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Software DVD player with closed captioning?

setacourse

setacourse

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Can anyone recommend a software DVD player with closed captioning? Preferably free or shareware, and preferably outlined letters so it's readable against whiteness.

I use PowerDVD XP4, which came with my computer. But the letters aren't outlined and it sometimes goes wonky with apostrophes and has glitchy refreshing.

Many DVDs have CC and no subtitles. I use it to understand when they mumble or talk real fast.
 
How about Microsoft Windows Media Player?

For Version 11, the setting is Play->Lyrics, Captions, & Subtitles->Closed Captions.
 
I had no idea DVD's would be closed captioned as opposed to subtitled. Is that only for TV shows or for regular movies?
 
There really isn't a whole lot of difference between the two. Generally subtitles are for different languages. Closed caption is for the same language.
 
I would imagine that any DVD player software can support closed captions if they're on the disk. Personally I like VLC Media Player because it's open source and can play pretty much everything.
 
Non Sync, does Windows Media Player outline its CC letters so you can see them against a bright background? I disabled WMP9 because it seemed resource intensive, but I'd be willing to reenable it if that's my only other option and it outlines letters.

Mr. Adventure, I'm much more into TV on DVD (generally more content per $ than movies). I know West Wing s6, SG1 s1-7 and Brisco County Jr. have CC instead of subs, some seasons with subs for French & Spanish.

Kaijufan, I like VLC too but scroll down to video: subtitles: closed captions and it has X's for all versions. This forum post mentions teletext support, but it doesn't seem to be the same thing, as I went to Settings->Preferences->Input/Codecs->Other Codecs->Teletext and tried the various recommend settings.

Edit: I bit the bullet and enabled WMP9. It has CC support but I couldn't figure out how to play a DVD. There was no Quick Access Panel. Now Playing showed an "Unknown DVD", which I selected and the program crashed.
 
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Sorry setacourse I just assumed it had a subtitles feature. I guess you know what happens when someone assumes. :)
 
setacourse said:
Edit: I bit the bullet and enabled WMP9. It has CC support but I couldn't figure out how to play a DVD. There was no Quick Access Panel. Now Playing showed an "Unknown DVD", which I selected and the program crashed.
Click to expand...

Attempting to play a DVD in Windows Media Player will invariably crash this otherwise stable PC. Sometimes it'll play successfully for a few minutes, but eventually it'll crash and take the entire system with it. It's one of those little mysteries that I absolutely cannot be bothered investigating. :lol:
 
By FAR the best software to display closed captioning (as opposed to subtitles) is The KMPlayer (free, note there is also a KMplayer for Linux. That's different software, this is for Windows). I've been looking into this for a while as my father is very hard of hearing.

To get CC just hit F2 to open the preferences menu and on the left go to subtitle processing -> multi-sub/etc

And then on the right the menu that brings up there will be a tab at the top that says "advanced" click that and then there will be a drop down box that says "Decode CC" choose "As Text." That should work, you will also have complete control over the appearance of the closed captioning. You can change the color, font, outlining, size, opacity, shadows, and so on and so forth (look in the font style section of that menu).
When installing just choose the default settings. There is also a wizard to choose settings for the program, just use what you want there. To open a DVD currently in the drive hit Ctrl+D. Hit 2 to get the window to normal size. There are also tons more options for customization.

If you enable/disable closed captioning while playing the DVD, you'll need to hit stop and reopen the DVD to get the new settings. However, it should play the DVD from where you left off.

Download Link

Example I just did to show just how much you can customize the look of the closed captioning (I wouldn't recommend these settings!)

k5k4z.jpg


and another:

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If you have any questions or problems just ask.
 
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