CCExtractor is portable, small, and very fast. It works in Linux, Windows, and OSX.

What kind of closed captions does CCExtractor support?

American TV captions (CEA-608 is well supported, and CEA-708 is starting to look good) and Teletext based European subtitles.

How easy is it to use CCExtractor?

Very. Just tell it what file to process and it does everything for you.

CCExtractor integration with other tools

It is possible to integrate CCExtractor in a larger process. A couple of tools already call CCExtractor as part their video process - this way they get subtitle support for free. Starting in 0.52, CCExtractor is very front-end friendly. Front-ends can easily get real-time status information. The GUI source code is provided and can be used for reference. Any tool, commercial or not, is specifically allowed to use CCExtractor for any use the authors seem fit. So if your favourite video tools still lacks captioning tool, feel free to send the authors here.

What's the point of generating separate files for subtitles, if they are already in the source file?

There are several reasons to have subtitles separated from the video file, including:

  • Closed captions never survive MPEG processing. If you take a MPEG file and encode it to any format (such as divx), your result file will not have closed captions. This means that if you want to keep the subtitles, you need to keep the original file. This is hardly practical if you are archiving HDTV shows for example.
  • Subtitles files are small - so small (around 250 Kb for a movie) that you can quickly download them, or email them, etc, in case you have a recording without subtitles.
  • Subtitles files are indexable: You can have a database with all your subtitles if you want (there are many available), so you can search the dialogs.
  • Subtitles files are a de-facto standard: Almost every player can use them. In fact, many setbox players accept subtitles files in .srt format - so you can have subtitles in your divx movies and not just in your original DVDs.
  • Closed captions are stored in many different formats by capture cards. Upgrading to a new card, if it comes with a new player, may mean that you can't use your previously recorded closed captions, even if the audio/video are fine.
  • Closed captions require a closed caption decoder. All US TV have one (it's a legal requirement), but no European TV does, since there are not closed captions in Europe (teletext is used instead). Basically this means that if you buy a DVD in the US which has closed captions but no DVD subtitles, you are out of luck. This is a problem with many (most) old TV shows DVDs, which only come with closed captions. DVD producers don't bother doing DVD subs, since it's another way to segment the market, same as with DVD regions.

What's New:

  • Rust updates: Added srt writer
  • Rust updates:-Added writers for transcripts and SAMI
  • Added missing DLL to Windows installer
  • Updated Windows GUI