Stream RARED movies directly from FTP-server
#1
hi. first of all, xbmc rox! i use it every day!

here a little suggestion from me, i know that it might be difficult to implement but it would be very cool. i would like to be able to view xvids directly from my ftp sites on the internet, so that, when my friends are here, we can browse through an ftp-site, choose which movie we want to see, and can start watching it a few minutes later (on a normal cable connection that is Smile).

in fact this is already possible, because xbmc can read avi's when they are still in the rar files. in combination with the ftp network share, this should, in theory, do the trick, but it doesnt work.

first of all this is because xbmc wants to download and extract the entire movie before it opens it. this is not necessary, it should play it while it downloads it. i know this is possible, because i use this trick when i want to see a movie without having to wait for the download: just download the first few rars of the release, then extract it, and when winrar prompts for then next files, do nothing. now you can play the first minutes of the (incomplete) avi file via smb share on xbmc. after a few minutes watching (and a few more files have been downloaded in the meanwhile), hit ok again on the winrar extracing proces and it will continue extracting the rest of the movie. works perfectly. this is a stupid and unhandy trick, but it proves that it is technically possible to view xvids while you are downloading them.

xbmc therefore shoud download the first rar file of the movie, extract it to a temp file, and play it while it downloads the next files. this way you can get the streaming effect, with like 1 rar cache/buffer.

another problem is that the xbmc ftp client seems to be a little buggy yet. what i understand from the debug log is that it reconnects to the ftp on every dirchange/filedownload. it also doesnt support advanced features like pasv/actv modes and ssl, and seems to timeout on some of my sites for no obvious reason.

an avg. xvid is 700mb for 100minutes of movie, so this way everone with more than 120kb/s download could view their movies directly from their sites. i know this will be a lot of work, but it would be very cool so maybe you can look into it.

either way, keep up the good work :d Smile Smile
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Stream RARED movies directly from FTP-server0