Hello. I'd love to see this plugin:

Say you're downloading a whole season of a TV show that has 20 episodes and it comes as one torrent. I'd like to automatically download the entire first episode, then the entire second episode, etc. instead of waiting for all 20 episodes to download before one episode reaches 100%.

This feature request is based on the excellent 'download first' feature already in KTorrent, but the enhancement would automatically download episodes sequentially. Once the first episode reaches 100%, KTorrent goes to the next, and so on, until all the episodes are downloaded. This would be great for torrents that download very slowly, so you can at least get started watching the first episodes while the rest finish downloading. Plus, who wants to watch Episode 9 in a series first when it builds on Episodes 1-8?

Thanks for considering this idea. I'd do it myself if I knew how

Cheers,
Matt from Boston

Max downloads = 1, and use the queue manager.

Thanks for your reply. I understand that I can download one .avi file in one torrent at a time, but I'd like to download multiple files within one single torrent sequentially. I think your advice would work if I downloaded several episodes of a show as separate torrents, but that's not what I meant.

Here's what I want to be able to do (easily):

1. I want Scrubs Season 1. It has, say, 24 episodes.
2. I find the torrent file for Season 1, and there are 24 .avi files within that torrent, each representing one episode.
3. I'd like to download Episode 1, then Episode 2 within that one torrent file.

Specifically, how would I do that?

Thanks for your help.

There's certainly been times when I thought that it would be nice to be able to number the files in a torrent in the order that I'd like them to download, but I have no clue how such thing could be done in a friendly manner. I just use "Download First", "Download Normally", and "Download Last" and change which each of the files are as "Download First" files finish (i.e. I change some "Download Normally" files to "Download First" and some "Download Last" files to "Download Normally"). And once in a while, if KTorrent just doesn't pay attention to the labels ("Download First", etc.), then I deselect files for download in order to force KTorrent to download certain files first since then they're the only ones selected.

Regardless, as I understand it, "Download First", "Download Normally", and "Download Last" are basically only requests to KTorrent. If has to choose which chunk to download and if they are equal priority according to however the bittorrent protocol normally does things, it uses those labels to choose which of the chunks to download. If KTorrent thinks that it's best to download all of the "Download Last" files first, it'll do so - probably based on the rarity of those chunks. Now, I may have it wrong on how that works, but as I understand it, that's more or less how it works. Certainly KTorrent doesn't always download the "Download First" files first and the "Download Last" files last.

In any case, I certainly think that forcing KTorrent to download files in a certain order would be nice, but however it prioritized chunks, it needs to stick with how the bittorrent protocol works in that regard and even if bittorrent allows you to force sequential downloading of files, I haven't a clue how you'd fit that into KTorrent in a sane manner. Trying to replace "Download First", "Download Normally", etc. with numbers might work but also might be more confusing and without changing the user interface, you will still be stuck with a fixed number of options (maybe 1- 10 or something). I suppose that you could have a "Download Alphabeticallly" option for a torrent as a whole, but I'm not sure if that fits in very well with the current UI. Even if a good way to tell KTorrent to download files alphabetically was found, all it takes is for that not to be the sequential order that you were looking for and it does you no good (for instance if the first ten episodes of the season that you were downloading didn't have leading zeroes on their episode numbers).

All in all, it's a nice idea, but I think that it represents a level of micromanagement that doesn't work well with a simple user interface. KTorrent has managed to do a lot without cluttering up its UI - which is one of its strengths - but this sort of feature would be difficult to fit in. The best that I can think of is change the "Download X" labels to numbers (maybe 1-10 with being first in line and 10 last). That might work, but isn't as clear as the current labels and as I mentioned before, I'm not sure that that level or ordering of downloads really works well with the bittorrent protocol.

Download First, Last and Normally are the priorities, KT will stick to those when it can.

But this might not always be possible, for example a peer might not have chunks which have higher priority, so we have to select a normal or low priority chunk.

Anyway, I think the easiest way to achieve all of this is to first set the priority of the first file to Download First. When that is finished, you set the priority of the second episode to Download First, once that is done you set the priority of the third to Download First, and you just keep doing that, until you have all the files.

Anyway, I think the easiest way to achieve all of this is to first set the priority of the first file to Download First. When that is finished, you set the priority of the second episode to Download First, once that is done you set the priority of the third to Download First, and you just keep doing that, until you have all the files.

That's basically what I do.

Given that now you can choose between download first, normal and last, it might be fine grained to a queue (download first, second, ...) letting normal and last as alias.

I think a 256 range should be enought for this. In this range, all files would begin with a 0 value (= normal) being first = 1 and last = 255. This way it would become a top alike.

i think azureus does this quite well. this is about the only feature i dearly miss.

Anyway, I think the easiest way to achieve all of this is to first set the priority of the first file to Download First. When that is finished, you set the priority of the second episode to Download First, once that is done you set the priority of the third to Download First, and you just keep doing that, until you have all the files.

A plugin that goes down the file list alphabetically and sets the top item to Download First would be great. Then when the top file finishes it could just set the one below to Download First and so on. Most TV season torrents use the same naming scheme so this could work.

The following threads seem pretty much related (if not even identical) to this one:

http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12186
http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12510
http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12511
http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12514
http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12558
http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12515

So, I think this RFE has been confirmed by popular request

All the Best,
Segmented

As of yesterday, there is now a plugin which allows you to set the download order

Thanks for turning this RFE into a usable feature!

A somewhat related question: When downloading some media files (think audio/video), I might want to check the quality of the file - usually, by just opening the partially downloaded file and hoping that the audio/video can be played back by the media player to help determine overall audio/video quality before downloading the whole file.
Sometimes this is also the recommended way to determine if a torrent actually contains what its description says.

This will however require that at least the beginning of the file (header), including a couple of MB has been completed.

For many container formats such as WAV/AVI this does seem to work in many cases.

So, the question is: what would be the best way to have ktorrent download a configurable amount of MB from the start of a file with higher priority?

I mean, some sort of "preview" chunk - where I would basically tell ktorrent: "download the first 5MB of this file as preview with higher priority".

Thanks!

Segmented wrote:A somewhat related question: When downloading some media files (think audio/video), I might want to check the quality of the file - usually, by just opening the partially downloaded file and hoping that the audio/video can be played back by the media player to help determine overall audio/video quality before downloading the whole file.
Sometimes this is also the recommended way to determine if a torrent actually contains what its description says.

This will however require that at least the beginning of the file (header), including a couple of MB has been completed.

For many container formats such as WAV/AVI this does seem to work in many cases.

So, the question is: what would be the best way to have ktorrent download a configurable amount of MB from the start of a file with higher priority?

I mean, some sort of "preview" chunk - where I would basically tell ktorrent: "download the first 5MB of this file as preview with higher priority".

Thanks!

Settings -> Configure KTorrent -> Advanced -> Preview size for video files

I would like to see buttons added to move file(s) to the top/bottom of the download order. (much like the buttons we have in the Queue manager).

As I recently downloaded a torrent with around 100 files in it, and the list was far taller than my screen; and there were many files a long way from where I wanted them to be. (I had to bring them up to the top in stages)