StreamFab v6.1.2.0ß: Amazon Bitrate Selection Logic

[jpp72]

The name of the show is Big Brother Canada. It's on the STACKTV channel in Canada. Full Season11 is nowhere in the title of the show. I was just stating i was downloading all the episodes of Season 11.

The URL is:

Now that i can no longer force analyze Episode 1, i had to settle with StreamFab analyzing episode 26. Episode 26 has 3 1080p bitrates and this time, i chose 2200kbps for all episodes.

What StreamFab should do is if 2200kbps is not available, you get the next bitrate up which would be 4500kbps for episodes 1 to 16. Instead StreamFab downloaded the 9000kbps.

On the other hand, if i were to scan episode 1 and only see 9000kbps and 4500kbps, if i select 4500kbps and there is an episode that has 9000kbps, 4000kbps, and 2200kbps, StreamFab should download 4000kbps and not 9000kbps because although it technically is lower quality than i selected, the difference is acceptable.

So you may think i am contradicting myself when i say it should not automatically download lower quality than selected and yet i say get 4000kbps if 4500kbps is not available, it again comes down to my point with wanting to be able to select the exact option i want for each individual episode. Don't try to guess and just let me decide on an episode by episode basis what i want to download.

Since we still don't know what the devs are thinking, it's hard for us to wrap our heads around why this seems to be such a big ask. I literally see no drawback or caveat to this. Unless i am completely oblivious, what would the negative be in letting us scan individual episodes? I just don't see it.

So this morning i redownloaded the whole Season 11. Like i said, i chose 2200kbps and StreamFab should have downloaded 4500kbps and 2200kbps but instead downloaded 9000kbps and 2200kbps:

[Mona]

When choosing 4500kbps, StreamFab will download 1-16 at 4500kbps but 17-26 at 2200kbps.

The developers could not locate the show Big Brother Canada Full Season 11 , please provide the URL and the StreamFab log session to better check, thanks.

[jpp72]

Hey, look, Jack (jpp72) got hijacked.

Lol... my thread title has the word Amazon in it so of course his posts belong in here

[Cats4U]

Hey, look, Jack (jpp72) got hijacked.

[theairedale]

Same thing even after this update

[theairedale]

I haven't been able to download anything from Amazon since (2 updates ago?). Starts analyzing then fails a few seconds later.

[jpp72]

Looking at it again, the file size is fine cause it's video + audio that gives us the file size.

But the bitrate labels are still wrong

[jpp72]

More weirdness...

Citadel has supposed 3 bitrates: 9000kbps, 4000kbps, and 2200kbps.



I selected 9000kbps with an expected size of 519MB. This seems very low for a 40 minute show but ok...



Resulting download gives me 725MB files @ the 2200kbps...

My guess is the manifest is wrong because the competitor can only download the highest bitrate and they also produce a file with ~2200kbps

In StreamFab, it looks like there are only 2 bitrates as choosing 4000kbps or 2200kbps results in the exact same file:

[jpp72]

I know this is still being worked on but here is another scenario supporting the need to select bitrates per episode:

Downloaded Big Brother Canada Full Season 11 and StreamFab is not respecting the bitrate selection because of the mixed bitrates.

Episodes 1-16 only have the 9000kbps and 4500kbps available. Episodes 17-26 have 9000kbps, 4500kbps & 2200kbps. That means when scanning from episode 1, you can pick 1 of 2 bitrates only.

When choosing 4500kbps, StreamFab will download 1-16 at 4500kbps but 17-26 at 2200kbps. That is not ok unless you put a setting for us to decide what we want to do. StreamFab should NEVER download something lower than selected. Only higher is acceptable in my opinion. If i choose 2200kbps, it's ok to download 4500kbps if the 2200kbps is not available. But if i choose 4500kbps, it should download that if available. In my case, that is actually what i wanted (lowest bitrate possible) but the logic is flawed.



Solution:

Scan ALL episodes and populate the dropdown with ALL bitrates from ALL episodes.

or

Let us manually scan individual episodes from the StreamFab GUI and add them to the queue 1 at a time without dismissing the selection window when pressing "Add to Queue"