Extracting videos from incomplete rars - a helpful tip

Here is a little something I found out the other day - apologies if it's common knowledge, but I am sure it will be helpful to some.

If a video is in a multipart rar or zip, you can still preview it just by downloading the first part.

Use winrar or winzip to extract the file to the desktop. When it stops, asking for the next part of the rar, navigate to the desktop, right click the file and select 'copy'. Next select a blank bit of the desktop, right click and select paste. Once it starts copying, cancel winrar/winzip. (You may need to navigate to the desktop folder from the start menu>my comp if winrar is 'blocking' your view of the desktop)

As the file is held open by the copy operation, winzip/rar cannot close the file, so the preview remains. You can then view the file. This works for 9/10 files, though it seems a few formats don't like being 'cut short'. Often mplayer classic works when media player fails.

Hope that helps somebody, as it's been a godsend to me.

Thanks for the tip that might come in handy

In Winrar, when you see the dialog that asks for a directory to extract in, just check the box that says Don't delete incomplete or corrupt files or something. Viola.

nonworkingrich wrote:

Ah I never noticed that, thx -

Thats easier...

I prefer Cellos

Two tools that will often help you with the half complete files are divfix++ and avipreviewc. They fix all files that are avi/divx/xvid.

another thing, which is absolutely flawless with the freeware 7zip.

When it does not find the next part, it just stops with a message and leaves the extracted part in the directory. No copying, no extra tricks.

Don't know, why people use winrar....

This hopefully helps.

Tnx for all the tips.
This really was usefull to me.

peace

-p

thanks ... these will come in HANDY!