First (?) PAL Teletext subtitle extractor for DVR-MS files

[boulder]

I think (hard to be sure) that I 'm the first to have written such a utility, so for people living in Europe or another PAL country, this might be of use.
It 's a utility to rip the subtitles broadcast with Teletext (analogue PAL) and recorded in Mediacenter, and put them into an SRT file.

Get it at http://www.extrabuttons.net

[SatStorm]

Very usefull! It's a great tool especially for the italian RAI channels, that broadcast english subtitles through teletext on movies, etc. I think the British channels also do this.

[DereX888]

Yeah, I never understand philosophy behind the TeleText.
Having so many weird and different languages all over Europe, with tv channels availability in many languages too everywhere almost, I would say that TT should have been put to use the way old CC (Closed Captioning) is in NTSC world, but wherever Ive been in Europe, TT was always used for spam delivery mostly, and some local news as distant second purpose

Bravo RAI

[boulder]

Yeah, I never understand philosophy behind the TeleText.
Having so many weird and different languages all over Europe, with tv channels availability in many languages too everywhere almost, I would say that TT should have been put to use the way old CC (Closed Captioning) is in NTSC world, but wherever Ive been in Europe, TT was always used for spam delivery mostly, and some local news as distant second purpose

Bravo RAI

This sounds more like an anti-European post.
There 's no such thing as a "weird" language.
PAL Teletext is way superior to closed captions, with colour support, international characters support, and positioning the text anywhere on screen.
It 's true that some commercial stations abuse Teletext for commercial purposes, but still, I can watch subtitles on 14 (out of 26) channels here :

één, Ketnet/Canvas, VTM, Ned1, Ned2, Ned3, La Une, La Deux, France 2, BBC One, BBC Two, Ard Das Erste, ZDF, Rai Uno

That includes 3 Flemish/Dutch stations, 3 Dutch stations, 2 Walloonish/French stations, 1 French station, 2 English stations, 2 German stations and 1 Italian.

So to say that they don't put an effort in subtitling broadcasts is rubbish.

[ntscuser]

Yeah, I never understand philosophy behind the TeleText.
Having so many weird and different languages all over Europe, with tv channels availability in many languages too everywhere almost, I would say that TT should have been put to use the way old CC (Closed Captioning) is in NTSC world, but wherever Ive been in Europe, TT was always used for spam delivery mostly, and some local news as distant second purpose

Bravo RAI

It was originally called Ceefax and invented by an engineer at the BBC as a way of sending messages to other engineers within the BBC without them being seen by ordinary viewers. It quickly expanded to become a news delivery system with one page being reserved for subtitles for hard of hearing.

Pioneer released a very limited number of laserdiscs in europe with Teletext subtitle pages in various languages. The bandwidth required was too great for VHS releases.

It is not the adverts per se on commercial Teletext which annoy me but their insistence on using flashing images. It quite often makes me turn back to a non commerical channel.

Teletext is gradually being phased out on analogue TV in the UK as broadcasters prepare for the changeover to all digital TV. We've already lost most of the video and movie review pages

[loster]

PAL Teletext is way superior to closed captions, with colour support, international characters support, and positioning the text anywhere on screen.

You are wrong on all counts except on some older televisions and decoders which did not support all features.

[boulder]

PAL Teletext is way superior to closed captions, with colour support, international characters support, and positioning the text anywhere on screen.

You are wrong on all counts except on some older televisions and decoders which did not support all features.

You are wrong because those newer sets you talk about are for DIGITAL TV, so you are comparing digital standards with analogue ones, apples and oranges...
Wikipedia confirms that colorisation is rarely used in the US, also the character sets were very restricted, the first generation of decoders even supported only uppercase...
The consequence of such standards that are only gradually improved is that developers tend to only write for the biggest common denominator.

If you want to compare the latest digital closed caption systems you should compare them with the digital systems that are in use in Europe : MHEG5, Digitext, etc.
But then you're looking at a totally different discussion.

[boulder]

It was originally called Ceefax and invented by an engineer at the BBC as a way of sending messages to other engineers within the BBC without them being seen by ordinary viewers. It quickly expanded to become a news delivery system with one page being reserved for subtitles for hard of hearing.

Pioneer released a very limited number of laserdiscs in europe with Teletext subtitle pages in various languages. The bandwidth required was too great for VHS releases.

It is not the adverts per se on commercial Teletext which annoy me but their insistence on using flashing images.

Any system can be abused, eh.
Teletext was indeed created as a public service, only later on did those commercial stations begin to abuse it.
However, those garish images should not discourage you from using subtitles, which was the point of my post.

Teletext is gradually being phased out on analogue TV in the UK as broadcasters prepare for the changeover to all digital TV. We've already lost most of the video and movie review pages

But MHEG5 is the digital equivalent of Teletext, so not all is lost.
Everything is moving digitally here (Flanders, Belgium) as well, however DVB-T and DVB-S carry a form of Teletext as well.

[DereX888]

Yeah, I never understand philosophy behind the TeleText.
Having so many weird and different languages all over Europe, with tv channels availability in many languages too everywhere almost, I would say that TT should have been put to use the way old CC (Closed Captioning) is in NTSC world, but wherever Ive been in Europe, TT was always used for spam delivery mostly, and some local news as distant second purpose

Bravo RAI

This sounds more like an anti-European post.
There 's no such thing as a "weird" language.
PAL Teletext is way superior to closed captions, with colour support, international characters support, and positioning the text anywhere on screen.
It 's true that some commercial stations abuse Teletext for commercial purposes, but still, I can watch subtitles on 14 (out of 26) channels here :

één, Ketnet/Canvas, VTM, Ned1, Ned2, Ned3, La Une, La Deux, France 2, BBC One, BBC Two, Ard Das Erste, ZDF, Rai Uno

That includes 3 Flemish/Dutch stations, 3 Dutch stations, 2 Walloonish/French stations, 1 French station, 2 English stations, 2 German stations and 1 Italian.

So to say that they don't put an effort in subtitling broadcasts is rubbish.

LOL
Maybe I dont live long enough, but as far as *I* can remember CC always had colors (many commercials have very, and I mean VERY colorful CCs), international characters (i.e. all mexican soap operas have those funny spanish letters) AND text positioning on screen (as well as capital and small letters in case you think it only has CAPITALS as many people do...). As a matter of fact I prefer CC than subtitles on DVDs, because CCs are almost always positioned on the screen to be least obtrusive as possible (if action happens at the bottom, theyre on top of screen, if many people talk at once their dialogue lines appear above or below them on screen, etc etc) which IS way way better than 'dumb' DVD subtitles displayed always at the bottom...
Maybe you've seen CC in 70's when it started LOL

Ignorance is a blessing Everything is so simple

And yes, there are WEIRD languages.
Check out the official european union's official languages list - there are even languages that maybe few people in whole EU only speak Not to mention those that aren't listed there
And how is that "anti-european"? (pls. dont even think to start some politically correct eurocrap with me, i had enough politically correct american idiocy already to bother to reply)

[SatStorm]

@boulder, can you add a buffer teletext fuction for VHS sources?

Let me explain: Sometimes, the teletext info could be recorded on the VHS tapes (It was recorded on SVHS totally), but in a "broken" way, like having problematic aerial reception.

This would be an excellent feature: For example, I have tapes with MTV Europe from 1992-1996, when Teletext was at it's best. It was like a community, before the internet here. We send faxes, emails and letters to MTV Europe from all around Europe and we interact between us. It would be great to find a way to capture those teletext pages from the VHS tapes so to archive them. Don't mention local charts from all around Europe, music facts about European bands of the time, reports, etc. The history of the 90s European Dance music is on those teletext pages. I wish I could find a way to save them!

[ntscuser]

Satstorm, I don't know if this is what you asking but you can't retrieve Teletext information that wasn't recorded on tape in the first place. I may have misunderstood you? The Teletext carrier signal is way above the maximum video frequency which any VHS machine can record. As you have discovered, it is even borderline for a S-VHS machine.

There were devices which could receive Teletext off-air and re-encode it at a lower frequency which could be recorded on VHS tape. There were even VHS recorders which had a Teletext record and playback feature built-in.

My own S-VHS machine is able to record the Teletext signal along with the regular video for playback through a Teletext TV. I find it useful for checking the time and date when a recording was made but it is not a part of the machine's official specification.

[boulder]

LOL
As a matter of fact I prefer CC than subtitles on DVDs, because CCs are almost always positioned on the screen to be least obtrusive as possible (if action happens at the bottom, theyre on top of screen, if many people talk at once their dialogue lines appear above or below them on screen, etc etc) which IS way way better than 'dumb' DVD subtitles displayed always at the bottom...

You obviously don't know what you 're talking about.
Subtitles do that too.
The only thing that 's lacking in DVD subtitles (we were discussing TV SUBTITLES, now you're quickly jumping to DVD subtitles vs DVD CC's !) is the colour information.
If you look at Teletext subtitles you 'll notice they carefully avoid to put subtitles over anything important on screen.

And yes, there are WEIRD languages.
Check out the official european union's official languages list - there are even languages that maybe few people in whole EU only speak Not to mention those that aren't listed there

So if a language isn't spoken by millions of people, it 's weird ?
I happen to like languages a lot, I think your attitude is based on ignorance, and living in a large country.
There 's a world outside there, you know.

[dphirschler]

Can your program be used to get the TT out of a DVDR recorded on a standalone? IS there *any* program that can do that?


Darryl

[boulder]

@boulder, can you add a buffer teletext fuction for VHS sources?

Let me explain: Sometimes, the teletext info could be recorded on the VHS tapes (It was recorded on SVHS totally), but in a "broken" way, like having problematic aerial reception.

This would be an excellent feature: For example, I have tapes with MTV Europe from 1992-1996, when Teletext was at it's best. It was like a community, before the internet here. We send faxes, emails and letters to MTV Europe from all around Europe and we interact between us. It would be great to find a way to capture those teletext pages from the VHS tapes so to archive them. Don't mention local charts from all around Europe, music facts about European bands of the time, reports, etc. The history of the 90s European Dance music is on those teletext pages. I wish I could find a way to save them!

Before asking these questions, you would better take a look at my homepage.
I am not extracting Teletext from the video signal !
What I am doing is extracting the information from a DVR-MS file, that was already recorded before.
The Teletext data is stored as a separate stream in that file format.
I don't think that I would even consider writing such a program, as it would way too complicated for me.

Anyway, that other guy is right too, once you have recorded your tapes on VHS the Teletext data has been lost, and there is no way to restore it.

[SatStorm]

DVR-MS? I missed that.

And no, I didn't read your homepage carefully, I just scan it fast with my eyes. I must be more carefull, but I was on a hurry and because of this, I had the wrong impresion. Sorry for this.

I'm searching for a tool like the one I say for myself years now. I wish to extract the teletext from the video signal.

Regarding Teletext on tape: On SVHS, teletext is recorded 100%. On VHS, a page once and there is recorded, when you tape a terrestrial transmission based on a satellite feed, and during the proccess, you loose a field. Older analogue satellite recievers (early 90s ones) used to drop fields frequantly during the decryption, when the source was encrypted to something called "videocrypt" (used by bskyb on SES Astra 19.2 East, before they moved to SES Astra 28.2 East for Sky Digital - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCrypt). That happened for years (MTV Europe, Eurosport and other channels use to have their main analogue feed on Astra 19.2 East), so teletext pages end up "hidden" by fault on the VHS tapes! So, I wish to find a way to extract this info from my old tapes.

VHS is full of suprises you know...

[DereX888]

And yes, there are WEIRD languages.
Check out the official european union's official languages list - there are even languages that maybe few people in whole EU only speak Not to mention those that aren't listed there

So if a language isn't spoken by millions of people, it 's weird ?
I happen to like languages a lot, I think your attitude is based on ignorance, and living in a large country.
There 's a world outside there, you know.

I guess youre one of those who call i.e. crippled person "enabled differently" and such, aren't you?
There is nothing wrong with the word "weird". It have negative meaning only to politically correct pigs.
Yes, if a language is spoken by few poeple only, it is a weird language to the rest of people. Call it whatever else you want.
And BTW: there is nothing more anti-european than European Union itself, the socialist bully of few largest EU countries that are slowly eliminating all the differences that differentiated one country from another until it all become like Mao's China LOL
Yes, there's a world out there, which I happen to see and taste. I suggest the same to you before you form any opinions again.
EOT

[DereX888]

DVR-MS? I missed that.

And no, I didn't read your homepage carefully, I just scan it fast with my eyes. I must be more carefull, but I was on a hurry and because of this, I had the wrong impresion. Sorry for this.

I'm searching for a tool like the one I say for myself years now. I wish to extract the teletext from the video signal.

Regarding Teletext on tape: On SVHS, teletext is recorded 100%. On VHS, a page once and there is recorded, when you tape a terrestrial transmission based on a satellite feed, and during the proccess, you loose a field. Older analogue satellite recievers (early 90s ones) used to drop fields frequantly during the decryption, when the source was encrypted to something called "videocrypt" (used by bskyb on SES Astra 19.2 East, before they moved to SES Astra 28.2 East for Sky Digital - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCrypt). That happened for years (MTV Europe, Eurosport and other channels use to have their main analogue feed on Astra 19.2 East), so teletext pages end up "hidden" by fault on the VHS tapes! So, I wish to find a way to extract this info from my old tapes.

VHS is full of suprises you know...

Im curious.
CCs are in the VBI part of analog signal, and some standalone ntsc dvd-recorders do record them as well.
I admit I dont know anything about TT (beside using it sometimes when Im in eurohotels before I gave up on it completely ), but shouldn't it be preserved by standalone dvd-recorders similarly as CCs are? (thats assuming they are just differently coded signal hidden in the VBI as well).

And why is that PAL VHS doesnt always preserve TTs?
Does it go beyond/out of bandwidth or something?
Sat please explain...

[boulder]

I guess youre one of those who call i.e. crippled person "enabled differently" and such, aren't you?

Far from it, I 'm against political correctness if it means masking the truth for some sort of a political goal.
But that doesn't mean I 'm against common sense.
You say a language is weird because it 's spoken by few people.
I find that way of reasoning simply stupid.
Whether you find a language "weird" or not has much more to do with the language group you're in.
For instance, my native language is Dutch/Flemish, which is a Germanic language, and is therefore related to German, Finnish, and several other languages.
Therefore German does not sound too weird to us, and the same goes for English.
So even if German would have been spoken by only 300 persons, it still would not sound "weird".
And even though Mandarine Chinese is the most spoken language in the world it must be one of the weirdest languages to us.

Yes, if a language is spoken by few poeple only, it is a weird language to the rest of people.

That is just plain stupid, like I explained above.
less used <> weird

And BTW: there is nothing more anti-european than European Union itself, the socialist bully of few largest EU countries that are slowly eliminating all the differences that differentiated one country from another until it all become like Mao's China LOL

I embrace the idea of a united Europe, as long as cultural differences are somewhat maintained.
But hey, I think you are contradicting yourself with your resentment of cultural differences dissappearing and at the same time finding anything but the most used languages weird...
Anyway, I 'm very happy to live in Europe, I wouldn't like to live in a country where George Dumbass rules.

[DereX888]

I guess youre one of those who call i.e. crippled person "enabled differently" and such, aren't you?

Far from it, I 'm against political correctness if it means masking the truth for some sort of a political goal.
But that doesn't mean I 'm against common sense.
You say a language is weird because it 's spoken by few people.
I find that way of reasoning simply stupid.
Whether you find a language "weird" or not has much more to do with the language group you're in.
For instance, my native language is Dutch/Flemish, which is a Germanic language, and is therefore related to German, Finnish, and several other languages.
Therefore German does not sound too weird to us, and the same goes for English.
So even if German would have been spoken by only 300 persons, it still would not sound "weird".
And even though Mandarine Chinese is the most spoken language in the world it must be one of the weirdest languages to us.

Yes, if a language is spoken by few poeple only, it is a weird language to the rest of people.

That is just plain stupid, like I explained above.
less used <> weird

And BTW: there is nothing more anti-european than European Union itself, the socialist bully of few largest EU countries that are slowly eliminating all the differences that differentiated one country from another until it all become like Mao's China LOL

I embrace the idea of a united Europe, as long as cultural differences are somewhat maintained.
But hey, I think you are contradicting yourself with your resentment of cultural differences dissappearing and at the same time finding anything but the most used languages weird...
Anyway, I 'm very happy to live in Europe, I wouldn't like to live in a country where George Dumbass rules.

dude, LOL... so much bull and contradictions in one post I was going to just skip it without reply
But hey, embrace your "maintained cultural differences" while they last
Never in mankind history such thing lasted, and so it will not in EU. Simply either i.e. your Dutch/Flemish 'maintained cultural difference' will disappear and your offspring will speak 1 of 3 main languages, or the EU won't last that long for your Dutch/Flemish 'cultural difference' to disappear...
Apparently you have never stick your nose out of EU countries, so I tell you: better pray your EU will become half as good as USA is, and last half as long as USA does, and it will be a success. Apparently you don't understand you didn't turn into communist comrade like half of the europe before, and you didn't have another all-out war in europe for 60+ years (isn't it the longest 'no wars' period in past 500 years in Europe?) only thanks to american taxpayers alone. And giant base of your current european semi-prosperity was practically built on US $$$ half of which was never paid back - they didnt teach you that in school? Have you go to any schools at all?
Im not american and I dont live in USA, but at least I learn about it and I lived there long enough to know that some stupid president self-elect doesn't equal to the whole US of A, so **** off with your anti-american european shauvinism. IMHO people like you are exactly whats wrong with EU.
But what do I care LOL

[SatStorm]

No politic discussions please, or I'll be forced to lock this post!

[boulder]

No politic discussions please, or I'll be forced to lock this post!

He can have the last word.
I totally disagree of course, but it 's obvioius that he cannot convince me, and I will not be able to convince him either.

[DereX888]

No politic discussions please, or I'll be forced to lock this post!

He can have the last word.
I totally disagree of course, but it 's obvioius that he cannot convince me, and I will not be able to convince him either.

SatStorm is right, it went too far into politics.
But I didnt mean to 'have last word' I don't care about such silly stuff.
Drop me PM if you want to continue and don't mind lack of 'broader audience'.