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

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

Was testing in SageMC 6.3.3c, so I just tried the default STV, same deal. Any special settings I'm possibly missing? I have "captions on mute" enabled and "preferred captions" to both.

Jack, I've updated the download on the first post. I think I have got it now, with a rework of the logic for the play start settings and the toggling on mute and Custom3.

John

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Eckwell

Getting Sage to reload the SMI if it changes would be great too, or to reload it each time it stops and starts again, or continuously (the best case) but I realize there are many issues.
.............
If there is anything I can do to help let me know.

If your feeling adventurous you could give this version a try. It's an attempt at reloading the .smi on the fly, but needs some real world testing to see if it really works and what impact it has on performance and whether it produces any undesirable effects and ....... and ....... and .......

John

Removed attachment as new version available on the first post.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Jack, I've updated the download on the first post. I think I have got it now, with a rework of the logic for the play start settings and the toggling on mute and Custom3.

John

I just messed with 1.1.5b54 and get the following:


With everything enabled and "preferred captions" set to both , smi captions work perfect ,but for embedded captions, only mute works for CC on/off, Custom3 only turns off CC. Ok, if mpeg has both, it works fine.


With everything enabled and "preferred captions" set to embedded, it seems to work perfect for embedded, and external isnt' triggered.


OK, thats wierd, set "preferred caption" to external and it seems to be perfect so for both external and embedded captions, if there is only 1 of the caption styles. If both are present, then ony external seems to work.

Seems to have the same behavior in both the defaultUI and SageMC.

Also, when starting a new video, it seems that both caption styles are enabled on startup. That would be nice to have a default selection for On/off captions on startup.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

It's an attempt at reloading the .smi on the fly, but needs some real world testing

John

Gave it a quick test replacing the text of a running .smi file and it did change the captions on the fly. Otherwise seems to run same as 1.15b4.

[herrdude]

Hello,

I made the request a few weeks ago in another thread to have the CC linked to a remote button. And I am happy to report that linking up CC to my remote works well now. Great job. I am very pleased with it. It is a beautiful thing.

A quick comment, at the beginning or end of a show, it will this cc was brought to you by Nickleodeon, for example (typically with different formatting), instead of seeing the formatting, we see the html code (<fontcolor=#23488...)

Quick question, when you say change the CC on the fly, does this mean being able to have CC from a live feed? Or does it mean being able to change the settings of the CC as it is playing? I am more than willing to test, I am just not sure what I should be looking for.

Lastly, I use ccextractorwin to pull out the smi from mytheatre files. I have managed to set up dirmon2 to automate the process. But it loops. The default in ccextractorwin creats the following smi from a video file: videofile.mpg will give videofile_1.smi. Dirmon2 begins by looking for a mpg file. Once it finds one it creates smi file. But since ccextractorwin creates a smi file that has a different root from the root of the mpg file. As a result dirmon2 loops.
For example, there is the file:
videofile.mpg
Dirmon2 will see it, call up ccextractorwin. Then the folder will have:
videofile.mpg
videofile_1.smi.
Dirmon2 will say: ok, videofile.mpg doesn't have the corresponding smi file and call up ccextractor again.

I guess one way would be to run some sort of batch program to remove all the _1 from all the files. Anyone have any suggestions?

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by herrdude

Quick question, when you say change the CC on the fly, does this mean being able to have CC from a live feed? Or does it mean being able to change the settings of the CC as it is playing? I am more than willing to test, I am just not sure what I should be looking for.

That means that if the .smi file changes, the import will automatically reload the .smi to get the updated file. So, if you were watching something in a "delayed" live feed, say 15 minutes or so, Dirmon would have enough time to scan the growing video file a couple times, and then update the .smi file with the new CC data. Each time Dirmon updated the .smi file, Sage would reload the new CC data on the fly. As long as you didn't catch up to Dirmon, you'd always have CC in a "semi-live" feed.

Lastly, I use ccextractorwin to pull out the smi from mytheatre files. I have managed to set up dirmon2 to automate the process. But it loops. The default in ccextractorwin creats the following smi from a video file: videofile.mpg will give videofile_1.smi. Dirmon2 begins by looking for a mpg file. Once it finds one it creates smi file. But since ccextractorwin creates a smi file that has a different root from the root of the mpg file. As a result dirmon2 loops.
For example, there is the file:
videofile.mpg
Dirmon2 will see it, call up ccextractorwin. Then the folder will have:
videofile.mpg
videofile_1.smi.
Dirmon2 will say: ok, videofile.mpg doesn't have the corresponding smi file and call up ccextractor again.

I guess one way would be to run some sort of batch program to remove all the _1 from all the files. Anyone have any suggestions?

I was just messing with that yesterday and saw the same behavior. I think the better options would be either see if dirmon2 could adjust its detection behavior to see the _1, or see if ccextractor could be adjusted to not put in the _1 .

edit: And if you tell dirmon2 to delete any orphaned .smi files, then it will delete all the ccextractor'ed files since they don't match the mpeg.

edit2: I looked at the ccextractor commands, and you can set up ccextractor to save the .smi file without the _1 with the syntax of cextractorwin -sami filename.mpg -o filename.smi . Now just to mess with dirmon2 and see if I can get the syntax correct in it.

[herrdude]

ok I am game to test it out. However, I will need to resolve the dirmon2 loop problem first. I can imagine that dirmon2 will work through several files before getting to the semi-live file (unless I am watching something on aardvarks!).

I found a piece of shareware called Batch Rename Utility, it was pretty easy to set up to remove the _1. However, I couldnt figure out how to automate it (I totally didnt explore it in detail tho)

I will tinker with that and dirmon2 and see if i can get something that breaks the loop.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

With everything enabled and "preferred captions" set to both , smi captions work perfect ,but for embedded captions, only mute works for CC on/off, Custom3 only turns off CC. Ok, if mpeg has both, it works fine.
........................

Also, when starting a new video, it seems that both caption styles are enabled on startup. That would be nice to have a default selection for On/off captions on startup.

Let me just check what your saying. If an mpeg has both and preferred is set to both then it works OK. But if their is no external file and it's set to preferred both then the embedded doesn't work properly with the Custom 3. (the one scenario I didn't test)

I should have mentioned that I changed the behavior of the Setup Enable/Disable settings. The Enable/Disable for external and embedded captions now is for whether they should be On/Off at start of playback.

John

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Let me just check what your saying. If an mpeg has both and preferred is set to both then it works OK. But if their is no external file and it's set to preferred both then the embedded doesn't work properly with the Custom 3. (the one scenario I didn't test)

Yup. I just stumbled onto that one trying to figure it out.

And I'm not sure if you got my explanation that right now, I have set preferred to external to have the best working setup. It plays external filles correctly, but will also play an embedded file, as long as there is no external file available.

I should have mentioned that I changed the behavior of the Setup Enable/Disable settings. The Enable/Disable for external and embedded captions now is for whether they should be On/Off at start of playback.

Ok, cool.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

Yup. I just stumbled onto that one trying to figure it out

And here we go. One more time. 1.1.5b5 on the first post, which should fix that one and of course all the other stuff I found while finding a way around it.

John

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

And here we go. One more time. 1.1.5b5 on the first post, which should fix that one and of course all the other stuff I found while finding a way around it.

John

Looks like that fixed it. I threw all the combos I could at it, with the default UI and SageMC, and it looks like it works.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by herrdude

ok I am game to test it out. However, I will need to resolve the dirmon2 loop problem first. I can imagine that dirmon2 will work through several files before getting to the semi-live file (unless I am watching something on aardvarks!).

I found a piece of shareware called Batch Rename Utility, it was pretty easy to set up to remove the _1. However, I couldnt figure out how to automate it (I totally didnt explore it in detail tho)

I will tinker with that and dirmon2 and see if i can get something that breaks the loop.

I think I figured out the syntax in dirmon2 for the command line,

-sami %FULLFILESPEC% -o [[%PATH%/%BASENAME%.smi]]

That will have dirmon2 tell ccextractor to create the .smi file without the _1, just the filename. It works, but it runs once and then stops. It doesn't rerun to keep making a bigger .smi file Haven't figured out that yet, for "live detection" like the comskip/showanalyser guys are doing.

[herrdude]

Here is my less than elegant solution:

I have one directory called: movies, and a subdirectory called: archives.

In dirmon2, I have a job that scans the mpg files and calls up ccextractorwin (the looping one). This way it will update smi and will allow me to do semi-live CC

Then I created a batch file with:

move d:\movies\*.mpg d:\movies\archives

I created another job that looks in the movies folder (and not the subdirectories). The moment it sees an mpg file it tries to move it to archives. However, if the file is still being written (recording), it cannot move it. As soon as a show is over, it moves it into archives. This means that the first job in dirmon2 is not looping through a very long list.

Finally, I have another job with ke6guj's suggestion using ccextractorwin:

-sami %FULLFILESPEC% -o [[%PATH%/%BASENAME%.smi]]

.
This creates the closedcaption file for all the videos in archive.

It works well. I am just trying to find the right amount of time to wait, so I don't run out of CC. Basically, I set up dirmon2 to poll every 30 seconds (6000 seconds was much too long!).

More news to follow....

[wbarber69]

I'm not sure if this is where I want to post my question but it does deal with captions. I started using showanalyzer to rip captions while comskipping and at first I wanted to make sure it was working I set it to create smi and srt. Now when I watch a show that has captions I get the regular cc playback and also another more dvdish captioning text at the boittom of the screen. NOw to fix this I have two options delete srt file (cause I don't know how to make them go away) or turn off CC and use srt. Major annoyance here though I only use captions because the wife really likes them, but now that she has seen the srt captions she likes the look and feel of them better, personally I don't care either way, but when she ain't around I don't use the captions at all, is there a way to turn on and off the srt catpions. I know that I used them a long time ago while watching some downloaded subtitled movie with media player, but all I know how to do is put the srt file in the same directory to turn them on, I don't know how to turn them on and off.

[ke6guj]

SOunds like VObSub is installed. When it runs, you'll see a Green Arrow in your right-side taskbar. While running, you can click on it and bring up a menu to turn it off. I dunno if Sage could be modded to control VobSub. That would be nice if it could, then it could play my existing .sub files and I wouldn't need to convert them to .smi.

[JREkiwi]

Updated download

(1.1.5)
- Added toggling of Captions on/off via a key defined as Custom3
- Changed operation of Options enable/disable to control startup status

No changes from 1.1.5b5

Added 1.1.6b1 to the first post. It has an update to 1.1.6a1 to include all the tested toggle code from 1.1.5

John

[Lucky3killer]

Hello, Does this download package is supported on Mac OS X? Please help me to put in correct file.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Lucky3killer

Hello, Does this download package is supported on Mac OS X? Please help me to put in correct file.

I don't have any way of testing on a Mac. If you try it and it doesn't work, I can try and fix any problems.

John

[JREkiwi]

New version available for download

(1.1.6)
- Added option to continuously read .smi file (for a changing file)
- Fixed marker icons placement when "Show recording status marker icons in lists" is disabled
- Reworked options panel in SageMC
- Added option to delete .smi files when a video is deleted (SageTV only)

John

[wolfgang187]

Anyway to not have the horridly ugly black backround for external subs and have them look more like directvobsub?