplayer      autoplay in mplayer**                           
-o, --omx          autoplay in omx**                               
-j, --jack         autoplay in omx** using the audio jack          
--clean            remove the tmp buffer file after peerflix closes
--path             change buffer file path                         

*Autoplay can take several seconds to start since it needs to wait 
    for the first piece
*OMX player is the default Raspbian video player

Cross-Platform BitTorrent Client `qBittorrent` 3.1.0 Released With Support For Atom Feeds, Other New Features

qBittorrent is a cross-platform BitTorrent client that aims to provide a free software alternative to uTorrent. The application comes with an integrated search engine, web interface, sequential download support, bandwidth scheduler, advanced RSS support with download filters, torrent creation tool, IP filtering and other useful features.

qBittorrent 3.1.0 has been released recently, featuring some interesting new changes such as a new option to copy torrent files for finished downloads, support for Atom feeds, option to use a random port on each startup, a command line option to demonize qbittorrent-nox (which can be used to run qBittorrent without X server) and more.

Other changes in the latest qBittorrent 3.1.0 include:

many RSS bug fixes and greatly improved RSS manager performance;
added μTorrent-compatible "Flags" column in the peer tab;
added "Shutdown qBittorrent" button to Web UI;
added context menu to Web seed list;
added support for tracker tiers / groups to creator;
allow clearing execution and ban logs;
exposed the cache expiry to the user;
added "save path" column;
load magnet metadata in the background while the "Add New Torrent" Dialog is showing;
allow to enter only an info-hash for download;
bring the "Add New Torrent" Dialog to the front.

For a complete changelog, see the qBittorrent news page.

Install qBittorrent in Ubuntu

To install qBittorrent in Ubuntu 13.04 or 12.10, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hydr0g3n/qbittorrent-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

The Ubuntu 13.10 package failed to build but if you don't want to wait until this is fixed, you can manually download the Ubuntu 13.04 package from the PPA and install it (tested on my laptop running Ubuntu 13.10). Unfortunately there are no packages for the latest qBittorrent 3.1.0 for Ubuntu 12.04.

Arch Linux users can install the latest qBittorrent via AUR.

For other Linux distributions, Windows and Mac OS X, see the qBittorrent downloads page.

via lffl.org

Multi-Platform BitTorrent Client `qBittorrent` Sees New Major Release

qBittorrent 3.2.0 was released recently and it includes numerous changes such as support for Qt5, rewritten WebUI code, episode filtering for RSS, per tracker re-announce and much more.

qBittorrent is a BitTorrent client that aims to provide a free software alternative to μTorrent, available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and FreeBSD.

The application comes with an integrated search engine, web interface, sequential download support, bandwidth scheduler, advanced RSS support with download filters, torrent creation tool, IP filtering and other useful features.

Changes in qBittorrent 3.2.0:

qBittorrent can now be built using Qt5;
WebUI code rewritten, refactored and improved;
support per tracker re-announce (needs libtorrent 1.0);
episode filtering for RSS;
support saving in network locations;
highlight files when opening containing folder on Windows and Linux (Nautilus, Dolphin and Konqueror);
added option to hibernate computer in Auto-Shutdown menu;
cache preferences in memory. This minimizes the chance of settings corruption;
added option to disable connections not supported by proxies;
added a save resume data interval option(useful for SSD);
Added new columns: "Last Seen Complete", "Last Activity" and "Total Size";
added setting to ignore RSS rule matches for X days;
show the reason why a peer was blocked (needs libtorrent 1.0);
allow to set text options for the toolbar icons;
`Add New Torrent` dialog has a button for quickly choosing a location;
implemented tracker list in the side panel;
implemented a 'Completed' status;
columns for session-based download and upload statistics;
code optimizations resulting in a more CPU efficient and snappier qBittorrent.

The complete qBittorrent 3.2.0 changelog is huge - for a complete list, see THIS page.

With this release, qBittorrent no longer supports Qt versions older than 4.8.0 and libtorrent 0.15.x. Because Ubuntu 12.04 has libtorrent-rasterbar 0.15.10, the official qBittorrent PPA doesn't provide packages for this Ubuntu version.

Also, it's important to mention that the packages available in the official qBittorrent Ubuntu PPA are built with Qt4 for now.

Download qBittorrent

Ubuntu 15.04, 14.10 and 14.04 / Linux Mint 17.1 and 17 users can install the latest qBittorrent by using its official stable PPA. Add the PPA and install the app using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

If you encounter bugs, report them @ GitHub.

Install BitTorrent Sync GUI In Ubuntu Or Debian [PPA Repository]

An unofficial BitTorrent Sync GUI for Linux was released today, providing almost all the features available in the official Windows and Mac BTSync GUI.

BitTorrent Sync is a tool that can be used to automatically synchronize files between computers using the BitTorrent protocol, available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and NAS devices.

Because it synchronizes the files directly between computers (so without using cloud servers) and the connection is encrypted with a AES cypher and a 256-bit key created on the base of your Secret, BTSync is advertised as a highly secure way of synchronizing your data. However, because the application is not open source, many will argue with this statement.

More about BitTorrent Sync: Technology | Desktop Manual

Now back to the GUI: BitTorrent Sync comes with a GUI for Windows and Mac, but on Linux there's only a WebUI you can use to control BitTorrent Sync. For this reason, Leo Moll has created an unofficial BitTorrent Sync GUI for Linux. Ubuntu users will also get an AppIndicator (was available for some time) which displays the sync status, can pause the sync, etc.

BitTorrent Sync GUI features:

add / remove local and remote folders, generate folder (including QR code for mobile devices);
displays a list of connected devices and their status;
displays the upload / download speed;
change the device name ;
option to limit the upload / download speed;
option to use NAT UPnP port mapping;
option to set listening port;
advanced preferences: folder rescan interval, limit local peers, encrypt lan data and more.

In my test, I didn't find any bugs, but there are a few things that couldn't be implemented in the BTSync GUI, due to missing API: you can only see the active transfers speed, but not what's being transferred and also there's no transfer history yet.

Install BitTorrent Sync with an unofficial GUI in Ubuntu / Debian

1. Add the unofficial BitTorrent Sync repository

To add the unofficial BitTorrent Sync PPA in Ubuntu and derivatives (Linux Mint, elementary OS, etc.) as well as in Debian, use the following commands:

sudo apt-get install curl
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL http://debian.yeasoft.net/add-btsync-repository.sh)"

Then follow the instructions.

2. Then, install BitTorrent Sync along with the GUI:

- with Ubuntu AppIndicator (the difference is that this package installs the AppIndicator dependencies):

sudo apt-get install btsync-gui

- without AppIndicator:

sudo apt-get install btsync-gui-gtk

Update: Arch Linux users can now install BitTorrent Sync GUI via AUR.

Report any bugs you may find @ GitHub.

PeerTV: Command-Line Tool To Manager And Play TV Series From EZTV Via Peerflix

PeerTV is a command line tool for manage and play TV series from EZTV.it. It uses Peerflix to stream the torrents and by default, the videos are played with mpv, but that can be changed from the PeerTV configuration file.

For those not familiar with Peerflix, this is a an experimental video streaming BitTorrent client for Node.js which can be used to stream video torrents via command line and play the stream with your favorite video player, such as VLC or MPlayer.

PeerTV allows you to easily keep track of your watched / unwatched episodes: each viewed episode is automatically marked as seen and you can manually mark/unmark episodes as viewed - and of course, you play them with the help of Peerflix, with subtitles support.

For downloading subtitles, PeerTV uses subliminal, a Python library and command line tool which supports subtitle websites such as Addic7ed, OpenSubtitles, Podnapisi, TheSubDB and TvSubtitles.

Important note: PeerTV uses Peerflix to stream TV shows from torrents and that may be illegal in your country. Use at your own risk!

Install PeerTV

1. PeerTV depends on bash, sed, wget, rt, sqlite3, peerflix, mpv (or some other video player), and optionally: subliminal and notify-send.

In Ubuntu / Linux Mint, most of these should be installed by default and for the rest, use the following commands to install them along with python-pip, which we'll use to install subliminal (and "git", to get the latest PeerTV under step 3):

sudo apt-get install wget git sqlite3 python-pip mpv libnotify-bin
sudo pip install subliminal

2. You'll also need Peerflix - for how to install Peerflix, see THIS article.

3. And finally, download and install PeerTV using the following commands:

cd && git clone https://gitorious.org/peertv/peertv-bash.git
cd peertv-bash
sudo PREFIX="/usr/local" make install

You can also download PeerTV manually from HERE.

Later on if you want to update PeerTV, navigate to its directory (assuming you've used the commands above, it should be in your home folder):

cd ~/peertv-bash

And update it using the following commands:

git pull
sudo PREFIX="/usr/local" make install

Arch Linux users can install PeerTV via AUR.

Configure PeerTV

The first time you run peertv (so run "peertv" in a terminal), it creates a configuration file under: ~/.config/peertv.conf

To see all the available configuration options, run the following command:

peertv config

To change some configuration options, use:

peertv set <configuration> <value>

For instance, to set the default subtitle language to English, use:

peertv set subtitle en

Modify these configuration options to suit your needs - as you can see, here you can set the video player to use for playing TV episodes (but, depending on the video player you set, you'll also need to change the other "MPLAYER_" options!), port (for instance, I already had something running on port 8888 so I had to change it to 8887 to get PeerTV to work), and so on.

How to use PeerTV

For the commands below, I'll use "Game of Thrones" with the "thrones" shortname as an example - replace these with the TV shows you want to add.

To use it, firstly visit the EZTV show list at https://eztv.it/showlist/, copy the show link (Game of Thrones in our example) and add it to PeerTV, like this:

peertv add thrones https://eztv.it/shows/481/game-of-thrones/

("thrones" can be anything and it will be used as the shortname for the TV series - Game of Thrones in this case)

Next, update the series with magnet links from EZTV using the command below:

peertv update thrones

(or, use "all" instead of "thrones" to update all the TV series you've added)

You can list all the episodes of a series by using the command below:

peertv list thrones

You can mark episodes as viewed using the following command (the command below marks Game of Thrones episode 1 from season 1, as seen):

peertv mark thrones 1x1

You can also mark multiple episodes - here's an example in which you'll mark all episodes up to season 3 episode 6 as viewed (from Game of Thrones):

peertv mark thrones "<3x6"

To view all the PeerTV available options, run:

peertv help

More examples, etc. available at PeerTV's Gitorious page.

Download Torrents And YouTube Videos With FrostWire

FrostWire is a free, open source Java downloader, BitTorrent client and media player, which comes with a built-in multi-tracker search (like TPB, Yify, Mininova, etc.) as well as YouTube and SoundCloud search/download support. The application is available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Android.

The app is not new but I've never covered it on failsdownloads and after receiving a review request and trying it recently, I decided it deserves an article here since it's a really good app, despite being a bit bloated.

Probably the most important FrostWire feature is its ability to search multiple BitTorrent trackers in the same time as well as YouTube, SoundCloud and Archive.org. The search results are filtered by file type audio, video, images, documents or apps so the results don't get cluttered with stuff you don't need which is much needed, considering the multiple sources the app is able to search:

"FrostWire will connect to all the major BitTorrent indexes of the internet and pre-fetch torrents (via the libtorrent DHT or via HTTP if it can't find it on the DHT), it will then index locally all the available metadata that's indexed by the torrent file, as the user searches, the local index gets better and better to yield richer and instant results".

At the time I'm writing this article, FrostWire supports searching and downloading content from TPB, FrostClick, KAT, Yify, BitSnoop, Extratorrent, Mininova, Monova, TorLock and BTJunkie BitTorrent trackers / search engines as well YouTube, SoundCloud and Archive.org.

For YouTube, the app allows downloading the audio only or the complete video and you can choose which format to download (1080p video downloads are supported).

Another very important FrostWire feature is the ability to play audio and video while downloading from the BitTorrent networks and previewing the content from YouTube or SoundCloud before downloading:

For this, the app comes with a built-in media player but you can also use external players such as VLC. For YouTube and SoundCloud previewing though, only the internal player is supported or at least that was the case in my test.

There's even an integrated media library which organizes your downloads in various categories (audio, video, images, programs, books/docs) and there's also a huge list of online radio stations available and an option to add more stations (one note though: many of the stations I've tried didn't work):

And finally, the last major feature available in FrostWire is the ability to easily share content with your friends or between multiple devices (such as your desktop and Android device) - for how to send files from an Android device to a desktop, see THIS video. It's important to mention that once you share a file, it's available to everybody on the BitTorrent network so keep this in mind before using this feature.

Under the hood, FrostWire uses frostwire-jlibtorrent, a swig Java interface for libtorrent for the BitTorrent part and MPlayer for media playback, along with H2 database and Lucene indexes for the search. For more information, see its GitHub page.

The application was updated recently (v6.1.3) with lots of fixes (including a fix for saving downloads on external drives), Windows 10 compatibility, fixed Soundcloud search and download, resumable Archive.org downloads as well as important changes on the way the BitTorrent engine works which allowed simplifying seeding settings.

Download FrostWire

Download FrostWire - binaries available for Linux (64bit only): deb, rpm and generic, Windows, Mac OS X and Android as well as source

Report any bugs you may find in the desktop version HERE.

Thanks to Giancarlo

Tribler BitTorrent Client To Become Anonymous, Version 6.3.1 Released

A year after the previous release, a new Tribler version was released recently and it includes new features, bug fixes as well as work towards anonymous streaming (using a built-in Tor-like network).

For those not familiar with Tribler, this is an open source, decentralized peer-to-peer client based on the BitTorrent protocol, supported by EU and Dutch research funding. The application includes features such as wiki-style channels, video-on-demand (watch videos while you download them) and more and is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Like other BitTorrent clients, Tribler features a search box you can use to find content however, the search results come directly from other peers, without using a central server and this makes it immune to government anti-piracy attacks (the application will continue to work if the torrent trackers are pulled offline), claims an article from dailymail.co.uk.

Anonymous BitTorrent

The Tribler team wants their application to use truly anonymous streaming with the help of a built-in Tor-like network which routes all data through a series of peers - "Tribler users then become their own Tor network helping each other to hide their IP-addresses through three encrypted proxies", notes TorrentFreak.

"Adding three layers of proxies gives you more privacy. Three layers of protection make it difficult to trace you. Proxies no longer need to be fully trusted. A single bad proxy can not see exactly what is going on.

The first proxy layer encrypts the data for you and each next proxy adds another layer of encryption. You are the only one who can decrypt these three layers correctly. Tribler uses three proxy layers to make sure bad proxies that are spying on people can do little damage."

- Tribler Towards Anonymity

Automatic anonymous 50MByte test download using new Tor-like protocol / Tribler 6.3.1

Tribler doesn't anonymize streaming yet (except the 50mb test download included in this release). The plan is to achieve anonymous streaming with version 6.4 and anonymous seeding starting with version 6.5. Check out the Tribler roadmap and the "towards anonymity" page for details.

Tribler 6.3.1

The latest Tribler 6.3.1 includes various bits which should eventually lead to anonymous streaming in a future release:

Tor-like anonymous tunnel building, based on UDP;
Support for Cell,Create,Extend, and Ping Tor protocol messages;
Diffie-Hellman session key exchange;
Real-time crawler for bandwidth performance (inspired by metrics.torproject.org);
decentralized directory service for Tor-like routers;
automatic anonymous 50MByte test download using new Tor-like protocol;
no general anonymous downloads yet, trial-only.

Besides this, the latest Tribler 6.3.1 includes the following changes:

A year of bug fixing, polishing and performance tweaking;
thumbnail navigation:
- single-click streaming from main screen;
- channels can now optionally be browsed by thumbnails;
- Youtube-like GUI composed of user-generated images;
- Prepares the way for remote control navigation & operation.
complete rewrite of the elastic database engine (the dispersy overlay):
- use of Twisted frameworks instead of our custom event-handlers;
- less reliance on master bootstrap servers (new discovery community);
- improvements in NAT puncturing efficiency;
- faster data synchronization between Tribler peers.

Install Tribler in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

The Tribler downloads page (see below) offers Ubuntu deb downloads however, to get automatic updates, I recommend using the failsdownloads Tribler PPA. To add the PPA and install Tribler in Ubuntu 14.04 or 14.10 / Linux Mint 17 and derivatives, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:failsdownloadsteam/tribler
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tribler

Tribler is also available in the official Ubuntu (14.04+) repositories, but it's an older version.

Download Tribler

Download Tribler - binaries available for Ubuntu, Windows and Mac OS X (source files are also available)

Arch Linux users can install Tribler via AUR.

FILES DOWNLOAD