Hi Seeker,
I don't think it is very impossible to enable a "quick preview" of files. It must not be perfect, just give the users a impression of what the downloaded content might be.... a "preview", no need for full replay of the percentage downloaded.

A possible attempt might be: Combining partials as soon as possible (e.g. in 500KB hops) and name this first resulting partial file something as 'Filename_unfinishedpreview.ending'. If the media type and associated player provides usage of streaming, a preview is possible. For example MP3s and common player will work with that, some MPEG movies, but DivX movies will fail with MS Mediaplayer.

I see a very high user demand for a preview function. Also I guess a lot of bandwith could be saved, because user would look into their files being download... if they rate them as not worth to be downloaded, they abort it.... and therefor free a "busy slot" earlier.

Did I miss a problem or would this work?
Moak

Preview is especially important for videos. It sucks having to wait 3 days for a 500 meg download to finish before seeing what the quality is.

It would be a neat feature; if you in the preferences could choose, that any preview file would get a shortcut dropped on the desktop.

keep up the cool programming you crazy dutch xolox guys !!!

joachim .)

What you could make xolox do is make a small preview file of the video file at the senders side and send this first, then the receiver could say yes I want this file or no I don't want it.

Yes, you can do this to preview an AVI movie quite nicely. You need to run DivFix or some such utility to reindex the AVI before you can view it however.

I just tried this on The Grinch/Jim Carrey movie that I am only 50% complete in.

The biggest bother is figuring out which file it is in the Xolox\Temp folder. So as to not interrupt the download in progress, I copied the .XLX file first and renamed the copy to temp.AVI

Do a search on Google for DivFix if you need it. I used version 1.05 which is available from DOOM9.ORG

I should also add that I am not in favour of automatic previews since this will add additional bloat to the client. I would much rather use my own tools to play the movie.

MP3s don't need a preview as they are only a couple of megabytes.

I don't work with MPEGs unless I really have to so someone else will have to let you know if they can be previewed.

Is this a democratic program?