NRK train video torrents

This is related to Trainfulness, a project of mine involving train videos captured from the front of a locomotive. For more information, see trainfulness.com.

Preamble

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) has produced several different so called minutt for minutt train videos, which form the core of my Trainfulness playlist. But sadly, it seems the original torrent trackers for most of the videos are offline and NRK has stated they have no plans to put them back up. To make matters worse, their torrents are marked private, disabling DHT and making them effectively useless. This makes it difficult to obtain the Creative Commons licensed videos and earlier I have had to resort to downloading bad quality compressed videos from YouTube.

If the situation is not corrected, it is possible that the videos may in the future be impossible to find outside NRK’s archives. That is why I have decided to create torrents for all the high quality videos I’m able to find.

This page lists all the torrents I have. My server will be seeding them for the foreseeable future. The torrents are public, use OpenBitTorrent trackers and have DHT enabled, so even if the trackers go down it should be possible to find seeds.

Some of these files are from Knud Guldberg’s NRKbeta torrents page (thanks Knud!), but I have recreated the torrent files to enable DHT.

Torrents

Bergensbanen

Links Torrent, magnet, YouTube Size 41.46 GB Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 Quality 1080p50 H.264 Source https://nrkbeta.no/2009/12/18/bergensbanen/

The one that started it all! Compressed from the original 240+GB Apple ProRes file to H.264 by myself. Deinterlaced with Handbrake’s Yadif-Bob setting, maintaining smooth 50fps motion.

Bybanen i Bergen

Links Torrent, magnet, YouTube Size 1.01 GB Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 Quality 576p50 H.264 Source https://nrkbeta.no/2010/06/24/bybanen-i-bergen-minutt-for-minutt/

Not that good quality, but this is the best there is as far as I’m aware.

Flåmsbanen

Links Torrent, magnet, YouTube Size 3.76 GB Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 Quality 1080p25 H.264 Source https://nrkbeta.no/2010/09/03/last-ned-flaamsbana-i-2d-og-3d/

There are also side views and 3D views of this video, but I have not been able to find them.

Nordlandsbanen

The longest video by far. This trip is available in four different seasons and in two formats (uncut and timesynced). All have the following details:

Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 Quality 1080p25 H.264

Uncut

These versions are the uncut, raw videos of the trips, with sounds. They are all in 6 parts each.

Source: https://nrkbeta.no/2012/11/30/julekalender-nordlandsbanen/

Summer (37.81 GB): torrent, magnet, YouTube

Fall (37.66 GB): torrent, magnet, YouTube

Winter (37.74 GB): torrent, magnet, YouTube

Spring (37.86 GB): torrent, magnet, YouTube

Timesynced

These versions are timesynced to the summer video. This means that the summer video is the uncut video with sounds, and all the others have been synced so that they are roughly in the same place at the same time as the summer video. This results in skips and freezes in the other videos, and they don’t have sounds. You can read more about this process on NRK’s website.

Note: The torrents for these timesynced versions are straight from NRK’s website, I have not added the OpenBitTorrent trackers to them. They are public though, so DHT works.

Source: https://nrkbeta.no/2013/01/15/nordlandsbanen-minute-by-minute-season-by-season/

Summer (17.09 GB): torrent, magnet

Fall (15.55 GB): torrent, magnet

Winter (14.32 GB): torrent, magnet

Spring (23.43 GB): torrent, magnet

Holmenkollbanen

Links Torrent, magnet, YouTube Size 5.2 GB Licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 Quality 1080p25 H.264 Source https://nrkbeta.no/2011/03/07/holmenkollbanen-minutt-for-minutt/

Missing files

Files I am still looking for:

Bybanen i Bergen in better quality

Flåmsbanen 3D view and side view

Raw files for Nordlandsbanen, Holmenkollbanen and Flåmsbanen, with better frame rate than 25