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  1. I am not familiar with .CAP format and I was asked to produce a subtitle file into that format. I use Subtitle Workshop. Is it possible to do it with that software? I didnīt see .CAP on the list of supported formats.

    Any ideas?
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    ".CAP" formats are actually not for subtitles (as most techies call it), but closed-captions. They could be in one of a few different formats: Cheetah's CAP, NCI's CAP, or Captionmaker's CAP. Captionmaker is really the only company still going strong here, but their .CAP format isn't the format of their subs/content, it is the format of their project file (incl. settings, paths, metadata, etc). So I don't think you want that one. Probably Cheetah, as they had a large user base for their hardware captioning boxes.

    You need to re-ask your contact person specifically if this is what is needed of you, and if so, you might have to go through a couple of apps/conversion steps before getting it into the format they need.

    Of course, one way to expedite this is to ask them for one of their existing sample .CAP format files and then post it here (should be fairly small) and it can be analyzed. Should be able to point you to the best conversion pathway (you never know, it may be trivial to reverse engineer it).

    You could of course just tell them what sub formats you ARE ALREADY capable of outputting and say they'll have to take one of those...

    Scott

    edit: no, I guess Cheetah is still doing ok business too. NCI is still around too, but their's is a "service" so they could be using other equipment now...
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  3. Hey Cornucopia,

    Thanks sooo much for your complete response! What you suggest is a great idea: I will ask them to provide a file sample so I could post it here.

    You are right, the .CAP seems to be a closed caption file... They told me itīs the file type produced by Caption Maker. But after I made a search I am not sure what program that is...

    I have just tried to save a file in Cheetah format using Subtitle Workshop, but the file extension is ".asc" and not ".cap". Apparently, the other formats you mention are not possible on that program. Hereīs the list of the supported formats on SW:

    Current list of supported formats:
    • Adobe Encore DVD (*.txt)
    • Advanced SubStation Alpha (*.ass)
    • Advanced Subtitles (*.xas)
    • AQTitle (*.aqt)
    • Captions 32 (*.txt)
    • Captions DAT (*.dat)
    • Captions DAT Text (*.dat)
    • Captions Inc. (*.txt)
    • Cavena (*.txt)
    • Cheetah (*.asc)
    • CPC-600 (*.txt)
    • DKS Subtitle Format (*.dks)
    • DVD Junior (*.txt)
    • DVD Subtitle System (*.txt)
    • DVDSubtitle (*.sub)
    • FAB Subtitler (*.txt)
    • IAuthor Script (*.txt)
    • Inscriber CG (*.txt)
    • JACOSub 2.7+ (*.jss; *.js)
    • Karaoke Lyrics LRC (*.lrc)
    • Karaoke Lyrics VKT (*.vkt)
    • KoalaPlayer (*.txt) (equal to one of the variations of TMPlayer)
    • MAC DVD Studio Pro (*.txt)
    • MacSUB (*.scr)
    • MicroDVD (*.sub)
    • MPlayer (*.mpl)
    • MPlayer2 (*.mpl)
    • MPSub (*.sub)
    • OVR Script (*.ovr)
    • Panimator (*.pan)
    • Philips SVCD Designer (*.sub)
    • Phoenix Japanimation Society (*.pjs)
    • Pinnacle Impression (*.txt)
    • PowerDivX (*.psb)
    • PowerPixel (*.txt)
    • QuickTime Text (*.txt)
    • RealTime (*.rt)
    • SAMI Captioning (*.smi)
    • Sasami Script (*.s2k)
    • SBT (*.sbt)
    • Scantitle (*.890)
    • Sofni (*.sub)
    • Softitler RTF (*.rtf)
    • SonicDVD Creator (*.sub)
    • Sonic Scenarist (*.sst)
    • Spruce DVDMaestro (*.son)
    • Spruce Subtitle File (*.stl)
    • Stream SubText Player (*.sst)
    • Stream SubText Script (*.ssts)
    • SubCreator 1.x (*.txt)
    • SubRip (*.srt)
    • SubSonic (*.sub)
    • SubStation Alpha (*.ssa)
    • SubViewer 1.0 (*.sub)
    • SubViewer 2.0 (*.sub)
    • Timed Text (*.xml)
    • Titlevision ANSI with cues (*.txt)
    • TMPlayer (*.txt) (five different variations)
    • Turbo Titler (*.txt)
    • Ulead DVD Workshop 2.0 (*.txt)
    • ViPlay Subtitle File (*.vsf)
    • Wincaps text timecoded (*.txt)
    • Youtube (*.sbv)
    • ZeroG (*.zeg)
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I'm just making an educated guess here, but I'm pretty sure that just about ALL of those formats are really ".txt" files.
    Now, they may be formatted a certain way, just like ".csv" or "Comma-separated Values" are a commonly used, formatted version of text files required for some spreadsheet interchanges, but at their core they are still just .txt files.
    That makes it easier to deal with, because you can always do scripted transformations on text like that, in order to massage it into the format needed.
    So one thing to do is to take a sample subtitle file (say a common ".srt" file) and open it and without doing anything to it, re-export it to each of those formats listed.
    Then, open each of those formats in Notepad. You could temporarily change the extension to .txt, but you could also just do an "Open With..." command.
    This way, you can see whether the .CAP file to be sent to you will match the formatted layout of the .ASC of the supposed "Cheetah" style caption file you can already export. And if they DO match, all you'll need to do in the end is:
    1. Create your subs/captions
    2. Save as Cheetah/.ASC format
    3. Rename the extension from ".ASC" to ".CAP"
    4. Give to client

    BTW, "Captionmaker" is the software produced by the company "CPC". Their software is not cheap! ($2k-5k USD)

    Scott
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  5. Hey, thanks so much again!

    I agree about your educated guess, most of those files are .txt and they are slightly different from each other in the details they include. I only use a couple of them regularly, so I am not sure.

    What you say really make sense:

    Save a .srt (or maybe a .FAB file) into Cheetah, open it as a Notepad and then ask them for a sample of a .CAP file to compare it with my file both using Notepad. Iīll do that.

    Yes, that seems to be the software: Captionmaker. A bargain! ))
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  6. Hi! Well, I received their .cap files and I canīt open them with a Notepad (I can, but itīs totally corrupted, full of "dirty" symbols. I canīt open them on EZTitles either. I get a message saying unknown format... ;-((((( However, I have the files unloaded on my desktop and they have the EZTitles icon, so the program is technically recognizing them. I used the advanced import tool to open them with EZ, but nothing happened. I couldnīt open them on SW either.

    What now?
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  7. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    If it isn't compromising your project/client, can you post one of the files here?

    Scott
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  8. Mmmmm... It wonīt let me upload because .CAP is not among the allowed formats. Can you give me an email to send it?
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  9. Member
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    Subtitle Edit might be able to open your .cap file ?
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  10. Actually we (Cheetah) still sell stand-alone conversion utilities to/from our .cap file format. (Yes we still exist And yes, we go to/from subtitle formats to captioning formats (and no, they aren't the same thing, but they're maybe kissing cousins?)

    If you're interested they're pretty cheap, write us at support@cheetahinternational.com (or sales@cheetahinternational.com) if you're inclined to check it out.

    our .cap file is binary, and not text editable at all. (It's actually fairly complicated once you know the whole thing)

    Typically though, the problem with going to a closed caption file from a subtitle file is not the format, it's the author's intent. A subtitle file is usually written for people who can hear, but maybe don't speak the language, whereas closed caption files are supposed to replace the ability to hear what's going on. That really makes a difference for sounds that happen for which there's no visual on screen, say someone off screen angrily comes into a room, the hearing person can hear a door slam, and someone start talking, even if they don't understand the words, a hearing impaired person can get a lot from text appearing on-screen like [door slams] or [off-screen laughter] or the like, which wouldn't logically be in a subtitle file.

    So while you can convert from one to the other, please keep in mind your application.

    Oh, and .ASC is probably an ascii text file which our Captioning software can create and read, it's intended as a 'bridge' format, however it's not really very popular. It does (or can) contain all the information which would be used to create a .cap file using Cheeah's captioning software.
    Last edited by KsmithCheetahTech; 14th Nov 2012 at 14:17.
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  11. Thanks!

    That was a rather old question, though...
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  12. I made this throw away account simply to state that I came across an issue with .cap files and wanted to thank the KsmithCheetahTech guy for posting and giving resolution on this thread. No matter how old the information is still valid and needed.

    So thanks.
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