This page was last updated on October 26, 2009Ski videos |
Nordic World Cup races and videos from 2001 to December 2005
Janne G of Sweden posted an extensive collection of ski videos from the 2001-2002 season up to December of the 2005-2006 season on his website in MPEG format with XviD or Div-X compression. There are some technique instructional ones, but the majority are World Cup racing. Many of those have Eurosport commentary in English.
The 2004-2005 season videos are compressed with XviD Codecs. (The 2003-2004 ones are compressed with Div-X Codecs.) Your version of Windows Media Player may not have the Codecs. When you try to try to open one of the videos, Windows Media Player may or may not successfully download the Codecs, and may or may not successfully play the video (the audio or the video). If not, you'll have to download the Codecs manually. You can go to http://www.divx-digest.com/software/xvid.html , right-click on "Koepi's Binary - XviD-1.0.2-29082004.exe" to download (save) the XviD Codecs to your computer, then execute (double-click) it on your computer to install the Codecs. Then try to open the .avi video file in Windows Media Player.
FTP download procedure
The videos are on this FTP server: ftp://mpeg-races.kicks-ass.org. You can do the downloads using a web browser (Internet Explorer), but it is significantly faster if you use FTP software. Free FTP software is available on the internet for you to download -- do a Google search for "free FTP software".
Nordic World Cup races and videos since January 2006
Some races since January 2006 are available as "bit torrents".
BitTorrent procedure
For a very thorough explanation of bit torrents click here.
Someone in Europe captures the video and uploads a "torrent" for it.
You have to do a one-time download and install of free BitTorrent client software. www.bittorrent.com is one product.
Cooperation is required by everyone. After downloading the video (being a "leecher"), you're expected to let others upload it from you (being a "seeder"). Here's how it works:
You download the torrent for a particular video file or set of video files. Finding the torrents(s) can be difficult. The easiest way is to subscribe to rec.ski.nordic, or at least search the archives of that list. For the 2006-2007 season, most of the torrents appeared at www.mininova.org in one of four categories: the TV Shows -> Sports related", "TV Shows --> Other --> Sports related", or "TV Shows -> Other --> Sports in the hills", or "TV Shows -> Other". For the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 seasons most of the torrents appeared at www.thepiratebay.org, but some in 2007-2008 appeared at www.thebox.bz.
You execute (start) your BitTorrent client software. You open the torrent(s) you've downloaded. The video files are downloaded to your computer, but this may take time because it's dependent on other people (who have the video file and its associated torrent) also running BitTorrent client software at the same time.
You should have a dedicated folder on your computer for downloaded torrents and downloaded video files, and you must not move or rename the folder or files if you intend to be a successful "seeder".
Good luck.
This page was last updated on October 26, 2009