Topic: Subtitle support for digital TV (Read 7599 times)

sandersoft · « **on:** October 22, 2016, 12:05:12 pm »

Howdy.
Any ETA when "digital TV subtitles" will (ever) become available in Media Center?
I think JRiver Media Center is great, but being hard of hearing, I kinda miss Windows Media Center.....
Thanks in advance.
David ("Huh?") Sanderson
:-)

DeaneG · « **Reply #1 on:** October 27, 2016, 10:12:13 pm »

Want to add my vote for ATSC closed caption too.

imeric · « **Reply #2 on:** November 08, 2016, 07:30:39 am »

As a workaround I use Dirmon2 to monitor my TV folder and run comskip on the recordings. There is an option with comskip in the comskip.ini file to extract CC and then create an .srt file. MC will then find this .srt file and show subtitles if you choose to (as it has the same filename except for the extension).

Works like a charm for me.

bellbuoy · « **Reply #3 on:** December 20, 2016, 07:52:22 pm »

Until I read this, I thought that I was just too stupid to get subtitles working. Now I discover that the right click menu that has "subtitles" in it is just a tease? I have been continuing to try to master the operation of Media Center because I can tell that there are many high quality features that someday I will figure out how to work. The Audio is far better than any other that I have tried. I have less of a need for subtitles because of that. I am really interested in the workaround that imeric has posted here. A step by step description of how to do that would help everyone who has landed on this post.
Thanks, Steve

imeric · « **Reply #4 on:** December 21, 2016, 07:23:13 am »

To get comskip working in the background with dirmon you can follow this guide:

http://www.geektonic.com/2009/11/commercial-skipping-with-sagetv-comskip.html

To get the .srt from comskip you need to add or change the following line in comskip.ini:

output_srt=1

Dirmon was a bit of a pain to setup with Win10 just make sure you run it as an Admin to get the service properly working.

There might be ways to get comskip working by calling it from MC but I'm not aware of any...Maybe someone else could chime in on this.

And keep in mind this will only work with TV Video Files from ATSC Tuner Cards (AFAIK)...Doesn't work if you use a capture card. Not sure for european DVB formats either...

And google is your friend + there's a few Interact posts on this.
Good luck!

bellbuoy · « **Reply #5 on:** June 26, 2017, 11:09:15 pm »

I awakened this thread because subtitles are still eluding me. The instructions in the very old Sage TV guide to get Comskip operable went way over my head. There are many of us who actually need subtitles and are still using Windows Media Center (and Win 7) to be able to get them. In WMC, subtitles are effortless and come "baked in". There is no need to look for files or do anything at all.
Question #1; Is this because of the different file format that WMC uses? Does that file type natively include subtitles?

I just upgraded to MC23 in hopes that subtitles would be included. No joy there.
Question #2; Is this the right forum to get help? Would posting to another place be better?

Looking at the stats for this thread, there are likely over 700 other folks looking for subtitles. According to this thread it is possible to get this working.
Question #3; Could someone post step by step instructions that a competent computer user, (but not a programmer) could use to get subtitles working?

Thanks, Steve

lepa · « **Reply #6 on:** June 27, 2017, 02:13:04 am »

After ten years of asking support for dvb-subtitles (or teletext subs) without ANY

answer I stopped holding my breath and just continued to use different program for television.

LAV-filters can show DVB-subtitles just fine, it's just that the TV part doesn't connect the subtitle pin and get the subtitles stream from the mux to the file.

DeaneG · « **Reply #7 on:** July 09, 2017, 07:02:27 pm »

I'm hoping for subtitles on ATSC TV too. It was very helpful in a noisy room, while preparing dinner, etc.

jmone · « **Reply #8 on:** July 09, 2017, 08:21:19 pm »

Try this for now.
1) Download : https://www.videohelp.com/software/ccextractor and unzip it somewhere on the PC
2) Just Drag and drop you TV Recording on top of "ccextractorwin.exe".

It will then extract the Subs in the same folder with the same name but with a SRT extension. Then when you play the file in MC you can select the SRT Subtitle file in the Subtitle Menu.

Tested on DVB-T TS recording from MC (Windows) and it works fine (it looks like you only need the ccextractorwin.exe file and none of the others).

astromo · « **Reply #9 on:** July 10, 2017, 12:32:01 am »

Quote from: jmone on July 09, 2017, 08:21:19 pm

Try this for now.
1) Download : https://www.videohelp.com/software/ccextractor and unzip it somewhere on the PC
2) Just Drag and drop you TV Recording on top of "ccextractorwin.exe".

It will then extract the Subs in the same folder with the same name but with a SRT extension. Then when you play the file in MC you can select the SRT Subtitle file in the Subtitle Menu.

Tested on DVB-T TS recording from MC (Windows) and it works fine (it looks like you only need the ccextractorwin.exe file and none of the others).

Neat tip. It's handy to bring up subs for sneaky out of hours watching when I need to work in stealth mode.

As a plus, fortunately VideoReDo keeps the CC data after editing. So this piece of software comes up trumps after the vid file has been up for the chop.

jmone · « **Reply #10 on:** July 10, 2017, 01:58:03 am »

You could also set MC up so you could right click on the "Recording --> Send To --> Send To (external)" and you would not even have to do the drag and drop. It seems to work fine doing a batch of files this way from MC (you will see a heap of DOS windows open but it processed them all).

RoderickGI · « **Reply #11 on:** July 10, 2017, 02:20:03 am »

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for recordings originally in JTV format that have been converted to TS format.

This is what I was expecting, because I believe that the JTV format doesn't save CC or Subtitle data.

I do love the ability to record a program from the start, even though it has been running for some time, using the JTV format. But this is yet another reason to switch to TS format.

Sigh.

astromo · « **Reply #12 on:** July 10, 2017, 04:47:26 am »

Quote from: jmone on July 10, 2017, 01:58:03 am

You could also set MC up so you could right click on the "Recording --> Send To --> Send To (external)" and you would not even have to do the drag and drop. It seems to work fine doing a batch of files this way from MC (you will see a heap of DOS windows open but it processed them all).

Sweet!

I'll put that one on my list.

EDIT: Yep - set up as you suggested and I pointed MC to ccextractorwin.exe

Worked like a freakin' charm. Makes me smile when stuff works and does the job that it says it does on the box. Thanks.

bellbuoy · « **Reply #13 on:** July 21, 2017, 02:35:21 pm »

I downloaded ccextractorwin.exe, extracted it, and looked in it to see what to do next. I saw that it had a place to scan for my HD Homerun, which I did. Now I can't figure out how to "point MC to ccextractorwin.exe" as was outlined in the last post.

jmone · « **Reply #14 on:** July 21, 2017, 04:50:09 pm »

First set it up using:
- right click on the "Recording --> Send To --> Add/Edit Programs" to create an option like "Make DTV Subs"

from then you can

right click on the "Recording --> Send To --> Send To (external) --> Make DTV Subs" and it will run over your selected files

bellbuoy · « **Reply #15 on:** July 21, 2017, 05:38:55 pm »

Where are you "setting it up" at? I went to the Standard view, Television, Recordings, then selected a recording, right clicked and got the menu "watch, delete, exempt from clean up" . I'm obviously in the wrong place. Where are you setting this up at?
Thanks, Steve

Yaobing · « **Reply #16 on:** July 21, 2017, 05:45:32 pm »

Quote from: bellbuoy on July 21, 2017, 05:38:55 pm

Where are you "setting it up" at? I went to the Standard view, Television, Recordings, then selected a recording, right clicked and got the menu "watch, delete, exempt from clean up" . I'm obviously in the wrong place. Where are you setting this up at?
Thanks, Steve

To get to "Send To" menu, you have to be in the Video view, not in Television view. I should add that to TV view too. But for now, go to Video view.

jmone · « **Reply #17 on:** July 21, 2017, 06:01:26 pm »

FYI for Yaobing - here is the source code info for CCExtractor if you are ever interested in seeing how they do it ....

imugli · « **Reply #18 on:** July 23, 2017, 02:57:59 am »

I've mentioned in another thread that it's basically a requirement for any device that does the job of a TV to display closed captions. I haven't heard a good reason how JR gets away with not doing it yet...

astromo · « **Reply #19 on:** July 27, 2017, 07:31:41 am »

Quote from: imugli on July 23, 2017, 02:57:59 am

I've mentioned in another thread that it's basically a requirement for any device that does the job of a TV to display closed captions. I haven't heard a good reason how JR gets away with not doing it yet...

http://wikibin.org/articles/ccextractor-development-2.html
Some key points from the above:

Quote

CCExtractor Development is a non-profit organization supporting developers and makers of Free and Open Source technologies.
...
It is also capable of extracting subtitles from live video streams.

So, on screen display of subs may not be too difficult to achieve from both a commercial and technical angle.

madbrain · « **Reply #20 on:** March 15, 2019, 02:29:55 am »

Another vote for this. I can't believe the support is still missing :-(
I was hoping to cancel my pay TV service, but this is a show stopper.
The options mentioned don't seem like they would play well with theater mode, when all one has is an IR remote and no keyboard/mouse to set things up. It really needs to be as usable as my Dish DVR, and unfortunately falls short with out this.
That's one feature I certainly would pay to upgrade.

madbrain · « **Reply #21 on:** March 15, 2019, 02:45:51 am »

Further info on my use case : I often watch TV live when swapping channels, or watch recordings time delayed a few minutes, in order to skip commercials.
For example, a typical TV series has about 15 minutes worth of commercials per hour. I have recording setup, and start watching at 15 past the hour. On my Dish DVR, I can watch time delayed while recording just fine with closed captions.
This is not about being hard of hearing, but rather having 2 non-native English speaker in the house.
I watch OTA channels primarily, so I wouldn't miss an content by using OTA ATSC with Media center. Except the subtitles ...

RoderickGI · « **Reply #22 on:** March 15, 2019, 06:35:31 am »

This is an old thread Madbrain. Closed Captions for ATSC using American standards have been added to MC24. Search the Release Notes for "Caption" to learn more. https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Release_Notes_MC24

Maybe search the forum for more recent threads as well.

Yaobing · « **Reply #23 on:** March 15, 2019, 09:17:45 am »

DVB subtitles are supported as well, but not yet for Teletext in DVB.

madbrain · « **Reply #24 on:** March 24, 2019, 03:40:34 am »

Quote from: RoderickGI on March 15, 2019, 06:35:31 am

This is an old thread Madbrain. Closed Captions for ATSC using American standards have been added to MC24. Search the Release Notes for "Caption" to learn more. https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Release_Notes_MC24

Maybe search the forum for more recent threads as well.

Thank you !
I did some searches before posting in this thread, but could find no indication that this feature was added. I think I browsed the Wiki and didn't see it. I admittedly didn't read the release notes for MC24.

This is great news, and I'll definitely be upgrading right now.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Subtitle support for digital TV (Read 7599 times)