Newbie Question on Video Capture

[bhas4]

Hi All,

We are working on a new product development that would involve following activities -

1. Capture of video stream from a TV Tuner card
2. Extraction of story from the video, also be able to change the channel
3. Extraction of CC from the video -- if available
4. Integration with TV Guide to understand when the story begins & ends

I have been on the wild web --- googling to get more info on hardware/software available for each of my above steps & below is my analysis for each fo the steps above -

#1 -- ATI TV Tuner card seems to be the best as suggested by people on some forums & web -- is this right? would this card not strip CC information that I would require to extract?

#2 -- I have not found any open source software in this domain - hit upon softwares like Virage & Pictron -- pls. help me if you are aware of any open source software that provides this feature

#3 -- MagHubCap, seems to be one the hardware tool that provides this feature, but not explored further to see if they have an SDK that I can interface with & extract the CC. Also read a lot of SCC tools from McPoodle -- but do not know where to start & build the application using SCC... as I need some kind of API interface & not a standalone application

#4 -- This has been a wild wild search still, unable to get any provider via - webservice or alternate mode that allows me to programmatically interface to extract the TV Guide -- if anybody have more information about it... pls. reply back.

Apart from above for #2 & #3 --- we would want to proceed with story & CC extraction on a downloaded MPEG or WMV file, so if you are aware of any softwares that can work without a hardware video capture card... pls. let me know.

Thanks
Bhaskara Kempaiah

[guns1inger]

I don't understand what you mean by #2. Do you mean locating the start and end points of the program ?

FWIW, in Australia none of the TV stations start their programs at the times advertised in their TV guides. Even the limited EPG (now and next) broadcast as part of the digital programming is worthless as it is usually out by at least5 - 10 minutes at either end.

[bhas4]

#2 - Involves following:
a) Indexing of the video content that is being acquired by the tuner card
b) Extraction of keywords or story of the program being aired

This product is for US region & I think the EPG is fairly followed by the channels in US.

-Bhaskara

[Nelson37]

Not clear what you intend to do with "indexing the video" and the TV Guide, but...

SFAIK the only common card which captures the CC data in standard MPG files is the Hauppage series. ATI does it but only in the proprietary VCR format. These files can be read by the Ulead DVD Player but no other non-ATI software. However, they can be converted to standard MPG with the ATI library, this conversion stripping out the CC data.

The CC data can be extracted via Graphedit in real time from the VCR file. This binary file can then be converted to a subtitle file, using McPoodles tools. SFAIK this binary file can also be extracted from the MPG produced by the Hauppage cards, it may be possible to capture and extract at the same time, which apparently cannot be done with ATI cards.

ATI also makes a text file containing the CC text and timing information, which can be converted into a subtitle file. Subtitle Workshop would be an example of a prog which can jump to spots on the video based on subtitle information.

IMO very few downloaded MPG files would contain the CC information.