DVDalibaba, NewMelle
very glad both of you responded :-)
Absolutely agree with you, better communication and status updates would really relax this situation - unfortunately this doesn't happen.
The option to to sign up somewhere else exists but for now I have no need for that yet - Disney still works and for Amazon I also can still get what I want.
I grew up with copying VHS tapes (even accepting, that not only the recordings were of pathetic quality, but even the copy protection would result in a video going bright and dark). SVHS and a digital video mixer made things better. Years later we were encoding MPEG-I to VCD keeping computers run for days and nights for just one movie. I also remember when DVDShrink came out and we would rent DVDs on an hourly basis and "shrink" 'em. FAB-Decrypter came in handy for the candidates shrink and RegionFee would fail on. For years DVD quality (SD) was satisfacotry. Then came blueray (HD). My first stream recording was a Netflix serial I had to have and ended up using a screen recorder with 60fps 50 minutes per episode. Next came the idea of Plex and the huge task to get all my DVDs into Plex and for the bluerays I "invested" in the life time Fab Blueray ripper and finally realised how bad DVD quality actually is. StreamFab was the solution and begining of last year I bought the life time for Amazon, Disney, Netflix and youtube. All of a sudden everything was just so, so easy. As a Star Wars fan I was in the cinema, had bought the VHS tapes, then the DVDs and even the bluerays (bought it often enough, right?) and didn't feel one bit bad about downloading 'em in full HD finally. Also I bought quiet a few titles on Amazon over time when they had bargains like 99Cent a movie (and I still feel entitled to download them - I mean I bought them).
The happyness ended all of a sudden on 25th of Feb. this year. What was taken for granted no longer worked :-( - I guess you all know this feeling?
Then came updates with apparently "useless" features and all the negativity about "recoding". Still, recoding allows to download new DRM protected material -
and whether you like it or not, SF still delivers - just not in the way we obviously expect it.
So far I still seem to be able to get all I want - just takes longer and with try and error I could overcome the "problems" of re-encoding.
I do want H.256 and what I cannot get in that codec I request the download in H.264 best quality offered and run it through handbrake or vidcoder using hardware NVEC to recode it to H.265 which takes maybe 20min for a movie. If I request H.265 and only get H.264 (means, that SF will recode based on the bitrate requested for H.265 which is much lower than needed for decent H.264). Therefore I stop the download and request it in H.264 best qaulity. Never had sync problems and the resulting quality I cannot complain about - it is not upscaled or whatever you read in the forum. Framerate and resolution of the outcome is the same as the source. Recoded video size in general is 20% larger indicating a minimum loss of quality. Just one thing to consider! don't change your windows session nor lock your screen - this seems to result in a not rendered video. So I check the recoded video whether the ending is playing and also if audio tracks are still in sync towards the end.
Anyways, maybe this is of help for you till SF is back, or a change to some other service has to be considered.
very glad both of you responded :-)
Absolutely agree with you, better communication and status updates would really relax this situation - unfortunately this doesn't happen.
The option to to sign up somewhere else exists but for now I have no need for that yet - Disney still works and for Amazon I also can still get what I want.
I grew up with copying VHS tapes (even accepting, that not only the recordings were of pathetic quality, but even the copy protection would result in a video going bright and dark). SVHS and a digital video mixer made things better. Years later we were encoding MPEG-I to VCD keeping computers run for days and nights for just one movie. I also remember when DVDShrink came out and we would rent DVDs on an hourly basis and "shrink" 'em. FAB-Decrypter came in handy for the candidates shrink and RegionFee would fail on. For years DVD quality (SD) was satisfacotry. Then came blueray (HD). My first stream recording was a Netflix serial I had to have and ended up using a screen recorder with 60fps 50 minutes per episode. Next came the idea of Plex and the huge task to get all my DVDs into Plex and for the bluerays I "invested" in the life time Fab Blueray ripper and finally realised how bad DVD quality actually is. StreamFab was the solution and begining of last year I bought the life time for Amazon, Disney, Netflix and youtube. All of a sudden everything was just so, so easy. As a Star Wars fan I was in the cinema, had bought the VHS tapes, then the DVDs and even the bluerays (bought it often enough, right?) and didn't feel one bit bad about downloading 'em in full HD finally. Also I bought quiet a few titles on Amazon over time when they had bargains like 99Cent a movie (and I still feel entitled to download them - I mean I bought them).
The happyness ended all of a sudden on 25th of Feb. this year. What was taken for granted no longer worked :-( - I guess you all know this feeling?
Then came updates with apparently "useless" features and all the negativity about "recoding". Still, recoding allows to download new DRM protected material -
and whether you like it or not, SF still delivers - just not in the way we obviously expect it.
So far I still seem to be able to get all I want - just takes longer and with try and error I could overcome the "problems" of re-encoding.
I do want H.256 and what I cannot get in that codec I request the download in H.264 best quality offered and run it through handbrake or vidcoder using hardware NVEC to recode it to H.265 which takes maybe 20min for a movie. If I request H.265 and only get H.264 (means, that SF will recode based on the bitrate requested for H.265 which is much lower than needed for decent H.264). Therefore I stop the download and request it in H.264 best qaulity. Never had sync problems and the resulting quality I cannot complain about - it is not upscaled or whatever you read in the forum. Framerate and resolution of the outcome is the same as the source. Recoded video size in general is 20% larger indicating a minimum loss of quality. Just one thing to consider! don't change your windows session nor lock your screen - this seems to result in a not rendered video. So I check the recoded video whether the ending is playing and also if audio tracks are still in sync towards the end.
Anyways, maybe this is of help for you till SF is back, or a change to some other service has to be considered.
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