Closed captions/sub titles support for live tv & VOD

[stillbeachin]

On 4/26/2022 at 6:35 PM, nbs. said:

It's not a matter of the box. If your server doesn't support subtitles you won't get them

Hey Jenna, I have the same issue.  The thing is, I had captions on 8 of 10 news programs, when my menu had the option to turn on.  Then all of a sudden my menu just says subtitles "disabled" with the option to enable gone.  No captions on any live tv now.  So i'm thinking it's the server.  Were you able to find a fix????

I'm pretty sick of spending 45 bucks and then the stream stops working as it was...  

thank you

 

[dishuser]

50 minutes ago, stillbeachin said:

Hey Jenna, I have the same issue.  The thing is, I had captions on 8 of 10 news programs, when my menu had the option to turn on.  Then all of a sudden my menu just says subtitles "disabled" with the option to enable gone.  No captions on any live tv now.  So i'm thinking it's the server.  Were you able to find a fix????

I'm pretty sick of spending 45 bucks and then the stream stops working as it was...  

thank you

 

did you try other video player to rule out box?

[Papadeco]

I have same issue, hit green button and subtitles comes up but says disables and no way to enable it. 

[nbs.]

21 minutes ago, Papadeco said:

I have same issue, hit green button and subtitles comes up but says disables and no way to enable it. 

That means your service doesn't support it

[dishuser]

1 hour ago, Papadeco said:

I have same issue, hit green button and subtitles comes up but says disables and no way to enable it. 

in both players?

[Needhelp]

What server does subtitles work on? 

[dishuser]

13 minutes ago, Needhelp said:

What server does subtitles work on? 

read the rules

this site doesn't recommend servers

Edited August 31, 2022 by dishuser

[Emporium]

15 minutes ago, Needhelp said:

What server does subtitles work on? 

This forum is just for the STB boxes.  We do not mention or promote any specific services.

On one of my servers, I know that some channels do support it.  But I rarely turn it on, so can't tell you how many of the 1000s of channel support it

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Emporium

[Zabicamom]

I just received the box and remote yesterday, every time I am in LIVE TV and press the left arrow, the SUBTITILES AND AUDIO function is shown and I cannot seem to clear it. Any help to get to the other country options. TY

[dishuser]

you press ok before left arrow

[Zabicamom]

thank you @dishuser every time I tried ok it did not work, restarted it and then hit ok now it appears to be working. 

 

[Hhh]

This has been fixed with Buzz 5 BETA.  

You can press 2015 on the Update page and it will get you to this BETA.

https://stbtalk.com/index.php?/topic/1485-how-to-download-and-install-or-upgrade-to-buzztv-5-beta/

[nbs.]

6 minutes ago, Hhh said:

This has been fixed with Buzz 5 BETA.  

You can press 2015 on the Update page and it will get you to this BETA.

https://stbtalk.com/index.php?/topic/1485-how-to-download-and-install-or-upgrade-to-buzztv-5-beta/

It's not beta anymore

[Kray]

This is very frustrating, I am hard of hearing and not having subtitles diminishes the viewing experience. Feel like a ping pong. The tech guy says the server offers subtitles provided BUZZ software has the ability to display them

My unit is xrs4500 max. 
 

what a shame. 

[dishuser]

17 minutes ago, Kray said:

This is very frustrating, I am hard of hearing and not having subtitles diminishes the viewing experience. Feel like a ping pong. The tech guy says the server offers subtitles provided BUZZ software has the ability to display them

My unit is xrs4500 max. 
 

what a shame. 

live tv?

did you try other video player?

[Emporium]

I can assure you that the xrs4500 (and pretty every other buzz box) support subtitles.

For LiveTV I use them all the time at nights, in order to not wake up "the boss"

Obviously this assumes your service and the the channel you are watching have subtitles.

 

[Kray]

I should clarify the issue of not having any subtitles occurs using VOD.  Live is fine  

 

[Emporium]

5 hours ago, Kray said:

I should clarify the issue of not having any subtitles occurs using VOD.  Live is fine  

 

Have you checked to see that subs are even embedded in the VOD ?   

You can always try using another software (iptv smarters, stbemu, ott navigator, tivimate, etc..), or another box to see if the VOD on your service even has any embedded subs. 

Keep in mind that with VOD on newer versions of BuzzTV 5, you can select an external player (which in theory takes buzz tv out of the loop once the VOD stream is launched).  You can select MX player, VLC, etc.. as an external player and see if they detect any subs. If they don't also, then I would strongly suspect that your provider does NOT have any embedded subs on the VOD streams.   Which is not uncommon, since many just use the same files you can get from torrent/usenet downloads. 

 

[dishuser]

if you want to know if service is using torrent/usenet try to download it

[allaboutbuzz]

6 hours ago, Kray said:

I should clarify the issue of not having any subtitles occurs using VOD.  Live is fine  

 

Your provider probably meant they offer sub titles on Live
Which you stated are there

It sounds like they do not offer them for VOD

[Emporium]

Got curious and decided to go hunting my VOD for something with Subs.  Truth is, there was not much with subs on VOD/TV series (at least on 2 services I checked).

After trying a few, I decided to try some of the 4k streams (figured most scene releases put a little more love into their 4k releases and all bundled into a single mkv container).  Well, first 4k movie I tried (T0p Gun M@verick) seems to have a few sub tracks included (see screenshot attached).

The non-4k version, did not have any subs included.   So the screenshot pretty much confirms that BuzzTV does support subs, if the stream has them embedded.  For reference, I was using the primary player for VOD.

Guess like many other services, your service does not have much with subs in the VOD section.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Emporium

[Kray]

Thank you for checking…….. Guess I will have to watch  Live, until the provider chooses to  support subtitles. 
I actually prefer VOD to Live….but no choice for now.
 

[LilyPerry]

I can relate to having the same issues … No subtitles on VOD. Green button just shows subtitles as disabled.   My additional issue is that it also doesn’t show captions/subtitles that are part of the movies. For example, when characters on screen start talking in foreign language, the subtitles that translate into English - those don’t show up either. Which just seems like something that shouldn’t be affected by server/service. 
 

((Anyone experiencing this too? You can check out the Last Samurai… when the characters all start speaking Japanese, built in subtitle should pop up in English. ))

[nbs.]

If subtitles are not embedded in the stream you won't get them period

[Emporium]

It is 100% related to server.  If the subtitles are NOT encoded in the stream, they will not show up, period.

I have tried 4 servers and the TV Series do not have any captions on any server I tried (there may be a few, but I did not find any on the ones I spot checked).  For VOD movies, most of the older movies have no subtitles encoded.  I did find a few big titles that had some subs encoded, but even those, you had to go up to the 4k encoded version, since the basic 720p or 1080p version were super basic with no subs.  Example, T0pGun Mav3rick I checked on 2 servers and the basic HD version played fine, but no subs available.   Selected the 4k version on both servers and they both had a few subs available in different languages.  Having "downloaded" many of the VODs, and then checking the metadata properties, I can tell you that most of the movies no VOD servers are typical movie scene releases (ie: the ones you find on torrents and/or usenet).  Depending on the server, the version they have is better quality than others, but most have at least the 1080p versions.  This is not a bad thing, there is no point in re-encoding/ripping something that can easily be downloaded elsewhere, but if subs is something you "need" then you would probably want to find a service can offer you what you need.

Here is the TG Mav in 4k, and you can see it has 3 CC tracks.. One for all English everything, the second English is for "forced english" for foreign language scenes, and in "Ggerman".

Now for TV, it is very dependant on the source that is used and if the provider decides to pass it along.  

Here is CTV on one of my servers (my main one), and it has 1 CC track, and when I select it, I get subs without an issue (as you can see below).  I have other services, where the exact same channel, does NOT have any options for CC.

 

 

So bottom line, is that it is 100% dependant on your server.  The BuzzTV box will detect and allow you to watch them if they are part of the stream.  So if you want subs/captions, then time to start looking for another server.

Another option if your service allows it, is to download the VOD you want to watch locally, and then watch it with an external video player which may allow you to download subs from an external source like opensubs, etc..  Obviously this is more effort.

When I download movies for my own plex server, I often download the English, French and Greek subs separately, verify they sync properly, make adjustments if necessary, and then create an mkv container for my personal library which contains the subs I want embedded.

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Emporium