[mythtv-users] Re: Closed captioning support

Ross Campbell ross.campbell at gmail.com
Fri May 20 22:54:19 UTC 2005


> I would want CC support
> that for example, did not display during normal play but did display
> at 3x and 5x FF speeds, or did other clever things like knowing about
> letterbox or pillarbox bars and making use of them

> or even an FF
> mode that shrunk the display window down to make room to do a lot of
> text on the screen at once.   A tool like that you really could watch
> a show at 3x or 5x speed, at least the boring parts.

sounds like a speed reading torture device :) . I remember having
something like that in middle school where a bar zipped down a page
and you had to keep up.

<Semi-related>
does anyone else feel like timestretch is there to challenge how fast
you can watch TV? Do you think people can learn to watch TV faster
just like people learn to read faster? Is there an upper bound to
this? I wonder what brain signals look like for someone watching TV at
1.7X vs. someone watching at 1.0X. My untested hypothesis is that
while people "zone out" in front of TV at regular speeds, watching TV
at timstretch factors above 1.5 requires more viewer attention and
participation and could be a significant mental stimulus as opposed to
an opiate or "eyeball massage".

I can just see it now... yuppie parents sitting their kids in front of
mythtv to watch Baby Einstein videos at 1.7X speed
</Semi-related>

> My point is that
> just passing to the TV is great for the deaf, but there's a lot of
> cool things that nobody has done with CC and subtitles for the
> hearing.

.. like being able to search your recorded TV shows for text and jump
to a point based on subtitles (sort of like this:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=dvr )

or being able to pause TV and select a word out of the CC text and
then either jump to a wikipedia definition or a webster's definition
or hear the word pronounced or "find other recorded programs
containing this word'

or sync lyrics to music videos

or sync text or audio or video commentary from various sources to video

or show subtitles to a movie in another language from possibly - maybe
even do realtime translation

CC data could provide the elusive synchronization link for many types
of other critic or commentary data (think DVD director's commentary)
from external sources - CC data should be like a reliable video
timestamp regardless of where the program is shown, how it is recorded
(as long as CC data is included), when the recording starts/stops, and
what speed it is played back at.

Imagine being able to record your commentary as you watch a program
and then letting your friend be able to watch that same show and
listen to your stupid wise cracks and inane banter or interruptions.
It could be anywhere from exceptionally annoying to "just like MST3K".

you could have your spare tuners "watch" certain channels and scan CC
for phrases and record an arbitrary amount of time before and after
any key words or phrases and store those clips or switch to livetv and
override to show a predefined "news alert" that was defined as
critical.

-Ross


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