Closed Caption Possible

[sshapiro63]

Is it possible to view Closed Caption on live or recorded programs with any of the supported hardware?

[dkardatzke]

Not to my knowledge and we've talked about supporting it but it's very difficult to implement from what I understand.

Maybe Jeff can elaborate some more on if it's available anywhere.

[Narflex]

We'll add it at some point in the future, both the Hauppauge and Creative cards are capable of doing it. No estimate yet on when.

[mlar]

It should be reasonably easy to add it to SageTV, if the CC is displayed by SageTV itself, but I think it would be pretty hard, if at all possible, to have the TV render the CC (maybe if you use a hardware decoder, such as PVR-350 or X-Card). Personally I'd prefer if SageTV could render the CC text so you could customize the font/colors etc...

One cool thing would be if SageTV could index the CC data, so you could search for things being said in shows.. Lets say.. I have SageTV record X number of newscasts.. and I want to see if any of them where talking about Bin Laden or whatever, then I could just search for it, and it would tell me which programs mentioned him (and even at what timecode!). I can always dream I guess.. Or Sage could monitor shows for things I like.. maybe I like Robert DeNiro.. and he appears on tonight show that I usually dont record.. one of my tuners happen to be recording from this channel, and notices that today robert deniro appears on the tonight show, so it automatically keeps the show around for me with some special border color or something, so it gets my attention.

[Narflex]

mlar, it's funny should mentiont that.

I used to be Director of R&D at FasTV.com. What we did was index the closed captioning data from recorded television streams and used a search engine to index it and serve up video clips that matched the CC search results. That company went bankrupt and died like most dot coms....but I sure learned a lot while I was there. :)

[mlar]

I bet alot of market research companies would pay for something like that.. but I guess they already have technology to do that.

The funny thing about dot com is that there were plenty of good ideas, that still are good ideas, but they were implemented the wrong way. They hired 1000 people to do something that really should have been a 1-4 person company. Then there were some really bad ideas, but that's another story.

[justme]

Did any of you who have the PVR 250 ever get CC to work, even natively in WinTV? I could never get it to work. Except with the last driver release(21062), and then only by building a graph in graphedit. Sadly that driver version caused me serious sound glitches and I had to go back one version. SHS said a new version should be out soon, maybe even this week. Maybe this will have working CC.

I would love to have CC in SageTV, and would really love it if Sage could save CC to text. I often record shows anf later archive them to Xvid, and a CC text file would be of great use.

[JJarmoc]

mlar -
Not only that, but they hired 1000 people, gave them all stock options (dilluting shareholder value) and had pinball machines / nap rooms / free food / etc. I knew at least a few people who were all excited that they only did a couple hours of actual work a day, and could then play pool, get a massage, even have free beer. It doesn't take a rocket science to figure out that if you run a business like that, it won't last long.

[Durwood]

In particular I don't understand the observation made by mlar:

it would be pretty hard, if at all possible, to have the TV render the CC (maybe if you use a hardware decoder, such as PVR-350 or X-Card).

I don't know why having a hardware decoder would make this any easier to do. At any rate, Tivo does it: anything recorded on Tivo, even if dumped in the meantime on to VHS tape, has the closed captioning encoded in it and can be decoded by your TV.

As for the idea of having Sage decode the captioning beforehand, so you can set the fonts, etc., that's kind of a cute idea and might be a nice-to-have feature, but is no substitute for passing the CC signal through as Tivo does it. Being able to turn CC on and off by your TV is a considerably more useful feature.

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally posted by Durwood
...
As for the idea of having Sage decode the captioning beforehand, so you can set the fonts, etc., that's kind of a cute idea and might be a nice-to-have feature, but is no substitute for passing the CC signal through as Tivo does it. Being able to turn CC on and off by your TV is a considerably more useful feature.

I run SageTV using a big screen computer monitor (32") and not a TV. Therefore the only way that I could make use of CC functionality is if SageTV supported it natively. This is one feature that is being requested by my fiancee. She's a teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing and thus uses CC a lot. That's the one thing missing from SageTV that I was able to get using the ATI TV viewer app.

Hmm...maybe I should add this to the official feature request list.

Regards
Lester

[mlar]

The reason why I believe this is true, is because the CC signal is supposedly on scan line 21, and if you use TV out on your graphics card, you have no control over what gets displayed on what scan line. A hardware decoder on the other hand, does decoding and rendering on a per scan line basis, and knows exactly what scan line it is outputting to. The TiVo uses a hardware decoder (obviously), and has no problems outputting the closed captioning, just like DVD players are able to output closed captioning. I don't see how you can use a standard VGA card with TV out to accomplish the same thing, unless you have some special card that gives you scanline precise control over output.

[Durwood]

If our friends at SageTV are able to continue improving their support for the PVR350 hardware output, then perhaps we can have both solutions: (a) when hardware output is used, the CC can hopefully be included invisibly in scan line 21, and (b) if the customer prefers to turn on the CC so that it appears permanently in the resulting file, they can have that too.

(And in response to Lester, I too have a hard-of-hearing person in my family but we use a TV, not a computer monitor. And we all prefer to be able to turn the CC captioning on and off as needed rather than having it always on.)

[Narflex]

SHS, what do you know about CC capabilites for the PVR 250/350 cards?

[justme]

hehe:) I can't wait to hear what he has to say about this. I've been a royal pain in his butt about CC.

To anyone who reads this and doesn't know. Hauppauge is the one responsible for the PVR250/350 capabilities. SHS does not work for them, but he is the best ally a PVR card owner can have.

[Narflex]

DVD playback will have closed captions in it.....not what you asked for, but thought I'd mention it (and no, I don't mean subpicture, that's different, but it has that too)....and it's in the next release. :)

[salsbst]

Could the CC info be stored in a file separate from the MPEG file? Perhaps in that way, it wouldn't need to be an all-or-nothing decision when scheduling/recording.

[Durwood]

Originally posted by salsbst
Could the CC info be stored in a file separate from the MPEG file? Perhaps in that way, it wouldn't need to be an all-or-nothing decision when scheduling/recording.

Not sure why this would be a solution -- the idea is for the CC info to be "passed through" so that wherever the stream goes, even if it gets dumped onto video tape, it is still viewable on any TV you play that video stream on. (Again, as Tivo does.)

[salsbst]

So MPEG has CC in its spec? I didn't know that.

I thought the idea as to be able to decide at play time, rather than record time, whether or not you wanted the CC, and that, if you didn't have a separate file, then Sage would have to record the CC into the regular MPEG video stream.

EDIT: In rereading it seems like we're trying to solve different problems. I'm coming at this from a not-necessarily-using-a-TV perspective, in which case the CC needs to be in the regular video output stream, unless you don't want to watch the CC, in which case it needs not to be in the regulsr video output stream.

But I'm still confused as to whether or not the CC can be embedded in the MPEG without putting it in the regular video stream.

Thanks,
Stuart

[Durwood]

So MPEG has CC in its spec? I didn't know that.

I'm sure it doesn't. Its encoding is, I'm sure, an Analog thing. Something to do (according to what's been mentioned above) scanline 21, although I could have sworn I read somewhere that in MPEG it is encoded as part of the Audio stream, not the Video stream.

[fidget]

I am the proud owner of a TiVo so I can tell you of some of the "peculiarities" of CC. If you record a program at the highest fidelity you get all the CC text. As you reduce the quality of the recording, the "quality" of the CC text is recuded. At quality 3/4 (where 1/4 is the best), you no longer get any CC text.

--Jonathan

[laurenglenn]

Originally posted by fidget
I am the proud owner of a TiVo so I can tell you of some of the "peculiarities" of CC. If you record a program at the highest fidelity you get all the CC text. As you reduce the quality of the recording, the "quality" of the CC text is recuded. At quality 3/4 (where 1/4 is the best), you no longer get any CC text.

--Jonathan
I'm not too familiar with the world's TV standards, but just because NTSC may put it on scanline 21, you'd have to program for SECAM and PAL also (not to mention the deriviates of each).

I, personally, would love to see the CC encoded in the MPEG file as part of the file just like the VOB files are. This way, if you make a DVD of the program, you wouldn't need to worry about the subtitles being lost.

While I don't use CC myself on DVDs often except for learning how to curse in the foreign languages encoded on the DVD :), it would be nice for it to either have it as a VOB in its own stream (DVD compatible) or just have an IDX file with the CC info in it. This way, Sage could at least display it when playing.

If it were in a VOB file and burned to DVD, it would show up as a regular subtitle.....

And as far as hard-of-hearing people watching it and converting it to tape, you could turn on the Sage CC and record it to tape for them. It's not the best solution, but it would probably be easier to program it that way, IMO, than to try to encode to Scan Line 21 which would probably not work right without kind of CC / MPEG hardware solution.

Of course, all this is speculation from my end as I don't program multimedia programs too much anymore....... :)

Lauren

[SHS]

Closed Caption can be embedded in DVD stream but for I know of it not ready.
As for DVD Playback it should be embedded in DVD stream it just matter of turn on or off.

[Durwood]

Originally posted by fidget
I am the proud owner of a TiVo so I can tell you of some of the "peculiarities" of CC. If you record a program at the highest fidelity you get all the CC text. As you reduce the quality of the recording, the "quality" of the CC text is recuded. At quality 3/4 (where 1/4 is the best), you no longer get any CC text.

--Jonathan

I don't find that to be *quite* true. I record pretty much everything at "Basic" quality, and I do get CC on almost all of the content I record at that level. Every now and then, I get garbled CC (stuff shows up out of order and truncated and interspersed with random characters). I never understood til now why that happened but now you have clarified it for me -- one risks losing, or corrupting, the CC stream by choosing a low-quality (high-compression) format. But again, this only occasionally happens, and I find I have readable closed-caption text in most of my Basic recordings.

[Narflex]

The PVR250 card crops its input image so this information is lost. I know the Provideo 256 cards that we support retain this information in their recordings...it's the original reason the zoom settings were created (we got complaints of a fuzzy line at the top of the screen, which was of course the line 21 data). I'm not sure about the Creative DVCR cards....

[Durwood]

Originally posted by Narflex
The PVR250 card crops its input image so this information is lost. I know the Provideo 256 cards that we support retain this information in their recordings...it's the original reason the zoom settings were created (we got complaints of a fuzzy line at the top of the screen, which was of course the line 21 data). I'm not sure about the Creative DVCR cards....

Oh dear. Do you know if the PVR350 does the same thing? And if there is no workaround if so?

[justme]

I Don't know about removing scanline 21, but I do know that the PVR250/350 drivers are getting closer to CC support. I have built a working graph(thanks to SHS) with the decoded CC alpha blended over my video. It looks great.
I guess Jeff could capture this decoded CC data and then remerge it back into the stream in some manner. Of course as already stated you would need it to be placed back on scanline 21 for the CC to follow the video off computer. ie VHS

[SHS]

Jeff I think you mean the other way a round PVR 250 dosen't crops its input image so this information is full scan that why end see some goof thing on top side or left side or buttom side and even rigth side of the screen that not on TVset becuase is all ready over size scan image so don't see it.
Why do think TVset have black bar runing all way round the tv tube.
On Big TVset they over size the image 8line on all four side

[pheitman]

Are there any updates on this? Is Closed Captioning possible? Can it be done with SageTV and a PVR-250? SageTV2? This is one of those things that "I should have asked before purchase". Closed Captioning is really important to me. I didn't realize that it was an issue (since TiVO supports it). Sigh.

[Lester Jacobs]

I'd like an update as well. As I've mentioned before, my wife teaches deaf and hard of hearing students and needs recordings with the CC in them.

Regards
Lester

[dkardatzke]

We are still looking at how we would implement closed captioning into SageTV. This is something under consideration for the future but it will not be in the initial release of V2 and I don't know when we will look at it for the near future.

Please don't think we are just dismissing closed captioning as we understand the importance for many reasons.

[wonder6oy]

I give up

:bang:

[wonder6oy]

You know, pheitman, I completely understand how you feel. I've been tracking the progress of this software now for over 6 MONTHS, and over and over again it's the same, disheartening response - "we're considering it, but it shurrr looks gosh-aufully harrd" non-commital just-buy-our-product-and-learn-to-live-without-it you silly little minority of unimportent potential users.

I guess it's amazing just how spoiled we are what with the government stepping in to insure that all those folks suffering from hearing loss as a result of age or other complications are able to enjoy broadcast media for the masses.

It's truly a blessing that broadcast companies are provided with funds from various sponsors to cover the costs of hiring the extra workers to provide viewers of live content with instantaneous transcriptions of the events before them, and that both cable companies and television manufacturers are required by law to ensure that features catered to the needs of those with a hearing disability are implemented in their products and services.

Of course, you completely take for granted this remarkable blessing until you decide to set forward on a fun little home project one weekend with the intent to build your family a new, home-brewed, tech-savvy PVR, except that you can't seem to find the darned caption feature anywhere. So, after blowing an entire day digging around, certain that you had just somehow managed to overlook it, you fire off an e-mail in a slightly irritated manner to Creative Labs demanding a thourough explanation of where this important feature might have gotten buried in the technology.

Two days later you recieve an e-mail from the company stating, much to your shock and disbelief, that closed-captions was a feature that they simply couldn't care about enough to implement. So, tough luck, sorry sir, we don't give a rats ass about mandates that don't affect us directly.

Two hours later the card was neatly boxed and returned back to the nice CompUSA gentleman behind the counter.

Since then, I've been through three different TV cards and every piece of compatable software out there, trying to find the right combination of elements to at least APPROACH the level of performance offered by that agonizing Tivo machine. So far, the best (and only) solution I have been able to find that addresses my lovely, 36 year old wife's hearing needs is a Happauge 250 in combination with MCE's video recorder. Yes. Windows MCE actually SUPPORTS closed captions, post-recorded video and all.

Not that I like much anything else about MCE. It's just that out of all the software designers struggling for a little piece of this newly discovered market segment, why is it the only company that would be thoughtful enough to include this one, simple, singular, yet VITAL feature end up being Microsoft?

Maybe it's because they actually DO care about those government regulated mandates.

[salsbst]

MythTV apparently supports CC: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2924198#post2924198

If MCE supports it with a 250, then the card must not be the problem. Does MS have access to different drivers?

[sudipto]

I use a 350 with my current MCE setup and sure enough close captioning is supported on live TV as well as in recorded video.

[jawgee]

Wonder6oy, have you tried out the TV plugin for myHTPC yet? It's supposed to support closed captioning in all TV/PVR modes. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't offer any experiences with it:

top100's myHTPC TV/PVR plugin (http://myhtpc.net/pub/TV%20Plugin/Web/)

Good luck,
jawgee

[wonder6oy]

jawgee,

Yes I have tried out the plug-in you speak of, but it was a pretty good while back. When I tried it at that time, CC's were only available while viewing live TV, and not while playing back recorded video, hence severely limiting the usefulness of the PVR functionality alltogether.
Is has been a while, though. I'd be curious to find out if any advances have been made since then.

[wonder6oy]

Nope.

Just checked.

:(

[sirgilbert]

I have tried the Hauppauge cards 1600, 1950, 500 and 350. in combinations (too numerous to mention) with WinTV 6 and 7 SageTV and BeyondTV. The closest I got to seeing the CCs was on a clear QAM channel on WinTV 7 using the 1950. I have only 4 days left of my trial period on Sage and I have made the cc_option_enable true alterations including winkling it out of the back up properties file. I have searched and searched for the proper video renderer and the overlay options to no avail. I guess that's it for this campaign until someone gets this CC software squared away. I am not holding my breath as one may wonder how long Cox cable is going to continue sending analog signals down their wires. If any kind reader has a blow by blow way of getting captions showing using the 350 I would surely not be the only one to recommend him for beatification!

[phelme]

I have tried the Hauppauge cards 1600, 1950, 500 and 350. in combinations (too numerous to mention) with WinTV 6 and 7 SageTV and BeyondTV. The closest I got to seeing the CCs was on a clear QAM channel on WinTV 7 using the 1950. I have only 4 days left of my trial period on Sage and I have made the cc_option_enable true alterations including winkling it out of the back up properties file. I have searched and searched for the proper video renderer and the overlay options to no avail. I guess that's it for this campaign until someone gets this CC software squared away. I am not holding my breath as one may wonder how long Cox cable is going to continue sending analog signals down their wires. If any kind reader has a blow by blow way of getting captions showing using the 350 I would surely not be the only one to recommend him for beatification!
CC is tuner dependent, for example I have CC embedded on shows recorded with the SiliconDust HDHomeRun and my Hauppauge PVR-USB2 and PVR-150, but the HD-PVR currently DOES NOT encode the signal at all, so there is no CC to be had (Hauppauge says they are working on it but it's a tricky issue).

My guess is with the list of tuners you have, that there is CC info being recorded, but getting it displayed might be the issue. If you are using Overlay as your rendering mode, try flipping "Overlay Color Keying" (under Advanced in Detailed Setup) to the opposite of what it currently is and see if that works. Another thing to try: On one of my clients, I have to use "Default" for the the MPEG2 Video Decoder and VMR9 for the renderer or CC won't show up; if I select the same decoder that IS the default already (using DECCheck.exe or DSFMgr.exe to see), for some reason it doesn't work.

There is usually some magic combination of Video Renderer, MPEG2 Video Decoder and color key settings (when using Overlay) to get CC displaying to be happy.

[sirgilbert]

Thank you Oh sageTV Aficionado Mr. Phelme, You have inspired me to have another go at this. You know just navigating the self-highlighting menus is not quite the easiest trick. But I will have a serious look for the Overlay Color Keying and the Mpeg Recorder settings you recommend. I know I have already tried the VMR9 but the search for the 'Magic Combination' will go on. Am I correct in thinking that when I have the magic combo that the Captions will also show when watching live TV, or are they only visible from a recording? I do at least have the menu option Closed Captions (OFF) showing, but it remains stubbornly at Off and no amount of clicking around brings up CC1 as Appdx K says. Regards Gilbert.