STV Import: Closed Caption Playback (v1.2.2 28/February/2008)

[OferL]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

New version up for download

(1.0.6)
- Options for Font Style, Colour and more Size and Position options
- Switchable between two different fonts

Also added a bit more info on the first post

John

YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!!
You're caption stvi officially support international fonts and languages!
Thank you very very very much!

[alijiwani]

What are the chances we could see a version compatible with SageMC? This one particular task is the only reason I have to use BSPlayer on my Sage box.

[JREkiwi]

SageMC does have the malore version that this is based on built in although it would need a minor tweak to work with avi's.

John

[jbarr]

I understand that this plugin works with external CC files, as opposed to how SageTV processes CC (which can also handle live TV.) Is there any way to have SageTV's processing do the "display CC on mute" function that this plugin does? I do like how SageTV handles things, and I like the functionality of this plugin, but there is an unfortunate disconnect between the two. Would this require an entirely new plugin or a re-tool of SageTV's functionality?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by jbarr

Is there any way to have SageTV's processing do the "display CC on mute" function that this plugin does? I do like how SageTV handles things, and I like the functionality of this plugin, but there is an unfortunate disconnect between the two. Would this require an entirely new plugin or a re-tool of SageTV's functionality?

It was easy enough to do, but there are some operational problems.

One is that there is no way to determine if an MPEG file has captions encoded. If you also have an .smi file, then you can end up with both sets of captions showing.

I don't use captions, so some usage preferences, by those that do would help.

How often would you have an encoded MPEG and an .smi file?
Do you use anything other than the CC1 captions?
Would you like options for toggle on mute to turn on inbuilt CC only for MPEGs and only .smi file for AVIs, or .smi for both, or any other ideas?
Would you want an option to have the inbuilt CC automatically turned off if there is an .smi file? or automatically turned on if there is no .smi file?

First in, First served

John

[jbarr]

John,

Ahh...thank you for the info. I need to clarify....

Currently, I only use SageTV's built-in CC capability to occasionally watch CC1 Close Captioning on live and recorded shows. These are the standard MPEG files recorded with a Hauppauge PVR-150. The CC is currently seamless, and works very well. I just wish the SageTV implementation had the "display CC on mute" ability.

I saw that this plugin has that feature, so thought this might be a good place to start. I'm not dealing with any external files (.smi, etc) and at this time, I'm not concerned with AVI's. We use SageTV primarily as a PVR for recorded TV content.

Maybe this would be a feature to request directly to SageTV Support....

[OferL]

I found that "Invalid Cation file" message appears when I play a DVD. It looks like the caption plugin is trying to load captions even on DVD play. It really shouldn't... not a big issue though.

I use the caption plugin for.smi with .avi, .ts, .mkv etc.
No use for embedded cations for me.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by OferL

I found that "Invalid Cation file" message appears when I play a DVD.

Thanks, I've got that fixed, but I'm just tiding up some other things before I put another version up for download.

John

[JREkiwi]

New version available for download

(1.0.7)
- Toggle on mute for Embedded Captions
- Reposition Marker Icons like Comskip Playback import
- Fix displaying Invalid Closed Captioning File when there is no caption file

As I've mention before, I can't find a way to determine if an MPEG file has embedded captions. The new Prefer External Captions works if both an .smi file and embedded captions exist, but if Embedded Captions is Enabled and embedded captions don't exist and Prefer External Captions is set to NO, then no captions will be displayed. External Captions (.smi) can still be enabled in the Video Options panel.

Hopefully amongst it all you can find a setup that works.

John

[Doubletop]

I've downloaded and installed the files into my sagetv directories, all the files are there in jar and stv. Imported Caption_Playback.stvi into my stvi, restarted and gone to detailed setup/customize and there is nothing there regarding cc's or additional menus

I've loaded stvi's many times before without problem. Any clues as to what I should look into?

(PS I assume/hope this works with the NZ SkyTV feeds?)

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Doubletop

I've downloaded and installed the files into my sagetv directories, all the files are there in jar and stv. Imported Caption_Playback.stvi into my stvi, restarted and gone to detailed setup/customize and there is nothing there regarding cc's or additional menus

I've loaded stvi's many times before without problem. Any clues as to what I should look into?

(PS I assume/hope this works with the NZ SkyTV feeds?)

You need to do the restart after unzipping and before importing the stvi.

The import is for file based captions. Is Sky transmitting captions? I have notice anything with captions in it.

John

[Doubletop]

Yes I have done the restart, a few times now. I have noticed a "CC" logo now appears in "currently recording" bar the as I have mpg2srt running. But no config menu. You will see that multi speed and comskip are there

I did notice Sky advertising some shows with CC recently (can't remember what though). What source do you use for your CC'd programs?

[JREkiwi]

What version of Sage are you running?

I don't use captions

John

[OferL]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

New version available for download

(1.0.7)
- Toggle on mute for Embedded Captions
- Reposition Marker Icons like Comskip Playback import
- Fix displaying Invalid Closed Captioning File when there is no caption file

As I've mention before, I can't find a way to determine if an MPEG file has embedded captions. The new Prefer External Captions works if both an .smi file and embedded captions exist, but if Embedded Captions is Enabled and embedded captions don't exist and Prefer External Captions is set to NO, then no captions will be displayed. External Captions (.smi) can still be enabled in the Video Options panel.

Hopefully amongst it all you can find a setup that works.

John

Thank you for the update. I will try it tonight.
I join the request for SageMC if at all possible.

[coryking]

Show Analyzer seems to output SMI files that cannot be read by either this STV or the SageMC one.

From what I can tell, there are a couple differences between what mpg2srt (0.3) puts out and what Show Analyzer puts out:

Sample line from Show Analyzer
<SYNC Start=2397><P Class=ENCC>[ Fievel ]<br>AND THEN THE HERO, WYLIE BURP,
<SYNC Start=2474><P Class=ENCC>&nbsp;

Some lines from mpg2srt
<SYNC START="609133">
<P class=ENCC>&nbsp;
<SYNC START="612100">


1) mpg2srt double-quotes the start frame
2) mpg2srt uses all caps for START
3) mpg2srt seems to create an entry for almost every letter...
4) You cannot see it above, but ShowAnalyzer saves it's files as either UTF-16 or UTF-8, which my copy of UltraEdit will pick up as unicode files. The mpg2srt ones are picked up as plain old ASCII files.

I've attached a zip file that has both the mpg2srt output and the ShowAnalyzer output (UTF-8)

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by coryking

Show Analyzer seems to output SMI files that cannot be read by either this STV or the SageMC one.

I'll have a look

John

[jbarr]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

New version available for download

(1.0.7)
- Toggle on mute for Embedded Captions...

Works like a charm! Thanks!

[coryking]

Cool. The version of ShowAnalyzer I'm using is 8.11, which is beta. Let me know if you think they are the ones spitting out bad data and I can go bug them about their bugs.

This file format looks like some kind of bastardized variant of HTML complete with the "feature" of everybody implementing it wrong. Maybe you need to do what Firefox has and have a "Standards Mode" and "Quirks Mode" :-)

[Doubletop]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

What version of Sage are you running?

John

V5 at the moment. As you will see from the attachment other STVi's have loaded OK.

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Advanced -> Customize -> Captions Playback Options

From your instructions, where should I be seeing "Captions Playback Options" In Advanced or Customise?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Doubletop

V5 at the moment. As you will see from the attachment other STVi's have loaded OK.
From your instructions, where should I be seeing "Captions Playback Options" In Advanced or Customise?

The Captions playback Options should be in Customize, the same as Comskip Playback and in fact uses the same code to insert the Options panel.

Can you try importing into a clean STV, or if that doesn't work can you post your base SageTV3.xml.

John