Order of downloading parts for torrents

Question

If I download a torrent (uTorrent 2.0.1), is there a way to tell the program to prefer parts on the beginning of the file (eg. so that I can play a video file while downloading)? Something similar to putting high priority on first episodes of a serial and lower on the later ones, just in smaller scale.
The problem here is not the player, VLC plays it anyway, but it freezes very often when the blank spaces are equally distributed...
Other client that can do it would also be considered a solution.

Answer 1

Actually, µTorrent can indeed be instructed to prefer parts at the beginning and end of a file. It has a specific option just for that purpose, and has had this for quite a few versions.

To inform µTorrent to do so, open up the Options menu on the main µTorrent window and select Preferences. There's a shortcut key for this step; simply press Ctrl+P instead, if you like.

In the Preferences window, select the title "Advanced" in the left-hand side pane. Then scroll down on the list of Name-Value pairs until you find one named "bt.prio_first_last_piece". Select it, and choose True for the value. Click OK.

There, you're done. Now µTorrent will favour the pieces at the beginning and ending of a file whenever it can do so, and you'll often find that files being downloaded will get their first and last parts before the other pieces.

A bit late for the original asker, I guess, but I hope any wandering readers might appreciate the information.

This can also be used by bittorent.

Answer 2

BitThief can do this too. It works on OS X, Windows, Linux. It is a Java application actually. Unfortunately it doesn't support Magnet links.

Answer 3

BitThief will do the job for you. It can download pieces in a consecutive order or sequentially. BitComet allows you to download files in the order that you want, but for each file it downloads the pieces randomly.

uSequential for uTorrent may work also.