Open File Not Working

[nebka]

When i right click on a music file and the menu comes up and the spot that says Open File is not highlighted to open that file.

What can i do to get that Open File to be highlighted again?

Edited May 18, 2010 by nebka (see edit history)

[kluelos]

Only music files that are completely downloaded normally have the OPEN option. If the file was moved, deleted, or hashfailed after a check, OPEN will disappear. That may have happened to you.

[nebka]

Tried that and still open file is not highlighted

[cassie]

What did you try? Moving it? Performing a hash-check? Please be explicit.

*topic moved to BitComet General Discussion... for now*

[nebka]

I did the hash-check and still the file will not open.

[kluelos]

is the file entirely downloaded? BitComet will not allow it to be opened in this way until it is 100% downloaded.

[greywizard]

Well, let's make it clear first.

My understanding is that you speak about the Windows Explorer context menu. Am I right?

Or are you talking about the Task List context menu?

On that note, I have to add though that I've tested myself this and right-clicking in the Task List on a single-file task which contains an .avi file, the Open File menu is grayed out.

The file can be played through the Play command in the Preview column though.

This seems like a bug to me.

The menu should be either working or removed, I guess.

[kluelos]

He's not speaking of video files, but of MP3 files, which don't need previews that lengthy movie files need.

The context isn't Explorer, but the BitComet FILES tab.

MP3's are (usually) small enough that there's little point to a pre, um, listen, so as far as I know, BitComet's never had this ability, and if the file isn't completely downloaded, the option to open it doesn't appear in the FILES tab.

At any rate, the reasons for the option disappearing boil down to something having happened to the downloaded file.

[greywizard]

Yeah, but he specified the "Open File" command and that one is found both in the Task List context menu and the Files tab context menu.

Except that in the Files tab it's accessible and works for all types of files (video, audio, text, you name it) by using the standard Windows files associations (save for video files in my case where it used the default player specified in BitComet which is different from the default player in Windows).

Whereas in the Task List context menu, the same command is grayed out and that's why I was saying that it seems like a bug. I think it's supposed to either work in both places or in neither of them at the same time.

[kluelos]

Yes, it ought to work consistently in both places, and there certainly ARE very long MP3 files -- some audiobooks are a single file -- so the reasoning doesn't hold up that well either.

Do we have a bug?

[Lucy26]

Question reported to the team.

When you're downloading a single video file, and it's the only file in the BT task, it's called a "single file task". (sometime the video file comes with a .txt file or a webpage, they are not "single file tasks".)

The video file in the "single file task" cannot be opened by right-click -> open file, you can only "play" it as the play option is next to the task.

[greywizard]

Well, Lucy, this philosophy is pretty much blown out of the water by the current state of things.

From the Files tab the Open File command works very well, at present time, both for single-file and multi-file torrents.

It just doesn't work for the Task List context menu, at all.

Besides I fail to see the connection between single-file or multi-file tasks and the ability to open a file inside the task.

As long as BitComet uses the standard Windows file associations for opening the files (which is a good thing if I may say) then it couldn't care less if there is only one or several files in that task.

It just uses the a system call and passes the responsibility for opening the file to Windows, therefore the number of files in a task should bear no influence on this process, since you can open only one file a a time.

That's why I was thinking that it should work just as well for the Task List context menu, as it already does for the Files tab context menu.

[Lucy26]

Hi wizard I'm getting confused here. :unsure:

From the Files tab the Open File command works very well

You are talking about the Files tab in the detailed info pane right? But I cannot open the video file from there either, and I found this sentence in the wiki "Open File: Opens downloaded files (non video type). Not available for video files."

Seems like all video files cannot be opened but only played, and I don't see this as a bug, it's more like a setting to me.

[greywizard]

OK. First let's clear up our terminology. Playing a video file IS opening that file.

What happens when you open a video file in Windows Explorer (by using the default context menu entry or double clicking the file or whatever other generic method) is that the file's association is being read by Windows from the Registry and the file is being passed to the associated application with a parameter containing the default action to be executed on the file.

Then the file is being opened in the respective application (which is associated with the respective file type), is being parsed and after that the default action for the respective file type is being executed by the application; which is playing for video files. This whole process is being implicitly understood when you use the expression "open a file" in Windows.

That goes for all non-executable files under Windows. Opening, is a generic term under Windows which will perform the default function defined in Windows for that type of file in the associated application, if there is a file association in the Registry for that file type.

For a text file it will mean opening it in a text editor (Notepad by default) and making it available for editing, for a PDF file it will mean opening it for viewing in the default PDF viewer, for an audio file it will mean playing it in the default audio player and of course for a video file it will mean playing (opening) it in the default video player.

That is why I say that playing is basically the same thing with opening the file. There is no other different action then playing, set by default for video files in Windows.

Now, in BitComet this command seems to be meant to do the exact same thing. And that's pretty much what it does when you access it from the context menu of the Files tab in the Detailed Info Pane.

At least for me it works flawlessly. If I click on the Open File menu entry for a video file in the Files tab it will open and play the file in the default BitComet video player, just as it would open in the default Windows video player if I used the default context menu entry in a regular Explorer window.

As I said the only little difference is that for video files, BitComet uses (in my case) VLC player which is set as the default BitComet video player instead of BS.Player which is the default Windows video player for me.

And for the rest of the file types that you can find in a torrent, this command yields the same results from BitComet as it would from a standard Explorer window. (I.e. it opens text files with Notepad, audio files with Winamp which is my default audio player, RAR files with WinRAR and so on.)

Now, I don't know who wrote that text in the Wiki; I certainly don't remember doing it.

Maybe that statement stood true for an older version of the client. But the actual version of the client seems to use Windows system calls for this command and as I said above it is able to open all the file types which already have associations in Windows Registry (for which fact I'm very glad actually because it would be a pointless limitation to not allow it to play video files when it can open all the other file types out there).

The only complaint I made was that the same command is inactive (grayed out) in the context menu of the Task List.

I don't know why it is not working for you.

What client and Windows versions are you using and what happens when you try to use the Open File command from the Files tab, in your case?

[Lucy26]

Well wizard, I got it now, thank you for this detailed explanation!

I'm now using Windows XP, and I haven't finished downloading this video file (actually I don't have a completed video file in my BC yet), thus when I right-click the task, the "open file" option is grey (which is normal). However, in the files tab in detailed info pane, the "Play File..." option was working (but the "Open File..." option was also grey) and I clicked on it, then MPCStar showed up but failed to open the file (because the file is not complete).

And I asked Gavin to test it on a video file which has finished downloading completely, he had the same situation as you: grey in task list and normal in files tab.

This problem has been reported to the team leader and he'll take some actions.