10 Dec
This the first in a series of blog posts about best practices when it comes to using Graboid Video. I’m sure we don’t know all the tricks that you do, so we’re looking forward to user commentary. We’ll compile all the blog posts into a revised user manual, that will then get updated when the new version comes out.
Things you should know to optimize your video watching experience after you’ve downloaded a video:
1. Stream a few minutes first to make sure it’s what you want (especially for TV episodes). If it doesn’t stream, then make sure it has a green thumb. If it doesn’t have a green thumb, it will probably still work, but don’t be upset if it doesn’t. If it has a red thumb, it may still work, but download at your peril.
2. When files are downloaded, they are put into a folder on your PC that can be accessed by you to play them on software other than Graboid Video. Graboid uses a piece of software called VLC player to play videos, but you can use other software such as PowerDVD. The location of the folders is shown/changeable in File-> Preferences when Graboid is open. If you move these files around, Graboid can’t access them, so if you want to play them in Graboid, then leave them in their original folders.
3. Videos come in all sorts of different formats. Some are DVD format, some are .avi, some are multiple .avi files. Graboid will play them correctly 90% of the time. But if it doesn’t work, you can sometimes get the files to play by accessing them directly on your PC and using different video play software.
4. If you don’t get sound or you get the wrong language while playing, go to the VLC player AUDIO drop down menu and try changing audio tracks. This will almost always fix the problem.
5. Keep enough space on your harddrive! These files are huge, and if you run out of space during a download, unpredictable things happen, although most of the time Graboid will simply give you an error message and stop downloading. You can pick up where you left off once you’ve cleared some space on your drive.
6. Once the file is downloaded, it will go into ‘Processing’ status. This can be for a long time (hours), or for a short time (seconds) depending on the file format, and whether error-correction is needed. When streaming files, every packet has to be correct, which is why downloading is more reliable than streaming. Once a file is downloaded, Graboid Video has some powerful error-correction algorithms to go in and fix any broken file segments. Just let it finish.
I’m sure this is just a subset of interesting things you’ve figured out about using Graboid to download video. Looking forward to hearing more.
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Future Best Practices, and feel free to suggest others:
34 Responses for "Best Practices - Watching downloaded video"
Nice input…..very helpful ! Thanx
I also use VLC player because it’s codex package is voluminous, it will also fix broken files which I had to run on a few movies thus far.
As for freeing up my hard drive I don’t really like any of the paid for programs for burning DVDs, I use Free Easy Burner, it does a good job with decent speed, you can find it here, http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/Data-CD-DVD-Burning/Free-Easy-Burner.shtml
Thank you for the continuing information, we hope you are all enjoying the snow! Down here in the south it has been to warm, hard to have the spirit. we can’t wait to here more info on dvd burning, etc. we had no big issues with upgrade and i think the fact that we get on average 390 to 700 per second, I think that is good ?! keep up the great work!
I have noticed when streaming videos that sometimes the player will re-buffer and malfunction and the percentage will read 0% for a long time.
When this happens I have been able to move the rebuffering window to the bottom of the screen and click the little black play arrow on the VLC player behind it and 3 out of 4 time the show will continue and play the whole way through.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it plays for a few minutes and vlc player shuts down.
Worth a shot when streaming though.
One other thing, I have found out that I can fast forward streaming media until I get the “Rebuffering” window, then I click the left arrow to go back to regular speed.
Once the rebuffering is done I can fast forward again until the next rebuffering window.
This seems tedious, I know, but it beats watching almost the whole show again if you had a hiccup.
For best usage, downloading is the best, streaming does work great most of the time, but can cause frustration sometimes.
Another hint is to add a shortcut to your desktop to the VLC player (C:\Program Files\Graboid\tools\media\vlc\vlc.exe) to your desktop. Sometimes when you click “Play” on some downloads (It seem particularly the ones with the “Audio_TS” and “Video_TS” folders in them) Graboid will not play them from the application.
Clicking the VLC shortcut and telling it to open the larger VOB files usually plays the video just fine though.
Love the program… think I may have to update to the Platinum since my gold is running out and I just signed up a week ago!
Happy Graboiding and Merry Christmas!
I’ve got a new bug, and can’t seem to remedy it yet.
When a download goes to 100%, the next download stays in Que, so I restart Graboid and the download that just reached 100% starts over again, any answer?
I posted this previously, but since your asking it here, Wifi streaming is possible, but if you use a Belkin Wireless-G router your router may reset/turn off the wifi. Something about the workload does this, I use both my laptop and my pc to stream video, this reset error only happens when im streaming through my laptop and when im using graboid, limewire uses alot of bandwidth when I run it on my laptop and it doesn’t reset then. This might happen to other routers I haven’t tested it yet, but my friends have a 3com, a Linksys, and some offbrand router I haven’t heard of nor remember the name of. If this happens to other Wifi routers I’ll let you know. Also if you click on a video to stream it and the little gray bar doesn’t pop up try clicking play at the top left of Graboid, or click on another video let it load playback info a bit and then start to buffer after it starts go back to the original video you wanted to stream and it should work, if NilObject errors occur, just click play a few times, it seems to be a chance thing. On downloads one thing I’ve noticed is that some don’t start or show up in the download menu. They’re actually there just restart graboid and the files should show up in the download menu and start downloading. As for the guy above me with the neverending downloads, fully uninstall graboid delete the graboid folder in the program files folder and then reinstall after that try it if that doesnt work change your download folder. Best Wishes. Oh hey Graboid guys it’d sure be nice if you could reset at least five GB of my bandwidth since most of it is from failed streams. Make it like a christmas present or something. Just kidding.
Still having major problems getting downloads, will continue for the rest of the night, if I still can’t get it to work I’ll install Graboid on another computer, one with XP instead of Vista to see if I can get it to work.
If not can I put my subscription on hold untill I can download again?
I wish to thank the Graboid staff for offering this great site. I signed up to pay for 50GB on a monthly basis.
Twice I lost all my downloads when I attempted to delete one watched program and all my unwatched programs were deleted. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
I have not been able to get Graboid to respond to my emails, so I am hopeful that someone here might be able to help me. Thanks.
I just removed Graboid from my XP computer and reinstalled the latest version. Now, I’m getting this error message and still cant download. “Error processing download/playback information (NilObjectException).”
I also emailed Graboid yesterday but haven’t got a response yet. I was really loving using this ap and now I’m lost without it!
seems to be working again, not sure why or how though.
Only thing I see different now is the spinning icon in the right hand corner now continually spins, it never did that before, even when I was downloading well.
I just reverted back to the old version and guess what? It’s downloading! I think there is definitely a bug in the new version, at least when using XP, because that’s when all the trouble began.
I’m going to have to cancel my subscription until you get the bugs worked out.
I thought that it had somehow fixed itself, it showed that it was downloading, it showed that it was being processed, it showed that it was complete, it moved down to the next in que and started downloading.
but the files never showed up in my folder.
what email do I use to cancel?
PS, another strange thing I just realized when it downloaded a few episodes of a series earlier, it never changed, it just kept downloading the same file 4 times.
[moderator: Noting that in your next post, things seem to be working - hopefully it will stay that way. For future reference, to cancel you can do that within your paypal account, or send an email to customer support]
I’m crossing my fingers because its working again today.
Hello i am new here and only just started a trial account but on the anime files for example the scrapped princess with the green thumb i watch about 60 percent of the video and it boots me out is this due to me being on a trial free account or is this just how much of the video you at graboid have.Also i cant figure out how to turn off the warning on some of the adult content for anime.
thank you would like to know so if i upgrade i know i am getting the full videos.
[moderator: The full files are available to all members, so any cutoff of videos at 60% would be due to an incomplete file, which should be quite rare. You can turn off adult content in File->Preferences, but Anime is a separate category and the adult specification doesn't apply - we have no way of knowing the content of the file.
having major issues with program since saturday. it will not download any movies or shows, it just ques them and thats it. ive tried to uninstall and then reinstall with no success. it fiqures i had just upgraded to unlimited downloads and now i cant download anything. any ideas?
Hey everyone,
I just wanted to let you all know if you’re having problems with Graboid and want to uninstall and then reinstall the old version, like I did, you need to save your files as something else. I lost all that I had in my archiver folder. Fortunately I had already watched them all but there were some I would have liked to keep, especially the HD stuff that ate up a lot of my bandwidth alotment. Just glad it’s working again though.
i had the free account and all the movies i downloaded just dissapered one day. so i downloaded them again and this time moved the files out of the graboid folder and one day it happend agian. is their a bug or error or somthing that im not understanding. now i have the premium edition and i like the service but is their any way to fix this problem.
Posting Update:
I’ve finished testing the Wifi’s of my friends Linksys, 3Com, and the offbrand router Buffalo Airstation. No unwarranted resets occured. This could just be a Belkin thing. As someone did mention to me today, it may seem unlikely that a program working through a network could do such a thing, but I noticed Limewire would cause my friends Motorola cable modem to reset while just searching for files. I tried this test with multiple laptops with Windows XP Pro SP2 (for a total of 5; one laptop only had SP1) installed on it. Each router(except for mine) performed fine when streaming and downloading. I also noticed while performing streaming and downloading tests, that the laptop with SP1 had more NilObject errors and failed a few streams and one download. As for the Vista comment up above, my home PC run Vista Home Premium, I did receive alot of errors before the update but most were fixed once the update had been installed. Also for most people using a Vista machine, Vista, like Graboid, is new and unfinished product. There was a bug with Intel chips when Vista first came out and that is why most people received BSOD’s (Blue Screen Of Death) upon installing. If your using an Intel based machine it’s possible that your install is not stable and may be causing these errors.
As always best of luck.
P.S. I work on computers(not a programmer), If you are having any problems I would be happy to help.
E-mail: aaronbobo30@gmail.com
Matthew,
The same thing happened to my downloads as well……….they just disappeared. And it happened twice to me too. I spent two hours searching my computer to see where they could be…..no luck. I think the safest thing to do is only download what you are about to watch.
[moderator: Don't set your temporary buffer location and your download location to the same folder, as the buffer location is just that: temporary. It is cleared after each time you stream a video. 0.9.6 has fixed this so it's not a problem, but there's still some issues with Windows Vista.]
I just dumped my old operating system, I have atleast 100 gig now free on this PC, but Graboid is telling me that I don’t have the space on my hard drive available to download more videos, any answers out there?
[moderator: Any chance you didn't empty your trash folder? Also, make sure that your download directory is on the drive that you cleared up, and not on a partition or other drive that perhaps doesn't have enough space. We haven't heard of Graboid itself causing/interpreting a disk space shortage this way.]
Because the files we download get moved around or burnt to disk the hard drive can quickly get fragmented, making your computer slow down, I don’t rely on Windows to defrag because I never found that it did a decent job, what I presently use is a freeware program called IObit, it defragments and optimixes, http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html?Str=download
or try diskeeper lite also a free program, http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/util/DiskeeperLite.html
IObit works with Vista, Diskeeper Lite doesn’t yet.
I’ve just lost my most recent downloads again. This has been happening since I upgraded to G9.6. I thought the problem was fixed after I went back to 9.5 and moved my download folders to different locations. One of the Files I downloaded I can still find on the computer but the one I hadn’t watched yet just dissapeared. Windows Vista just did an update though. Could that have been the problem? I was thinking of ugraded my membership but since I’ve lost half my GB’s on unsuccessful downloads since the update I think I’ll have to wait until Graboid has everything ironed out.
i had a free trial seemed good bought a subscription got the new update whouldnt download video just said qued i uninstalled everything ran a search deleted all that redownloaded the new graboid so far so good working great
Is there any one out there that can explain to me how to burn a movie on to a disc? I have tried but when I do all I get is the audio no video.
So I jumped the gun and changed in Preferences my downloading location. After saving a download to a file in My Documents folder I find that I can’t open and play it. I’d like to change my Preferences back to the original location so I can use the VLC player but I don’t know what it is…can someone tell me?
the Pc was clean, the recycling bin was empty.
Last night I uninstalled Graboid and shut the PC off, this morning I reinstalled and it no longer has a conflict.
To Jen N you might want to reinstall and then change the location, to be safe take your downloads out of your present graboid folder and put them in another folder, put a folder on your desktop and then see if VLC wil now play them first.
Another free program to help you keep stock of your disk space and location of files is a program called Treesize, http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml
i have a problem…i know that i have files in que, but when i minimize the program or go to another screen on graboid and go back to it, it just shows the files i have not the ones in que or the one downloading…any help?
its been 3 days now can,t down load can,t flag can, someone tell me wut to do
1 how do i uninstall graboid new version
2 how do i go back to graboid old version as in finding it on puter
3 i here the mentions of files what are they this is a great progam any advise
will someone pls help me i a new customer it was working find until i went to the new verison
you can contact me at hattiejohnson16@yahoo.com thank you so much
It’s been nearly a month now since I’ve been able to download anything, and I think I’m having trouble communicating via email - no response to my last email which was a week ago. When I try to download something, it goes into my queue, and sits there in “Queued” status indefinitely, until it mysteriously disappears. It also has an up arrow next to it, as though there’s something in front of it, but there’s nothing else there, and nothing happens when I click on the up arrow. Please help - I’m paying for a premium subscription and can’t download, only stream! If you’re not getting my emails, it might be better to work this out on the blog. I’ll keep checking back.
OK, nevermind! I think I solved my own problem. I went into the archiver folder and deleted everything there except the most recent thing I’d added to my download queue. Then I quit and restarted Graboid. It says it’s downloading now, so I’ll post back again if I have any further problems.
I can log in to prog ok, but using same password won’t allow me to get into forums to ask for help with other problems. Any suggestions?
I just wanna say that i have had graboid for a week now and so far i haven’t had any problems at all.I’ve downloaded about 50 movies so far and not one download was slower than 1000/kb per second(between 10 and 15 mins per movie).I think that is pretty awesome !!
As for keeping space on your hard drive. Do not exceed over 75 % for each of your drives. Even though your computer will continually store information passed 75% as a general rule you don’t want to got over 3 quarters capacity. If you do go over you risk the chance of accidentally having too much info on your drive and you may never be able to access the drive again. Note: after you burn a video to a disc make sure it plays and then delete the TS video files on your computer along with the original Audio Video Interleave (AVI) file. Together these will eat up a great deal of space and if you’re not careful, then after a few disc burns you’ll find yourself burned, out of cash that is,because you’ll need a new computer.
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