OSMC does not show closed captions

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

I have a few video files with closed captions. I can see these captions in VLC windows player but OSMC does not show these captions. I have enabled closed captions in Settings, Player, Language screen.

Linux osmc 4.14.78-4-osmc on raspberry pi 3b+

MediaInfo shows this info about the video file-

General
ID : 383 (0x17F)
Complete name : C:\temp\great-human-odyssey.mp4
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 1.53 GiB
Duration : 58 min 59 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 3 708 kb/s
Law rating : TV-PG
FileExtension_Invalid : ts m2t m2s m4t m4s tmf ts tp trp ty

Video
ID : 49 (0x31)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, RefFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 58 min 58 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 3 137 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 12.0 Mb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 540 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard : Component
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.151
Stream size : 1.29 GiB (85%)
Color range : Limited

Audio
ID : 52 (0x34)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 58 min 59 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -1 s 112 ms
Stream size : 162 MiB (10%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main

Text #1
ID : 49 (0x31)-CC1
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-608
Muxing mode : SCTE 128 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 58 min 58 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)
CaptionServiceName : CC1

Text #2
ID : 49 (0x31)-1
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-708
Muxing mode : SCTE 128 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 58 min 58 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

2

First, a correction as OSMC is a linux distribution containing Kodi. That you are really trying to say is that Kodi does not show the captions.

According to the media info, the CC stream is empty. I also wonder at the Invalid file extension. Was the file in question a .ts recording?

3

The file was a recording from HDHomeRun.
I changed the file extension to .ts . It still does not show captions in Kodi but does in VLC player.

6

If you open the ts in mkvtoolnix do you see the subs ? Trying to remux to Mkv can’t hurt in my opinion. Also try to analyze the ts file with eac3to and if it sees the sub file in the ts use it to extract it and then mud it into mkv manually. You might have to ocr ( convert to srt first though)

7

I was able to use ffmpeg to extract closed captions into srt file.
I can see subtitles now.

1 Like
8

Just acquired some files, about 150, with these CC subtitles myself.
My children’s Roku TV detects and shows them but Kodi doesn’t.
I found a way to convert the CC to SSA but it involved multiple steps and would be time consuming to do for the amount of files I have.
I’m curious what method you used with ffmpeg because I might be able to do something similar and run a batch.

9

Did you enable Settings>Player>Language>enable parsing for closed captions? I don’t think that option is enabled by default.

10

Yeah, I tried that.
Unfortunately it didn’t work for me.
I’m going to try and use CCExtractor to batch extract the subs to substation alpha then run a batch file for mkvmerge to mux the mp4 and ssa into a mkv.
For some reason the Vero stretches the 4:3 mp4 to 16:9 but if I mux it to mkv it stays 4:3.
So doing this batch will likely fix both issues.
Thanks for your reply!