Can I get help converting CC to .srt?

[johner23]

I find that guide interesting and decide to put here to add some information about the subject Closed Caption here.

---> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=475048

---> http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=72973

And for those who wanna try Gabest program, VSRip, follow the address:

---> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303

For me, VSRip usually works fine extracting CC.

But it will be nice if someone could create some GUI for SCC Tools, becoming easier for begginers extract CC using that program. :)

If someone could add some other information about the subject, it will be nice too.

Best Regards.

[jmac698]

Here is a bit of help to using scc tools more easy. Your original captured, raw vbi data, is called cc-fix.bin. Usually this is done with a graphedit graph, output from line21 decoder is sent to a filewriter.
copy /B ff.bin + cc-fix.bin cc.bin
raw2scc cc.bin
CCASDI -s cc.scc capture.srt
put that in a file, cc.bat, then you can double click it. Also need ff.bin file, it's just 4 bytes of FF in a file, you can use a hexeditor.

[CoNS]

Thanks for the info in this thread, guys. It came very useful for me today when I had to deal with CC (closed captions) for the first time on a DVD.

Boy, it's really a jungle out there with so many different types of subtitles on a DVD. For future reference, this is what I've concluded (please correct any mistakes):

On a video DVD there can be three kind of subtitles:

1. "Hardcoded" subtitles, i.e. subtitles that are physically an integrated part of the video.
2. "Normal" DVD subtitles, i.e. bitmap subtitles which are located in up to 32 separate streams. Such subtitles can be set to "forced" or not.
3. Closed Captions, i.e. text subtitles inside the VOB files, which can be displayed on the screen by some software and standalone players.

In my case, I needed to extract the closed captions subtitles in .srt format for further editing and converting to bitmap subtitles. I first tried with SubRip, but it was only able to inform me of the presence of Closed Captions on the DVD, not extract them. However, VSRip (see above link) turned out to be perfect for this, it outputted the Closed Captions directly as a text .srt file, which I was after. :)

EDIT: There were some problems with the .srt file outputted by VSRip. Some of the text was placed incorrectly in the subpic text lines. For example line breaks in strange places, like this:

719
00:50:33,447 --> 00:50:35,949
MAMA WOULD TURN THE LATC
H AND TELL THE STAFF

Furthermore, and more seriously, in some subpics the last chars were somehow located in the beginning of the subpic, like this:

724
00:50:56,470 --> 00:51:00,974
P.
ON THE CARPET
NEXT TO THE DOOR
AND I'D FALL ASLEE

Also, VSRip outputted some strange chars all over the text, like this:

598
00:40:29,510 --> 00:40:32,513
ÿÿÿÿALMOST AS IF THEY WERE
ÿÿÿÿPUTTING HIM TO SLEEP

This, however, was easy to fix with search and replace in Notepad.

Finally, there were some technical problems with the .srt file, which had to be corrected before I could load it into SubtitleCreator. These problems were empty lines between subpic lines, like this:

98
00:07:55,174 --> 00:07:57,176
THANK YOU.

SIGN HERE, PLEASE.

Easy to fix as SubtitleCreator tells you the number of the troublesome subtitle. A bit more tricky was the fact that SubtitleCreator refused to read some (but not all!?) of the subpic with square brackets [ and ].

[ai4spam]

Can't you use VSrip to save idx/sub, and then SubRip to convert them to srt? SubRip's OCR should work better for conversion to text...

[CoNS]

Good idea, I'll try that next time! :)

However, it'll be a bit backwards! The closed captions are in fact stored as text subtitles inside the VOB files, and what you're suggesting is to convert to bitmap and then convert back to text!

[ai4spam]

It shouldn't matter much, as closed captions use a font that's much easier to OCR than regular subs, so errors should be minimal.