Topic: Closed captions, how will we know when they are working? (Read 4313 times)

bellbuoy · « **on:** October 09, 2018, 12:28:03 am »

Is there a thread we can subscribe to or some other way for those of us that really need closed captions to know when they are working? I purchased MC 21 as a Windows Media Center replacement. I struggled for two years trying to get "subtitles" in TV working, but to no avail, so this program just remained ignored. I am excited to finally get the opportunity to utilize this very extensive media center. I hope I am smart enough to figure it out. It is waaay more complicated than WMC but obviously does a lot more.

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** October 09, 2018, 06:33:42 am »

You can watch the release threads. The notes already contain some information about Closed Captioning.

You could also subscribe to the Latest Channel. https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Updates

Hendrik · « **Reply #2 on:** October 09, 2018, 07:34:14 am »

It won't be much longer now, hopefully this week, latest next.

bellbuoy · « **Reply #3 on:** October 25, 2018, 07:06:22 am »

I have been watching the release threads, but no new ones have been added since my original post. The release that was most current when I posted indicated that DVB subtitles were supported in 24.0.56, but that Teletext was not. I assume that what I am waiting for is Teletext captioning (subtitles). Is that correct?

Another thread appears to describe a problem in getting DVB subtitles to work. I certainly can not get anything to display.

I really do not understand the distinction between DVB subtitles and Teletext. I know that according to the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, all television broadcasts have to include captioning. I am not sure if that means the broadcast stream includes Teletext or DVB subtitles or both. Perhaps someone could clarify the matter?
Steve

Yaobing · « **Reply #4 on:** October 25, 2018, 09:08:55 am »

Here is the latest status:

ATSC CC works. It will be available in the next public release.

DVB Teletext CC does not work. I do not know when we will be able to do this, and I am not even sure whether we should try (maybe we should).

DVB Subtitle CC is work in progress. Since last announcement of its support, we have found a number of problems. Please follow this thread for its progress (I may end up moving the thread to TV board later). I depend on users whose TV services include DVB Subtitling to do testing and to provide feedback.

Yaobing · « **Reply #5 on:** October 25, 2018, 09:40:00 am »

Quote from: bellbuoy on October 25, 2018, 07:06:22 am

I really do not understand the distinction between DVB subtitles and Teletext. I know that according to the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, all television broadcasts have to include captioning. I am not sure if that means the broadcast stream includes Teletext or DVB subtitles or both. Perhaps someone could clarify the matter?
Steve

If you live in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea, the service is called Closed Captioning (since you mentioned "the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010", I guess you do live in the US). Most TV stations provide the service using the newer CTA-708 standard. That is what we support now. Some TV channels continue to use the old CEA-608 standard which we decided not to support. So you will find some channels without CC. For those channels that support CTA-708 or both CTA-708 and CEA-608, we can display CC.

If you live in a country where TV standard is DVB, the situation is a little more complicated. There are also two or more standards - the old and the new - Teletext and Subtitling (and maybe others which we will ignore for now). We already have the DVB Subtitling decoding capability. The issue we have now is to find a mechanism to stream the subtitles to our subtitle engine and provide communication between the subtitle engine and the TV engine. That is what we have been working on. We do not have the capability of decoding DVB Teletext right now. Therefore its support will come much later, if it does come.

It appears that in Europe TV stations use DVB Subtitles and Teletext. So getting DVB Subtitling to work will be good enough. It is unfortunate that TV stations in Australia apparently do not provide DVB Subtitling service. They only do Teletext. But trying the latest DLLs posted in the thread linked in my last post will give us surer answer to whether that is the case.

DeaneG · « **Reply #6 on:** October 25, 2018, 04:18:17 pm »

Yaobing, thank you for your work on ATSC closed captions. We appreciate it very much.

lepa · « **Reply #7 on:** October 28, 2018, 03:39:15 am »

DVB-C (probably DVB-T also) subtitles are now shown when using latest test dlls. Selecting between different languages or turning subtitles off doesn't currently work I think

Yaobing · « **Reply #8 on:** October 29, 2018, 11:11:56 am »

For those of you waiting for Closed Captioning support in North America, build 24.0.60 is out on MC24 board. https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,118022.msg0.html#new

bellbuoy · « **Reply #9 on:** October 29, 2018, 12:27:34 pm »

Thank you for the alert. I just tried them on one program, and they are superior to any that I have tried elsewhere. I was going to ask where the configuration settings were located, but I do not need to, they are excellent.
Steve

Yaobing · « **Reply #10 on:** October 29, 2018, 02:01:30 pm »

The CC code itself specifies most parameters, such as which corner of window to display the text, and how scrolling should work, etc. Therefore there is not much configuration needed. For that reason the subtitle settings in Video playback options are not applied. For example, shifting of positioning of the CC text does not make much sense because the CC creator already decided the best location on screen to display the titles. The only configurations that can be done in MC, but I have not done them yet, are text color and text size. CC specification says user choice can override these settings.

DeaneG · « **Reply #11 on:** October 29, 2018, 11:38:10 pm »

I can see the playback menu item to select between subtitles Off or Closed Caption 1 and sometimes Closed Caption 2, but can't select the Closed Caption menu items to turn them on. Is there something I missed? EDIT: Same problem on 2 PCs, this is on shows I recorded using version .56. Seems to be no CC menu at all while watching live TV.

Yaobing · « **Reply #12 on:** October 30, 2018, 09:49:31 am »

Quote from: DeaneG on October 29, 2018, 11:38:10 pm

I can see the playback menu item to select between subtitles Off or Closed Caption 1, but can't select the Closed Caption 1 option to turn them on. Is there something I missed? EDIT: this is on a show I recorded using version .56.

I assume you are running build 60. MC would download the required LAV version for CC decoding. Does it work on new recordings or live TV?

DeaneG · « **Reply #13 on:** October 30, 2018, 09:52:16 am »

Quote from: Yaobing on October 30, 2018, 09:49:31 am

I assume you are running build 60. MC would download the required LAV version for CC decoding. Does it work on new recordings or live TV?

Yaobing, I am on version 60. It does not work on either recordings (can't select CC menu item) or live TV (no CC menu items show up).

Yaobing · « **Reply #14 on:** October 30, 2018, 09:58:51 am »

For live TV you may have to wait a bit (up to one minute) for the menu to get populated.

Yaobing · « **Reply #15 on:** October 30, 2018, 10:04:21 am »

Can you send/share a short recording so I can take a look?

DeaneG · « **Reply #16 on:** October 30, 2018, 10:12:42 am »

Quote from: Yaobing on October 30, 2018, 10:04:21 am

Can you send/share a short recording so I can take a look?

Yes, in a few minutes.

DeaneG · « **Reply #17 on:** October 30, 2018, 11:02:11 am »

PM sent with a link to 3-minute recording that seems to have two CC channels. I can't select either of them for display.

Yaobing · « **Reply #18 on:** October 30, 2018, 11:39:02 am »

I was able to get CC1 showing on screen playing the sample video you sent me. See attached screen shot. CC2 is not showing. I think it may not be real. I do see sometimes a channel indicating multiple CC services but only one works.

DeaneG · « **Reply #19 on:** October 30, 2018, 11:51:56 am »

Hmm, I can't select CC1 during playback to turn it on.

Yaobing · « **Reply #20 on:** October 30, 2018, 01:39:54 pm »

Strange indeed.

DeaneG · « **Reply #21 on:** October 30, 2018, 01:44:14 pm »

I tried a third PC. It behaved the same as the other two.

Live TV: no Closed Caption menu items appear at all
Recorded TV: I see menu items Closed Captions Off, Closed Captions 1, sometimes Closed Captions 2, but only "Off' can be selected.

The three PCs have very different hardware. All are running Windows 10 x64 with the current updates. Windows Defender, HDHomerun tuners and drivers. All were running version .56 before upgrading to 0.60. I noticed an "Adding Required Components" message on two of the three - might have just not noticed it on the other.

Let me know if there is anything else I can look at.

Yaobing · « **Reply #22 on:** October 30, 2018, 03:08:43 pm »

I don't think this matter, but just in case, take a look at Tools > Options > Video, and set the "Subtitle mode" to "Always show subtitles".

DeaneG · « **Reply #23 on:** October 30, 2018, 03:21:00 pm »

Quote from: Yaobing on October 30, 2018, 03:08:43 pm

I don't think this matter, but just in case, take a look at Tools > Options > Video, and set the "Subtitle mode" to "Always show subtitles".

It didn't make any difference.

Yaobing · « **Reply #24 on:** October 30, 2018, 05:02:17 pm »

I did not think it would. I was desperate

Yaobing · « **Reply #25 on:** October 30, 2018, 05:05:01 pm »

Please copy and post the filter graph info while playing a channel. Right-click, DirectShow Filters, copy graph info to clipboard.

DeaneG · « **Reply #26 on:** October 30, 2018, 08:47:26 pm »

Here you go, hope it helps.

Yaobing · « **Reply #27 on:** October 31, 2018, 09:58:54 am »

Thanks for the info. That graph looks completely normal. So we still need more clues.

What are the OS of your computers?

DeaneG · « **Reply #28 on:** October 31, 2018, 10:40:55 am »

Here is detailed info on all 3 PCs. Sorry for the format, have to rush out this AM and google automatically converted them to .docx (ugh).

Yaobing · « **Reply #29 on:** October 31, 2018, 03:46:31 pm »

I tried on a Window 10 machine and it was fine here. It is really strange why you can not get it to work. Are you able to get any subtitles (other than ATSC CC) to work on video files?

DeaneG · « **Reply #30 on:** October 31, 2018, 04:08:03 pm »

DVDs: the on-screen playback menu lets me toggle subtitles on and off as you'd expect.
Blu-ray: no on-screen subtitle menu item appears. Turning on subtitles through the Blu-ray's disk menu has no effect (no subtitles appear).

I don't have any other videos with embedded subtitles besides these and the ATSC videos. Would be happy to download and try one of yours if you want.

Yaobing · « **Reply #31 on:** October 31, 2018, 04:51:28 pm »

Try placing the attached file in the same folder as any video, and rename it to the same name as the video file name (but of course keep the .srt extension).

DeaneG · « **Reply #32 on:** October 31, 2018, 06:22:06 pm »

Nice closed captions appeared on-screen with this test file.

Yaobing · « **Reply #33 on:** October 31, 2018, 06:24:54 pm »

I will add some extra logging tomorrow for you to try and capture a log file.

DeaneG · « **Reply #34 on:** October 31, 2018, 06:30:38 pm »

Ok, I'll look for it.

Hendrik · « **Reply #35 on:** November 01, 2018, 04:30:41 am »

What exactly does "only "Off" can be selected" mean? When you click the others, the selection doesn't stick, ie. it goes back to "Off"?
That would be a different problem from the selection sticking but no subtitles actually showing.

Yaobing · « **Reply #36 on:** November 01, 2018, 10:23:03 am »

Please download the DLLs with additional logging.

Unzip and copy the two files with extension .dll into MC installation folder, and two files with .ax extension into the TV subfolder.

Yaobing · « **Reply #37 on:** November 01, 2018, 10:26:35 am »

Quote from: DeaneG on October 30, 2018, 01:44:14 pm

Live TV: no Closed Caption menu items appear at all

It takes a few seconds (maybe half a minute or so) for the menu to populate as we have to wait for the actual CC data to arrive before we know it is available.

DeaneG · « **Reply #38 on:** November 01, 2018, 12:02:57 pm »

Quote from: Hendrik on November 01, 2018, 04:30:41 am

What exactly does "only "Off" can be selected" mean? When you click the others, the selection doesn't stick, ie. it goes back to "Off"?
That would be a different problem from the selection sticking but no subtitles actually showing.

During playback of a recording, the right arrow key does not move the cursor from Off to Closed Caption 1 (the selection is stuck at "Off"). The menu item appears onscreen but can not be selected. During live TV, there are no closed caption menu items showing ever.

DeaneG · « **Reply #39 on:** November 01, 2018, 12:56:13 pm »

Quote from: Yaobing on November 01, 2018, 10:26:35 am

It takes a few seconds (maybe half a minute or so) for the menu to populate as we have to wait for the actual CC data to arrive before we know it is available.

I waited several minutes on several channels and just waited five minutes to try again before this post. I've never seen a CC menu during these tests of live TV. Will have log files later today.

Yaobing · « **Reply #40 on:** November 01, 2018, 01:35:52 pm »

Quote from: DeaneG on November 01, 2018, 12:56:13 pm

I waited several minutes on several channels and just waited five minutes to try again before this post. I've never seen a CC menu during these tests of live TV. Will have log files later today.

I thought I mentioned somewhere that we currently only support right-click-with-mouse menu. Sorry for the confusion. If you can confirm seeing CC text using right-click, I will move on to OSD.

DeaneG · « **Reply #41 on:** November 01, 2018, 03:21:33 pm »

Oops, I am so sorry for wasting your time, right-click works fine at turning on subtitles in both live TV and recordings. I should have mentioned that our three media center PCs are set up to only use the theater mode interface. We get the mouse out of the drawer only for maintenance.

Yaobing · « **Reply #42 on:** November 01, 2018, 03:36:56 pm »

Thanks for the confirmation. Don't worry about it. It is more of my fault. I assumed incorrectly that everyone was using a mouse.

And thanks to Hendrik for the hint.

Yaobing · « **Reply #43 on:** November 07, 2018, 08:54:16 am »

I have implemented Subtitle support in OSD command menu last week. It will be available in the next public release.

In the meantime if you want to try it, use these DLLs (for 64-bit version).

DeaneG · « **Reply #44 on:** November 07, 2018, 10:08:23 am »

It works great! Thank you very much! The only thing I noticed for improvement was that the previous text sometimes jumps very very briefly to the center of the screen when a new sentence is started at the bottom. Maybe at a line feed or carriage-return character in CC stream? But it's very usable and welcome now.

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Author Topic: Closed captions, how will we know when they are working? (Read 4313 times)