Ability to choose preview player

[migf1]

Hello, I searched the forum, didn't find anything related so I'm opening this thread.

I've just switched from utorrent to qbittorrent (v3.2.3 x86) and I'm impressed so far! Great client, thank you! What I'm currently missing though is the ability to choose from within qbt the player to be used during preview (actually one of the main reasons I ditched utorrent was because it removed the streaming feature in its free version).

mpc-hc is my default player (windows 8.1 pro x64) and it works as expected during preview. However, there are cases where mpc-hc is not the best option. For example, it needs external shaders (or avisynth scripts) to convert modern 3d movies to anaglyph 3d. Such shaders are not readily available (for example, I was not able to find one utilizing the dubois conversion algorithm). The same stands for Avisynth scripts (those are also very heavy on cpu). Being able to chose Potplayer for example when I'm previewing 3d movies would solve the problem (Potplayer supports 3d conversions out of the box).

As another example, mpc-hc does not support subtitle search via filename and/or movie title (it only does it via hash info internally). Bomi does (that's an mvp frontend).

In short, would you consider adding an option so that the user can define which player he/she wants to use? Possibly falling back to the system's default player if the user's selection is wrong/invalid?

Thanks.

PS. Supporting multiple user-defined players (and for example let him/her select the desired one via an entry in the context menu) would be ideal, but I realize this one may be too much to ask.

[ciaobaby]

I would like to hope that BitTorrent is finally showing some common sense in removing the "streaming" bloat, but in reality it's purely a marketing decision to persuade people to buy the "Pro" version.

Bittorrent protocol clients need to do ONE thing and one thing only. Not every BT protocol client user is 'stealing' films, T.V. series etc. so it doesn't need to be a media player as well which only adds to the running footprint.

[migf1]

The thing is that qbt already supports progressive downloads with prioritization, plus playing-back them with the system's default player (btw this tends to be the norm nowdays). I only asked if you would consider letting us choose which player will be used. I don't see why such an option would add any noticeable overhead during runtime, compared to what it does right now.

[Peter]

It's a legit wishlist request IMO, but do check our bugtracker, maybe someone already reported/asked this, and maybe someone is already working on it.
All in all, it should not be too hard to implement.

(One line in Advanced Settings, and if the line has content, qBittorrent would try to open/"stream" files with that application.)

[Switeck]

"Streaming" a torrent demands both first+last piece priority and sequential downloading, puts a big strain on torrent swarms under the BEST of circumstances (requiring a constant download speed considerably higher than most people's potential max upload speed), and directly disobeys core rules in the BitTorrent protocol (ignoring rarest first and severely crippling Tit-For-Tat -- 2 key features Bittorrent has over other file sharing methods).

It can leave poorly-seeded torrents unable to complete for everyone else.[quote="ciaobaby"]I would like to hope that BitTorrent is finally showing some common sense in removing the "streaming" bloat, but in reality it's purely a marketing decision to persuade people to buy the "Pro" version.[/quote]uTorrent's streaming ability supposedly only lets you do that with 1 torrent at a time, since you can only watch one at a time. It also is disabled on poorly-seeded torrents. It's also to blame for much of uTorrent v3's problems with disk overloads due to the complex file buffering and locking it uses.

A BT client that automatically streams (or uses "regular" sequential downloading) everything all the time would be much like a hit-and-runner.

[Nemo]

Valid points Switeck, pretty much what I think about it also.