Transmission: Feature suggestion: adding the option to download a torrent in sequential order

[fad1]

This is useful for large files that can be consumed as they are downloaded. i.e. to watch large video files (movies) while they are being downloaded.

That's the one feature I miss switching from Qbittorrent.

[imanushin]

Is this PR by @mrbodich related to feature https://github.com/transmission/transmission/pull/540 ?

[fad1]

Duplicate. #540

[andreygursky]

@mikedld commented:

Might be easier to re-open #597 and mark this as invalid.
On a side note, implementing this is unlikely to happen as it goes against the BitTorrent philosophy (e.g. see Sequential downloading is bad).

@fad1, feel free to reopen this issue.

@mikedld, I'm personally interested in this feature because I'm facing sometimes a situation, where there is only one seed appearing on an irregular basis and you don't know, whether he wouldn't disappear forever. There are no other peers. In this case, it makes more sense to have at least some consecutive part of data from the very beginning instead of many random chunks.

If some torrent has been just released, an activated super-seed mode should hopefully protect the seeder from giving away the same peace more than once(?) Then it is a decision of peers either to download something sequentially in say 80 minutes without "latency" or in say 15 minutes but with the latency of same 15 minutes. The only issue remains if not all peers choose the same strategy. Maybe some scientific paper exists that studies this in detail...

[andreygursky]

For reference:

• TRAC #2632 Add streaming capability to libtransmission (but not the Transmission GUI clients)
• Added 'streaming' capability to libtransmission: https://github.com/cfpp2p/transmission/commit/e91d645d9a89c4591ef478e0979d558e8c70e90b

[mihaiav]

What is required for a good streaming experience is random access not sequential order. The client may want to seek or the player itself may access different parts (i.e. to get meta data from the video container)

[ckerr]

https://github.com/transmission/transmission/wiki/Can-I-sequence-the-files-I-download