Downloading and converting Amazon Prime videos

[Katie Boundary]

Drawn Together is available on DVD, but only in uncensored form. This somewhat ruins the show for many people because the censorship was a big part of the show's humor and because many people would rather not have to look at cartoon dicks every few minutes. The only place where I've been able to find the original broadcast TV cuts of the episodes is Amazon Prime.

Search engines haven't been very useful. Fonepaw, iTube, and PlayOn were recommended but don't work as advertised. There's a Win10 app that allows downloading videos in a proprietary format that won't work on unapproved devices; does AVIsynth have plugins that can crack these files? What are the best (free) options here?

[FranceBB]

"Ben Waggoner doesn't like this comment" xD
Ok, that is just a joke (I made it 'cause he works at Amazon).
Anyway, jokes aside, I haven't watched anything on Amazon Prime Video, so I don't know, but they do allow you to watch things offline and download stuff legally, so it would be just a matter of getting the location of the file on your device, although I'm pretty sure it's gonna be encrypted 'cause they really don't want people to give away the files, in fact they use DRM.
On the other hand, I've seen plenty of pirates uploading the original stream of Amazon contents on places like... (well I can't say it here but they're pretty common torrent trackers) so I believe they were able to download from it by capping the stream, just like they do with other popular services like Netflix, Crunchyroll, Disney+ and, sadly, even us (sky)... :(
Well, anyway, I can't help you with your issue and I'm not sure if other people will, considering that is a bit "border line" given that it's technically something that *shouldn't* be done...
I'll leave it to others to reply, though...

[Katie Boundary]

All right, well, I've found a more or less acceptable workaround for the moment. Fonepaw can save three minutes at a time. That's not enough for a whole episode, but it's more than enough to grab the censored parts individually. These can then be spliced into the corresponding parts of the raw DVD cuts in Premiere. It's tedious and requires sitting through every second of every episode, but I think the final results will be worth it if nobody knows a better solution.

EDIT: this approach seems to cause weird frame rate issues. I set Fonepaw to screencap at 60 fps, the resulting AVI files are reported by Windows as being 600 fps, and then using ffmpeg->AVIsynth->Virtualdub to open them produces seemingly random frame rates.

[Frank62]

I tried some time to capture (which is legal) amazon prime videos. With any possible framerate, followed by a lot of decimate techniques and parameters: No way, there are always missing frames after some time.
The guys that get these streams directly (which is not legal) to upload it illegally somewhere (which is very illegal) seem to have some "special" piece of software for drm-removal or saving the stream somehow in a decrypted state. May be available somewhere in the darknet - but I wouldn't buy it.

[scharfis_brain]

I rather think that the pirates simply capture off HDMI with 60p or 24p refresh rates using HDMI-Splitter, which 'forget' to put out HDCP.

[Frank62]

That's what I did. But as I said: There is no possible framerate I didn't try. And no matter how you decimate: Frames are missing from the beginning. The odd thing is that these videos streamed and watched "live" do NOT look choppy.

[manono]

You can try OBS (https://www.videohelp.com/software/Open-Broadcaster-Software). I've capped a number of Prime Video files with it in the past. You just have to sign into Amazon Prime Video on your computer.

[Frank62]

Thanks! Am I right, that it captures screen? Is HD possible on PC?
I never tried this, what I tried was to capture from FireTV via HDMI.

[manono]

Yes, it's a screen capture software. The more powerful the computer, the higher the resolution you can get with a minimum of duplicate frames. It makes a suggestion of the capture resolution based on your computer specs.

Or you can try DVDFab DRM Downloader (https://www.videohelp.com/software/DVDFab-Downloader). There's a free trial period. It always downloads at the resolution and framerate of the source Prime Video. Unlike OBS, there's no reencoding done.

[FranceBB]

Well, if you were to go to the OBS route, use either Intel Quick Sync or NVIDIA CUDA to encode as it's gonna be hw accelerated and record at the very same framerate as your monitor. Then, index the resulting file in Avisynth, use TDecimate(mode=2, rate=xxxxx) where "xxxxx" is the framerate of the content originally streamed and just hope for the best (i.e hope that there aren't dropped frames). OBS can also go lossless on CPUs like if you don't have any of the above (neither Intel nor NVIDIA) and you're on AMD, but you're gonna need a pretty big drive. The reason I suggested it is that most monitors are at 60fps nowadays and encoding a FULL HD 60p stream on a CPU with no HW acceleration will likely lead to dropped frames.

I would personally go for the DRM way.

[Frank62]

The more powerful the computer, the higher the resolution you can get with a minimum of duplicate frames. It makes a suggestion of the capture resolution based on your computer specs.

Thanks, but that was already clear. I just didn't know if amazon prime's DRM works ON PC (normally only on certificated closed hardware), and not only in SD, which I supposed. It's new to me that you can get HD on PC. Some years ago there was a hack to decrypt WiDevine (which doesn't work any more), so I am surprised.


Or you can try DVDFab DRM Downloader (https://www.videohelp.com/software/DVDFab-Downloader).

This is really new to me, very interesting!



...
use TDecimate(mode=2, rate=xxxxx) where "xxxxx" is the framerate of the content originally streamed and just hope for the best (i.e hope that there aren't dropped frames).

Just that is the problem... As I wrote, there are always missing frames, no matter, what "post capture" decimating-technique you use. Frames are NOT dropped on my side, they are simply not transferred, in the first place. I use a wonderful Chinese capture card that can capture HDMI in any arbitrary framerate and resolution and is brutally fast, also the rest of this machine, so hardware is not the problem.


I would personally go for the DRM way.
Who wouldn't? :)

[badflame]

Amazon encodes its advertising at 60 frames per second and tags the information delivered to the user at those frames. Since movies are encoded at 24 frames per second, skipping occurs.

https://youtu.be/U7DG2I3uVCk?si=ZAZhI5vQOXljzntC&t=363

[Swede]

Seriously? A 4 year old thread? And liniking to a non-english youtube?