Collaborative Download

Hello,

There is a gentleman on these forums that is trying to download a full archive of the (audio) sermons available here. I know it's taking him a long time, and he's got other things on his plate besides downloading sermonindex.

I'd like to appeal to the community here that we, as a group, bless this man by helping contribute to what he's doing. Take the load off, where we can.

My suggestion is that we work on this as a collaborative effort- open source style.

If we download the software listed on the About Us page, that allows us to mass download sermons from speakers, we could each contribute.

If you're willing, choose a letter of the alphabet, and download all of the sermons from every speaker in that letter. Once you have downloaded them all, you can share them to me through Google Drive, I'll make a copy of it all, then notify you that you can free up your drive space.
[Share to my Google Drive account. mattzab!#mattzab.com but convert the !# to the @ symbol]

Also, to coordinate what letters are remaining to be downloaded, and which have been taken already, we can use this format when volunteering to participate.

*****
I'm taking letter: A

Letters Remaining:
BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Letters Claimed:
A
*****

When you choose to volunteer, just copy/paste the last person's post and modify the alphabet by moving a letter from the remaining section to the claimed section.

I think this is would help to bless the brother that's serving the community by providing a single link that allows the download of all sermons in one click.

Blessings in Christ,
Matt

Hello Matt, what is his purpose to download everything ? I hope you don't mind me asking. As we would want to know if its a hopeless task or not.

For now, I've set up a public folder on my Google Drive account that can be freely added to. The link is here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4pXyK-2Hp-4SzJTV09pcUZ3RTA

As long as this is not abused, anyone here can upload what they have. Please only upload whole collections. For example, if I've downloaded only one third of AW Tozer's sermons, I shouldn't add that folder to this Google Drive space. I should only add the AW Tozer folder if I have everything available.

Blessings in Christ!
Matt

I believe this to be a very important project and I want to help with it. I'm in the middle of transitioning to a new laptop, internet connection etc. so I will not be able to help until I am settled.

May I offer for your consideration these quick undeveloped 'half-thoughts:'

-It seems to me downloading to only then upload again is going about it the wrong way (would constitute more time+work in the end, I think). Is there a better way?

-Considering that there are people who have the full 250gB library downloaded, it may be worth looking at top-notch (but free?) compression software to compress it down. Then making it shareable online, say in 10 chunks.

-Also even without compressing the library, it should fit on 54 DVDs at 4.7gB/DVD. A pack of 100 DVDs can retail in the US for as little as USD20. See here:

https://www.amazon.com/Maxell-639016-4-7-DVD-Discs/dp/B001GXCVH0/ref=pd_day0_23_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B001GXCVH0&pd_rd_r=N72TE2WHGHP7ARPK86RB&pd_rd_w=iCaFP&pd_rd_wg=Q5FXP&psc=1&refRID=N72TE2WHGHP7ARPK86RB

Maybe someone may volunteer to, say for example, make copies offline for 1-5 other people and post the 55 DVDs to each if recipients will cover all costs?

Then once each of these recipients has made copies, they could forward the 55 DVD-set to a further 1-5 people etc. at recipients' expense etc. etc.?

Just thinking out-loud and trying to offer alternatives to save us work and time. . .still needs some thought but you see the kinds of alternatives I'm thinking about. . .

Like I say, I'm tied down for now.

Thanks!

Excellent thoughts. I had considered mailing a hard drive, but hadn't considered the cost of DVDs. The time it takes to burn 54 DVDs might exceed the time it takes to download and re-upload the library. Not sure on that one.

Another alternative could be that someone that already has the entire 250GB archive could set up a torrent and we could download it.

Once I'm able to obtain the entire library of content, I'm uploading it to Google Drive in order to provide folks with a single click download. Or to help someone that's working on that goal, at least.

So the long "download only to re-upload" method is our cheapest route financially, it just takes more time than all the other alternatives.

Also, as far as I'm aware, there isn't any technology that can compress audio well enough to be worthwhile. We'd likely end up compressing the 250GB library into ten- 25GB zip files (or 7z/tar.xz) If someone knows of some compression software that outperforms what's been around for all these years, I'd love to hear about it. Always excited to hear about new compression methods.

While we are brainstorming, another thought I had is this:
Someone (not me) who knows Java well could modify the current download application that's available at the bottom of the About Us page. I don't know how hard this would be, but couldn't it be as simple as changing a few lines of code to cause the downloader to do as it already does, but to download every sermon for every speaker?

If this last option were the case, I have access to an extremely fast internet connection. I could have the entire 250GB archive downloaded, and re-uploaded to Google Drive in under two hours. (Google Drive, or Amazon S3 with a .torrent available)

Finally my brethren,
as far as the torrent idea goes, I know you can create torrents using S3 buckets. Aside from that, the only torrent site I am familiar with or use is LinuxTracker. Outside of that, I don't know anything about where we ought to list this torrent, if we choose to go that route. I do know that there are, or have been, many illegal torrent sites. I'd think it wise to avoid those altogether, including sites that advertise "legal torrents" that are violating copyright anyway.

Blessings in Christ, brothers!
Matt