Freesound Forums

Hi there. I'm having a problem when I'm downloading certain files. What generally happens is that the download will begin just fine, but it will freeze part way through. Sometimes it stops just before completing, while other times it will barely grab any of the file at all.

I've tried:

*Allowing the frozen download to sit in the background for a while. It never picks up again.
*Manually pausing/restarting the download. No luck.
*Canceling the download and trying again. When I do this, it will often give me a perpetual "starting..." message on the downloads window, while never actually beginning. Otherwise, it just freezes again while downloading.

I can't seem to pinpoint any reason why it happens with some files and not others. The only factor that seems to matter is the length of the clip. It never freezes when I'm getting short files (~12 seconds or less). The problem very commonly crops up for any longer files... but not always.

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.3 with Windows XP. This issue seems unique to Freesound, as I've never had it happen before (certainly not this consistently). It doesn't seem to matter whether I simply click the download button or if I right click "save link as". The download will fail with either technique.

I looked through the rest of the bug report topics and didn't see a download question that matched this one, but if the answer has already been posted, I apologize and ask you to direct me to the relevant post.

Thanks for any help you folks can give, and thanks for the wonderful site.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I tried downloading one of these problem files with Internet Explorer just as a test, and it still froze.

Hard to say, but try the downThemAll! extension.

If you use the dTA download manager it has better support for fragmented downloads and resuming. (Might want to only have it do one chunk at a time though, the last thing you need is *more* network load.)

what are the files you have trouble with? if you're getting the problem with both Firefox and IE then there is a chance it could be the file.

Post the link to a file your computer doesn't like and i'll try downloading it...

Thank you both for the quick replies. Halleck, I've got dTa, and I'll give it a shot downloading with that.

Streety
Post the link to a file your computer doesn't like and i'll try downloading it...

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=19546

downloaded fine for me!

Sorry I had to go out of town for a day...

I can't say I'm surprised you downloaded it with no difficulty. Since I didn't see this issue raised already on the forum, I assumed I was the only one. However, I did try downloading a couple lengthy clips with DownThemAll, and it worked wonderfully. I haven't had a chance to try it with any of the problem clips yet, but perhaps this solved my problem (whatever it was). We shall see.

Thank you both for the help.

well i didn't really help. hope it works

Yeah, let us know if it's still a problem once you re-try those files.

dTa is very good, works pretty well even over moderately crappy connections (like mine.)

Well, I haven't had a chance to check all my problem downloads, but the one listed above is still getting stuck, even with dTa. First try got it to 57%. The second try made it to 54%. Bizarre. Previously, the second download attempt would usually fail, so I suppose that was at least a step in the right direction.

I dTa-downloaded a couple other big clips with no problem, so who knows? I'll try to grab some more large files in the next couple days, but perhaps I'm outta luck on these particular files for some reason. While I've never had this problem with downloading before, I'm planning on switching to a new cable internet provider in the near future, so maybe that'll magically solve the issue.

Thanks for the help, anyway. Much obliged.