Subtitles - cannot get them

[stevedallas 1]

I am a newby but I've searched these forums.  I know I am making a newby mistake and would like help.

 

I have created a user login in open subtitles and have provided my login name and password in emby.  I have (I think) checked all of the correct boxes in each library's settings, but still no subtitles.  There are no subtitle files in each recording's folder.  I'm attaching a screen grab from my latest recording attempt.

 

Please help!

 

Thanks,

Steve

[ebr 15584]

Hi.  There is no screen shot in your post.  I suggest using the feature to add an image directly to the post (little picture icon in the toolbar above).

 

Did you try a manual search for subtitles?  What happened?

 

Open Subtitles

[stevedallas 1]

 

 

Here's the jpg.  I've searched my boot drive and the drive on which I keep my recordings.

 

I might be missing the point - do I need to manually download subtitles?

[Luke 39685]

No, you don't need to manually download subtitles, but if they're not happening automatically then you can do a manual search to see if any are even available for your particular video.

[ebr 15584]

Click the '...' on a movie in the web app and select "Edit Subtitles" and search there.  What happens?

[stevedallas 1]

Edit subtitles does not appear.

[Luke 39685]

Only admin users can see that function, so make sure your Emby user is an admin.

[stevedallas 1]

My user profile allows me to manage the server.  Does this mean that I am an admin?  If not, I found another post on elevating a user to admin status, but I don't know where the file or setting is to change.

[stevedallas 1]

I found edit subtitles under ..., but when I check English, it gives me the movie filename.ts but says there are no subtitles.

 

 

That answers my previous question - I AM an admin.

[Luke 39685]

So that means there are no subtitles available on open subtitles. You may get more results if you make sure your movie has an imdb id.

[stevedallas 1]

Maybe I am missing the entire concept of subtitles.  When I watch a show live on tv, there are subtitles. 

 

Does this mean that even though a TV show has subtitles, subtitles are only available for movies or shows with an open subtitle entry?

 

Am I confusing subtoitles with closed captioning?  If so, please point me to the entry(ies) explaining in newby terms how to get closed captions. My OS is Windows 10 and I have realtime monitoring on in all libraries.

 

Thanks very much in advance!!  I really appreciate your help.  I will be "cutting the cord" soon, and emby will be my DVR for all OTA programming.

[VaporTrail 66]

I don't want to lead you down the garden path, but I think I can answer this for you Steve.

 

You're correct in guessing subtitles are different than closed captioning. The subtitles you'll find on 'Open Subtitles' are usually ripped from DVD's or Blu-ray discs. They're then converted from .sub & other formats to .srt files. These .srt files play nicely with the video player on your PC. For example. some .sub files ripped from a disc can be >20MB large. That's because it's an image format which your computer would have to scan/decode with OCR technology. Very CPU intensive & often guesses characters wrong. The same file converted to .srt (with OCR errors corrected by hand) can be 1000x smaller in size & saved as plain text for easy reading. 

 

Because these .srt files from 'Open Subtitles' are usually ripped from disc, they likely wouldn't sync in time with your DVR recordings, even if the .srt in question was capped (recorded) OTA like yours. You'd have to start/stop the recordings at the exact same time while matching commercials.

 

Anyway, hope this helps explain things a little. 'Open Subtitles' is useful for some applications, but I don't think in your case. For some hope, it appears Emby devs are looking to add Closed Caption support sometime in the future: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/52500-no-ccsubtitles-available-when-watching-live-tv-or-recorded-live-tv/

[Luke 39685]

@@stevedallas, please let us know if this helps. Thanks !

[stevedallas 1]

Vapor Trail and Administrators, you have superbly cleared up my understanding of subtitles and closed captioning.

 

Administrators, PLEASE, PLEASE, add close captions to your next release.  My wife is hard of hearing, and I assured her that emby would be our solution for "cutting the cord."  To say that she is upset with me is an understatement (royally pissed is a better description   .

 

Again, thanks for your help and, again, please tell your developers that many of us really, really, really need closed captions.

 

Steve

[Luke 39685]

Thanks for the feedback.

[sluggo45 47]

Vapor Trail and Administrators, you have superbly cleared up my understanding of subtitles and closed captioning.

 

Administrators, PLEASE, PLEASE, add close captions to your next release.  My wife is hard of hearing, and I assured her that emby would be our solution for "cutting the cord."  To say that she is upset with me is an understatement (royally pissed is a better description   .

 

Again, thanks for your help and, again, please tell your developers that many of us really, really, really need closed captions.

 

Steve

 

Hey Stevedallas,

 

I have hearing loss myself - I am legally deaf in my left ear - and agree it would be fantastic if Emby added this feature to the product.

 

I took matters in to my own hands in the meantime and figured out a way to do it myself

 

The trick is post-processing, which Emby supports for DVR recordings. Simply put, when Emby finishes recording a program, it can trigger a post-processing script to run on said recording. You can do a lot of things with those - re-encode them, or automatically cut commercials, etc. - and, additionally, strip out Closed Captioning and put them in an external .srt file. This file - which will match your recording - can then be loaded at playback like any external subtitle.

 

The script I wrote does several things but let's not complicate this. Couple questions for you:

 

Based on your posts/examples I assume you are in the US, but never hurts to ask - these are US ATSC recordings, correct? It matters for how subs get extracted.

 

and

 

What OS are you running Emby Server on? Windows, Linux, FreeBSD? I ran mine on a FreeBSD system however it was easily adapted to Linux. Windows will be slightly trickier because the script will have to be re-written for it most likely however it's not that complicated.

 

I'm willing to help, though I can't guarantee of course this will end up working for you. Let me know.

 

My older post, with a copy of my script (from FreeBSD) is here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/49900-automated-commercial-removal-from-tv-recordings/page-2&do=findComment&comment=618199 however unless you really know what you are doing I wouldn't try to use it as-is with your server.

 

@@Luke - you can see in my script all I'm doing is leveraging ffmpeg, the same installed by Emby, to extract them. My way is pretty basic and could probably be improved/probably should be improved to cover more use cases, but

echo "Extracting subtitles"

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "movie=${b}[out0+subcc]" -map 0:1 "$d"

echo "Subtitle extraction complete"

where "b" is the input file and "d" is the same name output with an .srt extension, works.

[Luke 39685]

Thanks, we will be looking at support for closed captions in a future release.

[Luke 39685]

On 10/20/2018 at 2:36 PM, stevedallas said:

Maybe I am missing the entire concept of subtitles.  When I watch a show live on tv, there are subtitles. 

 

Does this mean that even though a TV show has subtitles, subtitles are only available for movies or shows with an open subtitle entry?

 

Am I confusing subtoitles with closed captioning?  If so, please point me to the entry(ies) explaining in newby terms how to get closed captions. My OS is Windows 10 and I have realtime monitoring on in all libraries.

 

Thanks very much in advance!!  I really appreciate your help.  I will be "cutting the cord" soon, and emby will be my DVR for all OTA programming.

@stevedallas

Universal closed caption support is coming: