So, just arrived here but you don't know what to do? We'll keep the condescending remarks about your intelligence to a minimum here, so read this and you'll be set straighter than the equator.

Check out this BitTorrent guide if you don't know what to do with the files you've downloaded here.

Your ratio is the amount you've uploaded, divided by the amount you've downloaded. Ideally, this figure should be as close to 1.0 as possible; (although you can go higher if you like :]) meaning you've shared as much as you've downloaded, in theory at least - if you download any bonus torrents then you won't need to share as much as you download to get a 1.0 ratio.

It's important to distinguish between your overall ratio and the individual ratio on each torrent you may be seeding or leeching. The overall ratio takes into account the total uploaded and downloaded from your account since you joined the site, and is visible in your userbar. The individual ratio takes into account those values for each torrent. You may see two symbols instead of a number: “Inf.”, (infinity) which means you have downloaded 0 bytes while uploading a non-zero amount (ul/dl becomes infinity); or ”—”, which shows up when you have not downloaded or uploaded any data (ul/dl = 0/0 which is an indeterminate amount).

You do not need to keep a good ratio until you have downloaded over 5GB. The minimum ratio you must keep after that is:

Bear in mind that the global ratio (total data uploaded/total data downloaded) is around 2.5 due to the numerous bonuses available on site, so you do not necessarily need to keep a real ratio of 0.5 to achieve that ratio on site. If you fail to achieve the minimum ratio you will be demoted to the probationary class of “Defective” and be restricted to one concurrent download; if you then download an additional 5GB without getting back above the minimum ratio, or you fail to improve your ratio after 40 days, your account will be disabled.

First of all, if you're thinking of making a forum thread about your specific problem, don't - if you can't seed on CG while torrents for other trackers will seed fine, there is no problem on your end aside from possibly between the keyboard and chair. The reason why you aren't uploading much is because this is a fairly small, private tracker - if the torrents you're on have no leechers, or far more seeders than leechers, then you will struggle to upload any data on them. Additionally, on any torrent with more than one file (more commonly on large collection torrents with lots of movies) some of the peers showing up as leechers may actually not be downloading anything, just seeding the parts of the torrent they have.

If your torrents on other trackers are also crawling along, it's more likely you either have a configuration issue (see below) or that your ISP throttles BitTorrent. If your ISP is throttling you there's really not much you can do about it - you can try enabling RC4 encryption in your client, but very few ISPs are fooled by packet header encryption when the fact you're trying to download at full speeds over hundreds of TCP connections makes it fairly plain that you're torrenting (although it may be more effective if you are behind a small network (i.e. university) that restricts BT). If you're using an ISP that restricts upload speeds, all we can recommend is that you either donate £10 to stop yourself being demoted below User, or switch to a better ISP.

Also, if your upload speed is much lower than your download speed, bear in mind that 90+% of users on site are in the same situation - it's the norm for everyone who can't get a fibre connection. It's not an excuse.

If you're struggling to keep a good ratio, try the following:

• Ensure everything is working properly
  • If you are listed as Unconnectable in torrent details, or if you're seeing all yellow faces in Azureus (or all red crosses in µTorrent), it means you can't initiate outgoing connections - which means you can only connect to people who are connectable, and only if they need to connect to you. As such it is hugely preferable to be fully connectable - check here for a guide on how to make yourself just that.
• Learn about Bonuses
  • If you hadn't noticed, a lot of torrents on the site have a spinning coin next to them. If you see that coin, it means the torrent is eligible for a bonus, which takes the amount you upload/download on a torrent and increases/decreases it by a certain percentage (hover over the coin to see how much).
• Use the Featured torrents
  • The featured torrents at the top of the Browse page give you a 50% bonus and are only featured for 48 hours at a time, so in addition to boosting your stats they're almost guaranteed to be popular - until the time runs out, at least.
• Find popular torrents
  • Order the torrent list by “Leechers” and you'll see in order which torrents have the most downloaders on them. As I'm sure you've now realised, these ones are usually good targets if you want to seed.
• Grab part of a collection
  • Any good torrent client will let you pick and choose which files to download. If you find a huge collection torrent, you can usually get some luck from downloading and seeding one or two films from it - plus big collections are usually eligible for 40% bonus, which should help you further.
• Be patient
  • Due to the nature of BitTorrent, your speeds will always be fluctuating. Just because something isn't moving at all doesn't necessarily mean another peer won't soon hop on and take up your full upload speed.
• Enable protocol encryption
  • As stated above, encryption won't stop your ISP from knowing you're torrenting, but having it enabled in your client (with fallback to legacy connections enabled) will allow you to connect to both people who have it totally disabled and people who have it forced. Having it disabled or forced will restrict the number of peers you can connect to.
• Upload something!
  • By far the easiest way to get ratio - find something you can upload. If you've got some DVDs that are suitable for us but you don't know how to rip them, check our Internal Rip guide. (A VHS guide will be coming soon.)

First of all, don't panic. You'll have received a PM which will tell you what download figure you have to exceed to get auto-banned - until you hit that figure, you have 40 days in which to get your ratio back above the minimum, so if you see a very popular torrent you should usually be okay to grab it.

Additionally, make sure you don't delete or rename any of the movies you grab from here, as your best course of action if you do get demoted is to seed what you have for as long as possible. If you're really struggling for downloaders, try recommending the movie in the Movie Discussion thread, and see if you can get anyone to download it. (NOTE - do not make beg threads simply asking us to download torrents you are seeding.)

Remember you can only download 1 torrent, but you can seed as many as you like; but if you are downloading more than one torrent, or are partially seeding one torrent (the tracker only counts you as seeding if you have downloaded 100% of the torrent) then your client may be reporting tracker errors due to having too many simultaneous downloads. If this happens, any uploaded data will not be counted by the tracker until you stop getting the error. Therefore, keep an eye out and ensure this doesn't happen to you.

If you meet the requirements you can be rewarded for keeping a good ratio by being promoted to a new userclass. You can see the various userclasses and the benefits that come from being promoted on the Site Information page.

If you're using µTorrent or Azureus, there are Guides which explain how to make and upload a torrent with those clients. Make sure to check the Rules before uploading anything.

When you actually download the torrent file it will embed your personal passkey in it. Torrents with no passkey will not be able to connect to the tracker; until you re-download the file, the torrent will have no passkey.

When you re-download the torrent file, you'll need to open it manually in your client (unless it is already stored in your default downloads folder) and show your client where the files are located; alternatively, in some clients (uTorrent in particular) it is easier to start seeding the torrent you created (by checking the box in the torrent creation tool), then re-downloading the torrent and opening it as usual. The client will give a warning that the torrent is already open and ask if you want to load the list of trackers from it; click Yes and everything will work as usual. (You can delete the announce URL with no passkey from the list of trackers if you get annoyed by the changing status.)

If you kept the download in your default downloads directory, you can just redownload the .torrent file from CG and fire it up. If you've moved it, you'll need to save the torrent and then open it manually in your client (select File > Open (no default save) in µTorrent, and File > Open and select the directory it's stored in in Azureus).

If this doesn't work properly, chances are you've selected the wrong thing; it's important to remember here that you can make a torrent contain a single file or a whole directory. If the torrent only contains one file, you need to select the file itself; if it contains multiple files you need to direct it to the directory the files are contained in, or in some clients the directory above that. If the torrent stays on Downloading status, check the directory your download is stored in - if there is another directory of the same name within it, then you need to point your client at the directory above.

See above.

Firstly, make absolutely sure it's not your system which is at fault. If you're having difficulty playing a movie, ensure you don't have too many codecs/codec packs installed - if it doesn't work in mplayer or VLC, then you may have a problem.

If something is really wrong with the file, ask in the comments section of the torrent to see if anybody else is getting the same problem. If it's not just you and it is a serious error, you can either ask the uploader to upload a fixed version, or report the torrent.

If you still have questions, read on: Site Information

Let us know if you think we need to add anything to this guide.