Does Closed Caption work in SageMC?

[Eckwell]

I have been searching and searching and I can't figure out the answer. I tried to set the cc_enabled flag in properties but it keeps changing it back to false.

Do I need to revert back to the default STV to get Captions?

Will they work in none SageMC STVs such as iTV?

THanks in advance

[ke6guj]

Yes, the default closed captioning will work with SageMC.

If the .properties file is changing the enabled flag back to false, it sounds like you haven't shut down Sage completely before editing the file. Shut down Sage, and the service (if used). Then edit the .properties file and it shoud still when you restart it.

Question is, what tuners are you using, and does Sage have the capability to save the captioning? Only the Hauppauge tuners are supported, PVR-150, 250, 350, and 500 that I know about. Maybe the analog part of the 1600, but I dunno fo sure. No other tuners will do CC that Sage can use.

[Eckwell]

I am using the GT for QAM and analog. That must be the reason. Any ideas on getting around this?

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Eckwell

I am using the GT for QAM and analog. That must be the reason. Any ideas on getting around this?

Not that I know off. Sage says that CC is unsupported and that it only works with those hauppuage tuners that save the CC data in the mpeg file in a specific way with a specific driver feature.

I'm in the same boat you are in now with most of my recordings being digital with QAM recordings from my HDHomerun or firewire recordings from my HD cable box. AFAIK, the digital recordings are just stream captures so the CC data should be there in its original format. IF so, Sage needs to be able to display the CC, its already there for the viewing. Or else, I need to find a program that can strip the CC out and save it as an .smi file, so I can use JREkiwi's Closed Caption plugin. I've tried mpg2srt but it doesnt work on transport streams and if I convert it to a program stream in VideoReDo, there is still no data. I dunno if the data gets lost during the conversion, or that mpg2srt won't work with digital CC at all.

As for analog recordings from the GT, I have no idea.

[Eckwell]

What is frustrating is that I can turn the CC1 on in the OnAir Program and see the captions so I know they are being decoded by the GT. But I don 't know if they are being stored in the MPEG itself.

[Eckwell]

OK here is some more info...

According to Ryan at Onair,

"The GT passes all the Closed Captions to SageTV, but SageTV ignores it. "

"However, I understand SageTV's position. Our developers worked very hard to get Closed Captions (both Analog and Digital) working in our software (OnAir HDTV Program). It is a coding nightmare for Digital TV captions. We've added DTV captions from popular demand."

I have done some additional testing and what I see is that the file that is recording by SageTV still has the digital captioning embedded in it. I am able to open a file recorded by SageTV with the OnAir Application and it renders the CC. Cool...

I have tried mpg2smi with no luck getting the captions out, and ccextractor, and a couple others.

The questions now are:

How do I best motivate SageTV to get digital CC implemented as they have done for the OnAir program?

And

If there third party software that anyone knows about that can strip digital CC into an .srt or .smi file so SageTV can use it as is?

Anyones input welcome at this point!

Thanks!

[Eckwell]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

Not that I know off. Sage says that CC is unsupported and that it only works with those hauppuage tuners that save the CC data in the mpeg file in a specific way with a specific driver feature.

I'm in the same boat you are in now with most of my recordings being digital with QAM recordings from my HDHomerun or firewire recordings from my HD cable box. AFAIK, the digital recordings are just stream captures so the CC data should be there in its original format. IF so, Sage needs to be able to display the CC, its already there for the viewing. Or else, I need to find a program that can strip the CC out and save it as an .smi file, so I can use JREkiwi's Closed Caption plugin. I've tried mpg2srt but it doesnt work on transport streams and if I convert it to a program stream in VideoReDo, there is still no data. I dunno if the data gets lost during the conversion, or that mpg2srt won't work with digital CC at all.

As for analog recordings from the GT, I have no idea.

Jack -

Have you tried CCextractor?

http://ccextractor.sourceforge.net/

It looks promising, and still in development.

I tried it and it failed, but I am still trying to figure out if I have an .Mpg file or a .ts file. I think it is a transport stream, but how to I force that in SageTV? I think I can with a properties setting, but I keep reading it is not supported.

What are your thoughts? Thanks a lot for your input.

Jon

EDIT: There is a LOT of CC information here as well... McPoodle's Tools. Maybe with this I can figure out how to get the CC data out fo the file.

http://www.geocities.com/mcpoodle43/...SCC_TOOLS.HTML

[ke6guj]

I tried CCextractor and am getting CC info out of them on both my HDHomerun recordings, and my Firewire'd STB recordings, so my digital captures are capturing the CC data, as I expected.

CCextractor will output to .smi, but the files end in _1.smi so they have to be renamed. Also, the formatting of the file is different than mpg2srt and subtitle workshop, so it would take some tweaking of the .stvi.

Now that I know that the files have CC info, I guess it is time to bug Sage some more on getting native support to display the digital CC since they are already there. It isn't like the driver issue and not having CCinDVD support in the drivers so that the captions aren't saved into the file, they are already there.

[herrdude]

I have been trying so many different ways to get CC with my two DVB-S cards. It is particularly frustrating since I can get CC in MyTheatre. But oddly CC will not work with these cards in SageTV.

Today, I think I fluked out and I managed to get CC on timeshifted shows recorded from a DVB-S card. First of all, I tried using mpg2srt and it kept giving me empty srt and smi files. I tried mpg2srt on mpg files from SageTV and from MyTheatre and it always gives empty files with absolutely no closed captions.

I searched around the net and I found another program (possibly more powerful than mpg2srt) called ccextractorwin.exe (download from here: http://ccextractor.sourceforge.net/. I was able to produce valid srt and smi files!!!

For some reason, the CC from Malone in SageTV wasn't processing the smi file correctly (it was showing gobbledygook for about a millisecond). So, I accidentally installed this STV Import . I know, I know, I know, I am installing it into SageMC, but it worked (for me)!

Here are the following steps (remember cuz I fluked, they might not all be necessary for you).
1. Download this file. Then run on the command line wherever you stuck cccp.ax file: regsvr32 cccp.ax
2. Download and import JREKiwi's stv import. Don't bother looking for options in >Detailed Setup > Customize, as they don't show up.
3. Check your sage settings, I have the following:
SageTV: 6.19.143
Java: 1.4.2_11
SageMC: 6.3.2
Video Renderer: VMR9
MPEG Video Decoder: NVidia Post Processor
Overlay Color Keying: Enabled
4. Check your sage.properties file. Make sure the line on closed captions enable is true.
5. Record some show, any show (preferably something that is known to have closed captions!)
6. Download ccextractorwin and dump it into the folder that has your video files.
7. Go to the dos prompt (start, run, cmd). Key your way to the directory with the ccextractorwin and video files. Type the following:

ccextractorwin -sami myvideo.mpg

(or replace -sami with -srt. Also replace myvideo with your video name. For fun, type ccexractorwin to see all the options it offers.
8. Let ccextractorwin do its job. It could take up to five minutes for an hour show.
9. Once the file has been generated, open it with notepad and see if it has pulled out closed captions.
10. When it creates a file, it adds _1 (for example: myvideo_1.mpg). I found that I didn't need to rename this since it worked as is in SageTV.
11. Go into SageTV and find the show that you have now created a closed caption file for and play the file.
12. Don't freak out if there is nothing at the beginning as the default is the CC turned off.
13. Right click, and I see two CC options: the one that comes standard with SageMC and the one that installing the aformentioned stv gives. Enable the bottom one (I have noticed that this one only shows up if there is a smi or srt file).
14. If you have fluked like me, then you should be seeing closed captions.
15. If you right click again, there are options, I really haven't played around with them.

I hope someone else can do this. I would like to learn how to automate this procedure (like with comskip), so all of my shows would have the comskip files and closed caption files ready to watch.

For fun, I ran ccextractorwin on a show that was being recorded and it pulled out the closed captions up to the end of the show at that point. I restarted the show and the captions were there. I am thinking (I am no programmer by any means), that a script could have a loop running ccextractorwin thereby giving closed captions on Live (slightly delayed of course) TV.

Looking forward to see if others can get it working too!

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by herrdude

For some reason, the CC from Malone in SageTV wasn't processing the smi file correctly (it was showing gobbledygook for about a millisecond). So, I accidentally installed this STV Import . I know, I know, I know, I am installing it into SageMC, but it worked (for me)!
.........
2. Download and import JREKiwi's stv import. Don't bother looking for options in >Detailed Setup > Customize, as they don't show up.

Since version 1.1.0 of the import you've been able to import it into SageMC.

The options in SageMC are in Settings/SageMC/Extras

John

[herrdude]

I was happily watching a show with the commercial skip on and closed captions was working like a charm. When the show skipped over the the first set of commercials, it caused a major delay with the closed captions, almost 10 seconds. It made the show difficult to watch at that point.

Anyone have an idea how to correct this?

[ke6guj]

I don't use commercial skip so I haven't seen that behavior.

Are you sure that your ccextracted captions are timecoded correctly? I can't use ccextractor on my digital recordings, for the most part, due to timing issues. They end up getting out of sync very badly. It is due to the "internal clock" on the digital files being all messed up. ccextractor tries to fix it, but can't.

If you don't do commercial skip, is the CC accurate? Try to run ccextractor on a file and generate an .srt file. Then you can easily look at the timecodes and see if the timing of the file is off, or if the commercial skip is causing the problem.

Or are you trying to say that once you skip forward, that there is a delay in the captions reappearing on the screen. I know that for me, once I FF/REW it takes around 3-5 seconds for the CC to reappear, but the CC is in sync.

[Eckwell]

Jack -

I, like you, have great syncing issues with digital recordings and I am still trying to find a solution before the new season of Boston Legal starts! I do use commercial skip, but I have tried it both ways and it doesn't seem to help. I have also done a QuickFix with videoredo and that didn't seem to do it either. I was going to try showanalyzer... but I need more TIME.

It is frustrating though...

The WAF is very low right now...

[herrdude]

I used ccextractorwin on a movie (no commercials). And it kept sync throughout. I fastforwarded and rewound and it worked fine.

For some reason, it will not work with .srt files, the menu just doesn't show up when right-clicking. When I create .smi files, the menu shows up and closed caption works fine.

So, as long as I don't use comskip, I have decent closed captions.

Is there a way to automate this process, for example dirmon2, so all the recordings get .smi files?

[herrdude]

I will look at the srt file tonight and see if there is a problem (anything i should be looking for?)

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Eckwell

Jack -

I, like you, have great syncing issues with digital recordings and I am still trying to find a solution before the new season of Boston Legal starts!

With my limited testing, I've found that my HDHR QAM'ed digital recordings are fairly close in sync. I'm hoping that when/if I switch over to BDA capturing in .ps instead of .ts, my sync may be better. I dunno about that, but one of the things I heard about the BDA switch was that it was supposed to fix some timeline isssues.

As for the firewire capturing in .ts, I don't even know where to start. The timing on them is so far off its not even worth messing with, on the order of 10% fast at times. And about 50% of the time I can't watch live recordings, only pre-recorded stuff. I wonder if I can set up graphedit to dump to .ps instead of .ts, and if it will make a difference.

the ccextractor guy has mentioned that he would like samples of videos that ccextractor don't work with. However, I'm not gonna send a 4-6gig file to him, and if I chop it down in videoredo, it does something to the timeline so that the CC is now on a different sync.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by herrdude

I used ccextractorwin on a movie (no commercials). And it kept sync throughout. I fastforwarded and rewound and it worked fine.

For some reason, it will not work with .srt files, the menu just doesn't show up when right-clicking. When I create .smi files, the menu shows up and closed caption works fine.

thats good that ccextractor will properly CC your recording. .srt files are not supported by the CC display import, only .smi files are. However, you can set up ccextractor to create .smi files, you just have to add the right switch to the command line.

Is there a way to automate this process, for example dirmon2, so all the recordings get .smi files?

I beleive you can set up dirmon2 to run ccextractor.

[herrdude]

thanks for your help so far.

I have been able to get dirmon2 to automate pulling out closed captions with ccextractorwin. The whole thing is working like a charm. My wife is very happy.

2 questions:
1. Is there a way to set up the cc button on my remote so it enables the closed captions? Just like the mute button does, without turning off the sound. In other words, can i enable the closed captions with a remote button?

2. Comskip continues to knock the synchronization of closed caption out of whack. It seems I can have one or the other but not both. Anyone have an idea why it would do this? Or better yet, how to correct it?

Thanks!!

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by herrdude

2. Comskip continues to knock the synchronization of closed caption out of whack. It seems I can have one or the other but not both. Anyone have an idea why it would do this? Or better yet, how to correct it?

Thanks!!

Does it only go out of sync on comskip, or does FF/FF2 affect it as well?

Have you tried to see if you have the same problem with the default UI and the imports?

[herrdude]

In SageMC
FF1 (10 seconds) works flawlessly.
FF2 (30 seconds) works fine
FF2 (150 seconds) closed captions and video are about 20 seconds out of sync
comskip: same as FF2

In the default UI,
FF1 (10 seconds) works flawlessly.
FF2 (30 seconds) works fine
FF2 (150 seconds) closed captions and video are about 20 seconds out of sync
comskip: same as FF2

So basically it is the same in the default UI and SageMC.