Having trouble getting closed captions

[MickBurke]

After reading a couple threads, I'm not sure if captions are expected to work at this point or not, but my situation is we like to watch Perry Mason when we go to bed, but he's on at 11:30, so I figured I'd just record them and watch, but the recordings don't seem to have the closed captions, which we like because we can leave the volume lower and still get what's going on in the show.

So with an install of SageTV 9, should I be able to see captions if they are working on that channel, and if so, how can I best ensure that I get them in the recording, and then can actually switch them on and view them during playback?

Thanks for any input!!

[Striker:WG]

its been years (and several versions) since I've used closed captions in SageTV for live TV streams.

I think it is still supported, but only in specific use cases. It depends on whether or not you are using a supported tuning/recording setup, and what you are doing the playback on.

Could you provide some more details on your setup?

[mechling-burgh]

What are you using to watch it on the tv, Pc Hd extender android client.

Android client needs closed caption extracted to srt files
PC needs the sagetv mpeg from version 7
HD extender should just work

[JustFred]

Originally Posted by MickBurke

... but the recordings don't seem to have the closed captions

The first order of business is to determine whether the problem is with recording vs. playback. Try playing back one of the Sage-recorded files using some other program, such as VLC.

[Tiki]

Also, what type of capture device are you using?
If you are using a set top box with a tuner like the HDPVR or Colossus, you won’t get the captions recorded in the first place, so won’t be able to view them during playback no matter how you view them.

But if you are using something like the hdhr to record directly from cable or an antenna, you should at least be able to capture the captions and the only trick will be figuring out how to make them display.

[Striker:WG]

actually, while we're on the topic of closed captions, does pulling the mpeg decoder from version 7 do anything to help with the playback/display of closed captions that are embedded in MKV files?

I have some MKV files that contain CC which displays without issue on my HD200/HD300 units, but doesn't display on the PC (I don't even see an option to enable CC). I just figured it wasn't supported on PC and didn't care that much at the time.

[UgaData]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

actually, while we're on the topic of closed captions, does pulling the mpeg decoder from version 7 do anything to help with the playback/display of closed captions that are embedded in MKV files?

It can, if your running the 32 bit version of SageTV. Doesn't work for the 64 bit versions.

[MickBurke]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

its been years (and several versions) since I've used closed captions in SageTV for live TV streams.

I think it is still supported, but only in specific use cases. It depends on whether or not you are using a supported tuning/recording setup, and what you are doing the playback on.

Could you provide some more details on your setup?

SO SORRY. I always forget to share my setup.

It's a Sagetv 9 VM system I have a Ceton Infinitv network tuner (6tuner)

But at this point I did confirm the captions are in the file, as I was able to extract them with CCExtractor, and being able to create a .srt subtitle file with that works even better, as ultimately my goal was just to GET the captions so I could watch the full recording (with the commercials) in another app (Plex) and have subtitles (since plex doesn't reproduce the captions encoded in the TS file).

So that said, if I do need to get the CC's in the Sage client any issue I have is with the client itself right? Since the captions are in the recording, it seems t me it's not the server that's preventing it, right?

Thanks everyone for your input

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by UgaData

It can, if your running the 32 bit version of SageTV. Doesn't work for the 64 bit versions.

ahh, yeah, i'm running 64bit.

Thanks!

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by MickBurke

SO SORRY. I always forget to share my setup.

It's a Sagetv 9 VM system I have a Ceton Infinitv network tuner (6tuner)

But at this point I did confirm the captions are in the file, as I was able to extract them with CCExtractor, and being able to create a .srt subtitle file with that works even better, as ultimately my goal was just to GET the captions so I could watch the full recording (with the commercials) in another app (Plex) and have subtitles (since plex doesn't reproduce the captions encoded in the TS file).

So that said, if I do need to get the CC's in the Sage client any issue I have is with the client itself right? Since the captions are in the recording, it seems t me it's not the server that's preventing it, right?

Thanks everyone for your input

Yes, I would agree with you, the client is the issue not the server if the CC is captured in the recording.

[MickBurke]

Great, I'll maybe build a test system and see what combo works for getting the captions!

Thanks again!

[easperhe]

Originally Posted by UgaData

It can, if your running the 32 bit version of SageTV. Doesn't work for the 64 bit versions.

I have HD Homerun prime 3; OpenDCT; latest SageTV. CC never worked but I'm running 64-bit. So if I convert to 32-bit CC will work? No issue doing that, just want to verify before converting.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by easperhe

I have HD Homerun prime 3; OpenDCT; latest SageTV. CC never worked but I'm running 64-bit. So if I convert to 32-bit CC will work? No issue doing that, just want to verify before converting.

I think you need to install the original V7 commercial version first then install V9 over top of it. Then you will have then decoder that was provided with V7 that cannot be included in the open source version.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by wnjj

I think you need to install the original V7 commercial version first then install V9 over top of it. Then you will have then decoder that was provided with V7 that cannot be included in the open source version.

There are other 32-bit decoders that also support CC too, but I don’t think anyone found a 64-bit decoder that works with closed captions that can be used with Sage.

By the way, this is only for mpeg-encoded files and only if the captions were captured to begin with. The HDHR prime is one of the devices that captures the raw stream including any captions. However, the prime gets the stream in whatever format the cable company happens to be using. Mpeg2 and h.264 are both in common use right now (and you probably have a mix of channels using both formats). You may even have some h.265 channels.

I don’t think anyone found an h.264 decoder that displays captions whether 32-bit or 64-bit.

[easperhe]

OK, I'm no expert. But given how highly most talk about LAV decoders, I would have thought they'd support closed captioning since this is such a common thing.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by easperhe

OK, I'm no expert. But given how highly most talk about LAV decoders, I would have thought they'd support closed captioning since this is such a common thing.

No CC with LAV unfortunately, but check out this post I made a month ago. I've got captions working in 64 bit.

[Striker:WG]

So why is it that my HD200 can decode and display CC from an MKV file but my 64 bit windows client cannot?

The info is there, Sage is capable of displaying the info, it's just an issue of decoding the info from the MKV?

LAV does support subtitles and I think that CC would fall under the same category of functionality.

So what is the missing piece to get it working on my Windows client?

I understand it not working for live TV as that is using other sage components that would require the 32 bit component from v7, but an MKV should be using all 3rd party stuff, no?

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

So why is it that my HD200 can decode and display CC from an MKV file but my 64 bit windows client cannot?

The info is there, Sage is capable of displaying the info, it's just an issue of decoding the info from the MKV?

LAV does support subtitles and I think that CC would fall under the same category of functionality.

So what is the missing piece to get it working on my Windows client?

I understand it not working for live TV as that is using other sage components that would require the 32 bit component from v7, but an MKV should be using all 3rd party stuff, no?

First, it depends what you are using to play back the recordings. When you play back locally on a PC, it is up to the codecs that are installed and selected to figure out how to playback the audio, video, and any captions or subtitles. When you playback on an Android mini-client, it relies on the ijkplayer or exoplayer software to handle it. When you playback on an HD200 or HD300 extender, the decoding is handled locally by the hardware in the extender. Each of these have different capabilities and none rely on the Sage Server core software.

Next, subtitles and closed captions are similar, but different. They accomplish basically the same thing - printing text on the screen on top of the video, but the underlying mechanisms are different.

Next, I don’t use captions, but I believe (based on past posts I have read here), that there is a way to extract captions to a separate file, which can then be treated like subtitles during playback. Look for something called ccextractor and .srt file generation/playback. I don’t know if this can be done with live tv.

[Striker:WG]

I want to use a PC to do the playback. It's the main playback system in my main media area.

99% of the time I don't care about subtitles/cc support, but occasionally there will be a scene in a movie or TV show where a different language is being spoken and you need the subtitle support to get the English translation.

So ideally I want to enable it so that I can push a button and enable the subtitles if they are present. If that means installing a different codec, I'm happy to do that. I'm just trying to understand if it's really a codec problem, a demuxer/splitter, or something else?