Newbie - Retention Question

[Teeklin]

Hey all, I decided to give newsgroups a try yesterday as I was getting tired of P2P and wary of torrents and thus far I've been getting some rather mixed results; I was hoping someone could answer a question (or two!) for me.  Keep in mind that I have no idea what I'm doing, so it's quite possibly something simple I've just setup wrong or overlooked.

Version: 0.5.6
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Install-type: Windows installer
Skin (if applicable): smpl - white
Firewall Software: Windows Firewall
Are you using IPV6? Probably not

I'm looking for some fairly obscure files so there aren't a lot of options for newer posts or alternate downloads unfortunately and I'm hoping instead to be able to figure out what some of these error messages actually mean and whether it's a problem on my end or with the postings themselves.

I recently got the message:

Download failed - Out of your server's retention?

According to binsearch where I found it, the collection has 290/290 parts available and was posted 403 days ago, and if I understand correctly that shouldn't be outside of the retention for the Giganews server I have set.  Any ideas?

Also I see a lot of errors like "Repair failed, not enough repair blocks (22 short)" which I definitely do attribute to just poor postings, but I don't know for sure and I'm not sure how I would check something like that out.  Are there any other programs outside of SABnzbd that might have better luck with certain downloads for some reason?  I tried out Mimo first and it was terrible and Unzbin was a lot like uTorrent but I kept failing downloads and getting no explanation, and some of those same failures were successes when I upgraded to SABnzbd.

And finally the last error I have no clue about (but might be part of either of the above issues I suppose), I notice that I'm getting a number of warnings that say:

2011-03-13 01:38:59,484 WARNING: None -> Unknown encoding

Sorry about the length, and thanks in advance to anyone that takes the time to shed a little light on this process! 

P.S.  Anyone else notice that you can't keep text highlighted in the SAB console for more than a few seconds?  I'm using Chrome if that matters, but it's kinda weird that it just disappears and made copy/pasting some of those messages a bit tricky.

[shypike]

Usenet can be hit and miss.
Your best bet is to use one of the report-based sites.
See our overview of NZB sources: http://wiki.sabnzbd.org/nzb-sources
Relying only on automated indexers like binsearch will give mixed results.
Be also aware that Giganews is a popular target for DMCA takedown requests.

The "Unknown encoding" message is just an unfortunate side-effect.
It's shown when SABnzbd has found no articles at all for a file.
Should you want to try an alternative program, I suggest Grabit.
(Easy to google).

[Teeklin]

Should I bother trying to find a free server to set up as a backup or optional server for SAB or is Giganews alone enough?

Also, at what point during the process are the files in the cleanup list deleted?  It says they're deleted "after download" but is that after everything has been repaired, unpacked, and sorted or just after all the files are finished being transferred?

I only ask because I have .sfv and .nzb in that list but I've been occasionally getting an "Unpacking failed, CRC error" and I've been reading up on CRC errors and it seems like having the .sfv might help if I needed to manually unpack the files or having the original .nzb would be nice so I could re-download if necessary.

And thanks for the link!  :)

edit:  Ok, sorry for all the questions all over the place but I figured it would be best to just keep them in one "I have no idea what I'm doing" thread.  As far as CRC errors go, if I've successfully downloaded multiple gigs and I get that "Unpacking failed, CRC error" is there any way to try and redownload just the broken or missing parts or should I just abandon it and look for another? 

In this particular instance it seems like all but one of the files are the same size and 7zip unpacks them all until just fine until it gets to 98% and then gets to that last little bit and then I get a "CRC failed in 'divxfactory-bcd.avi'. File is broken.  Unexpected end of archive"  Seems a shame to waste all that time when just that tiny bit is messed up.

Thanks again.

[shypike]

Free servers are usually not more reliable than Giganews, but they won't hurt either
if you set them up as backup server (and optional).

The cleanup list is used at the end of post-processing.
SFV files are only used when no par2 files are available.
They are used before the cleanup.

CRC errors have different causes.
1. The poster made an error. In this case there's nothing you can do.
2. There are no par2 files available and files are incomplete.
    Here SFV files might help detect this, but they won't repair anything
3. Our QuickCheck test fails to see an error
4. The par2 program fails

#4 is the least likely.

#2 might also mean that par2 files are available, but not in your NZB
or that the poster used non-standard names for them.

There have been some reports about #3, but so far we not been able to reproduce this.
You can disable this feature in Config->Switches if you don't trust it.

It helps if you look over the content of the NZB before downloading.
Click on the title in the queue and you will get an overview of the files.
Look for the presence of par2 files and a regular naming pattern.
My Show.rar
My Show.r01
My Show.r02
My Show.vol00+03.par2
My Show.vol05+12.par2