Teletext Subtitles

[voltagex]

Hi all,
You'd think Australia could be normal and use DVB subpicture subtitles, but no, they have to use Teletext!

My question is this, are there any programs that can rip these subtitles? VLC can play them but ProjectX can't rip them!

Edit: Finally got ProjectX to rip them but the last subtitle doesn't display for very long... I'd also prefer something that can be run as a MythTV batch job.

[ronnylov]

If only the last subtitle does not last too long then it is easy to edit the srt file manually with a text editor. ProjectX does have a command line interface so it should be possible to batch it.

[voltagex]

Is there a CLI tutorial somewhere for Project-X? It's complicated enough as it is

[netmask56]

Re Subtitles - I've been using ProjectX to demux Oz DTV via my Topfield pvrt5000 without any bother at all. A link below shows screenshots of the various ProjectX parameters including extracting subtitles. Hope they are helpful

http://www.pvr-tools.com/netmask/ProjectX_Screenshots.zip

[voltagex]

Thanks for that. I was eventually successful with both Project X and the command line tools mplayer and dvbtextsubs. The reason I needed a command line program was so that I could batch process the video files as they come out of MythTV on Linux.

[Sontel]

Hi Voltagex,

I'd be interested in more details about the system you finished up using. I've been trying to develop what sounds like a similar system for a while and I'm not really getting anywhere.

I want to take the files from my Topfield and re-compress them as H.264 to save disk space. I also need to retain the teletext subtitles because my hearing is shot.

I've got the Project-X side of this down pat... but I'm having trouble finding a good utility that can do the H.264 conversion and bundle up the subtitles in a useful format. Preferably all automated under Linux or OS X

Thanks,
Sontel.

[voltagex]

Yeah I'll let you know when I get something going, but the current way I do it is:

1. mplayer -v -vo null -ao null file.ts
Watch the output scroll past - looking for the PID numbers. PIDs for audio/video/subtitle streams should vary from channel to channel. e.g. I think the ABC here was PID 41 for the subs

You can also do this step with dvbsnoop but it's complicated!

2. If you don't have it checkout http://dvbtools.cvs.sourceforge.net/dvbtools/dvbsubs/ compile it, then run

./dvbtextsubs -srt PID TELETEXTPAGE < sample.mpg

where PID is the pid containing the teletext data and TELETEXTPAGE
is the teletext page showing the subtitles.

in Australia the TELETEXTPAGE is 801, in the UK it's 888. It will spew errors if you get it wrong

Working on a better solution soon - once I have it all scripted, I'll set it up as a MythTV batch job, but I suspect you'd have to have a list of PIDs for your digital channels, it seems to vary from region to region in Australia.

e.g. Mine:
SC10: 387
ABC-NSW: 144
ABC2: 577
Prime Sth Coast: 2755
WIN-NSW: 47

These will (99.99% sure) not work for you, so you'll have to screw around with mplayer/dvbsnoop to get your PIDs. Again, they won't change unless the broadcaster changes something.

If you wanted to send me some small recording samples I can get the PIDs for you if you can't yourself!

[voltagex]

Haven't got the x264 side going yet, I'll work on that after my exams are over. If you could trawl the manpage for x264 it'd be greatly appreciated.