FinalGear.com Forums FAQ

.torrent files are for use with a BitTorrent client. They do not actually contain the video file but are more like directions for you BitTorrent client to download the file off fellow users such as yourself.

For more details about BitTorrent and just what it is, see Wikipedia.

I personally use and suggest µTorrent. It's very lightweight (uses few system resources and is small in size), but still contains many, many features. It's also easy to use in my opinion.

Mac users should try Transmission as I hear it's good.

For a variety of reasons, but the main ones are speed and cost. If we were to offer downloads in the traditional form of you just downloading them off of our servers, then our servers would quickly reach their maximum upload speeds. You'd then be stuck with astronomically slow downloads or we'd have to buy dozens more servers.

With BitTorrent, you are downloading from people just like yourself (you upload as you download) as well as servers provided by us and other helpful people. BitTorrent is nearly infinitely scalable so the speeds are almost always fast even with tens of thousands of people downloading at once.

There are three main reasons why you may be downloading slowly:

1. The most common is that you are behind a firewall (such as a router) and have not forwarded the port(s) that your client uses. If you don't forward the port, you can't accept incoming connections. Only being able to make outgoing connections limits you to only downloading from people who have forwarded their port(s). Remember, the more people for your client to choose from (within reason) equals faster download speeds. For more details, see PortForward.com as well as this entry and the next in the µTorrent FAQ.
2. The torrent may be old and have few people on it. Remember, with BitTorrent, you download off fellow users like yourself. If there are only a dozen other people on the torrent, your speeds may be a bit slow. Patience is key and make sure to keep uploading when you're done downloading to help other people like yourself out!
3. Bandwidth is usually given to those who upload and upload the fastest. So, if you want to download fast, make sure that you're uploading as much as you can (cap it at about 80-90% of your actual, not claimed, bandwidth limit).

It varies from client to client, but usually what you do is select the file, visit the "Files" tab, and then select "Do Not Download" for the priority level.

You can see some screenshots of how to selectively download files from a multi-file torrent in µTorrent in this forum thread.