Outline · [ Standard ] · Linear+ "Get First Chunk" Only, A more advance selection

[Unknown]

Hello guys; hope everyone is doing fine.

A suggetion, something that can be beneficial to us who have relatively small hardrives; please, if possible, could you make another selection that, instead of choosing "Get First/Last Chunk for preview", extend that option box further(another option box after that when cursor is placed over that option) and allow the user to only select "Get First Chunk".

I only preview the first chunk to see if it the right video; getting the last chunk makes the file register as the maximum size which takes up valuable harddisk space.

This sort of thing would be invaluable.

later for now.

[muleteer]

Hi, Unknown. Haven't heard from you in a while.

Very nice request. I have requested something similar in our internal discussions citing less disruption to the part distribution algorithm, but your reason is even better.

The only thing I'm a bit concerned about is that some of these new codecs are a real pain about previewing without the last couple of chunks also. In particular, mp4 video files. We need a list of which formats will need which set of preview chunks.

Btw. we've enabled getting the first chunk for archives too.

[DoubleT]

A better way is to implement NTFS spares file support.

I use this for a long time on Win2k/XP without any problem. Not sure if the problem on Vista persists (start reading...). The patch itself is not very complex. The only thing I didn't take into account is to preallocate space.

[glaskrug]

That sounds very interesting!

DoubleT, if you already implemented it, aren't you willing to add NTFS sparse file support to the main branch as an optional per-file feature?

[DoubleT]

an optional per-file feature?

No, it's a global option.

Quote myself...

The only way to make a spares file is, when you set special attributes while creating such file. The rest is part of the file system (NTFS). After that you can't change this state of the file. To get a normal file (not sparse), one have to copy this file.

[glaskrug]

Ok, I see.
So the choice whether a file is sparse or not has to be made at file creation time, right?

Still, I think this would be a very usefule feature, especially for large files (up to DVD size).