[tompatulpan]

Let me make my self clear,
teletext is working here, but as KkkkkkTzs says its complicated to use it for a normal user.

/tt

[Leatherface]

Teletext works but not the subtitles and activate it with page makes it out of sync with a few seconds so it's not usable either.

[opdenkamp]

so if i got this right, it works and is in perfect sync for some (like me, tested with vdr), but you don't like that you have to activate teletext first and enter the page number, and are asking for a shortcut for this?

and it's out of sync for some like leatherface. what backend are you using? are you having sync issues on every channel that has subs, or just some?

[dodoadoodoo]

so if i got this right, it works and is in perfect sync for some (like me, tested with vdr), but you don't like that you have to activate teletext first and enter the page number, and are asking for a shortcut for this?

It would be pretty sweet if, from a ui point, teletext subtitles are handled like any other embedded subtitle. So, the shortcut is already there (T) :-)

and it's out of sync for some like leatherface. what backend are you using? are you having sync issues on every channel that has subs, or just some?

I seem to remember that somebody (elupus?) mentioned that there is a known error in dvdplayer that causes teletext pages to go out of sync. Anyway, I have seen this using mythtv backend.

/D

[Leatherface]

It works in sync with tvheadend for livetv and there it works without manually activating page number but not working for other backends.
On recorded .ts files it doesn't work either because xbmc's player doesn't support it.
When activating with teletext page with 'v' it works on both live tv and recorded .ts files but it's out of sync for a few seconds so that's not an option either. So for now XBMC is not an option for TV for scandinavian people and probably many other countries that wants subtitles.
Proper support in XBMC's player would support teletext in all backends and recorded files.

[FernetMenta]

tvheadend parses subtitles from teletext and sends those as normal text subs to XBMC. This way it can keep the subs in sync with video. Teletext packets don't have a reliable timestamp and teletext player inside XBMC would ignore them anyway. Means that displaying subs through teletext player does not work.

If you want to make this work for recorded ts, you either have to patch ffmpeg demuxer or write a new mpegts demuxer for XBMC. The latter probably makes more sense because it could also prepare for demuxing of NTSC closed captions which would be hard to do in current ffmpeg demuxer.

[opdenkamp]

So it only works properly when watching live TV with an add-on that has it's own demuxer (vdr and tvheadend), but not with add-ons that use filesystem based streams (all the others). If that's the case, then it's some issue in dvdplayer indeed, like elupus said, and actually has nothing to do with the PVR code. You should raise a ticket on trac if there's no ticket about this yet, under "video playback" and not under "PVR"

Proper support in XBMC's player would support teletext in all backends and recorded files.

While it may look like there's one player handling everything from a user's point of view, it's actually a lot more complex, and there's different types of PVR add-ons that are handled very differently in dvdplayer. That's why I was asking which backend/add-on you are using, as I couldn't reproduce this issue.

So these are two different things: a feature request to add teletext subtitles to the standard subtitle selection. No idea if this is somehow marked as a special page in the teletext protocol, because if it's not, then it's just not possible, as XBMC wouldn't know which page contains the subs.

And the second issue is the sync issue, which only shows up with filesystem based streams. This one needs a ticket on trac (if it's not there already) assigned to "video playback"

[dodoadoodoo]

So these are two different things: a feature request to add teletext subtitles to the standard subtitle selection. No idea if this is somehow marked as a special page in the teletext protocol, because if it's not, then it's just not possible, as XBMC wouldn't know which page contains the subs.

According to ETSI 300 468 section 6.2.42 the PSI PMT identifies which pages contain subtitles and for what language and even keeps track of "normal" and hearing impaired subtitle pages. The datatypes are pretty well specified here. For the actual decode, https://github.com/forers/telxcc is GPL code and could be helpful. That said, I realize that hooking all this up is, ahem, non-trivial :-)

/D

[Leatherface]

I am using Vu+/Enigma pvr addon and there i have no subtitles at all. Only option is to enable teletext with 'v' and go to subtitle page and that doesn't work because it's out of sync then. Can get it little better with playing with less buffer but not enough to be usable.
Then i don't understand why ffmpeg would need patches when other things that is using ffmpeg does it just fine.
The only thing is that Teletext needs to be delayed 2-3 seconds on recordings and that can be fixed with a manual setting for that .
It should be possible to support it in same way as DVB subtitles is supported.
But doesn't matter how it's done only it works and you will have many happy people
I wish i had the skills to do it myself.
As a workaruond it works with vtuner to make virtual tuners on computer from any box and then use tvheadend but that only works for live tv.
And ofcourse iit knows what pages that is subtitles otherwise it wouldn't work on any box or TV either.
And VLC for example have no problems with .ts files or streams.

[negge]

So these are two different things: a feature request to add teletext subtitles to the standard subtitle selection. No idea if this is somehow marked as a special page in the teletext protocol,

They ought to be since tvheadend knows about them. I guess the best approach would be to do whatever magic tvheadend is doing since that way the user's subtitle settings will be used instead of the bone ugly teletext font.

I don't have any idea about the sync issues though, I've noticed before when working on some recordings that teletext subtitles don't seem to have any timestamps. Again, a look at how tvheadend does it could be worth a try since its parsed subtitle streams are always completely in sync.

[opdenkamp]

tvheadend parses subtitles from teletext and sends those as normal text subs to XBMC. This way it can keep the subs in sync with video. Teletext packets don't have a reliable timestamp and teletext player inside XBMC would ignore them anyway. Means that displaying subs through teletext player does not work.

If you want to make this work for recorded ts, you either have to patch ffmpeg demuxer or write a new mpegts demuxer for XBMC. The latter probably makes more sense because it could also prepare for demuxing of NTSC closed captions which would be hard to do in current ffmpeg demuxer.

hah i never noticed that, and only just saw your post crossed mine
i've tested teletext page 888 which are subtitles here, not the subs from the dropdown menu.

[Leatherface]

.I don't have any idea about the sync issues though, I've noticed before when working on some recordings that teletext subtitles don't seem to have any timestamps. Again, a look at how tvheadend does it could be worth a try since its parsed subtitle streams are always completely in sync.

Sync problem with manually selecting subtitle page is because audio/video buffers and teletext plugin doesn't.
It's same behaviour as 2SUB on Dreambox there you need to delay the subtitle for a few seconds on recordings.

[negge]

I've argued before that audio and video shouldn't be buffered at all but that is unlikely to change. There's probably a way to fix it without resorting to that though.

[Leatherface]

It should be possible to buffer if you're on more unstable connection.
But after playing with buffer settings and with later build atleast mine with FernetMenta changes the sync is acceptable now when selecting pages manually on livetv atleast.. On recordings it's still out of sync.

[client]

I switched from XBMC (on the original Xbox) to Mediaportal when I wanted to record live TV some years ago. I switched back to XBMC (Win 7) last year, and I'm now running the latest beta version.
I'm not at all an advanced user, so I was googling for a solution to enabling teletext subtitles when I found this thread.

I'm using NPVR as a backend, and I record my TV shows in XBMC. Up until now I've been forced to watch the recordings in VLC, because I cannot get the teletext subtitles to function properly in XBMC. In VLC I just select the subtitle as I would with any other sub (e.g. srt). In XBMC, however, I can't find or choose any subtitles. As others have said, I must press v and then choose the correct page. That results in big ugly subtitles, and they are many seconds out of sync.

I see that some of you have teletext subs in perfect sync, and you talk about clients, backends, plugins and whatnot. Can you offer any help to a newcomer who just has the vanilla XBMC installed? I usually record from the SD TV channels to keep the file size down, and almost all of them use teletext for subs.

I don't mind installing an addon. And I certainly understand that the developers are people doing this for free on their spare time. I just hope that someone can point me in the right direction so I can get rid of VLC and watch the recordings in XBMC.