Beyonwiz Australia

Hello helpful people
Subtitles are an absolute must for me ?
I know (have been told) the V2 does record subtitles (closed captions) from free to air TV.
With most PVR's this is generally the case but when recording some channels from free to air TV there are sometimes problems with the subtitles recording and sometimes problems with replaying them.
From my experience the most problematic are the HD channels .
Could I ask some helpful person out there (if they have a V2) to record a very small portion from 9 HD (with closed captions) and place it in dropbox or similar and supply me a link to it.
Not sure if it is ok to post a link in this forum but hopefully you know better than me.
Thanks to anyone who can help with this.

robeyon wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 16:37

Hello helpful people
Subtitles are an absolute must for me ?
I know (have been told) the V2 does record subtitles (closed captions) from free to air TV.

You have been misinformed. The V2 (and all other models of Beyonwiz) record subtitles from FTA TV.

You've asked the same question on the forum before and had pretty much the same answer.

robeyon wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 16:37

With most PVR's this is generally the case but when recording some channels from free to air TV there are sometimes problems with the subtitles recording and sometimes problems with replaying them.
From my experience the most problematic are the HD channels .

I'm not a heavy user of subtitles, but I've never had any problems with playing them on any model Beyonwiz (and I've used all models except the old FV-L1).

There are some forum members who rely on subtitles a lot, and I don't recall them posting that subtitles haven't been recorded or haven't played back.

robeyon wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 16:37

Could I ask some helpful person out there (if they have a V2) to record a very small portion from 9 HD (with closed captions) and place it in dropbox or similar and supply me a link to it.
Not sure if it is ok to post a link in this forum but hopefully you know better than me.
Thanks to anyone who can help with this.

Posting a link like that would be no problem.

The V2 initially had some problems displaying the recorded subtitles, in that they would flash on and off if the subtitles were being transcribed live (such as on news broadcasts), but this was fixed months ago.

MrQuade wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 17:20

The V2 initially had some problems displaying the recorded subtitles, in that they would flash on and off if the subtitles were being transcribed live (such as on news broadcasts), but this was fixed months ago.

I didn't remember that one, but my V2 is just used for testing.

[quoteYou have been misinformed. The V2 (and all other models of Beyonwiz) record subtitles from FTA TV.You've asked the same question on the forum before and had pretty much the same answer.][/quote]

Thanks pri
But this is absolutely not the same general question.
If you had to use subtitles all the time like me you would know some of the issues I face.
Believe me I have had a lot of experience in trying to get them to work perfectly.
I have tried many different VCR's and different recording methods that claim to record and perfectly replay subtitles.
Issues that vary between channels like Some lines of dialogue display while others dont (thats in the same video)
Subtitles that hang on the screen and do not disappear until the next dialogue is spoken (that can be 10 minutes or so in some cases)
I have a Topfield 2400 and that fails my requirements.
It records the subtitles really well but replay is very dodgy.
I have to down load the recordings (FTP) onto the laptop and play using Potplayer (The only player that does absolutely everything perfectly)
So that's just a few issues I run into.
Thats why I need to test things before I fork out the money and end up with something that will not help me.

I don't use subtitles myself, but many on the forums do truly on them, and I don't recall anyone reporting these sorts of problems with any of the Wiz T/U/V series.

MrQuade wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 15, 2019 09:44

I don't use subtitles myself, but many on the forums do truly on them, and I don't recall anyone reporting these sorts of problems with any of the Wiz T/U/V series.

As I also mentioned in my reply.

Here is a screenshot of a V2 displaying subtitles in a recording of Compass from ABC HD (the ABC HD watermark can be seen in the bottom right):


The subtitle display on the V2 and the (T & U series models) uses the per-speaker colour coding in the broadcast subtitle data, but that can be disabled to display all subtitles in either white or yellow. The subtitle text size and the border width around the letters of the subtitles can also be set by the user (I prefer a larget text size and more border than the default).

Here is a link to that recording on my Dropbox account. It's 2min10sec, 51MB.

However, while that link will show that the V2 does indeed record subtitles when they are present, most of your observations about the subtitle capabilities of other devices appear to be more to do with playback than with recording.

Only frequent users of subtitles on the V2 can really comment on how well the V2 handles subtitles on playback.

Of course, for programs with subtitles embedded in the video (like most foreign language drama on SBS), the subtitles will be displayed in exactly the way the broadcaster has embedded them.

I use subtitles all the time except on news as they do them live and there is delay except for pre-scripted packages. But on all programs that have subtitles they are OK on my V2 and T3. It's the principle channel that has subs more so than the secondary channels. Station policy and economics play a part. When Midsummer Murders for example was exclusively on ABC TV during the first run every ep was subbed. Many episodes on commercial channels don't appear to have them.

When broadcasters must show captions

Commercial (free-to-air), ABC and SBS:

• from 6am to midnight, all programs must have captions
• at any time, all news and current affairs programs shown must have captions

There are some exceptions, such as:

• programs that are not in English
• programs that consist wholly of music
• catch-up TV, as this is a type of video on demand
• community TV
• advertisements

Repeats of programs must have captions if the original had captions.

https://www.acma.gov.au/captions-tv-bro ... st-provide

I'm not sure how repeats of, say, Midsomer Murders get away without having subtitles if they were originally broadcast with them (nor, really why the broadcaster wouldn't provide them anyway).

I found two different pages that summarise the rules. The one above, dated 26 Nov 2019 that implies that captions must be supplied on all channels, and this one, dated 22 Nov 2019, https://www.acma.gov.au/provide-captions-free-air-tv, that says that the National and Commercial broadcasters must have captions on "programs on your main channels from 6am to midnight".

That link from 22 Nov perhaps provides a clearer meaning to "repeat" (the one that the broadcasters like to use): "[you must have captions on] programs you repeat on your main channel or multi-channel if the initial broadcast had captions".

Thank You Pri for the link.
Just what I wanted.
Them subtitles are perfect played in Potplayer.
Thanks to all the others who replied.
All very helpful.

It's a pity the V2 doesn't support .ass or .ssa subtitles, these are basically srt text subs with colour and screen location tags. Useful when 2 actors are on the extreme edge of frame etc. There other use is if you end up with a foreign movie on file with burnt in subs, with a .ass format you can also build a virtual box around your english subs to completely cover the burnt in subs.

https://matroska.org/technical/specs/subtitles/ssa.html

I have expended a considerable amount of effort on getting the Australian FTA subtitles working correctly. The default settings will provide subtitle rendering as intended by the broadcasters. There are options to change the behaviour, but if you intend on having subtitles enabled permanently, I do not recommend deviating from defaults.

There have been a number of users over the years that have reported issues with subtitles and as far as I know all outstanding problems have been resolved on T2, T3, T4 and U4. I am not aware of any new problems being reported for V2, which makes sense, since the user space code is identical.

tl;dr - Extensive testing by heavy users of subtitles confirms that FTA TV subtitles work well.

If you do find issues, there is a good chance that they will be fixed. That is the advantage of the open source nature of the Beyonwiz products.

netmask wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 15, 2019 15:30

It's a pity the V2 doesn't support .ass or .ssa subtitles [...]

It looks like it would if the codec was present. WebVTT is supported (rename .vtt to .srt). VobSub (DVD) may end up being supported.

Edit: SSA/ASS are supported, but they must be embedded (i.e. within the container, not in an external file). All the formatting is stripped out, though, so not much point.