uTorrent - how to get films to play?

[auntiebertie]

OK - I'm a girlie so be gentle with me - I have downloaded uTorrent and also an episode of Lost to watch - but cannot figure out how to get it to play....
If I open the uTorrent icon it show that I have an episode loaded, but pressing the > play button does nothing. Status says 'seeding' if that helps

When I got to desktop/my documents it also shows same episode in there but nothing happens either when I click on it - even tried to run it via a Quicktime player but it just says it is not a movie..!

Thanks!

[fo3nix]

You need to learn about the BitTorrent system.

Normally when you download a file from a computer somewhere else on the internet, it's sent straight from that computer to you. That computer will have so much bandwidth with which to send you stuff, as well as anyone else connecting to the server at the same time as you. This bandwidth costs money. Also, say they can send out a max of 10 'blocks' a second (ignore bits and bytes talk). If it's just you downloading, you may get a speed of 10 blocks per second. The total file may be 100 blocks in size, so it'll take 10 seconds to download. Now, if 10 people are downloading from that computer, then that 10 blocks bandwidth it has is divided up, so you'll each perhaps have only 1 block per second download speed. Suddenly that 100 block file takes 100 seconds. It's also quite expensive once you get to sending large amounts of data.

BitTorrent is the solution. If you want to share a video file for example (say, lost), one computer acts as a tracker computer, because it tracks what's going on with that file! When someone starts to download the file, they first download a small .torrent file. This gives you information about where to download the actual video file from. The great thing here is that a .torrent file is very small compared to the video file itself, and so it doesn't cost much money in bandwidth to let people download it.

[fo3nix]

When you put the .torrent file you've downloaded into a BitTorrent program (client), such as uTorrent, it goes to the tracker and asks where to download from. The tracker itself has the file, so will start sending you that file. This is no different to the first I explained above. However, this tracker knows who else is downloading. So, this other person may be downloading other pieces of the file that you haven't got yet. In which case, it'll tell them to send you some stuff, and you send them some stuff that they haven't got. This cuts down on the bandwidth that the main tracker computer has to use, because the people downloading the file are helping eachother.

This can also help with speed too. You may only get a bandwidth of 1 block per second from any one person you download from, but if you're connected to 20, you'll get that 100 block file in 5 seconds.

Now, once you finish downloading the video file, you become what's known as a seed. This is just someone like you who's been downloading it and has now got the entire file. They just share to others, without getting anything else from the others. While you're downloading and sharing your pieces with others, you're a peer. You're on the same level as everyone else downloading, so you're all peers.

uTorrent will tell you how many seeds and peers there are for that particular torrent file: the more the better.

So, you need to let it download (it should say how much time and data remaining), and it'll tell you when it's complete.

[fo3nix]

Often when you're downloading, it'll create the file instantly. This is because it creates an empty file (but still takes up all the room on your hard drive), and then as you download pieces of it, it'll fill up with the proper film data.

Once downloaded, check what file type it is. A great program that'll play just about all the formats you're every likely to come by is VLC:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/