TV closed captions as a subtitle track for DVR recordings?

Feature Suggestions
1

Whenever I watch TV, I usually turn on the closed captions so I don’t mishear what’s being said. But my DVR recordings don’t have that luxury, so I was wondering if there was any way to add support for closed captions?

2

I strongly agree. I’d really like the Live TV to have this too. CC always seems to be an afterthought–but it’s vital for many, especially if you don’t hear well and want to watch something with others (who hear fine) at a comfortable volume.

3

It is really weird that plex isn’t currently supporting CC. My understanding is that Plex did support CC before they switched to mkv. I assumed that the switch back to .ts was partially for CC support again. Apparently not.

4

@repentance said:
It is really weird that plex isn’t currently supporting CC. My understanding is that Plex did support CC before they switched to mkv. I assumed that the switch back to .ts was partially for CC support again. Apparently not.

To be fair, my recordings all save in MKV format by default (which is fine because that’s the format I use for the rest of my collection anyways)

5

I configured subtitle downloads from OpenSubtitles.org, but they are incomplete and out-of-sync, at least for the show that I tested. So, recording actual TV CC would be a great feature addition!

1 Like
6

Glad to see this feature requested already. Like many others, I’ve been using Plex DVR to record TV from my HDHR for awhile and noticed that CC (closed captions) aren’t being displayed.

It turns out they are actually being saved, just not displayed. The closed captions are encoded as EIA-608 and EIA-708 Teletext. Would love to have the closed captioning displayed like subtitles.

Text #1
ID                                       : 256 (0x100)-CC1
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : EIA-608
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Duration                                 : 31mn 58s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)
CaptionServiceName                       : CC1

Text #2
ID                                       : 256 (0x100)-CC3
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : EIA-608
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Duration                                 : 31mn 58s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)
CaptionServiceName                       : CC3

Text #3
ID                                       : 256 (0x100)-1
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Duration                                 : 31mn 58s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #4
ID                                       : 256 (0x100)-2
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Duration                                 : 31mn 58s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)
7

@krunk4ever said:
Glad to see this feature requested already. Like many others, I’ve been using Plex DVR to record TV from my HDHR for awhile and noticed that CC (closed captions) aren’t being displayed.

It turns out they are actually being saved, just not displayed. The closed captions are encoded as EIA-608 and EIA-708 Teletext. Would love to have the closed captioning displayed like subtitles.

Awesome, nice to know I don’t have to re-record everything!

8

So you should be able to run CCExtractor on the recordings manually, until this gets built into Plex In theory it could work with live streams too, but I don’t know how to configure that.

9

Yes, please add this feature.

10

Ccextractor does work, but CC’s are often out of sync and the spelling is frequently off. I use a Linux bash script on mine. I posted one today on this forum, but would prefer it if it just work d inside Plex.

11

Remember to like the original post if you want this feature to get the attention of Plex employees.

12

If you use a computer for Plex, with or without a NAS, you can run the recordings thru Handbrake. It will make the CC appear as subtitles, and then Plex will recognize it. It does require a lot of manual labor to run Handbrake, i.e., remove the old file from Plex by deleting for Plex App, reintroduce the new file, etc.

Much better if Plex could recognize it without this work. The last time I was able to use Plex with captions was Plex version 9.3.4 for Mac.

13

I’m wrestling with the same problem. The weird thing: On iOS devices, Plex does recognize closed captions, at least on some recordings! They show up under the subtitle options for some shows I’ve recorded, but don’t show up on Plex on my Mac.

Also, I can’t get Plex to download and display external subtitles, at least with any kind of consistency, for the life of me, but that’s a whole other problem…