Subtitle help request

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Rikkitic

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#278482 19-Oct-2020 10:45

As old age creeps up, I find it harder to understand some movie soundtracks and the like. I can blast my ears with headphones, but coming from Holland I am used to subtitles and actually prefer them. I stream almost everything I watch through Kodi and would like to make use of closed captions and subtitle downloads but am having trouble getting these to work. Since Geekzone is an unlimited font of wisdom in matters like this, I am wondering if anyone can offer some useful tips.

Subtitles: I don’t subscribe to services like Hulu or Netflix which I think have their own captioning. I occasionally watch films from different free sources like those published by @Apsattv. I have tried some subtitle services but so far they don’t seem to work very well. Can anyone offer recommendations or tips?

CC: Is this even available with IPTV live streams? I can get it from satellite on NZ Freeview, but there doesn’t seem to be anything with streaming. Am I missing something here?

Mainly I am just trying to get information on the possibilities. Any help would be much appreciated.

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bagheera

539 posts

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#2587619 19-Oct-2020 11:20

Subtitles are hard, most of them work by going x words at y time in the movie and display for z time, if what you are watch has longer / short blank space for ads or even ads in it then this timing breaks. If the streaming service does not have subtitles, then good luck adding them. If it a downloaded rip, then you have options like https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search/subs , you just need to find the right one for the timing, what you do is download the one you think is the right one for the rip, and play it and skip to the end, and see if the subtitles are still in sync or not, if not try the next one.

ps the govt should be make streaming services do subtitles because they do not want to do due to the cost of doing, and the only way that it gets done is due to they have too - like in the USA are forced to, so Netflix and Hulu have them

Rikkitic

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#2587677 19-Oct-2020 11:51

Thanks for the reply. That explains some things. I suppose I was being overly optimistic just thinking this would work. I am not trying to match downloads, just live streams. Opensubtitles doesn't work when I try to search any film. It just says it can't find anything. If I type the name of the film in, it comes up with several possibilities. So far, nothing has been any good. I get subs on some of them, but they are so far out of sync they can't even be corrected. Every time I want to try something else, I have to type the name of the film again (painful) and go through the whole process. It isn't worth the effort. I tried a few other services and none work at all. Addic7ed just gives a Kodi error. It was a nice idea but I'm not going to waste the rest of my life on this.

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Oblivian

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#2587692 19-Oct-2020 12:06

Bitrates/framerate conversion can also throw timing out by ~4% (look at an NTSC vs PAL dvd runtime..)

For streaming it would need to be bundled in the stream, or run an addon that does some very bad speech2text like they run on Youtube or Australian news broadcasts when in public settings on mute that can go very wrong. Pidgeon english like. Which I understand people have been after for ages for Kodi etc, but it's just a too hard bin.

bagheera

539 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2587694 19-Oct-2020 12:11

Rikkitic:

Thanks for the reply. That explains some things. I suppose I was being overly optimistic just thinking this would work. I am not trying to match downloads, just live streams. Opensubtitles doesn't work when I try to search any film. It just says it can't find anything. If I type the name of the film in, it comes up with several possibilities. So far, nothing has been any good. I get subs on some of them, but they are so far out of sync they can't even be corrected. Every time I want to try something else, I have to type the name of the film again (painful) and go through the whole process. It isn't worth the effort. I tried a few other services and none work at all. Addic7ed just gives a Kodi error. It was a nice idea but I'm not going to waste the rest of my life on this.

yeah, it a lot of work finding the right one, and normal it only for popular movies/tv shows, anything else not there, but not surprising as it all crowd surf stuff, normal by one person writing the subtitle, another person getting the timing right, and finger cross movie company does not get lawers involved asking it to be taken down due to copyright. This is why it should be a law for streaming services to have them, make it a lot easier for all - hoping soon, as the average age of people using streaming goes up, the cost-benefit to keep them with subtitle means they will do it, but the charges the movie company have to use the copyright printed subtitle most like mean it will never happen without a law forcing it.

Rikkitic

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#2587695 19-Oct-2020 12:12

I guess it was worth a shot. Thanks for clarifying.

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Eva888

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#2587755 19-Oct-2020 14:01

I also like having captions on for bad weather days when the wind noise is loud it saves having the TV roaring. Our TV is permanently set to captions because the wind up here ain’t ever going to stop. A lot of the time though the captions don’t match and lag behind the speakers which can be equally annoying. I also wish they would plan the placement of the captions better. Was watching a repair show and the entire repaired item was hidden by the boxed captions and by the time you find the right setting to turn captions off it’s too late.

Was also considering a Sound Bar to attach to the TV for some sound improvement.

Rikkitic

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#2587783 19-Oct-2020 14:25

I have wireless earphones connected to the sound system and that works fine, I just don't like using them that much. I would prefer to just read subtitles, but I guess that is 22nd century technology.

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Dairyxox

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#2587789 19-Oct-2020 14:37

22nd century, not really? Its now technology if you pay for the service, ala Netflix, Lightbox, Neon, Amazon, Hulu, Disney+ etc.

bagheera

539 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2587790 19-Oct-2020 14:41

Dairyxox:

22nd century, not really? Its now technology if you pay for the service, ala Netflix, Lightbox, Neon, Amazon, Hulu, Disney+ etc.

4/6 have subtitles in that list - 2 of them are NZ companies and do not have to do them, so they do not do them, the other 4 are US company, and there is a us law that makes them do subtitles

Rikkitic

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#2587794 19-Oct-2020 14:57

I am not an engineer, not even close, and the way technology keeps changing I can barely turn things on any more, but I can't imagine it would be all that difficult to plant little markers in digital video files to keep external subtitles in sync. They did something like that in the early days of film. They called it a clapper board.

Once that is sorted, it can't be all that hard to create such a subtitle file and find a way to download and play it. Kodi already does that. It just doesn't seem to do it very well. I didn't realise it would be so hard to make something like this work.

Yes, commercial streaming services like Netflix and Hulu already do this, but they use a different technology and the subtitles are already welded to the video. I didn't realise what I was asking is still in baby shoes.

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