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Preview of files while downloading
The preview of .mp3, .avi, .rmvb, .wmv, etc. media files, is available during the downloading process. However, since version 1.23, preview program can open any files from task list regardless of the file type.
With Bitcomet (version 0.60 or above) you can preview the videos only minutes after downloading has begun, instead of waiting even dozens of hours to finish the download. At present, most of the video files on the Internet have huge sizes, some files going even as big as several Gigabytes. And there are some torrents containing fake files which may waste lots of your time to download.
With this new function, you can check the content by previewing files and deciding whether to continue the download or remove the task and its files from your computer.
There is also another function built in BitComet which once enabled, attempts to make the preview of the whole file available for preview, while downloading.
How does this work?
When the “Optimize download strategy for preview” option is enabled on the Options-->Task page, BitComet downloads first, up to 10% of the task's pieces (usually 1%-2.5% with a 700MB-1400MB torrent), in the normal “rarest first” mode. After that it attempts to download a number of sequential pieces from the beginning and the end of the torrent in high-priority mode, in order to enable the preview of the beginning of video and audio files.
Once that is accomplished, it switches back to normal download mode and proceeds further with downloading the rest of the task. Since it only downloads a few adjacent pieces from the very beginning and the end of the torrent, only when they are available, this doesn't bear any impact on the downloading speed for that task.
How to preview a video file?
Right click a task and select “Play”, and then tick the checkbox before the file you want and click on “Preview” to play. Alternatively you can click on the “Preview” button in the Preview column of the tasklist or in the Files tab of the Detailed Info Pane.
However, this will only allow you to preview, roughly, the first minute of the file (since it only downloads a few adjacent pieces at the beginning and the end of the file).
How to enable the preview of the whole file?
In order to enable the preview of the whole file while downloading, you will have to also enable Preview Download Mode for that task. You can do that by right-clicking the task in the tasklist and putting a check-mark before that option in the context menu.
This option, when enabled, makes BitComet attempt to download all the pieces for that task, from the beginning towards the end, in a sequential order (it executes first the actions implied by “Optimize download strategy for preview”, as explained above, and then attempts to download the rest of the remaining pieces in a sequential order).
This should let you play the media file while it's being downloaded; that is, if the downloading speed and piece availability allows BitComet to stay ahead of the playing bitrate.
However, be advised that this will have, most probably, a negative impact on the downloading speed for that task. This option needs “Optimize download strategy for preview” to be enabled, in order to work.
