General conference video on media/USB players with subtitles/closed captions

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jcrosbie
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General conference video on media/USB players with subtitles/closed captions

#1

Post by jcrosbie »

Our stake is now downloading the files after conference in .mp4 video format and playing it on media players at the chapels. I've checked lds.org, posts here, and the wiki but can't find any information on subtitles for the hearing impaired being made available in a file for pairing with video played on media players?

I know that closed captioning comes down via the satellite feed, and that there are subtitles available on the DVD's - but it would be great if a .sub or XML type file with the subtitles for each session was available. Anyone know of anything like this?

Once you get it in any type of subtitle format, then it's not difficult to convert to a format that will play on a particular media player as there are quite a few formats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_% ... le_formats
jcrosbie
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#2

Post by jcrosbie »

Just to follow up on this original request. Is there any movement in getting standalone closed captioning/subtitle files available for general conference sessions? There is a definite need in our stake and we know that quite a few other stakes would also like this.
russelljd
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#3

Post by russelljd »

We are currently working on a process to make subtitle files available with downloadable MP4s. The process is a little tricky since each media player wants them embedded in the file in a slightly different way. What media player are you using in your stake and we will test to see if we can make it work on that device?
jcrosbie
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#4

Post by jcrosbie »

Hi JD, this is great! We currently use a Western Digital media player, but to be honest if you get us a subtitle file of some sort for the sessions - we're happy to test\convert & play around with it to get it to work with our setup. I know that media players can be problematic, but we can use a laptop too if needed.
dillonkor
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#5

Post by dillonkor »

We would also very much appreciate any format of the subtitle. It doesn't have to be embedded in the file, and a standalone version may in fact work better for the setup in our stake.
jcrosbie
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#6

Post by jcrosbie »

Just following up if there has been any progress on subtitle files being made available for general conference sessions?
wiscombe.peter
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#7

Post by wiscombe.peter »

With the increased use of multimedia in lessons, this is becoming becoming a need instead of a want.

We are advised to pre-download videos for use in Sunday Lessons, but the closed captioning is not available (that I can tell) on any of the downloaded videos.

With deaf or hard of hearing members in our wards, it would be helpful if we could have progress on this.
paulw
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#8

Post by paulw »

I wanted to download some subtitles a while back so I looked into how the online videos did their subtitles and eventually I found a way to download many of the subtitles in an automated fashion. Here are a few different methods you can try.

The way I originally got subtitles was using Firefox's developer toolbox. Specifically, the network monitor feature shows all requests made by the browser as it downloads files off the Internet. To see the subtitle file it downloads I first navigated to the video I wanted to download, then I opened the network monitor. I then pushed the CC button to turn on the subtitles at which point the browser makes a few requests which will show up in the network monitor tool. One of the requests will be for the subtitles file. Right clicking give you the option to open it in a new tab or to copy the URL. The text of the file will also show under the "response" tab, where you could copy/paste it to save it as a new file. Using this method you can download any of the subtitles for videos that have them.

A slightly different approach relies upon the similarity of a video's thumbnail to its subtitle file. If you right click on a video's thumbnail you can "View Image" or "Copy Image Location" to get something similar to media.ldscdn.org/images/videos/youth/mormon-messages-for-youth-2012/2012-08-008-reclaimed-192x108-thumb.jpg. The important part, what I'll call the video ID, is everything after "videos/" up to "-192x108-thumb.jpg", or: youth/mormon-messages-for-youth-2012/2012-08-008-reclaimed. From what I've seen in general, subtitle files all begin with media.ldscdn.org/dfxp and end with this video-specific ID tag. Combining the two and appending .xml you get media.ldscdn.org/dfxp/youth/mormon-messages-for-youth-2012/2012-08-008-reclaimed.xml which happens to be the subtitle file for the Reclaimed video. This works well in general but it doesn't always work.

Lastly, I created a little program to automate downloading subtitle files (using the second method from above) which is handy if you've got a lot of videos you need subtitles for. It is described in detail on the program's Github website. Skip down to the "Exporting to Roku" section where it describes how to use the program to download the subtitle files. Links to download the program and its helper file are at the bottom of the page.

The subtitle files are all in the TTML format. If you need them in a different format there are a few online subtitle converters you can try. I don't know how well they work, unfortunately.
wiscombe.peter
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#9

Post by wiscombe.peter »

It looks like I need to stand corrected - the closed captioning IS there for many of the videos. I just needed to make sure of how to use it in my video player.
russellhltn
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Re: General conference video on media/USB players with subti

#10

Post by russellhltn »

wiscombe.peter wrote:It looks like I need to stand corrected - the closed captioning IS there for many of the videos. I just needed to make sure of how to use it in my video player.
Unlike closed captioning for SD TV, there is no defacto standard for CC in digital streams. So you may have to find a different viewer that supports what is there or covert the CC from what is available.
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