Extract Closed Captions

Playground Hacks
#1

Has anyone on this forum been successful in extracting the closed captions from the files that the Channels DVR stores? If so, what tool did you use? (a quick search turned up a tool called "CCExtractor" which I haven't tried yet)

The reason I'm asking is this... I have some friends that appear in a commercial that airs very infrequently. I would like to scan my DVR recordings for key words in the CC data to discover if I've managed to capture the commercial I'm looking for. (with the awesome commercial skipping features of ChannelsDVR, it is unlikely I will actually see said commercial unless I know it's in the recording and I can turn off commercial skipping)

#2

CCExtractor works well on the files, at least for Closed Captions used in the US (EIA-708, as well as older CEA/EIA-608).

As part of the commercial detection done, comskip also extracts the CC information as part of its processing. (The presence of CC data is one of the factors used in determining commercials.) The CC data pulled by comskip can be found in the logs (usually about halfway down), which are located in ${_DVR}/Logs/comskip/${_fileID}/video.log (where ${_DVR} is the directory/path that Channels is using as its root, and ${_fileID} is Channels' internal ID for the recording.)

CCExtractor does go one step beyond just printing the CC data, though, and can output that data into other formats for easier use, such as SRT for embedding in MKV.

(If your sources are OTA DVB, I am not sure about the level of support that CCExtractor has for DVB or teletype subtitles, which are different from the Closed Captions used in North America.)

#3

Oh, hey. That's good to hear that comskip has already done the work for me.

I'm just interesting in "grepping" the CC text for a keyword or 2 to help identify if any of my recordings contain the commercial that I'm looking for.

#4

Then grepping through the comskip logs should be adequate. Just remember that not all commercials contain CCs.