How do I INITIATE a seed?

[ulrichburke]

Dear Anyone.

I understand that if I DOWNLOAD a torrent, I become a seeder for as long as my computer's turned on (unless I delete the downloaded file, of course!)

But if I have - say - a video I think others might like, but haven't downloaded from anywhere because it's one of my own, how do I make it into a seed, or a seedable file, or whatever the terminology is - I've only just started in torrents, so I'm using terminology I've read but probably imperfectly understood. I'm a complete baby in all this, so be gentle with the safety pins!!

Say I've got a movie called Akira. For arguments sake, I've looked for it as a torrent and can't find it. But unknown to me it IS out there as a torrent. How do I set up my copy, which is on the hard drive already, so it can be downloaded by others or become part of the downloadable.... I don't know which of 'swarm' or 'cloud' is the right word here, but you'll know what I mean. What file type should I change it into? And I know that bit torrents collect parts of files from different computers, so do I need to chop my movie up into lots of small files so the system can just find the bit it wants?

If there's a FAQ I've missed out on about this, just direct me. It's just all the seeding explanations I've read assume you've downloaded a file in the first place and are just keeping your computer open so others can download it. They don't seem to say how to set up a new file as a seed.

Thanks for reading this.

Chris.

[koberulz]

http://www.utorrent.com/torrent.php

[jewelisheaven]

Click the links in my signature (top line, the bottom line is for personal use). Koberulz was nice enough to link you to the Torrent Creation guide.