bittorrent series: #2 Vuze

The world of the BitTorrent protocols, search engines, and clients can be pretty confusing. Most Internet users don’t understand it or even use it, yet peer-to-peer traffic constitutes a majority of all data that’s transferred on the Internet. That’s mostly due to the fact that while the userbase for the protocol may be small, the files are large and the fans are dedicated (obsessive?).

It’s also due to, in part, the rise of much more user friendly clients like Vuze gaining recognition and popularity. For the just-the-facts, ma’am contingent, there’s always lean and effective BitTorrent clients like uTorrent. For those that are just looking to watch super-high quality online entertainment, there’s Vuze.

Where uTorrent weighed in at under half a megabyte, the Vuze client itself is over ten megabytes, not to mention the Java Virtual Machine required to run the program, which can be thirty megabytes or more. But for the footprint, the software gives a completely managed and much more user friendly experience, aiding in the search and discovery process for just about any video type and genre you could want – most of it legal!

Compatible with the Mac or PC, you can find a wide variety of independent content that hasn’t quite made it to the popularity level to be included in popular web video destination portals like Hulu or Joost. Of course, the quality of the video depends on what the producer makes available to the public, but most of the videos featured in their directory are near-HD and near-DVD quality, and certainly good enough to make for an enjoyable experience.

Vuze isn’t just an open platform where anybody can publish their content. The company has signed licensing deals with several mainstream producers like the BBC, A&E, and Showtime, who are offering paid content.

Installation is fairly simple and straightforward, but much like most torrent clients, you will be asked to install two toolbars for your web browser. One is the Vuze toolbar, which in my opinion doesn’t provide any added convenience for me as a user to make up for the real-estate it’ll grab from every page I view on the net.  The other toolbar is the Ask search bar, which of course is a sponsored insertion that helps pay the expenses of the Vuze team. Neither one is essential to use the program, and even though the installation makes it look as if the Vuze tool bar installation is essential to accepting the terms of service for general installation, it isn’t. You can skip both as long as you select the “custom installation” option on the initial screen, and uncheck the option to install the toolbars on the last screen.

After installation, you’ll When you install the program, you're presented with a layout that should conjure déjà vu for iTunes users. Within that layout, the content and discovery is distributed amongst four four main section tabs on the left: My Library, Vuze HD Network, Notifications and Subscriptions. The “Vuze HD Network” content library functions mostly like the iTunes library does, with category trees full of video content.

The notifications tab is mainly for showing what’s new about the program and other new features that may have been added, in lieu of a company feature blog. The subscriptions area is most interesting, with the ability to create notifications of new content based on keyword searches and series from the content network they maintain, which can function as a sort of real-time monitor of new content based on your interests or just a way of keeping up with your favorite series.

The “My Library” section is just what it sounds like – your library of downloaded files, whether it’s software, movies, music or images. All are displayed cleanly with icons along side size, quality and rating details.

There are also many of the advanced features that show up in clients like uTorrent when it comes to managing bandwidth and file clean-up, IP filters, and firewall tests. The download and upload statistics aren’t as detailed and intensive as what you’ll find on uTorrent, but it’s sufficient for what this client aims to be, which is a portal for high-quality video content.

When compared to other video portals, Vuze is a hands down winner, particularly if your broadband connection and computer specifications are better than average.  While download speeds are in no way guaranteed, the userbase of Vuze is large enough so that almost everything listed in the content directory seems to be very well seeded, and your download speeds seem to be mostly limited by the size of your broadband contract. I have a 10 Mbps downstream on my broadband, and on average the videos downloaded were running at 90% of that.

When I tested it on my slightly older and less than top of the line machines however, the memory footprint and overhead of the Java Virtual Machine started to become very obvious, just from the GUI itself, not from the activity of downloading, necessarily. The downloads, as a result, were much slower on these older machines that they were with uTorrent, though on the higher end machines I tested, the downloads ran somewhat quicker than they did with the more lightweight client.

 

Vuze also doubles as a media viewer as well, although it has to rate as one of the least enjoyable media viewers I’ve ever had the chance to use. Even on my fastest machine, before a video will load, there’s about a seven second delay, which is immediately followed by a thirty second video.

Slightly less annoying is the unique video encoding method that seems to be used by all the videos showcased is one that was previously unfamiliar to me, something called the “Matroska Media File,” which you must go out and find the proper codec for before you’ll be able to view anything you download. The download site is a little odd – and seems to be intentionally reminiscent of the Soviet red and yellow (the download is called “The Combined Community Codec Pack” or CCCP, and is emblazoned with a hammer and sickle insignia). The hunt for the proper driver might be out of reach for the entry-level user, and if they’re able to find the proper site, they’ll likely be put off by the communist motif.

If you can get past all that, though, the codec seems to be one of the better quality ones I’ve seen lately, and provides nearly flawless video, with very little artifacting or other picture imperfections.

All in all, the interface is what shapes the recommendation of this product. When it comes down to it, Vuze has exactly the same feature set as every other BitTorrent client in existence, but with a much more top-heavy interface. Vuze has search, and so does most of the other BitTorrent clients out there.  Vuze has download management, and a number of ways to optimize file downloading, and all the other standard and advanced features.

Where Vuze stands above others is not in performing the core functionality, but in the endeavor to aid in discovery of new content in the world of torrenting, and doing so in a way that doesn’t showcase entirely pirated materials. As a torrent client, it’s only average. As a discovery tool, it’s truly unique, making it a near-perfect choice for those really wanting to delve into the world of torrenting while not becoming copyright violators.