Overview
Patching, in the fansubbing/programming world, is a form of magic (otherwise known as binary delta compression) that allows users to transform File A to File B without having to actually download all of file B. This conserves your download bandwidth, whatever it may be, as well as my rather limited upload bandwidth. For ReDone-Subs releases, patches are done for two reasons:
1) To add subtitles to existing raw files, the latter of which can be found via torrent trackers and direct downloads from other sites. Theoretically, I should be able to do these for all files aside from encodes I create myself. Which I don't do very often.
2) To correct subtitle errors and create v2 of existing ReDone releases. Hopefully these will be rare.
How to do it
There are several ways to go about patching a file. Many of the popular guides for it involve using command-line interfaces. However since I prefer to live in 2005 instead of 1985, I do things a little differently. This is far from the only way to patch files, but it is a way that I know to work.
Before you begin, you will need the following:
A) xdelta.exe
B) This GUI. Go into Settings > Paths... and browse to / select the location of the xdelta file you downloaded.
To patch a file:
1) Obtain the corresponding raw or v1 file.
2) Obtain the patch from the appropriate release post. You will wind up with a rar file containing one or more .xdelta3 files and a "New File Name(s)" text document.
3) Open up the xdelta gui. Under the "Apply" tab, use the Browse... buttons to select the raw/v1 and the patch file.
4) Press "Apply," and wait a few moments. A new file in the format "OldFile_patched.mkv" will appear in the same directory as the original file.
5) This new file is the official v1/v2+ file. Use Copy+Paste from the New File Name text file to rename it to the official name, or rename it to the file name of your choosing. But you want to be conformist like the cool people and have the standardized file name, right?
NOTE: This method is tested to work and produce correct-CRC patched files on my system, Windows XP 32-bit. I cannot guarantee that it will work perfectly or at all on non-Windows OSes. Sorry, but I tried and failed to use the traditional CLI method of creating patches, and this method is what I came up with.
