Closed captions: 608 vs 708, CEA/ATSC/DVD

[jpm]

On VLC version 0.9.8a (Grishenko): I have a question about closed-captions (CC are not subtitles). There are two major standards (608 vs 708) with several subdivisions in those standards. Can anyone confirm if they can play out the 7 standards shown on this page (the second section has 5 second mpg clips):

http://www.pixeltools.com/tech_tip_clos ... oning.html

VLC only displays 708ntsc_field1 for me. All others do not show CC info, either displayed or in the Tools->Codec Info menu.

FWIW: The above distilled examples are a good summary of the trouble I have seen with many files.

[jpm]

To clarify: "VLC only displays " should read instead

For me, VLC displays only the 708ntsc_field1 closed-captions. For all of the other files, the closed captions are missing.

(The video itself plays fine in all cases. JUst the closed captions are missing.)

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Please use VLC 1.0.0 and report, since it has better support for those.

[jpm]

Thanks j-b. After a couple of days for building a fresh machine: Fresh compile of 1.0.0-pre2 under brand-new (fully updated) fedora-10, fresh compile of ffmpeg, libmad, liba52.

Same result. (The only video I see CC option for is 708ntsc_field1.mpg under right click -> video -> subtitles track.)

Q's:
Is 1.0.0-pre2 very different in its support of CC than 1.0.0?
Is there a prior set of tests that were used for testing CCs? I'd be happy to try that on this system.
I note that fedora is nowhere on the vlc devel build page. Is there some fedora-specific issue that I've tripped across?

Anyway, we'd like to support hearing-impaired folks for our app. So even if this costs me a bit of time, I'd like to help make it work. Alternatively, if you know of a good CC playout and would like to strike this from the already-long list of things to do, please let me know.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Do you have zvbi enabled? do you have libmpeg2 enabled?

[jpm]

zvbi: no
libmpeg2: yes (because it looks like the default is that way.)

I'll recompile with both explicitly enabled and post the result.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes, please.
And post samples.

[jpm]

Well, I have tried a few things.

First, I enable zvbi and libmpeg explicitly. Again the only mpeg that has a cc stream in the codec information (and on the screen) is 708ntsc_field1. (See the first post for the link to the mpeg samples for 608 vs 708, CEA/ATSC/DVD).

The machine was old, 2000 vintage, running fedora 10. I brought up a i7 920 with a fresh install of fedora and newly compiled liba52, libmad, ffmpeg, x264, and vlc. I get errors along the lines of what is listed at the end of this message. I see several folks pointing out that errors like these are indicative of vlc not finding the plugins, yet I can't find any combination of --plugin-path that makes it work. I suspect that I'm running against some 64 bit issues. (for example, I can't compile --enable-shared without complaints about -fPIC.)

I can't say I know where to look in order to add some value here. For the US, 608 has the largest body of closed-captions for broadcast, so that one is important to me. Any pointers or clues that can be thrown in my general direction would be welcome.

JP

______________________________________________

[errors from i7 920 machine running fresh fedora 10 fully updated.]

$ vlc -vvv
VLC media player 1.1.0-git Goldeneye
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: VLC media player - version 1.1.0-git Goldeneye - (c) 1996-2009 the VideoLAN team
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: libvlc was configured with ./configure '--enable-x11' '--enable-xvideo' '--disable-gtk' '--enable-sdl' '--enable-avcodec' '--enable-avformat' '--enable-swscale' '--enable-mad' '--enable-zvbi' '--enable-libdvbpsi' '--enable-a52' '--enable-libmpeg2' '--enable-dvdnav' '--enable-mkv' '--enable-freetype' '--enable-fribidi' '--enable-speex' '--enable-flac' '--enable-caca' '--enable-skins' '--enable-skins2' '--enable-alsa' '--disable-kde' '--enable-qt4' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-release' '--enable-static' '-disable-shared' 'PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig'
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: translation test: code is "C"
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: checking plugin modules
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: loading plugins cache file /home/jpm/.cache/vlc/plugins-04081e.dat
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: recursively browsing `/usr/local/lib/vlc'
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: module bank initialized (1 modules)
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: opening config file (/home/jpm/.config/vlc/vlcrc)
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: CPU has capabilities 486 586 MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2 FPU
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: looking for memcpy module: 0 candidates
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: no memcpy module matched "any"
[0x1b6ecd8] main playlist debug: Activated
[0x1b6ecd8] main playlist debug: rebuilding array of current - root Playlist
[0x1b6ecd8] main playlist debug: rebuild done - 0 items, index -1
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface error: no interface module matched "hotkeys,none"
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.018 ms - Total 0.018 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.018 ms)
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "hotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no interface module matched "inhibit,none"
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.014 ms - Total 0.014 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.014 ms)
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "inhibit,none" initialization failed
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no interface module matched "screensaver,none"
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.011 ms - Total 0.011 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.011 ms)
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "screensaver,none" initialization failed
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: option drawable-xid does not exist
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no interface module matched "signals"
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.012 ms - Total 0.012 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.012 ms)
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "signals" initialization failed
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no interface module matched "globalhotkeys,none"
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.010 ms - Total 0.010 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.010 ms)
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "globalhotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no interface module matched "any"
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.009 ms - Total 0.009 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.009 ms)
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "(null)" initialization failed
*** LibVLC Exception not handled: Interface initialization failed

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: module bank initialized (1 modules)

Yes, you are missing all plugins. From build_dir, run ./vlc -vvv --list

[jpm]

After recompiling of libs & vlc with -fPIC, I got the fast 64-bit machine running. From the mpeg samples here:
http://www.pixeltools.com/tech_tip_clos ... oning.html

Viewing under tools->codec information:
atsc: no cc
608-field1: no cc
708-dtv: no cc
708-field1: cc stream present
708-both: 1 cc stream present (probably field 1?)
dvd: cc stream present
scte: cc stream present

Here is another bizarre item: On my machine, the actual video display was correct only for dvd. All others had wacky displays, and errors to the terminal like those attached below.

Is there a set of videos that was used for testing this code already? (ie, a gold-standard?) The set from pixeltools is something I found, and I don't have a good readout as to the quality/standards that they set. I've used some Rhozet-encoded items too (they are all 608), but again, those are not any sort of gold standard.


_________________________________
some errors from scte, for example (just a few lines included, there were many more lines like this...)

ac-tex damaged at 38 14
slice mismatch
invalid cbp at 24 17
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...
invalid cbp at 7 18
mb incr damaged
slice mismatch
ac-tex damaged at 19 21
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: found sync code
ac-tex damaged at 5 22
invalid mb type in B Frame at 26 23
mb incr damaged
invalid mb type in B Frame at 29 25
slice mismatch
ac-tex damaged at 4 27
ac-tex damaged at 4 28
end mismatch left=6790 1445A0
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: found sync code