Converting recorded TV for my personal archive, preserving closed captions

[Simon_Haddad]

Does anyone know of any free software to convert a broadcast ATSC, MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) to an ATSC, H.264 Transport Stream? Specifically to save space, but also to preserve things like primary and secondary audio, cea-608 and -708 closed captions, and eXtended Data Services like parental ratings?

I can simulate most of these in MKV (Example with both surround & secondary audio and three subtitle streams; simulated closed captioning with positions using vobsub, positioned text using ssa and non-positioned text using srt) but a TS file would be more universally compatible with Smart TVs, and could contain the captions and other metadata.

[usually_quiet]

I know of nothing free which can do those things.

The only software that I have used which comes close to being able to do that type of conversion is payware, VideoRedo TV Suite v5 (updated to the newest beta version). It definitely preserves closed captions and can save all the audio streams. MediaInfo shows the parental rating in the conversion I did, but have no way to check for other metadata.

[Simon_Haddad]

...but have no way to check for other metadata.

So, I downloaded the trial version of VideoRedo TV Suite v5 and ran a test conversion. I can confirm that the other metadata is intact. You can see the metadata by running the resulting .ts file through CCExtractorGUI. They show up in the "Activity" box of the "Execution" tab.