We need a native tool to migrate from uTorrent. The tool I am suggesting would allow even a single torrent be “moved” with all (most) of its metadata and stats. But really the tool is needed to migrate all torrents in bulk to the Vuze platform.

I am working on a hack which uses the import folder option as, just like Aureus, uTorrent keeps the .torrent files in one subfolder in the %appadata%

However, some parsing and hacking of the two config files is still needed: resume.dat for uTorrent’s and downloads.config for Vuze. Both config files are binary BEncode which can easily be serialized and desrialized to/from JSON or XML and there are a lot more programming tools for those clear text formats. My choice of poison was JSON.NET to read the resume.dat (first serialized to JSON) for a script to output a hacked downloads.json and then deserialize it back to BEncode right in Vuze Help. (kind of an illogical place in the menu for a tool, but thanks for including it anyway).

So before I hack I just import/add the whole uTorrent folder with all the torrents in it but make sure that they are added in a stopped state so no files are created. Then I do the hack of the downloads.config and simple force-recheck all the added torrents. For thousands of torrents that takes as much as a whole week but it happens in the background so no complaint. But that puts new completion date so if I want Vuze to show the original add and completion dates from uTorrent I have to do a second hack of downloads.config and a second week-long round of force-recheck of all torrents even though the second hack did not change file paths.

The real problem is that very few fields match up between the two config files. For example, resume.dat shows an array of “Labels” which are analogical to Tags and/or Categories but neither has a field in the downloads.config. So I guess another hack of tags.config may be needed which I have not even figured out if possible. I would like to import other fields from uTorrent like UL and DL stats etc. that I could not do because downloads.config has so few top-level fields compared to the 100+ top-level fields for each torrent in resume.dat.

Of course all of this hacking is dangerous. We need a native import utility developed by Vuze that can do all of that. Vuze developers can match up as many of the resume.dat fields to the settings scattered throughout Vuze, not just to fields in downloads.config. My knowledge of Vuze is minimal. I did this out of necessity after begging for several weeks on the forum for someone to show me a way to import. Not a single developer/Vuze staff responded in that thread.

http://forum.vuze.com/Thread-How-to-bulk-import-from-utorrent

I am reluctant to even post the code written in c# using JSON.NET because I’m afraid it’s not tested for distribution. I’ll eventually post a step by step instructions of what Options need to be changed for the import project, and then undone when finished. There are quite a few. If the utility was native there would be no need to temporarily change and unchange any Options settings. Come to think of it people who migate to Vuze would often be newbs to the platform and would not even know which Options to set. They would be so intimidated that they may just decide to stay with uTorrent.

The need to migrate from another platform is so common, so basic. This functionality would so helpful to Vuze and boost its popularity as Vuze is already the most robust torrent client out there. What good is it if our bulk torrents are kept h-o-s-t-a-g-e in another client platform? There are many master torrenters who are not programmers and cannot just whip out an IDE and libs and start coding hacking scripts…

Some of the vuze options like the ignore rules or the auto starting depend on how many seeds are in the swarm, it will be better to wait for the tracker and search for alternative methods like dht to find seeds. Some tasks at start show 0 seeds so the ignore rules are pretty much useless for those tasks even if they might have plenty of seeds to be ignored. And if you have set vuze a limited tasks to run, the ones that show 0 seeds will have priority, even if you might have other tasks in queue that need seeds more urgently.

I've used a VPN with Vuze (force=yes) for several months and two trackers show my ISP IP# instead of VPN IP# so i guess it's sent sometime somehow (though i didn't detect it in simple traffic captures of scrape requests).

I'm not sure on the implications of this for my privacy/anonymity but at least it defeats some purposes of using a VPN with BT.

What i've found in the SVN:
"(HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();" needs to be replaced (to use NetworkManager i guess) in http://svn.vuze.com/public/client/trunk/azureus2/src/com/aelitis/azureus/core/versioncheck/VersionCheckClient.java , http://svn.vuze.com/public/client/trunk/azureus2/src/org/gudy/azureus2/core3/ipchecker/extipchecker/impl/ExternalIPCheckerServiceImpl.java and maybe other places..

Since i don't think i'll be able to implement this myself, until otherwise solved, i'll try to have a local HTTP proxy rewrite the "sourceipaddress" part in Vuze's reply from "http://version.vuze.com/version?" (found in VersionCheckClient.java above with VERSIONSERVERV4 in http://svn.vuze.com/public/client/trunk/azureus2/src/org/gudy/azureus2/core3/util/Constants.java)

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND UPLOAD AND DOWNLOAD SPEEDS, TO BETTER UNDERSTAND PLUGINS, TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE USER INTERFACE WOUL DBE GREAT TO MAYBE SIMPLIFY IT FOR NEWBEES, HAVE BETTER EXPLAINATIONS OF PLUGINS THAT ARE IN ENGLSIH AND NOT COMPUTER TALK, VUZE IS AWESOME AS IS, BUT FOR MANY THEY CAN NOT UNDERSTAND SEEEDS PEERS AND WHY THEY SEE 30 OUT OF 140 SEEDS WHILE THEY ARE DOWNLOADING, OR 6 OUT OF 690 PEERS, THEY WISH TO KNOW HOW TO INCREASE THIS VALUE, IN ENGLISH TALK. MORE SEEDS MEANS BETTER DOWNLAOD SPEEDS? MORE PEERS MEANS THE SAME? THEY SIMPLY DONT KNOW. AND THE HELP PAGE THAT VUZE OFFERS DONT HELP DUE TO TO MUCH PC TALK NO SIMPLE ENGLISH WORDS THAT THOSE WHO NEED HELP CANT UNDERSTAND, AND I FEEL THAT ALL TEMPLATES SHOUL DBE INCLUDED, AS WELL THE BEST PLUGINS AREADY SET FOR THOSE WHO NEED TO JUST GET GOING WITHOUT ANY USER INPUT TO BETTER THE VUZE EXPERIENCE, AS WELL THE PORTS SHOULD BE SET UP TO 50000. OR TO THE BETTER PORTS THAT VUZE HAS ALREADY SAID TO SET THEM TO. THIS WAY USER INPUT IS LITTLE AND MORE WILL USE VUZE, I HAVE USED IT FOR YEARS I FIND MYSELF TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE IN VUZE BECAUSE I FEEL ITS THE BEST, BUT THEY SAY THEY DONT UNDERSTAND CERTAIN THINGS AS SAID ABOVE, MAYBE AN AUTO DETECT OF SYSTEM SETTING WOULD HELP TO SET VUZE UP PROPER FOR THOSE WHO KNOW LITTLE ABOUT TORRENTS, THAT IS ALL, OTHER THEN THAT VUZE IS SIMPLY AWESOME. ALSO THE NEWER VERSIONS OF VUZE ARE HARD TO UNDERSTAND FOR MANY, SIMPLY PUT THE OLDER VERSIONS ARE BEST, THE JAVA RUN TIME IS ALSO HAVING ISSUES WHEN MAIKING COMMENTS AND DISAPEARING, AS WELL WHEN YOU VIEW COMMENTS VUZE WILL DISAPEAR, "CLOSE DOWN"