Playlists and file sources

StreamFlow supports playlist URLs, TXT files containing multiple URLs, and YAML files that define one or more groups with their own download settings.

Playlist detection

Playlist detection is intentionally simple.

The application checks whether the supplied URL contains:

list=

If the parameter is present, the source is treated as a playlist.

Playlist directory

When a playlist is detected, StreamFlow asks the user for a playlist folder name.

The folder is created inside the configured download directory.

Conceptually:

Downloads/
└── My Playlist/
    ├── Video 1.mkv
    ├── Video 2.mkv
    └── Video 3.mkv

The output template is based on the media title:

%(title)s.%(ext)s

TXT source

A TXT source is useful when multiple URLs need to be downloaded.

Example:

videos.txt

Contents:

https://example.com/video-1
https://example.com/video-2

https://example.com/video-3

Empty lines are ignored.

The resulting list contains only non-empty URLs.

After selecting a TXT file, StreamFlow asks for the download group name, output folder, filename prefix and suffix, naming template, optional indexing, media type, format, and quality. The default template is {title}. When indexing is enabled, {index} can be included in the template, for example {prefix}{index:02d} - {title}{suffix}.

YAML source

Choose YAML File and provide a UTF-8 YAML file using configuration version 1. Each item under downloads is downloaded with its own URLs, destination, naming rules, and media settings:

version: 1
downloads:
  - name: "YouTube videos"
    urls:
      - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"
    output:
      folder: "E:/Videos/YouTube"
      prefix: "[YT] "
      suffix: ""
    naming:
      template: "{prefix}{index:02d} - {title}{suffix}"
      indexing:
        enabled: true
        start: 1
        padding: 2
    media:
      type: "video"
      format: "mkv"
      quality: "1080p"

media.type is video or audio. Video quality accepts best, 1440p, 1080p, 720p, 480p, or one of StreamFlow's displayed quality labels. Filename templates support {title}, {prefix}, {suffix}, and {index}. For playlist URLs, the index counts the playlist items; for ordinary URLs, it counts the URLs in that group. Each profile is processed sequentially.

File validation

Before reading either file, StreamFlow checks:

1. whether the path exists;
2. whether the path points to a regular file;
3. whether the file can be opened;
4. whether the contents can be read as UTF-8.

Sequential processing

URLs are processed sequentially.

For example:

URL 1
 ↓
Download
 ↓
URL 2
 ↓
Download
 ↓
URL 3
 ↓
Download

The current implementation does not provide parallel downloads.

Recommendations

For large collections of URLs, keep the TXT file simple:

one URL per line

Avoid adding comments or additional metadata unless the source parser is extended to support them.