Extracting closed captions from a DVD step by step tutorial
Note: This procedure may or may not be legal in your country, depending on whether they consider it fair use. I own the DVD used in the tutorial and I am not going to distribute anything from it, plus I live in a country where this sounds reasonable, so I believe I am in the safe side. But your mileage may vary.
This tutorial was written years ago. Probably better tools exist already to do the same thing.
This tutorial will teach you how to go from a DVD in your shelf to a transcript of its closed captions. Basically there are these steps:
Install DVDDecrypter (a program to extract the DVD data from the physical DVD). You only need to do this once.Install CCExtractor (our beloved program; it gets the data from the previous step and extracts the closed caption track). You only need to do this once.Use DVDDecrypter to extract the DVD data into your hard disk.Use CCExtractor to extract the closed caption track from the DVD data.
To convert ISO to MKV without quality loss, you need a professional ISO converter to maintain all the data including video, audio, and subtitle tracks of your ISO image files. Maybe you have tried a bunch of so-called ISO to MKV converters online or offline but found them hard to get the conversion done. A DVD-ROM drive on your PC that is capable of running DVD Decryptor 2. The original DVD Necessary Software: 1. DVD Decryptor 3.5.4.0 a. One thing to note is that DVD Decryptor is no longer being updated, so you might need to get another program like DVDShrink to rip the DVD into ISO and then use DVD Decryptor to get the source files we need.
As an example, I will be using the movie Merlin. Remember that DVD subtitles and closed captions are two different things. Closed captions come from the NTSC (USA and Canada) TV world, and they are usually prevent in DVDs from TV shows, documentaries, old movies and so on. If you buy a brand new DVD with a film from last year it's unlikely to have closed captions - it will have DVD subtitles, which require different tools to extract. Many tutorials exist on DVD subtitle extraction.
- Download BCPconvert, convert DivX subtitles from cp1250 to iso-8859-2, simple solution for a BIG problem on Eastern European market. Updated: September 12, 2004 View/Download.
- Extract subs from (non-encrypted, on hard drive) DVDs and convert to Advanced Substation Alpha format. It can also convert sup (PGS) and sub/idx formats to same. 'I wrote this because I hate the blocky, too-high-on-the-screen look of regular DVD subtitles and wanted to re-encode my DVD collection in h264/aac/assa in an mkv container.'
1 - Install DVDDecrypter
As explained before, DVDDecrypter is the tool we will use to copy the DVD data from the physical DVD into the hard disk. DVDDecrypter reads the DVD, decrypts it (so other tools can actually use the data) and writes it to the hard disk. There are other tools that do the same thing, so you can use whichever you prefer. DVDDecrypter is free, use to use, and does a good job, so it's the one I use regularly.
First, download DVDDecrypter, which is available from this page. You can get the file directly here.Depending on your browser, it may ask you whether you want to run the program, or save it, etc.
Run it if possible directly, or save it somewhere and run it later if your browser insists.
If you are using Internet Explorer it might warn you about the file not being signed, and ask you again if you want to run it:
Say yes. If you are running Vista it will show you yet another window to reconfirm you haven't changed your mind. I couldn't get a snapshot but it you are a Vista user you have seen that windows a billion times anyway.The installation program starts. All defaults are correct, so the only thing you need to do is say Next at every chance. A screenshot of all screens follows:
When asked about whether you want DVDDecrypter to check for new versions say no. The program is no longer being maintained so it will never find a new version anyway.
The installation ends. In the last screen you have an option to start DVDDecrypter inmediately. Since we are going to install CCExtractor now, uncheck the box.
2 - Install CCExtractor
CCExtractor is the program that does the actual work of getting the closed caption text from the data. It supports DVDs as well as many other formats. This is its home page (you probably know that already). Follow the link “Download Windows installer” (I don't link to the installer directly because it's updated from time to time and the link would be out of date soon). As before, run the installer if possible or save and run later if needed.
3 - Extract the data from the DVD using DVDDecrypter
Insert the DVD in the DVD player if you haven't done it already. Most likely it will start making noise for a few seconds, until Windows is done analyzing it. Wait for the noise to stop (so it's ready) and then start DVDDecrypter, either by clicking on its icon (on your desktop) our by selecting it in the program menu (Start → Programs → DVD Decrypter → DVD Decrypter).Initially the screen looks like this (assuming DVDDecrypter detects the DVD correctly - if not you may have to select the correct drive from the combo box):
The first time, go to the settings area (Tools → Settings). There are a lot of things there but the default settings are fine, except for the file splitting. We don't want the output video to be split in several files (the only exception would be if your hard drive couldn't handle large files). Having all the output in one file makes things easier later.
So go to the settings area as explained, and the select the “IFO mode” tab. In file splitting choose “None” from the combox box and then press OK. Done with the settings.
Back to the main screen, you can see that there's a “Destination” that DVD Decrypter automatically sets. You may need to choose a different folder. For me that directory is OK (F:MERLINVIDEO_TS).Notice too that all the files in the DVD are selected. If were trying to get the data from say, one specific episode of a TV show (where usually there are 4 episodes or so in each DVD) we would have to guess which file is correct. Since this is a complete movie, we're going to get all the files, so we leave the selection as is.
OK, so we press the large 'Decrypt' button (see below) and DVD Decrypter does its magic.
File selection
Take a look at the destination directory:
The VOB files are the actual video data. In DVDs, they usually have more stuff that just the movie. For example, the chapter selection video is there. In order to get a clean transcript, you need to tell CCExtractor which files to use. Usually the right files are easy to spot. In this example, you can see that the file VTS_01_0.VOB is 330 Mb long, while VTS_01_1.VOB is 1 Gb, VTS_02_2.VOB is one Gb too, etc. This is a clear indicator that it is not part of the same video stream. In order to verify it, we just play the file with any DVD capable player:
This is indeed the chapter selection video, which we don't want. Just to make sure, we start playing VTS_01_1.VOB, which should be the actual start of the movie:
Extract Subtitles From Dvd Using Vlc
Indeed it is.
4 - Extract the transcript with CCExtractor
Open CCExtractor, by click on its desktop icon or by selecting it from the program menu (Start → Programs → CCExtractor → CCExtractorGUI).
Now, open Windows Explorer if you didn't have it already, and choose the files VTS_01_1.VOB up to VTS_01_01_8.VOB (so all of them except the one we already know not to be part of the movie):
Drag and drop the files from Windows Explorer to CCExtractor:
Now you can see that CCExtractor has queued the files:
You can notice that CCExtractor has a lot of tabs with lots of options. The good news is that the default settings are OK, so you don't need to worry about them. The one thing you may want to change is the output format in the Output tab. By default it exports to .srt, which is the standard format that most players support. Suppose you want a plain transcript with no timing information. Just check the .txt option (transcript):
Finally, go to the Execution tab and press Start: screen-shot You can see the progress:
Once CCExtractor finishes, a file with the same name as the first file in the input is created in the same directory (this can all be changed in the settings). In this case, the file is called VTS_01_1.txt (note that it ends with .txt instead of .VOB). Here's the contents (the first 10 lines):
We're done.
I guess you'll agree with me that most DVD ripping tools out there handle video and audio pretty well but unfortunately just do not manage subtitles that good at all. They either 'burn' the subtitles on the video which means you cannot turn them off or create .sub files. In the other hand, .srt subtitles is much more handy than any of the choices above. It's plain text, so it is small sized and can be formated by the player to the liking of the user. Also it is very easy to merge in containers like mkv so that you can have video, audio and subtitles in one file.So the best solution is to create the video file using the DVD rip program of your choice and then rip the subtitles using something else. In this guide we will use one of the most popular programs that can do this task, SubRip.
Load SubRip and in the main window click the 'VOB' button in the toolbar (it is the very first one). The window above will open. First, you will have to click Open IFO and load the first .IFO file of the DVD. That will probably be VTS_01_0.IFO. After you load it, check the filenames to make sure everything is OK, there should be 4 or more VOB files of a big size (size appears in the right). Make sure you select all of them but the first, and right at the top select the Language stream you want to rip. In the right part of the window, leave Characters matrix file to New File (we will explain what that means at the end) and make sure 'SubPictures to Text via OCR' is selected in the Actions option. Finally, click Start to begin the ripping process. |
SubRip is using OCR (optical character recognition) to convert the subtitles, which in the DVD are stored as images, to text. Because of that you'll need to manually input each character the first time SubRip finds it. It may sound like a big job, but usually in 5-10 minutes you will enter everything SubRip needs to continue the ripping automatically. You can see an example dialog above. All you have to do is check the blue character in the image, enter it below and click OK. Just make sure you enter the correct one (they are case-sensitive) or the subtitle created will have dozens of errors. |
Extract Subtitles From Dvd Iso 14000
Above you can see SubRib working. Usually ripping a 2 hour movie's subtitles after you're done with the manual character input takes a little less than an hour. Just make sure you are around, since SubRip might find an unrecognizable character anytime, and of course halt the ripping process waiting for your input. |
When it is finished you have to save to .srt file. Click the save button as shown in the image above and your subtitles file is ready! Before you close SubRip it would be a good idea to save the Characters Matrix, so check the next step as well. |
Convert Dvd Subtitles To Srt
Extract Subtitles To Srt
Rip Subtitles From Dvd
The Characters Matrix file holds all OCR information that we inputted manually before, so it's a very good idea to save it by selecting Characters Matrix -> Save Characters Matrix File As. Then you can load it in Step 1 in the next DVD you will rip in order to save yourself time by not starting the recognition process all over again, but instead just enter any extra characters SubRip can't understand. This pretty much concludes this simple guide for ripping the subtitles from a DVD. Of course SubRip is a much more advanced utility with many more options that we may explain in future guide. Until then feel free to use our forum for any question. |