Posted by Jukka Aho on 10/18/06 20:27

Linea Recta wrote:

> My [DVD] player sems to have an option for captions in the setup
> menu. I never payed attention to this before.

I'm not sure what that option does. It _could_ mean that you can toggle
the insertion of CC data in the VBI on and off, though I don't know what
useful purpose that kind of setting would possibly serve.

It could also mean that the player _can_ display CC all by itself,
without a decoder in the TV set, but I think you said in your earlier
message that regardless of how you set this option, the player does not
display captions, even though a software DVD player on your PC does.

> Apart from that, I have an (easier accessible) button for subtitles
> on the DVD remote.

That button is typically reserved for switching between different DVD
subtitle streams, or toggling DVD subtitles on and off. I'm not sure if
it has any relation to closed captions.

> Thanks for this extensive explanation.

You might want to take a look at these web pages as well:

<http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.45>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_%28captioning%29>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captions>

> I do have a subtitle editor on PC for adapting subtitles for DIVX
> files, but I haven't got into extracting subtitles (or captions)
> from DVD's yet.

See <http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1578742>.

> BTW, I noticed that while playing the DVD on the PC, captions
> where all in upper case. Is this usual?

I've been wondering about the same thing since the CC subtitles I've
seen have been like that, too. I don't think it's a technical
limitation, though, since the character set used for Closed Captioning
would appear to contain lowercase letters. (Teletext subtitles and DVD
subtitles usually use mixed-case lettering which makes the text easier
to read.)

See <http://www.geocities.com/mcpoodle43/SCC_TOOLS/DOCS/CC_CHARS.HTML>.

--
znark

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