# Closed captions for archived shows



## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

This has been discussed before, but I want to see if there is an updated answer. I have a Tivo Premiere XL. I back-up many of the non-copy-protected recordings to a Netgear Readynas fileserver, and then I can transfer them back to the Tivo to watch them. Works, though there certainly have been glitches. But my major current problem is I lose the closed captions.

Anyone know anything about preserving captions on transferred Tivo recordings? Tivo tech support, with which I have had very mixed luck, simply says I am out of luck.

Thanks!


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Use latest version of wmcbrine pyTivo along with recent version of ffmpeg and add "ts=on" setting to pyTivo config and captions will be preserved when transferring shows back to the TiVo. On series 4 TiVos if you transfer programs back in mpeg2 program stream container the captions appear to be discarded. The "ts=on" setting in pyTivo tells it to transfer back in mpeg2 transport stream container which avoids the captions problem. One of many things pyTivo does better than TiVo Desktop at.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

I know this is the Premiere forum, but will this work for a TivoHD? I keep looking for a way to preserve closed captions for my DVDs that I copy to the Tivo.

Thanks,
Bob


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

Another method if you have VideoRedo TVsuite is to use their H.264 Beta release which will preserve closed captions on encoded MP4 recordings. Closed captions can be toggled on/off via the remote on the Tivo Premieres, but does not work for the older Tivos. I use this in conjunction with kmttg to edit out commercials, encode and then archive TV shows. You have to turn on Videoredo encoding profiles in kmttg via File -> Configure -> VideoRedo


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Series 3 TiVos actually don't have the bug that the series 4 TiVos do. i.e. mpeg2 program streams transferred to your series 3 unit do properly preserve captions. The problem with DVDs is the captions they use are not quite compatible with what TiVo needs. However if you use recent versions of VideoRedo TV-Suite and are willing to re-encode to H.264 then you can get working captions from DVD sources. (You then need to use pyTivo push to transfer the H.264 recording to your THD). See the pyTivo thread around here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9450330#post9450330

Another perhaps easier way to go for DVD sources is extract captions to accompanying videoFile.srt file and then use streambaby to "stream" the file to your THD. streambaby automatically looks for the .srt file and will display captions that you can toggle on/off using zoom button. You can use kmttg as a front end to ccextractor to extract captions from a DVD mpeg file.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

Thanks, moyekj.

Your trick of course works, but unfortunately does me no good. If I transfer a video to my PC with a PC-based program like TiVo desktop or even the TiVo web browser interface, it seems I can transfer it back to the Tivo as you suggest with pytivo, and captions are preserved.

However, it also appears that if I transfer a recording from the readynas to the TiVo via a PC using pytivo with ts=on as you suggest, still no captions. It's therefore likely the captions were lost during the archival process (i.e., Tivo => readynas), so there's likely no way I can get them back.

I've used a readynas for archival because it runs "automatically" from the readynas, archiving all shows on the Tivo that are set to "keep until I delete"; I don't have to use any interface other than the Tivo's to make the process work relatively automatically - easy on my family members! Also, I never put my readynas to sleep.

From the comments you have posted here I would guess the .TiVo files are sent to the readynas without the captions, perhaps as program streams rather than transport streams - I don't know enough about the transfer process and file formats to be able to determine what's going on. 

But probably I must live without captions, or use a PC-based program like your excellent kmttg.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

alexofindy, you can run mediainfo on one of your archived .TiVo files to see if it has captions in the 1st place. I don't think the captions are stripped out when transferring off the TiVo Premiere regardless of what format they are transferred (PS or TS container). Look for EIA-608 captions in the mediainfo output.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

Mediainfo indicates that the files are type MPEG-PS; they do have the EIA-608 caption component, so I don't know why the captions don't play when I transfer them back to the TiVo with pytivo.

Files that I transfer to my PC as MPEG-TS (these don't go through my readynas) and then transfer back with pytivo do seem to preserve captions when I transfer them back.

I have to move on to other things for a few days, and will return to this investigation over the weekend. Thanks again for your advice!!!


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

moyekj said:


> Use latest version of wmcbrine pyTivo along with recent version of ffmpeg and add "ts=on" setting to pyTivo config and captions will be preserved when transferring shows back to the TiVo. On series 4 TiVos if you transfer programs back in mpeg2 program stream container the captions appear to be discarded. The "ts=on" setting in pyTivo tells it to transfer back in mpeg2 transport stream container which avoids the captions problem. One of many things pyTivo does better than TiVo Desktop at.


Wait, I use kmttg to transfer off of the Tivo, and the Mac version of pyTivo, which also has StreamBaby in it (probably irrelevant).

I don't do any conversion, I just keep them in decrypted MPEG 2. Can I play in the reindeer games too? I forget if you're referring to the stream type that tivodecode does NOT work with.

Or if this would help, I could just offload and *not* decode.. would that work? I'd much rather have the captions retained. (And they do on e.g. my Tivo HD)


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

tried one more experiment. If I take a readynas tivo file, and decode it using kmttg, I get an mpg file type. If I play this file in VLC, I do get captions - they are badly garbled, but readable and clearly present.

more futzing in a few days....


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

mattack said:


> I don't do any conversion, I just keep them in decrypted MPEG 2. Can I play in the reindeer games too? I forget if you're referring to the stream type that tivodecode does NOT work with.


 Offloading from TiVo in PS container is fine (captions are preserved). The key is if returning them to a series 4 unit they have to be returned as TS container and for that to happen you need to set "ts=on" property in pyTivo config.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

alexofindy said:


> Mediainfo indicates that the files are type MPEG-PS; they do have the EIA-608 caption component, so I don't know why the captions don't play when I transfer them back to the TiVo with pytivo.


 Are you sure you have ts=on set in pyTivo (and that you re-started pyTivo since adding that)? They have to be returned in TS container for captions to be preserved and I suspect that is not happening. One more important factor is you need a recent version of ffmpeg as well as older versions won't work.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

Thanks again for the help.

I do have the ts=on in the conf file, and I did restart pyTivo (it goes in the [server] section, correct?)

I may have downloaded the wrong version of ffmpeg, and will give it another go this weekend.

I will get back to this issue, and again, I really appreciate your help.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

moyekj said:


> Series 3 TiVos actually don't have the bug that the series 4 TiVos do. i.e. mpeg2 program streams transferred to your series 3 unit do properly preserve captions. The problem with DVDs is the captions they use are not quite compatible with what TiVo needs. However if you use recent versions of VideoRedo TV-Suite and are willing to re-encode to H.264 then you can get working captions from DVD sources. (You then need to use pyTivo push to transfer the H.264 recording to your THD). See the pyTivo thread around here:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9450330#post9450330
> 
> Another perhaps easier way to go for DVD sources is extract captions to accompanying videoFile.srt file and then use streambaby to "stream" the file to your THD. streambaby automatically looks for the .srt file and will display captions that you can toggle on/off using zoom button. You can use kmttg as a front end to ccextractor to extract captions from a DVD mpeg file.


I made a quick test of your VideoRedo/pyTivo suggestion and didn't have any success. I'll make a more exhaustive test later.

I have used the Streambaby solution, but it fails for other family members if I don't have the computer running.

Thank you for the suggestions.

Bob


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

moyekj said:


> Are you sure you have ts=on set in pyTivo (and that you re-started pyTivo since adding that)? They have to be returned in TS container for captions to be preserved and I suspect that is not happening. One more important factor is you need a recent version of ffmpeg as well as older versions won't work.


Do you know how I can set this in the Mac OS X GUI PyTivoX?

I looked around a bit the other day and couldn't find anything..


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

mattack said:


> Do you know how I can set this in the Mac OS X GUI PyTivoX?
> 
> I looked around a bit the other day and couldn't find anything..


 Nope. But most likely the pyTivo that is part of that deprecated project is so ancient it doesn't have the TS code anyway. I would switch to wmcbrine pyTivo.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

That's not a GUI pyTivo is it? I live in CLI all the time, but for something like pyTivo, I'd prefer a GUI app.

Yeah, uggh, looks like there's no GUI option.. plus PyTivoX lets me use *multiple* folders. Looks like pytivo itself only allows one at a time. Mostly due to space reasons (I'm now starting to eat into my saved recordings), I was saving in a few different places.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

mattack said:


> That's not a GUI pyTivo is it? I live in CLI all the time, but for something like pyTivo, I'd prefer a GUI app.
> 
> Yeah, uggh, looks like there's no GUI option.. plus PyTivoX lets me use *multiple* folders. Looks like pytivo itself only allows one at a time. Mostly due to space reasons (I'm now starting to eat into my saved recordings), I was saving in a few different places.


 pyTivo does allow for multiple video and/or audio shares. There is a web server GUI for it. pyTivoX is no longer maintained so you won't get much help with it.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

I still can not send tivo videos back to my tivo with the captions intact using pyTivo.

The videos are stored on my Netgear Readynas file server. Mediainfo shows the captions to be present in the .tivo video files. If I send the shows back to my tivo directly (the readynas acts as a DLNA server, and appears under My Shows on my tivo) the shows play fine, but no captions.

If I copy the .tivo video files to my PC, and send them back with pyTivo with ts=on, same deal, no captions. Here is my pyTivo configuration file:
**********************

[Server]
ts = on
port = 9032
togo_path = HomeVideos
tivodecode = C:\pytivo\bin\tivodecode.exe
tivo_password = redacted
tivo_username = redacted
ffmpeg = C:\pytivo\bin\ffmpeg.exe
tivo_mak = redacted

[_tivo_SD]

[_tivo_HD]

[HomeVideos]
path = C:\Users\Alex\Desktop\videos
type = video

********************

I have the latest versions of pytivo, tivodecode, and ffmpeg, and the appropriate version of python.

If I decode the videos on my PC using kmttg as a frontend to tivodecode, I get mpg files. If I play these files on my PC with VLC, the captions are there, but badly garbled (though clearly recognizable). Other media players do not show the captions at all.

Any suggestions as to why pytivo does not preserve the captions, even with ts = on? Also, can anyone suggest a windows video player (or a mac player) that would allow me to play the decoded files on a PC (or Mac) with ungarbled captions?

Thanks very much!!


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

alexofindy said:


> I still can not send tivo videos back to my tivo with the captions intact using pyTivo.
> 
> The videos are stored on my Netgear Readynas file server. Mediainfo shows the captions to be present in the .tivo video files. If I send the shows back to my tivo directly (the readynas acts as a DLNA server, and appears under My Shows on my tivo) the shows play fine, but no captions.
> 
> ...


 Most likely because you are transferring .TiVo files back to your TiVo. For the ts=on trick to work you have to decrypt .TiVo to .mpg and then transfer the .mpg back to your Premiere. If you transfer .TiVo file pyTivo will not remux to TS container when transferring back and hence captions won't be present. With ts=on and transferring a .mpg file this will force pyTivo to remux to TS container and then captions are preserved.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

OK, once again thanks very much, moyekj.

This works, I can now see the captions on my tivo. But all is not completely well - the captions are recognizable, but badly garbled. Exactly as they are when I play the same mpg file with VLC on my PC. some letters are duplicated, some are added, others are missing. 

Any thoughts on where the corruption may be occurring, or how I might track it down? What settings should I use in kmttg when I decrypt the .tivo files? And thanks again for your help, and of course for kmttg.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

alexofindy said:


> OK, once again thanks very much, moyekj.
> 
> This works, I can now see the captions on my tivo. But all is not completely well - the captions are recognizable, but badly garbled. Exactly as they are when I play the same mpg file with VLC on my PC. some letters are duplicated, some are added, others are missing.
> 
> Any thoughts on where the corruption may be occurring, or how I might track it down? What settings should I use in kmttg when I decrypt the .tivo files? And thanks again for your help, and of course for kmttg.


 There are no special settings for decryption and it's unlikely the decryption is doing the corruption. Could well be the transmission from your cable company (i.e. original recording) was messed up.
Easy way to confirm round trip from TiVo->PC->TiVo is not messing things up is:
1. Find a recording that has properly working captions on your TiVo
2. Transfer it to your PC and decrypt to .mpg
3. Transfer it back to your TiVo and check the captions again
To speed things up perhaps just make a 5 minute recording on your TiVo for testing with.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

Are you transferring them from the TiVo as transport streams or program streams? AFAIK tivodecode still isn't 100% when it comes to transport streams.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

The transfer from the Tivo to the Readynas file server are handled by software on the Readynas, which is not really user configurable. If I examine a transferred .tivo file with mediainfo, the file is MPEG-PS and includes an EIA-608 text stream. Thus, I assume the transfer from the Tivo to my file server is, in fact, program stream.

I've checked several files that have good captions when first played on the Tivo, these also wind up with corrupted captions after the round trip, so the problem is not with my cable provider - the programs arrive on my tivo with captions intact.

But after I transfer them to my fileserver, and then to my PC, and decode them using kmttg as a frontend to tivodecode, the captions are garbled. This garbling is the same whether I play the decoded files on my PC with VLC, or transfer the decoded files (which are file type .mpg) back to my Tivo with pyTivo with TS=on. The issue here is that I can't transfer them back to the Tivo as TS unless I first decode (with tivodecode) them.

If I transfer the .tivo files back to my Tivo directly from my Readynas fileserver, or from my PC using pyTivo, in both cases there are no captions at all; presumably in this case it is the known problem with a Tivo that it doesn't recognize captions that arrive as PS.

Any suggestions?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Probably Readynas doesn't give you an option, but if you download with kmttg with TS Transfers option turned on then if you transfer those .TiVo files back the captions should be there without the need to decrypt 1st since it's already in TS container.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

Thanks, moyekj. I suspect that will work, and will probably try it. But I would like to see if I can get it working via my readynas - the readynas automatically archives all shows with "keep until I delete" set, which lets my family members control the archiving from the Tivo user interface alone. 

I'll be doing some more futzing.....


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

alexofindy said:


> TBut I would like to see if I can get it working via my readynas - the readynas automatically archives all shows with "keep until I delete" set, which lets my family members control the archiving from the Tivo user interface alone.


 FYI kmttg auto transfers has an option to do that too, but of course means having to leave a PC on running kmttg which is not as convenient.


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

I have actually found a workaround, that for at least one show, works. User friendly it is not.

The Tivo recordings are saved on my Readynas as encrypted .Tivo files, in .ps format

I have downloaded and installed two programs on my Windows PC. First ccextractor, with the windows GUI. This program will extract the captions from the encrypted .TiVo file, without altering the .Tivo file, and quickly generate an .srt file which contains the captions in a standard, readable, text format. The captions are not corrupted.

I also downloaded the 32 bit version of a codec called directvobsub, which enables the standard 32 bit version of windows medial player to read the .srt file. The .srt file (which must have the same name, other than the extension, as the .TiVo file; ccextractor does this by default) should be in the same folder as the .Tivo file. 

I have previously installed the free version of Tivo Desktop, which of course is no longer available from Tivo. In any case, it installs a 32 bit codec that the 32 bit version of Windows Media Player uses to decrypt and play the .Tivo file.

If directvobsub has also been installed, a curved green arrow will appear in the system tray when the .TiVo file plays. this will allow one to configure the captions.

Without changing any configuration options, playing a .TiVo file in windows media player will display uncorrupted captions, with one problem. At least for the single show I tried, the captions are out of sync by 46 or so seconds.

Directvobsub has an option to advance or delay the captions. If I enter 46000 milliseconds in the directvobsub configuration dialog, the captions played properly on my PC.

I have only tried playing short segments of one file, (it is late and I am tired) I will soon investigate further and see if this really works. I suspect the 46000 number will vary from show to show, so this procedure is definitely NOT user friendly. But it's a start.

Directvobsub is available on the internet either as a standalone codec, and is included in many of the readily available codec packages.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

That's a lot of trouble. You know that if you have a .mpg file and accompanying .srt file that streambaby will display the captions right? That's a much easier solution and the captions can be configured to be displayed in many ways (size, background and foreground color, etc) using this version:
http://streambaby.googlecode.com/files/streambaby-20111203-2132.zip


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

I didn't know about streambaby, and will try that shortly. 

After installation of the software I mentioned, a one-time process which I have now completed, the time consuming part of the process I described is determining the time offset (46000 in the example I gave). I don't know if using streambaby on an .mpg file will avoid this issue. I still need to generate the .srt file, for which I used ccextractor. If this is where the sync discrepancy comes from, I won't avoid it with streambaby. Best way to find this out it to try it, which I will.

Do you know a way to get an .srt file from a PS .Tivo file other than ccextractor? These are the files saved on my Readynas

I am suspecting the offset somehow arises because the TV show I recorded doesn't start at the beginning of the .Tivo file - there is a part of a commercial recorded first, which may introduce the timing discrepancy.

My earlier experiments suggest that using tivodecode corrupts the caption data, which is why I would probably have to make the .srt file before I run tivodecode. I need to track this corrupting issue down, as solving it would also simply things for me. (A guess: there are two types of captions - closed captions and subtitles, which I believe are encoded completely differently. I wonder if there is corrupted subtitle data, in addition to the closed caption data, stored in the .Tivo file, which becomes visible after the file is decrypted into an .mpg by tivodecode)

One aside, though this is a bit off topic. I have found that Windows Media Player (WMP) is the only player that will play a .Tivo file directly, decrypting on the fly. (Unless I use the .srt workaround, WMP doesn't display captions). I am suspecting that this is because the default version of WMP used by Windows 7 is a 32 bit version (there's also a 64 bit version installed with Windows 7, but it is not normally used). I believe the codec Tivo Desktop (the free version) installs to decode .Tivo files on the fly is 32 bit only. My other media players are probably 64 bit, and can't use the 32 bit decrypting codec. Wouldn't surprise me if Tivo doesn't have a 64 bit version of the decrypting codec, which may be why they no longer allow downloads of the free version of Tivo Desktop - as the world moves to 64 bit, the decrypting codec in the free version of Tivo Desktop stops working. As I said, this is a somewhat off topic digression

Thanks again for your help, moyekj!!!


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

You may need VideoRedo QS Fix in flow to fix sync problems. Via kmttg I have ccextractor configured and tick off "decrypt", "QS Fix" (using VideoRedo) and "captions" task to download from TiVo to make an .mpg file and .srt file. I can then use streambaby to stream back to TiVo with captions or use "encode" task with ffmpeg to hard burn captions right into the video stream and either way it's always in sync for me.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

You can download a short clip of streambaby in action showing captions here:
http://tivostream.googlecode.com/files/iron_man_clip_with_captions.ts


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## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

Thanks again, moyekj. 

I did try to run streambaby, but it complained that the command "java" in the streambaby bat file was not understood; obviously, I do have java installed, but I'll have to figure out why the command is not recognized by Windows, presumably an environment or PATH variable or some such. 

I am guessing that streambaby will have offset (out of sync) captions; there's probably an offset in the .srt file produced by ccextractor. directvobsub allows me to compensate, but in the documentation I find on streambaby, I don 't see such an option. As I said, I plan to try the version of streambaby you suggest, as soon as I figure the java glitch out.

I don't own videoredo; I will gladly buy if it will solve my problem. I doubt it will fix the sync issue, it seems to be able to fix different sorts of corruption in the .srt files. Probably I'll try the ProjectX option in kmttg first, and then I think there are trial versions of videoredo. 

This is all apparently occurring because my source files are the PS .Tivo files archived to my readynas fileserver. The transport stream files you download using kmttg are probably cleaner, for whatever reason. I may switch to using kmttg in the future, but for now the readynas user interface is easier (since it doesn't require the computer to archive a show, all I do is set keep-until-I-delete on the Tivo) and in any case I have a lot of shows already on the Tivo I hope to view with captions.

Thanks once more!


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

For streambaby just edit the .bat file to put the full path to javaw.exe in it in place of "java".
VideoRedo QS Fix is designed to fix timestamp issues which cause out of sync problems. Yes try the free trial version. ProjectX won't work because while it fixes timestamp issues it throws out captions.
Switching to TS downloads is not a good option without VideoRedo since tivodecode can't decrypt them properly. PS downloads are fine and the problem most likely is timestamp issues in orgiinal TiVo recording.


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## BlondAngel (Feb 25, 2011)

Hi All,
I am using kmttg to get the files from my premiere.

I did not install tivo desktop software.

VideoReDo could not open *.tivo files but it can open the decrypted/decoded *.mpg generated from kmttg.

When I open the mpg file with VideoReDo, it shows that the captions are preserved. However, when I put the mpg file to be served by pyTivo, the captions are not available on the premiere. Here are the contents of the pytivo.conf file:
[Server]
port = 9032
ffmpeg = C:\apps\kmttg\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe
ts = on

[MyMovies]
type = video
path = C:\Users\Media\Videos

When I check the media infomation, it says that the 
mux type is ps - mpeg2 and the 
captioning is eia 608 with 
audio codec ac3.

So, why are captions not present? What is missing in my process? I had thought that ts=on is all I needed to ensure that captions are present.

I am using the wmcbrine fork of pyTivo (I downloaded it yesterday), and ffmpeg is version May 13 2013, and python is 2.7.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

When you set ts=on in pyTivo.conf did you re-start pyTivo? Unless pyTivo is re-muxing to TS when transferring back to Premiere captions won't work.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

One other important factor I sometimes forget about:
On TiVo under Settings-Displays-Closed Captioning you need following settings:
Standard Captions: CC1
Digital Captions: None

I tried a sample transfer today of a show with captions back to my Roamio with pyTivo and ts=on and captions were not displaying.
Checking the above options I had the following (default) settings:
Standard Captions: Off
Digital Captions: DTVCC1

Once I corrected the settings then captions showed up as expected on my transferred video.


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## BlondAngel (Feb 25, 2011)

I double-checked my default settings for closed captioning and it is set to:
Standard Captions: CC1
Digital Captions: DTVCC1


For an *.mpg file, I got an error message from pyTivo (actually from ffmpeg)
Please use -b:a or -b:v, -b is ambiguous

For a *.ts file, I don't have this error message.

Regardless of these issues, once I restarted pyTivo (which I have repeatedly whenever I make a change to pytivo.conf) and re-set the default closed captioning, the captioning from the transfered files WORK!

Thanks.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

BlondAngel said:


> I double-checked my default settings for closed captioning and it is set to:
> Standard Captions: CC1
> *Digital Captions: DTVCC1*


Using Digital Captions has caused problems for many caption users. Scrambled words and generally garbage displays. Setting this to NONE resolves it.

YMMV.


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## BlondAngel (Feb 25, 2011)

When I was using google and searching for this issue, one thing that stands out: many people have this issue but have difficulty finding a solution (or once people find a solution, forget to post their experience). 
So, here is my solution/recap for newbies:

0) I assume that the machine has java installed
1) get python 2.x (I use 2.7) installed
2) get pytivo (wmcbrine fork) and 
3) get kmttg

You start pytivo by running (double-clicking) the pytivo.py file
You start kmttg by running (double-clicking) the kmttg.jar file
Look at the readme files for each if you have issues.


With kmttg, transfer your shows from your tivo. There is an option in kmttg to transfer in TS format. Do not use this! Keep it at default (TS turned off) to transfer in PS format. Set the checkbox to decrypt the transferred show (it will be saved as an mpg file).
add this setting to the [server] section of pytivo.conf file:ts=on​
On TiVo under Settings-Displays-Closed Captioning you need following
settings:
Standard Captions: CC1
Digital Captions: None​
Notes: use mediainfo or videoredo if you want to double-check that the file has closed captioning; look for eia 608. In particular, videoredo has an option to turn on captioning while previewing the video.

My current settings on my Tivo is 
Standard Captions: CC1
Digital Captions: DTVCC1​
But this may not work for you. YMMV.

In short, transfer tivo shows to PC/Mac in PS format, save it as mpg (optional) -- ensure that the captioning stream is not stripped out, send it back to tivo in TS format.


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