Hi all
I’m using BitComet 1.28 on Windows 7 and I extremely LOVE the feature Preview Download Mode to preview the whole video while downloading. However, I often use BitComet for HTTP download, and this function is not visible while I am downloading a video clip from Youtube (I have enabled “Optimize download strategy for preview” and turn ui.preview_any_file to true). Does it only work for torrent ?
I would like to thanks the developers of this program for making this feature work on HTTP download also.
Thanks a million
http is not an efficient means for downloading files and is less forgiving if a download is broken and needs to resume, therefore trying to view it while downloading would be problematic.
Also, please understand when using this option on torrents, your forcing bitcomet to get the pieces in order 1,2,3 etc, so if it downloads piece 1 but piece 2 is unavailable, then it has to wait until it finds a peer who has it. By this time piece 4 (for example) may no longer be available, but was available earlier, so you finally get 2 and 3, but now your waiting for 4.
The entire process is more efficient if you take whatever pieces are being offered when they are offered, instead of being fussy about it and demanding them in order.
An analogy would be if your wife sent you to the market for milk and eggs. They were out of milk so you stood in line waiting for the milk while others got eggs, then when you finally get your milk, they were out of eggs. If you let the bittorrent protocol do it’s job, it will fill your entire shopping list with the most available pieces at any given moment, so much less time searching and faster downloads, not only for you, but for everyone you connect to.
I realize this option sounds like something desirable, but keep these things in mind and only use it if you understand how it effects efficiency. I’m rarely in that much of a hurry to get something that I can’t let the download complete first, and in some cases, you’ll watch it faster if you let it fully download first.
TUUS, the program actually doesn’t wait for the next sequential piece, it just requests them from peers, but it will still take other pieces being offered if the next in line are not available.
I remember testing this a while ago.
I’m thinking that while it requests blocks which are part of the next sequential pieces(s), probably BitComet will request blocks for at least another piece by the rarest-first standard algorithm.
I’m not entirely sure exactly how this is done (obviously only someone from the team could give a definite word on that) but you can perform a few tests and you’ll see that from case to case, more or less random pieces are being downloaded while “Preview download mode” is enabled.
It’s as if BitComet provisions some piece downloads for the case where it doesn’t receive the requested blocks for the next sequential ones.
I’m not precisely sure about the exact algorithm BC involves during this download type but this seems to be the logical conclusion.