Subtitle support for DVB-C? (FloppyDTV)

[tkraang]

Hi all,

Sorry for my ignorance, but are subtitles from DVB-C cards supported yet? I've searched the forum now for days, and cannot find any updated info on this.

I live in Norway, and subtitles works (of course) for channels where subtitles are included in the picture stream. However, for channels like Discovery, subtitles are not displayed. Any way to get this to work in SageTV? Is it already implemented out-of-the-box, and I am just missing something? If not -- when can we expect this?

(I am using FloppyDTV with Conax on Canal Digitals cable network in Bærum/Norway.)


Best Regards,
Terje

[StephaneM]

Hi Terje,

Originally Posted by tkraang

Sorry for my ignorance, but are subtitles from DVB-C cards supported yet? I've searched the forum now for days, and cannot find any updated info on this.

No subtitles from DVB streams (Teletext or DVB subtitles) are not yet supported by SageTV.

I will have a solution for Teletext subtitles on DVB Streams but it will require to use DVBViewer to record the shows.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[tkraang]

Do you (or anyone else) know how SageTV handles the incoming DVB-stream? Is it, or can it be, saved raw without any form of transcoding?

If so, then I could at least open the mpg-file after SageTV has finished recording it, using a mediaplayer that supports teletext/DVB-subtitles. Dunno if Discovery has teletext or DVB subtitles, but I know at least some players has support for the one or the other. (VLC?)

I love the fact that SageTV has support for both free and encrypted channels on DVB-C, it worked like a charm here (except for the subtitles). Any Sage representatives here that can tell us about their plans for subtitle-support in the future? The WAF on my SageTV-installation at home is highly dependent on subtitle support :-/


Best Regards,
Terje

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by tkraang

Do you (or anyone else) know how SageTV handles the incoming DVB-stream? Is it, or can it be, saved raw without any form of transcoding?

SageTV can record a partial Transport Stream. However it is not recommended to do so:

* It is "unsupported" by SageTV
* The subtitles stream are excluded by default
* Even when the subtitles streams you'll have difficulties to play them in VLC (and other softwares. DVBViewer is able to play them but it display the subtitles 2 seconds early )

Any Sage representatives here that can tell us about their plans for subtitle-support in the future?

There are plans to include subtitles support. Though it could take a while before having full support: Subtitles are not that easy to implement (there are many many disparities between broadcasters).

If you are running SageTV 6.3.6 and :

* you want subtitles support right now
* the subtitles you are interested in are Teletext subtitles
* you don't mind spending 15 € for DVBViewer

You can contact me directly at lmgestion@hotmail.com and I'll send you my recorder plugin that extract teletext subtitles in real time (the Caption Support STVi is needed to render them, but it works fine).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[rtengvad]

Hi Terje

Emailed Stephane about that plugin too.

On another matter. I see you use FloppyDTV. Me too, but I have problems tuning channels first time I start Sage. Sage found that it is due to the CI-program.

What about you?



Rasmus

[tkraang]

Originally Posted by rtengvad

Hi Terje

Emailed Stephane about that plugin too.

On another matter. I see you use FloppyDTV. Me too, but I have problems tuning channels first time I start Sage. Sage found that it is due to the CI-program.

What about you?

Rasmus

I recently changed to FireDTV, I like the external box better than the internal card. Better airflow inside my cabinet. However, at first SageTV would hang completely on the video preview when adding my FloppyDTV as source. Then I updated the firmware and installed the newest drivers. Same result. Finally I tried the new beta-drivers, and voila! It worked :-) But as said, I changed to FireDTV, beta-drivers gave me strange results, installed drivers that came with the CD and for FireDTV that seemed to give me good results.

(I am missing quite a few channels in SageTV compared to FireDTV Viewer, hopefully it is just a matter of missing transponders in the frequency-list or something...)


Terje

[rtengvad]

Thanks for that update Terje

I haven’t given up on Sage also because I use an extender in the living room an not a pc. So the DTVviewer is not an option for me. Only if I can make Stephanes plugin working with DTVviewer. I wonder how the differences are.

Rasmus

[tkraang]

Stéphane,

Thank you for sending the recorder plugin, I've tested it and seems like I am almost there.

I get the correct channel, it displays for about 15 seconds, then it seems like everything crashes/freezes. The picture freezes up, and DVBViewer seems to have crashed.

However, before trying to resolve that problem, I would like to know more about this solution. The picture quality using DVBViewer is good. The picture quality using this solution did not seem that good (judging by the 15 seconds I got to see of it). Will this solution with the correct settings give me 100% picture quality, or is the network-recoder/encoder-solution doomed to yield loss of picture quality?

It seems like I can get by (high enough WAF) for a while using only built-in DVB-C support in SageTV, giving up subtitles for Discovery Channel and National Geographic. If this can give me better PQ then the choice is easy :-)

PS: I did try to re-scan the channels using built-in SageTV support, after installing your recorder-plugin and SageTV 6.3.6. Something weird happened, it seems like I only get the channels I selected in DVBViewer Channel Editor? I might be doing something wrong though, maby I should revert back to previous non-beta Sage version also.


Terje

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by tkraang

I get the correct channel, it displays for about 15 seconds, then it seems like everything crashes/freezes. The picture freezes up, and DVBViewer seems to have crashed.

That must be an error during subtitles extraction. To keep things clean : I shut down both DVBViewer (stopping the recording) and the recorder plugin. All details about the error should be in the trace file.

I expect issues like this one (My interpretation of TS and TTX standards may be incorrect on some points), so you have to send me the trace file and also a recording sample (if it contains subtitles it's better).

The picture quality using DVBViewer is good. The picture quality using this solution did not seem that good (judging by the 15 seconds I got to see of it). Will this solution with the correct settings give me 100% picture quality

The picture quality should be exactly the same. All the network encoder is doing: is to ask DVBViewer to make the recordings. But the recording is not modified in any ways. So if DVBViewer and SageTV are set up to use the same MPEG2 decoder and the same video renderer, the video quality should be the same

I did try to re-scan the channels using built-in SageTV support, after installing your recorder-plugin and SageTV 6.3.6. Something weird happened, it seems like I only get the channels I selected in DVBViewer Channel Editor?

This is the expected behavior. SageTV in this case is only a client of the DVBViewer recorder: it cannot scan channels, but only retrieve the channels the recorder has to offer (in this case, the channels you selected in the channel editor).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[tkraang]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

This is the expected behavior. SageTV in this case is only a client of the DVBViewer recorder: it cannot scan channels, but only retrieve the channels the recorder has to offer (in this case, the channels you selected in the channel editor).

Even when trying to scan with the SageTV capture device for FireDTV (and not the capture device added by your utility)? For now, I need to get back to a stable setup, so I am more or less trying to uninstall or disable your solution and just use the built-in SageTV DVB-C support.


Terje

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by tkraang

Even when trying to scan with the SageTV capture device for FireDTV (and not the capture device added by your utility)? For now, I need to get back to a stable setup, so I am more or less trying to uninstall or disable your solution and just use the built-in SageTV DVB-C support.

Usually no, but SageTV have issues on his own with DVB scanning. So the best way to get back to the point before adding the network recorder, is to restore the sage.properties file (If you didn't make a backup copy, my utility has created one with a ".bak" extension)

Also send me the log files you'll find in C:\Documents And Settings\All Users\Application Data\LM Gestion\DVBViewer Recorder in a zip file at lmgestion@hotmail.com.

Regards,
Stéphane.