6.1.0.0 Still No Forced Subtitles on Amazon

[Mauser]

This is a relatively minor irritant for downloading movies, but it is a HUGE problem for any series where only some of the episodes have forced subtitles:

Problem 1: Amazon Prime downloads do NOT include forced subtitles automatically, even when that box is checked in the VIP Services Settings.

Problem 2: There is no way to manually select forced subtitles for inclusion on many series - in fact, there is absolutely no way to even know that they exist in many cases, so you don't even know they are missing.

Here is an example using Amazon Prime Series Bosch:

For Season 1, none of the episodes have English forced subtitles, so if you start with season 1 first in the Amazon Downloader, there is not even an option available to select English forced subtitles (Amazon calls these "English forced narrative"). If you want to queue up the entire series (all seasons) for download at the same time, you will not get any of the forces subtitles on any of the later seasons.

And it does not help to try to just download one season at a time. Season 2 has four episodes that have English forced subtitles, but Episode 1 is not one of them. so, if you first select Season 2 in the Downloader with Episode 1 pre-selected on the browser, once again you will not see any English forced subtitles available to include in the download.

And since there is no way to first start watching an episode in the Downloader BEFORE it does all the analyzing about the selected program, there is absolutely no way to work around this problem within StreamFab!

If you want to download Bosch season 2 and be sure to include any forced subtitles for all episodes, here is what you have to do:

1. First, you must know if any episodes actually have forced subtitles available. There are only two ways to do this A) is to watch them all on an external streaming device and wait to see if any forced subtitles show up (because forced subtitles tracks are not visible or selectable while streaming an Amazon program, and they do not display in a browser), or B) use a browser OUTSIDE of StreamFab to start watching each episode, then stop.
2. With option B) above, once you stop watching an episode in a normal computer browser, Amazon will then mark that episode for you to "Continue watching" in that season, and this will pre-select it for analyzing in StreamFab. So now you have to go back to StreamFab and select that season, making sure that it first shows "Play S2 E1 BEFORE you click on it. This is because StramFab will ONLY analyze the first episode that the browser has pre-selected for you to watch!
3. Now you wait for Streamfab to finish analyzing the program before you can manually check the Subtitles to see if there are any forced in your target language. If not, you have to cancel out of the Downloader screen and go repeat steps 1 and 2 here for EACH EPISODE - this is the ONLY way you can find out if there are any forced subtitles on any episode in the Season.
4. For Season 2, Episodes 1, 2, and 3 do not have any forced subtitles, but when you finally get to Episode 4, you will see that it does have English forced subtitles. FINALLY you can quit tediously reviewing each episode; once you have found one episode that has the type of subtitle track you are looking for, you can then manually select it and also select all episodes for the entire series or season, and the forced subtitles will be included wherever they actually exist.

The best solution, of course, is to fix StreamFab to actually find and automatically include all forced subtitles, just as the program creator intended - that is why they are called "FORCED"!

If StreamFab cannot be fixed to do this, then the only other reasonable option is to provide the capability to pre-analyze ALL selected episodes for available subtitle tracks before you queue them up or start the download. All subtitle tracks that are found on ANY selected episodes need to be available for selection for all episodes. This is the only way to ensure you do not miss one because you did not know beforehand that they existed.

[DeadPixel]

I've pointed this out before, its a massive issue that needs to be addressed. I really think (at least for amazon) it needs to be changed so the program only performs analysis on one season at a time. that way it can easily check all episodes for the correct subs. I can't count the amount of times I've tried to watch something just to find its missing forced subs.

[Mauser]

Yes, automatically analyzing the entire selected season when it first starts would certainly be a good start, but then they would also need to avoid letting you select MORE seasons for download. The drawback to having this done for all seasons is that it would dramatically increase the analyzing time for all series, so it would make the Downloader unacceptable to many people. That is why I think a better option would to have a new button in the Downloader to allow the user to re-analyze all selected programs if they wanted to.

Another and probably better option is to not waste time analyzing ANY series when first selected in the browser - just quickly bring up the Downloader screen populated with only the available seasons and episodes, then require the user to select what they desire to be analyzed.

This would solve another problem for me too - I often want to know if a series has new episodes available that I do not already have, and I HATE waiting for the full analyses in StreamFab just to find out that information, so I always go to a different browser first.

[Marty92]

Yes, automatically analyzing the entire selected season when it first starts would certainly be a good start, but then they would also need to avoid letting you select MORE seasons for download. The drawback to having this done for all seasons is that it would dramatically increase the analyzing time for all series, so it would make the Downloader unacceptable to many people. That is why I think a better option would to have a new button in the Downloader to allow the user to re-analyze all selected programs if they wanted to.

Another and probably better option is to not waste time analyzing ANY series when first selected in the browser - just quickly bring up the Downloader screen populated with only the available seasons and episodes, then require the user to select what they desire to be analyzed.

This would solve another problem for me too - I often want to know if a series has new episodes available that I do not already have, and I HATE waiting for the full analyses in StreamFab just to find out that information, so I always go to a different browser first.

Exactly as it is with the other program.

Analyzing sometimes takes a really long time when there are many seasons.

I don't understand why they don't offer it in the same way as the competitor program.

[jpp72]

Honestly they need to change their whole way of selecting and have a subtitles dropdown per episode... You get a list of all episodes for one season at a time and next to each episode you have a dropdown specifically for subtitles.

When giving you the list of episodes, it shouldn't analyze the whole season and give you all possible options for the episode you clicked on but all possible options for each individual episode.

That way, when selecting say forced subtitles for episode 1, you go to episode 2 and forced is not part of the list so you choose CC or no subs. You can still select the subtitles the regular way if you want to (by default it should do that) but then you can go to each individual episode and overwrite the "season selection"

I am glad i don't have this issue as i always download the regular or CC subtitles and those include the forced subs. I got so used to having subs on all the time for everything because of my wife, i now prefer it that way...