Undocumented (unknown?) feature/function: Watching parts from multi-part rar/zip archives with movies.

[mcewana1111]

My background is in software compatibility testing which involved investigating how multiple apps of similar function performed when running together. I guess old habits die hard.

Recently I was running RMC at the same time as Internet Download Manager. The latter was downloading a multi-part RAR/ZIP file containing a movie, when I noticed it started to run very slowly. On investigation I found that RMC had started downloading the contents of the individual parts of the RAR/ZIP files as separate files at the same time, but with the extensions showing as MP3. (The files inside the ZIP when joined together would be AVI or MKV files.)

I tried running the MP3 files which RMC captured through various players. Apart from warnings about extension not matching file types, they seemed to run okay. Only problem was that I didn't seem to have the full film even when the parts were played in the correct order, but if that could be made to work it would be a really useful function. It means you can start watching the first part of a downloaded film while the rest is still downloading without having to wait for all of the RAR/ZIP parts to be rejoined.

Are you aware of this function? Any work being done to fully utilise or implement it?

[stream-recorder.com]

This probably because the site is streaming these zip/rar files with application/octet as the content-type. Many music sites also stream mp3 files with the same content-type, so RMC detects it as mp3.