There is a sport documentary that came out last year that's still going around film festivals. Nowhere to be found, I didn't get to see it in my city as I was ill. I'd happily pay to see it, but again, nowhere to be found.

Another independent documentary about marine science in my local sea. Again, no chance of getting it anywhere. I've gone as far as emailing director asking to buy a copy, but no reply.

There is a small scale LGBT show about relationships I want to watch. Once again, nowhere to be found.

People big up private trackers and so sometimes I feel like I'm missing out staying on public ones. But I wonder if this kind of stuff is really to be found on private trackers. Or is some stuff just truly too obscure to be dug up? Does everyone else also have those few things that just remain unavailable despite everything you do?

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[–] Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

Independent documentaries can be, from my experience, quite hard to find and even purchase. They often have limited screenings, do not get any physical releases or to streaming services, and sometimes end up with licensing issues after some years if they've licensed music and sound for example. Maybe PTP has them, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[–] SmokeFree@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

you really are missing out staying on public. There are some Private trackers dedicated for content like this and have users who works in the film industry but are hard to join or impossible to join.

try docspedia.world and mvgroup.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You are really missing out

impossible to join

Lol yeah many of us know we are missing out but can't join any decent private trackers because they are impossible to join. The one small one I was able to join has so few users that maintaining a good ratio is literally impossible because not enough people download anything but brand-new media. Luckily they give points for keeping things alive that can be traded for ratio.

I think without the points I would have like a 0.05 ratio or something dumb while I am 24/7 seeding over 300 files. On public trackers I have 3.1TB down, 20.7TB up seeding ~600.

[–] jbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

mvgroup

Is pretty good for docs, albeit often many releases have no more seeders.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Although not exactly the same media I had the same feelings with public vs private trackers in the past when looking for audiobooks. I wasn't convinces that a private trackers would be any better.

Boy was I wrong, MAM was like a revelation to me and I have found everything I have wanted quickly and easily since.

I dont know how private trackers compare from movies / shows etc but if it is anything like my experience with MAM they are going to be significantly better than public.

[–] safesyrup@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

For me its the same. Everything i was looking for that i couldn‘t find on public trackers, I found on private trackers

[–] zabadoh@ani.social 4 points 1 week ago

I've had good luck with eD2K/eMule for older shtuff.

That doesn't work well automated torrent setups though.

Also, YouTube frequently is the answer for many documentaries and straight-to-video shtuff

[–] jbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

Have you tried rutracker? While it's unlikely to have regional documentaries, they do have more niche b-movies and some documentaries.

[–] ye_olde_noob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

Sometimes I've had success using yandex to search, but there are some films I haven't found even there.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

private trackers are the way. DigitalCore is one Im signed up for and it helps a bit with fleshing out my library.

[–] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Do you need a seedbox to maintain your ratio? I've thought about looking into them but don't want to pay some monthly fee to get a couple hard to find things, when I could just torrent from my plex box when I need to.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

I think this depends on your tracker. For digitalcore, they expect you to be seeding for X amount of time but after that you're good. I don't think ratio is super important for them but it may be others.

They also have an IRC that increases your freeleech as long as you idle in it. When I started I accidentally did a few Hit-and-runs and my freeleech was low so I just logged in with a client I set up to autostart with my OS, which sorted it quickly enough.

Once you get a few torrents permanently seeding (even if it's slow!) you build up enough freeleech to not ever have to worry - it's self sustaining for me now.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

On obscure trackers /s

[–] Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 2 points 1 week ago

Stremio grab every addon, configure em all for realdebrid, gets most obscure things, sometimes you gotta wait a day or two for rd to dload really obscure stuff (itll tell you torrent is dloading to rd) I found some random old movies I didn't expect to be there.

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 week ago

Really obscure stuff can be a bit of needle in a haystack. Some places you can try are Archive.org, YouTube, Usenet, and bittorrent (I have good luck on Pirate Bay, but YMMV).

[–] Tregetour@lemdro.id 1 points 1 week ago

Tried asking on the comm's Signal chat?