FirstLoveMovies

This is even where the file is almost completely downloaded. What I found in the past is one of five states for VLC :--

1. Not enough parts even for preview - slider moves but no play.

2. Enough parts for preview but avi reported as broken, and no seeking slider available. Hate this, you have to sit through first 2 minutes of credits then the film invariably just stops.

3. Enough parts for preview, avi still reported as broken, shows seekable bar but if you manually move this, application frrezes and has to be ended/restarted.


4. Enough parts for preview with working seek bar. Depending on number of sub parts, you will find there are "blank" periods but you can easily skip over these.

5. VLC just does nothing - no idea what causes this and thankfully is fairly rare. You do not even get a progress bar, it just seems to implode. This behaviour can be recreated by trying to play a part file number which does not exist in the directory - try it !!

I could live with this, but had to reinstall VLC with defaults other day, also reverted to 0.85 to use the plugin. NOW, even if a film is virtually completely downloaded, I only get behaviour 2,3 or 5 - never get the full preview.

I am thinking to upgrade again to 0.86 and live without the part file plugin as this seesm to be the cause.

Has anyone experienced same and/or offer advice ?

Thanks peeps

Bad etiquette but anyway - uninstalled 0.85, deleted prefs and cache, installed 0.86 no plugin and now works fine again !!

Maybe installing the newer version screwed up some settings which caused problems when you went back to the older version.

I always disable seeking (you can do this in the advanced properties for the partfile plugin). Sometimes it helps to disable the audio during preview. To get through the boring parts, I use the speed control to run through them - upto 4x speed on my PC.

Some bad news (not verified). Seems the new version has tweaked so many things that a partfile plugin may not be available at all. We may need to look elsewhere for players for preview, or use older versions. Media Player Classic and Zoom Player seem worth checking out.

Please let us all know your experiences with the latest version of VLC. Is it good enough for preview purposes without the plugin? Are you able to easily jump over the missing parts with the slider?

Hit and miss - if you right click a file and preview is not available (greyed out) forget it - this is when VLC will just do nothing - not even a slider visible. If preview is available and you select that, MOST times, the file still cannot be "properly" previewed - you MAY have the slider, but it will not work - if you try to play forward, it will either go back to zero, or will just stop the file from playing and your only choice then is to exit the application by ending the process !! If you are lucky, and the slider works it is pretty much perfect.

Overall, I would say this is only going to work properly if you already have most of the file downloaded.

MPC and Zoom by the way are ace players - MPC is most robust player I know of.

You always need to have the header of a file to enable a preview. Without the first parts of a videostream you can't see anything in any videoplayer.

To scan through the file with the slider you also need the end of the file.

@emuler: I am still using VLC 0.8.5 and have no problems with the plugin.
What is the latest version?

Latest partfile plugin version is still for 0.8.5. Don't expect to see the version for 0.8.6 anytime soon, if ever.

The plugin is not the problem with 0.8.5. Its the 'file broken' message/ prompt that I find irritating. Otherwise it is OK for most videos. Pathetic for previewing mp3 files though.

Partfile plugin for VLC 0.8.6a is available.
https://www.first-loves.com/forums/v ... hp?p=13560

Ahem ... did you try this link?:-)))

Yes. Scroll down in the thread to see my post dated Mon Mar 12, 2007 2:28 am.