Please suggest capture and project settings to retain closed-caption data

[Doug Beal]

Chris On the DVDs we generate a file for DVD SP out of MacCaption. I’m at home but I remember it as an SCC file I think. It is an optional export using the same encode that the “black file” is generated from. MacCaption can also read the caption info by loading a captioned file into it from which it can generate an SCC file. I also remember DVD SP has a check box to load the file, line 21 file??
Sorry not more accurate can’t look from here at all of it

Doug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN

[Doug Beal]

Excellent post. thank you for the details. we need to look at this product for our proposed HD captioning services.

Doug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN

[Giovanni Galvez]

“Source tape is DVCpro 25 and has cc data on it which I want to retain as I bring the footage into FCP and out again. Can you reccommend the best settings to not lose the CC data. Do I have to capture it as composite video, or can I bring it in SDI 8-bitand still keep the CC data. Just as important, what setting to get it all back out to DVCPro25 again? I’m going to try to add a graphic over the top of the captioned program without breaking the captioning. It may not work, I know, any advice is welcome.”

Hi,

This is Giovanni from CPC MacCaption. You can capture the DVCpro25 video via firewire and retain the captions if you do not have a capture card. However, if you edit the video in anyway you will loose the captions. This is because DV25 video puts the captions in the digital VAUX area in the DV codec. Because it is 720×480 it does not have the correct aspect ratio and resolution to place the Line-21 VBI in the active video. If you decide to output your DV25 video out of the component, composite, S-Video, or SDI outputs of your DVCpro25 deck then the 720×480 DV25 video on the tape will be up-converted to 720×486 with Line-21 VBI.

If you are capturing the up-converted 720×486 video from your capture card (AJA, BlackMagic) then there is a way to preserve the captions in FCP even if you do edits or renders. It’s important to not use the DV25 codec while you capture because this will crop out and eliminate the Line-21 VBI. Rather use something like 8 bit uncompressed, or ProRes.

If you are capturing Firewire then MacCaption can retrieve the captions from the DV25 codec before any edits are done and re-apply them to the finished edit. (this workflow is a work around if no capture cards are found)

Really this is the best practice even if you can capture and preserve the captions in FCP. If edits are going to be made the best thing is to retrieve the captions and store them separately to the video because any edits or cuts may compromise the quality of the text in the captions. Then re-apply them after the edit is done.

Because of the nature of CC codes that your TV reads to generate the text over video. A cut in the wrong place in FCP may result in your captions getting garbled or simply not appearing at all during the first couple of on-screen dialogues.

DVD-Video captions work similarly to DV25 in that the active video is actually 720×480 and not 720×486. Therefore, when you apply an SCC file before you burn a DVD in DVDSP the program actually puts special codes in the MPEG-2 that your DVD player at home can read. When you play a DVD out of a DVD player it does an up-convert from 720×480 to 720×486 and if it sees caption codes in the MPEG-2 it will also generate Line 21 VBI our of it’s component and composite outputs.

Some set-top DVD Recoders will do the same if they are recording TV. It will down-convert 720×486 to 720×480 and place the Line 21 VBI into special codes in the MPEG-2 data.

As far as the Matrox MXO2 is concerned it is the MOST elegant and practical solution for HD-SDI captioning. If anyone has an MXO2 and is going to output to HD-SDI then I can literally e-mail them the captions with a tiny .ZIP file that contains the audio with captioned data for their FCP timeline.

So if I’m in Washington, D.C. and my editor is in L.A. I can e-mail him his captions for the HD show. No more sending out his tape to the dub house. All thanks to Jean Lapierre and all the folks at Matrox for such a ground breaking solution and innovation with the MXO2 board.

[Fabian Mayen]

Read this post and if possible would like to ask you something. A couple of months ago I bought a MXO2 LE with MAX and would like to know if there’s a workaround for capturing a DVD made with an .scc file in DVD SP through that box into FCP preserving the CC info of the video.

Fabián Mayén
Realizador Audiovisual

[David J. stewart]

Excellent informative thread here. Curious if any of this info has changed with time since the last post.

I am about to archive a large number of Beta SP NTSC programs containing Closed Captioning using an AJA IO/ OctoMacPro / PCP 6.0.6.

1) What capture settings would best suit this type of project and future proof the files for use in web, DVD and mobile devices?

2) future editing of these SD programs in FCP/upres via Kona 3 for HD broadcast retaining the closed captioning information?

3) Any thoughts on the upcoming FCPX, will it handle HD Closed Captioning without the need for CPC software?

David Stewart
Creative Director
essencecreative.biz