Closed Caption on VLC 1.1.0

[mjayme]

Hi ALL,
I am a software developer for a brazilian manufacturer, and use VLC specially for .TS files playout, specially lately as I am working on an ATSC CC/VBI decoder driver and VLC has the ability to show them.
But as I updated VLC from 1.0.5 to 1.1.0 these days, the same TS file it played with captions very well now is behaving badly with the new version: it is displaying duplicated characters pairs for each frame.
Maybe it is considering the characters from both fields instead of discarding one of the pairs.
Is there any configuration to solve this, as I did not find it?
Thanks,
Marcelo

[fenrir]

Could you make a sample showing the issue available for download ?

[jb2009]

hi,
I have the same problem with a Transport Stream (TS) file. The close caption is a ATSC/SCTE-20
here is a short sample

[jb2009]

hello, has someone been able to reproduce this bug (for example with my sample) ?

[Lotesdelere]

Yes, I can reproduce the duplicated characters problem.

Now be patient while the devs are working on this

[jhb50]

jb2009: your sample test.ts file plays audio but the video is black using any of my many players, similarly my players which also display captions do not display your captions either. I don't understand this because MediInfo reports an MPEG-2 640x250 video stream and I can extract the captions to subtitles as per the attached .srt file.
Similarly the filter chain for your video is fine so why can't the video and captions display? I've never seen this type of problem with a .ts file.

If you are able to play your test.ts file and use the .srt file, you will find however that vlc is unable to play any .ts file if there is an similarly named .txt .srt or .sub file. This is a bug that I have reported under 3075 and 3516 along with accompanying test files and message logs but still occurs with the latest nightly.

I was not aware that VLC could display captions and so was hopeful that this was an alternative solution to playing my TS files on VLC with displayed audio text but it sounds that doesn't work either.

As an aside I see you ftp'd from NFB. I have seen the nfb streaming library but AFAIK there are no captions or subs available. I can't check right now because the NFB server is down, but I'd appreciate knowing how I can get access to the captioned .ts files.

It would be appreciated if you could post a clip that you can play the video with so I can figure out what the problem is here. Then I can lend more insight into your problem and offer alternatives.

OOps..can't attach files here so here's a 30 second snip of the test.srt so you can try it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
22
00:02:01,534 --> 00:02:03,367
<i>I move my family</i>
<i>to Nova Scotia,</i>

23
00:02:03,400 --> 00:02:06,801
<i>make new plans,</i>
<i>get on with life.</i>

24
00:02:06,834 --> 00:02:08,767
<i>But not before a remark</i>
<i>from Steve</i>

25
00:02:08,801 --> 00:02:10,634
<i>has stopped me</i>

26
00:02:10,667 --> 00:02:12,567
<i>in my tracks.</i>

27
00:02:12,601 --> 00:02:15,601
You and I were having lunch.
You looked at me.

28
00:02:15,634 --> 00:02:17,934
You stopped.

29
00:02:20,467 --> 00:02:23,501
Big uncomfortable pause.

30
00:02:23,534 --> 00:02:25,534
And you said to me,

31
00:02:25,567 --> 00:02:27,801
"You don't sound to me
like a man

32
00:02:27,834 --> 00:02:29,868
who's been given
his life back."

[jb2009]

hi,
yes, it is normal the video is black.
since it's a sample and the problem is only with the close caption, I used black frames to reduce the encoding time.
I put only the sound of the source for sync evaluation.
the caption are embedded in the picture essence as user data: this a requirement for ATSC/SCTE-20.

thank you jhb50 for presenting the .SRT alternative, I think the SRT alternative doesn't work with this file because either VLC doesn't accept .SRT when the cc is embedded or because no timecode is displayed while playing the file (Transport Stream doesn't need timecodes AFAIK ).
I knew it was possible with VLC but wanted to go with a better solution since the CC is already embedded in the files and VLC seems to understand it fairly!

[jhb50]

Yes but it would appear that the closed captions(in the user daa) can overlay the video and display only if there is in fact video frames to play. All my other .TS files with captions play with video and captions display fine but yours does not. Again, can you advise how to gain access to these captioned .ts files?

[jb2009]

the file has already video frames for playback; only they are black. sorry but I don't really know an other way to gain access to the .ts files other than from the downloaded .TS file.
With VLC, I can see the overlay captions during playback of the .TS when selecting in the menu "video >> subtiles track >> closed captions 1".
for my sample, the 1st text appears at 40e seconds from the beginning.