Monthly Archives: August 2013

So Is The New Mary Poppins Blu-Ray Worth Buying ?

I previously reviewed the Mary Poppins iTunes HD download, which was about as terrible as the DVD (harsh DVNR, edge enhancement). Will the brand new 50th Anniversary Edition be worth buying ?

I was surprised to see a 1080p trailer posted on YouTube, so I decided to have a closer look.

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Closed Captions In SCC Format Python

SCC format subtitles

SCC format subtitles, basically a raw closed caption bitstreams.

After building the first version of the closed-caption decoder, I realized that SCC format would be a more useful format to output in. There are many tools to convert SCC format subtitles into other formats. Additionally SCC captures more of the presentation details of closed captions.

Enjoy.

ccDecode

25 May 2014 Update: An improved version is available see here.

Closed Caption Decoding In Python

I’ve been backing up my Laserdiscs after the problems I had with my players a month or so back, one thing I frequently noticed was the flicker of closed captions at the very top of the captured video file. This greatly intrigued me, as it would be useful to have subtitles these films. I began investigating software options for decoding the captions embedded in the video image area, but was unable to find anything that worked with video file embedded captions, or was cheap enough to justify spending the money on. Having been intending to do some video-processing work in Python this seemed like an ideal warm-up exercise.

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