How to preview unfinished torrent video files

Question

I'm using uTorrent 2.0 and downloading videos. Some videos are large and I don't want to wait till their download is completed in order to preview. Is there a way I can preview the finished part of the videos with the .!ut extension?

Answer 1

This is not possible in 2.0.

However.... µTorrent 2.1 alpha has this functionality.

(screenshot borrowed from DownloadSquad link above)

You can grab the latest build from here.

Answer 2

I'm currently running ubuntu, and I am able to find where the partial video files are stored and open them with vlc player. I would assume that you could do the same thing in any other operating system provided that you know where the files are located.

Be aware that viewing these files may corrupt the data and cause downloading to be extended due to junk bits, and that your video quality is going to be absolutely horrible until the file finishes downloading. This is because these files are not downloaded sequentially and linearly from 0:00 to the end consecutively.

Answer 3

With a good media player (e.g. KMplayer or VLC) you could open uncomplete files.

Except the order in which the file is downloaded, it's not really dependant of the download manager.... So you could do it with any µTorrent version, it's just not integrated in versions previous 2.1 alpha.

The real condition is to have downloaded the first and last part of the file. There's an option in Option > Preferences > Advanced > bt.prio_first_last_piece that let you prioritize these pieces, but it's not recommended for the global network speed... (I hope it will not be the default in 2.1)

So, if you have donwloaded these parts, you just have to going in your download directory and open them with the adequate media player. (For convenience, if you check Option > Preferences > General > "Append .!ut to incomplete files" you could register this extension with a dedicated media player...)

Answer 4

The first thing you need is a torrent client that can download file parts in order. AFAIK BitComet can also do that and has a preview button (I think it launches an embedded mplayer).

The second thing you need is a player that can play unfinished files (also optionally, to recreate the index info, so you could navigate the file). Mplayer can do that.

You would also need some good connection.

Here's a solution for OS X: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/30244/watch-1080p-torrents-while-downloading/30374#30374