Playing a movie while it is still downloading

Question

I don't like downloading movies before playing them. I usually decide to play a movie and I want to see it immediately.

What is the best way to do it?

I need to do it on both Ubuntu and Windows 7. In windows one of the problem is that firefox stores partially downloaded file with to file with .part extension which is later renamed. This problem can be overcome by using Opera browser which stores partially downloaded file right way from the beginning and it doesn't rename it later.

Second problem is choosing right movie player program. I usually used KMplayer which asked me some question about when to make index and I had to click "Play now and build index later" button or something like that. And that worked perfectly and I could watch movie. This stopped working for me. I guess some update removed this feature. The movie stops playing when reaching the time to which it was downloaded when I had stared playing it. This way I am interupted several times during watching the movie which is still downloading although smart movie player could realize that during playing was another part of the video downloaded.

On the ubuntu machine I don't have any problems with file extension and I can double click file which is named with .part extension and any movie player I have knows that it is video. But the problem with the sensless interupting me during playing remains.

How do you do it?

Solution

In VLC, you can add the URL of the movie directly and VLC will take care of the downloading. This is really nice if you have an http link because you can seek through the file.

Comments

[terdon]

Windows can't I think, on Linux, just use vlc.

[yosh m]

VLC is on Windows, too

[Karan]

When some of the file's done, copy/paste it, remove the .part and play with VLC.

[James]

+1 it also allows handling of authentication which is helpful