Close Caption

[hvp]

Subject: Captions
I have consulted numerous FAQ’s and Forums (including videohelp.com and this one) but I have not seen an answer to my problem.
I have ripped and backed up movie dvds and have been pretty successful. My main problem is close captioning. I would like to retain the captioning from the original because of a hearing problem. Is there any procedure, software, or hardware to retain the captioning? I also have capturing capabilities from TV or VCR. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks !!

[Dimmer]

Welcome to the forum.

Normally, Closed Captions would always stay with the video because they are encoded into MPEG headers unlike subtitles, which are stored on DVD separately. You only risk losing CC if you compress (re-encode or transcode) the video hence modifying the MPEG stream.

Two transcoders are verified to keep the CC: DVD Shrink (latest version) and Clone DVD 2. Some methods that use CCE or TMPGEnc encoders to compress video always remove CC. You can rip the CC and add them back to an MPEG video stream using McPoodle's SCC Tools (http://www.geocities.com/mcpoodle43/SCC_TOOLS/DOCS/SCC_TOOLS.HTML). Check out that site, there is a lot of useful info if you'd like to rip CC from DVD, capture them from TV/VCR, or create from scratch and afterwards add them back to DVD, both commercial backups and home video.

If you need more help, it would be great if you described the method you use to back up your movies.

[ammck55]

Another :goodpost:, Mr. Dimmer! It's going straight into my Doom9 "gotta keep links"! Keep 'em comin'!

ammck55

[Dimmer]

Originally posted by ammck55
Another :goodpost:, Mr. Dimmer! It's going straight into my Doom9 "gotta keep links"! Keep 'em comin'!

ammck55 Why, thank you. In this case, however, the credit really should go to McPoodle and his CC processing tools mentioned above.

[hvp]

Thank you for the information. I normally use DVD Shrink because it is simple and covers most of the bases. I have DVD Decrypter which I understand was required by
DVD Shrink before the recent versions. I recently added a pci TV and video capture card V-Gear ProTV SAP which came with PowerDVD,PowerVCR and PowerDirector. I am slowly getting to know how to use them but it is obvious that the close captions are not retained at least from the VCR. I had looked at McPoodles SCC Tools but it was confusing to say the least. My question would be “How is the caption synchronized with the video?” I have to admit to a great ignorance especially when it comes to the myriad of codecs,editors etc. Again thank you for the information about DVD Shrink retaining CC’s

[Dimmer]

My question would be “How is the caption synchronized with the video?” In case of a VCR capture, you'll have to synchronize them manually. Unfortunate fact is that so far you can't capture video from VCR or TV and keep the CC automatically as with VHS tape. The actual process of CC capture using GraphEdit is described in McPoodle's documentation as well as in this thread (http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=220458) (pay attention to the screenshots).

The real inconvenience is that you'll probably have to play your tape twice: first to capture the video, and then CC. That's because capturing CC often conflicts with video capture. The guys in the thread above mention some proprietary methods of concurrent video and CC capture such as with a standalone DVD recorder but no universal solution.

Once you've captured the CC, you have to convert them to .scc format (Scenarist standard) with McPoodle's raw2scc, then you can adjust the timing with ccadj. If you wish to edit the captions, first convert them from .scc into readable form with ccasdi. What to do after that depends on your authoring process. All required information can be found it the documentation. However, depending on your interest in the technical aspect of CC, it might be easier for you to purchase a standalone recorder.

[hvp]

I sincerely appreciate your timely and informative response. I had assumed that replacing CC’s would not be simple.I guess that is all of my questions for the present. Again Thank You very much for taking the time to respond to my query. hvp