Re: Closed-Captioning Support

[Bryen <suseROCKS bryen com>]

My reason for this:
I am compiling a list of functionalities for documentation purposes.
One of the questions that has been asked is whether CC support exists.

My findings:
xine supposedly has support designed by one of the xine developers,
Christian Vogler -
http://osdir.com/ml/linux.ubuntu.devel.accessibility/2005-11/msg00001.html

gstreamer supposedly has support according to this website -
http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/Text_capture

Yet, I have searched high and low for days and found nothing in terms of
configuration, options, or plugins.  Questions posed to the xine and
gstreamer mailing list have gone unanswered.

CC vs. Subtitling:
I can understand your preferences.  My guess is that preference comes
with what we're used to.  I've been using CC since the mid 1970's.  What
I consider nice about CC is it is on a black block background.  

Subtitling on the other hand is typically white (possibly with a thin
black outline around each letter depending on how it was created.)  The
drawback here is if there is something white in the screen, you can
barely see the subtitles in front of it.   Murphy's Law of Subtitling
dictates that the background will always go white at the most critical
moment of dialogue in the movie.  :-)

Some distributors offer both subtitling and CC on their DVDs.  In such
cases, here in the U.S. we always choose CC.

So, what I am trying to do is get Totem to enable CC in order to get it
to work.  I currently have Totem running with xine engine, and still
don't see the option.  I would PREFER running Totem with gstreamer, as
that is the default that ships with GNOME.

Flash:
As for Flash streaming, you may be interested in this Flash CC creator
http://ncam.wgbh.org/news/ccforflash.html from WGBH.   I also read that
Adobe as some "Captionate" software as well.   I haven't even jumped
into that subject yet.  :-)  

Back in the early 90's I was something of a CC activist and worked with
folks at WGBH educating producers in Hollywood to get their works CC'ed.
Looking back, the work was alot easier than it would be today.  There
were only x-amount of entities creating media content.  Now, nearly 20
years later, everybody and their little sister is creating media
content.  I'm guessing part of the reason you're not seeing cc on Flash
yet is because we have a huge number more people out there to educate
about the needs to caption their works.

As for iBBC, isn't that one run by the guy who says no one's using
Linux?  (rolls eyes.)  :-)

Hopefully, we'll find the solution to all of that soon enough.   As I
come across anything, I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks again,
Bryen

On Tue, 2008-01-08 at 01:03 +0000, JGJones wrote:
> Just a thought...
> 
> Obviously if you're using Totem, and have a srt file or similar, it
> shows up perfectly well.
> 
> As for CC vs subtitles, I find it complex myself - as being in UK, we
> don't have CC on TV's or DVD's etc (for example you'll only find CC in
> use on Region 1 DVD's mostly) but mostly rest of world doesn't as far
> as I have found out.
> 
> (I also don't like CC myself but prefer subtitles as they're easier to
> modify to suit my liking)
> 
> Interestingly enough, this subject - while not related to Gnome, is a
> sore thumb for many deaf people regarding BBC's iPlayer - by using WMV
> videos, but to date I've not managed to get subtitles working (it's
> broken - it was broken, then got fixed...then it's broken again) but
> that's Windows XP. On Gnome, I'm limited to Flash streaming, where
> there are *no* subtitles at all. (I'm deaf myself btw, there's a
> thread or two about it on BBC's See Hear forums, See Hear is a TV show
> for the deaf - http://bbc.co.uk/seehear )
> 
> But anyway, sorry about that waffling - when talking about CC for
> videos - what exactly are you looking for? Getting CC off videos as
> streamed via satelite/cable or something like that or generic video
> files (MPEG or something?) with inbuilt CC.
> 
> I wanted to clarify what kind of videos you was talking about, as I've
> mentioned - CC isn't used in many countries outside of USA (UK being
> one of them - we get it by Teletext for analogue channels and via
> MythTV I seem to get subtitles just fine with digital Freeview -
> although am aware it's not Gstreamer that MythTV is using).
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Joseph Gwynne-Jones MBCS
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 18:15 -0600, Bryen wrote: 
> > Peter,
> > 
> > Thanks.  You did lead me on some interesting paths and I found caption
> > support available for RealPlayer and HelixPlayer.  However, these
> > players do not support DVD at this time.  
> > 
> > >From what I've read on the Internet, gstreamer and xine both provide CC
> > support.  But, I cannot find out how to enable it whether through an
> > option, config file or a plugin.  No answers yet from either of those
> > mailing lists.
> > 
> > If I find more concrete answers, I'll let everyone know here.
> > 
> > Thanks again,
> > Bryen
> > 
> > On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 13:26 -0800, Peter Korn wrote:
> > > Hi Bryen,
> > > 
> > > The media formats need to support captioning, and then the players must 
> > > be able to play it.  RealMedia and QuickTime and WindowsMedia all 
> > > support caption encoding (in one fashion or another), and HelixCode will 
> > > render them.  I don't know about other players.
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > 
> > > Peter Korn
> > > Accessibility Architect,
> > > Sun Microsystems, Inc.
> > > 
> > > > Thanks Willie,
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately that refers to subtitles which is an entirely different
> > > > feature from Closed-Captioning.    Need to be able to enable closed
> > > > captioning when watching tv programs or DVD that has CC but not
> > > > subtitling.   Besides, I hate subtitles, they are a difficult to read
> > > > poor implementation of captioning.  :-)
> > > >
> > > > Besides, television programs aren't subtitled.
> > > >
> > > > But thanks...  still working hard on finding the answer to this.
> > > > Gstreamer claims to support it but won't answer me on their mailing
> > > > list.  oh well...
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 15:59 -0500, Willie Walker wrote:
> > > >   
> > > >> Hi Bryen:
> > > >>
> > > >> I saw this come through the gnome-announce list recently:
> > > >>
> > > >> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2007-December/msg00028.html
> > > >>
> > > >> "Gnome Subtitles is a subtitle editor for the GNOME desktop. It supports 
> > > >> the most common text-based subtitle formats and allows for subtitle 
> > > >> editing, conversion and synchronization.
> > > >>
> > > >> * About: http://gnome-subtitles.sf.net/about
> > > >> ..."
> > > >>
> > > >> Will
> > > >>
> > > >> Bryen wrote:
> > > >>     
> > > >>> Hi,
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I've been hunting high and low for answers to Closed-Captioning support
> > > >>> on GNOME.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I have found that supposedly gstreamer and xine have built in
> > > >>> closed-captioning (CC) but I have yet to see where to enable it.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Many thanks!
> > > >>>
> > > >>>       
> > > 
-- 
---Bryen---