Free / open source Closed Captioning software?

Your best bet will be to job this out. The only sofware (that I know of) that allows you to create or extract captions from video, particularly if you need to include them as line 21 in DVDSP is Mac Caption, $6000, or $8000 for the fully functional HD-capable version.


Your best bet for a workaround is to get the captioning data and convert it to a text file you can import as a subtitle stream.


Hope this helps

Not really!

I work for a School District, which services the entire state of Utah and we had to purchase our captioning software. This kind of software is very sophisticated in how it encodes the .scc file format it creates.

The software we use is called Mac Caption from CPC, http://www.ccaption.com/ it costs about $7000.00 USD and about half that if you are an educational institution.

The sofware is very expensive, so the suggestion above would be your best option. Captioning services usually cost around $30 to $50USD per minute for captioning, when adding in all of the setup costs.

The company that makes my software, is a captioning service as well: http://www.cpcweb.com/

Kelly -

What might be the chances of creating a valid .scc file with a simple text editor. I have done a lot of subtitle data files, and have been given some .scc files which I have never been able to import to dvdsp, and when I try to open the sample .scc files all I can see is a bunch of code gobbledygook. It sure would be nice to be able to take a subtitle file and convert it to a .scc file just by replacing some headers and changing the syntax, but I doubt this is possible.

What do your .scc files look like if you open them with text edit?


Max

my company does offer closed captioning as a service, Kelly is correct when he says the software is very expensive. as far as creating a .scc file with a text editor, i don't believe it is possible but i may be wrong. when opening a .scc or .cc file in a text editor, it does look like a bunch of "gobbledygook". but the .cap file that is used to create the .scc or .cc file looks a bit more manageable and could possibly be created without captioning software, again i may be wrong and have never attempted to do it. but say you could do it, you could save a bunch of money by creating the .cap file and giving it to someone who has the software to convert it to .scc or .cc. if that seems overwhelming and want to job it out, you could save some money by transcribing the video yourself which is a significant part of the cost when outsourcing. here is a sample of what a .cap file looks like:

~CPCC6.70~;Upper;PopOn;01;
00:00:48:06³0CEN³WELCOME TO.
00:00:52:08³0CFN³
00:00:53:23³0C2N³(CHOIR SINGING)
00:01:00:26³0C1N³
00:01:25:25³0C1N³I WANT TO SAY HELLO TO\THOSE OF YOU THAT ARE WITH US
00:01:28:24³0C1N³RIGHT NOW ON THE INTERNET\ALL OVER THE WORLD.
00:01:31:17³0C1N³IT'S SO WONDERFUL TO HAVE CHURCH\MEMBERS THAT HAVE MOVED ON.
00:01:35:25³0C1N³I GOT A CALL TWO WEEKS\AGO FROM A FAMILY THAT MOVED

The chances are NONE!

A true .scc file is hexadecimal code, this is why it looks like none sense when you open it in a text editor. The only way to create a .scc file that will work with DVD SP or any line 21 import option, of any authoring software, is to be in a format that is part of the Scenarist_SCC V1.0 1.0 standard for captioning. It is a very specific format, that TV captioning decoders depend on, and must be adhered to.

There are only two ways I know of that these files are created, hardware or software, designed specifically for the job.

The above example can be used for subtitling or .STL file, but not for captioning directly. The example above, with the proper captioning software can be converted and save out as a .scc file, but a text editor will never get you there.

That's what I figured. I have had some success converting the text data from a captioning service to a subtitle data file, but no luck going the other way.

However, I have picked up some tricks along the way, using Excel and find & replace in Word, to get the not-quite-right captioning data into a format that works as subtitle data. The biggest one was a cooking series - 25 half-hour shows on 4 discs - over 100,000 lines of subtitles - I was so glad when I dropped in those data files and they lined right up!