Export AVCHD frame specific metadata to subtitles

[eugenegill]

I have all the files together in one folder. There are probably ffmpeg dll's registered and I'll see if I can somehow uninstall them and try again. Will post back later. I don't feel up to recompiling your code!

I'll also try on a different computer.

Thanks for the quick response.

[caen44]

Hi eugenegill.

I think I figured out the problem. Before you mess with your dlls, please try the new version I will upload in a few moments. It appears that my sublib1.dll was dependent on something from the visual c++ runtime, which you might not have installed on your computer. It is on my computer (probably came with visual studio express) so it works fine for me.

I tried my program on my wife's laptop and got the same error as you. Even installing the visual c++ 2010 runtime on her computer didn't help. However, after much messing around I found that one can compile that stuff statically into the library. I did that, and now it works on her computer too.

Hopefully it will work on yours. Give it a try and let me know.

Good luck,

[eugenegill]

Success! Works perfectly. Thanks for sticking with this - much appreciated.

[eugenegill]

I have been trying to find a work process that can use this tool. My ambition is to assemble and edit my home video clips into a movie I can burn to a bluray disk. The metadata (date, time, geotagging) should be on the subtitle track, so it can be displayed when desired. The editing is nothing fancy - just trimming extraneous bits off about 30 clips, and arranging them in order, with maybe a title. Footage is from a HD Sony camcorder, which has a GPS (HDR-CX500V).

I have tried Sony Vegas 9.0d and CyberLink PowerDirector 8.00 for editing. The problem is extracting the metadata AFTER editing. I found a Vegas extension, SVDTS which does this very well, but only works for date/time, not geotagging (http://www.elisanet.fi/paavo.jurvelin/). If I render the completed edit with Vegas, the metadata are lost as it cannot render m2ts or mts. PowerDirector scrambles the data, and using the SubTitleMaker tool results in missing and misplaced subtitles.

Does someone have a suggestion? SubTitleMaker is a great program (thanks, HD65 and caen44), but unfortunately not useful for my needs. Perhaps a joint effort with the SVDTS author may be useful, allowing the option of capturing the whole range of metadata beyond date/time/location.

[eugenegill]

See http://forums.adobe.com/message/3641780#

[caen44]

Hi again,

I don't own any blue ray stuff yet so I still make DVD's. For that I have been using Corel DVD MovieFactory 7 for some time. It supports the avchd video fine, but doesn't generate subtitles from the metadata like it does for DV files. But is consumes .srt files just fine, which is why I made a little tool based on HD65's code.

You might try pulling the .srt file into a SubtitleEdit (I think it is called that), which will let you fix common errors and save the subtitles in many different formats.

I am also thinking of adding a feature to the SubTitleMaker program that dumps all the metadata for each frame. That would be easy to do, but using that information might not be so straightforward.

I should also be able to update the tool to dump the geotag info (I don't have any files with that, so I couldn't test it), if that helps.

Also, I think that the crappy ImageMixer software that came with my Canon camera allows for simple editing (trimming and joining), and I know that it preserves the metadata because I am using its output to test my utility. I'll test that tomorrow night and get back to you all. It think it also makes simple bluray disks, but I don't have one so I didn't look for that feature.

[eugenegill]

I have a program called SubtitleWorkshop which allows for subtitle editing and format conversion. The problem is that if you make multiple cuts and edits to 30 different video clips, you then have to do the same by hand for each associated srt file, and then join the multiple srt files. That is not practical. The PMB software from Sony that came with my camcorder does not have the ability to edit, never mind extract the metadata.

However, once you have the srt, assembling a DVD or BD is easy with DVD Architect, PowerDirector or MovieFactory, as you said.

Data beyond date/time/location would be nice, but is not a priority for me.

[caen44]

Perhaps surprisingly, the ImageMixer 3 software that came with my Canon camera defiantly allows me to trim and join files in any order. It also maintains the metadata so my tool can make a .srt file.

To make a DVD from my AVCHD files I join a bunch of individual clips together with ImageMixer after trimming the ends if necessary. It produces a single .m2ts file from the individual clips. THen I create a .srt file with my tool. I then import the joined .m2ts file into MovieFactory as well as the .srt file, and voila I'm off to the races.

I have no idea if you can actually purchase ImageMixer. The company that makes it is Pixela. I have version 3. The almighty google returns many leads.

It sounds like it would do what you need.

[fuzics]

Hello guys,
I am recorded in a shop an about 7 minutes 1080p/50 video with the Panasonic SD 90 camcorder.
First demuxed it with tsmuxer , and tried the sup to convert srt with all the tools you can find on the net.
With all of them I got a one line srt file.
At the end I tried you fantastic solution, but the same problem

My SRT file :


1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:07:30,240
Saturday 01-Jan-2011 00:00:03 (+02:00)

Any idea?


I found some sample mts file on the net, with these files no problem
Thanks in advance

[fuzics]

From this link you can download a Sony HX7V mts file, and a Panasonic SD 90 file.
If you create the srt file from them, the Sony srt is OK, but fromthe Panasonic you will receive 1 line srt file, like I received...
The Sony file is 50i, the Panasonic 50p...


http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1009&message=38279963

Hello guys,
I am recorded in a shop an about 7 minutes 1080p/50 video with the Panasonic SD 90 camcorder.
First demuxed it with tsmuxer , and tried the sup to convert srt with all the tools you can find on the net.
With all of them I got a one line srt file.
At the end I tried you fantastic solution, but the same problem

My SRT file :


1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:07:30,240
Saturday 01-Jan-2011 00:00:03 (+02:00)

Any idea?


I found some sample mts file on the net, with these files no problem
Thanks in advance

[Sean_69]

Hi,

First thanks to all those who have made and contributed to this amazing video software tool.

The PMB software from Sony that came with my camcorder does not have the ability to edit, never mind extract the metadata.

I was also in the same boat as eugenegill. I managed to get a copy of ImageMixer 3 SE... but you need the Canon serial number from the camcorder.

I have since taken a closer look at PMB... and amazingly it is possible to trim video clips and then join them together without the metadata being lost or messed up. Then this video tool can extract the metadata.

[caen44]

Hello guys,
I am recorded in a shop an about 7 minutes 1080p/50 video with the Panasonic SD 90 camcorder.
First demuxed it with tsmuxer , and tried the sup to convert srt with all the tools you can find on the net.
With all of them I got a one line srt file.
At the end I tried you fantastic solution, but the same problem

My SRT file :


1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:07:30,240
Saturday 01-Jan-2011 00:00:03 (+02:00)

Any idea?


I found some sample mts file on the net, with these files no problem
Thanks in advance

That is odd. Firstly, did you use HD65's commandline tool to generate this, or my application that wraps up his code? I ask because I was sure that I had modified his code to not include the timezone information in the subtitle (the +2:00).

Interestingly I also ran into this (the single subtitle problem) when I was converting HD65's code into a library. I never could figure out why this happened, but I just scaled back on the extent of my recoding until everything was working, and used that code. When I have the time, I'll give it a try on your .mts file and see what happens. Work has really snuck up on my recently, so I might be a bit slow on debugging this one.

Also, all my sources are up on the google site for anyone wishing to dig into it themselves. If you do fix anything, please let me know so that I can either let you check in your updates, or fix the bug for others.

[fuzics]

Dear Caen44,
thank you for your prompt answer
with this file

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KK27G880

I received

with subtitlemaker_v.032 s

1
00:00:00,010 --> 00:01:30,720
Saturday 01-Jan-2011 00:00:03

with avchd2srt-core.exe
1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:03:01,440
Saturday 01-Jan-2011 00:00:03 (+01:00)

Thanks for your work

Hello guys,
I am recorded in a shop an about 7 minutes 1080p/50 video with the Panasonic SD 90 camcorder.
First demuxed it with tsmuxer , and tried the sup to convert srt with all the tools you can find on the net.
With all of them I got a one line srt file.
At the end I tried you fantastic solution, but the same problem

My SRT file :


1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:07:30,240
Saturday 01-Jan-2011 00:00:03 (+02:00)

Any idea?


I found some sample mts file on the net, with these files no problem
Thanks in advance

That is odd. Firstly, did you use HD65's commandline tool to generate this, or my application that wraps up his code? I ask because I was sure that I had modified his code to not include the timezone information in the subtitle (the +2:00).

Interestingly I also ran into this (the single subtitle problem) when I was converting HD65's code into a library. I never could figure out why this happened, but I just scaled back on the extent of my recoding until everything was working, and used that code. When I have the time, I'll give it a try on your .mts file and see what happens. Work has really snuck up on my recently, so I might be a bit slow on debugging this one.

Also, all my sources are up on the google site for anyone wishing to dig into it themselves. If you do fix anything, please let me know so that I can either let you check in your updates, or fix the bug for others.

[arjuna1980]

After a lot of googling, I came across this thread today and its exactly what I am looking for. Thank you very much HD65, caen44 and all others for the awesome work. I recently purchased Sony HDR-CX350V and I am going to use this tool to create .srt for my m2ts files.

Just off the track question. In my camcorder, while recording every time I pause, it creates a file and hence I have many many m2ts files each for a scene. Is there any software which merges all of them into one and also create .srt files. Basically I want to achieve both the functionality in one program. This saves lot of time for me

[_Al_]

For Vegas users there is a neat solution to export SRT with datestamp info, for videos of any kind basically , that's the beauty of this method .
Before importing clips into Vegas they have to be given a name by datestamp.

- HDVSplit covers HDV video by selecting capture by the scenes and those clips are given names by datestamp.
Other videos from card camcorders could be renamed before importing into Vegas with Renamer, great utility. It can add datestamp into name of the clip (add rule/ PascalSript/Scripts/Date and Time
- Edit clips inside Vegas
-Choose a track
-Run this script "JHM_Create_Regions_From_Event_File_Names.js" ....creates regions named after clip names
-Run this script "Export Regions As SRT Subtitles.cs" ....creates SRT subtitles from those regions
-Run that SRT file through notepad and save it as ANSI
-Mux it with video and audio into MKV

[HD65]

After a lot of googling, I came across this thread today and its exactly what I am looking for. Thank you very much HD65, caen44 and all others for the awesome work. I recently purchased Sony HDR-CX350V and I am going to use this tool to create .srt for my m2ts files.

Just off the track question. In my camcorder, while recording every time I pause, it creates a file and hence I have many many m2ts files each for a scene. Is there any software which merges all of them into one and also create .srt files. Basically I want to achieve both the functionality in one program. This saves lot of time for me

Not found anything that creates subtitles like this program. So I combine the m2ts's and then create the single srt.

The HDR-CX350V has GPS - right? This will also be in the srt. I'll soon post the windows script that translates the GPS info into an address - like the linux script already does.

[lpdg1]

Hi,

I've got the Sony cx350ve and I've managed to extract gps/date/time in an an SRT
Tried to put it through mutiAVCHD for blueray output as selectable subs but all I get are intermittent glimpses of the data on the screen, ie the subs don't stay visible (both on my i7 PC and the PS3). Any ideas?

I put the srt through Corel X4 Video Studio and it hard-coded them in properly, though there isn't an option to make them selectable there.

Any help would be appreciated
Kind regards,
lpdg1

[arjuna1980]

Thank you HD65 for your response.

Quick update: I found that the latest version of Sony PMB (5.6.01.03300 release on 05/02/2011) has the ability to merge all the .m2ts files. So after merging all my m2ts files, I have used "avchd2srt" windows exe file to generate the .srt file.

The windows script you are talking about for translating GPS to address, is it a separate script which I may have to run or it's included within "avchd2srt"?

The challenge I have now is, I have both m2ts and .srt files in my external memory, I have plugged it to my Bluray player (Sony BDP-BX57) via USB cable. I can play the m2ts file without any issue, but the subtitles file is not recognized. Someone in some forum suggested changing the encoding style of the .srt to UNICODE (Big Endian). I did that in a text editor, but still no success.

[ericgl]

HD65,

Is it possible to add:
Aperture
Shutter
Gain (dB) / ISO

That will appear in a seperate line under the timecode/datecode?

...Just like in DVMP Pro?

Thanks,
Eric

[HD65]

HD65,

Is it possible to add:
Aperture
Shutter
Gain (dB) / ISO

That will appear in a seperate line under the timecode/datecode?

...Just like in DVMP Pro?

Thanks,
Eric

Technically rather easy, but less so to make it optional in avchd2srt, and I don't think this would be of general enough interest. Maybe later...

[HD65]

I promised some time ago to post the windows script that translates the GPS info to addresses. Please find it in the v06 release:

Windows 7: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?p4l5lsm8sl1o2w6
Ubuntu Linux: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?aebm6g5hqigt6uo

The linux release has also been updated to keep it consistent with the windows release and because Google changed the data format from the API.

No major other change so all effort in this forum to create GUIs should still be OK.

[HD65]

Did some heavy video processing this long weekend and noticed that in a few cases not all GPS info was extracted. Traced it back to a small bug. Hence please find v07:

Windows 7: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?pn8ls84yra7z3ke
Ubuntu Linux: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?lzfsln3rczsz11l

If you don't use GPS this release makes no difference compared to v06.

[Sean_69]

Thanks HD65 for the latest update...

However, you must have an interesting version of Windows... my verson of Windows can't get passed the "where" command in the "avchd2srt.cmd" file.

Please could you give us some tips on how to run the "avchd2srt.cmd" script.

Thanks.

[HD65]

Thanks HD65 for the latest update...

However, you must have an interesting version of Windows... my verson of Windows can't get passed the "where" command in the "avchd2srt.cmd" file.

Please could you give us some tips on how to run the "avchd2srt.cmd" script.

Thanks.

Not sure. You mean it does not know the "where" command? Which Windows version are you using?

I tested it on Windows 7 (64b) Home Premium, Ultimate, and 32b Starter, all without trouble. Also Vista Enterprise no trouble. In all cases where.exe is in c:\windows\system32.

What did fail is XP Pro SP3, but then this was never claimed to work properly.

I wanted the script to run fine in either the working folder, or a folder in the path. Actually, all it needs to know is where the avchd2str-core.exe and avchd2srt.awk programs are. You could hard-code that into avchd2srt.cmd.

If there is any other expert knowing more about windows scripting - please help!

You can test the GPS features on this small avchd test video: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?7oi2wjyw7lu52bn

[Sean_69]

OK... I managed to make it work.

Yes, I was trying your avchd2srt.cmd script on Win XP SP3... and there is no where.exe file on this Win XP system.

To make it work... I commented out all the sections with "where" and as you suggested hard coded the avchd2srt-core.exe and avchd2srt.awk

Further, since the system did not know the path to; gawk.exe, wget.exe, find.exe and ping.exe I put a copy of these files in the same directory as the avchd2srt.cmd script and then it worked, a bit rough but at least it is working.

Anyway, thanks again for all your efforts... this is a great video tool.

[xsanka]

I'm having a little trouble and wondered if anyone can help. I'm pulling the time/date codes out of the video files form a Canon HF-S21 camcorder. I've used your tool HD65 and it pulls the .srt files out of my .MTS files just fine. But I can't get anything to work to burn it in. TSmuxer is just not working for me. I can use Subtitle Workshop to encode them into an Encore compatible format, but then they only appear when subtitles are on. I want to burn them right onto the .MTS file, like some of you have apparently figured out with TSmuxer. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[HD65]

I'm having a little trouble and wondered if anyone can help. .... I want to burn them right onto the .MTS file, like some of you have apparently figured out with TSmuxer. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

So just to be clear, when you say you "want to burn them right onto the .MTS file", you mean you want to add them to the MTS but not re-encode the video. TSMuxer suggests it can read SRTs and then transform them to PGS, which is probably what you want indeed. But that failed for me too. I would like that as well.

[Sean_69]

The best tool, I have found so far, for adding the meta data, as a sub-title, to the .MTS file is multiAVCHD...

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/multiAVCHD

It is a bit funky... as in; it is not so graphical and you need to play with it a bit, but I am able to add as many sub-titles as I want to the .MTS file. Look at the website for the installation instructions... I installed it waith all the latest software and it worked well.

Although multiAVCHD is a complete package to make HD disk it is also possible to have just the .MTS file with the meta data added as a sub-title.

[HD65]

The best tool, I have found so far, for adding the meta data, as a sub-title, to the .MTS file is multiAVCHD...

Interesting. Looks pretty good.

One question. If I use multiAVCHD to add an SRT (created with avchd2srt) to the original MTS file then the subtitle is not playing smoothly (well, not as smooth as the original SRT) on my mediaplayer.

If I use tsmuxer and suprip to look at the subtitle generated by multiAVCHD there is a difference:

SRT original:

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,040

2
00:00:01,040 --> 00:00:02,080

3
00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:03,120

corresponding multiavchd subtitle:

1
00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:02,079

2
00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:02,119

3
00:00:02,120 --> 00:00:03,159

I noticed before that for smooth subtitle display the timestamp of the end time of one subtitle should be the same as the start of the next (and not one ms difference). Is this a setting in multiAVCHD I can influence?

[Sean_69]

Yes, I have also noticed the non-smooth sub-titles.

So far I have found no solution... I just learnt to live with it, so far... I had the same problem with my SD camcorder.

It seems to be player dependant...

My multiAVCHD video files also have the same timing as your's...

3000
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:11,319
Monday 26-Jul-2010 12:41:38 (+02:00)

3001
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:12,359
Monday 26-Jul-2010 12:41:39 (+02:00)

3002
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:13,399
Monday 26-Jul-2010 12:41:40 (+02:00)

3003
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:14,439
Monday 26-Jul-2010 12:41:41 (+02:00)

3004
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:15,479
Monday 26-Jul-2010 12:41:42 (+02:00)

...but that also might be how subrip divides the sub-titles

If I play the video on my computer with Splash Pro EX the sub-titles are smooth. However, if burn it to a disk, either DVD or BD the sub-title play back is not smooth.