How to Sample MPG/VCD/MP3 files with Newsbin 4.0

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LAST EDITED ON 03-11-02 AT 11:04 PM (EST)
Sampling Downloads manually

There are a couple file types that can be played even when there's only a part of the file downloaded to your disk. These files are

mpg,mpeg,mp3 and VCD.dat files.

VCD's are often posted with a .DAT extension. They're really MPG files so, all you have to do is rename it to "vcdbla.dat.mpg" to play it.


Most other files like AVI, ASF,ZIP and RAR files are useless if the while thing isn't on the disk (please let me know if there are other file formats the can play partial files).

With Newsbin 3.32 it was possible to preview the downloading files (those that support partial file decoding) by dragging a copy of the file out from under the downloader and playing the partial file. Because of the redesign of the download layer, this is no longer possible but, you can still sample the files.

Here's how.

Say you have a 20 meg MPG or 5 meg MP3 file you want to sample.

1) Mark it for download.

2) During download, watch the download progress bar. When the progress bar shows

[03/20] Filename size

This means 2 of 20 chunks is in the spool directory.

3) Go into the download list tab, right click and specify "Combine Files".

4) Click the browse button, go to the spool directory which's under the directory where you installed Newsbin. Pick one of the downloaded chunks.

5) Press the "Reassemble" button. It copies the chunks together.
Remove the ".chunk" extension and you have a viewable file.

6) Don't like the file? Terminate it. Want to see more? Wait till more chunks download and repeat.

Yes this is cludgy, but, it's what you've got until I automate the process.

[Quade]

Turns out you can sample AVI files now too. Look for a program called "divfix". It makes DivX encoded AVI files viewable even if they're only partially downloaded. Not sure if it works on other AVI files though.