Implementing closed caption on Roku

Archived
1

Hi All,

My understanding is that with the Roku 2 support was added for closed captioning (this is based off the many posts concerning closed captioning with NetFlix channel). I am developing a channel and the client has requested closed captioning be supported but i can not find any details on how to add closed captioning data to the stream. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Is there an XML file like the standards around some flash players or do you encode the data directly into the m3u8 stream? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks
Jeff

2

We are planning to support closed captioning via SMPTE TimeText in a coming software update. We don’t support it today in the SDK. We’ll post more when it we have more to announce.

3

Does Roku still support SRT files? You could try using those while waiting.

4

It’s still in the development guide under Content Meta-Data

Under SubtitleUrl (“Since Firmware version 2.6:”)
roVideoPlayer and roVideoScreen: Will display an overlay of subtitles stored in an SRT formatted file.
Example: “http://www.myco.com/vid/1932.srt”

5

We do support SRT for subtitles, yes

6

Thanks for the responses. Is it possible to use an SRT file with streaming content? It seems that the instructions require you use .mp4 and .srt to make this work but in my case i am using m3u8 streams.

Thanks
Jeff

7

“jmacfl” wrote:
Thanks for the responses. Is it possible to use an SRT file with streaming content? It seems that the instructions require you use

Yes, you can use SRT with streaming video. Just set the subtitleURL attribute of your content-meta-data (http://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/RokuSDK … +Meta-Data) to the URL of your SRT file.

8

SRT files do not currently work with HLS streaming. You currently must use streamformat = “mp4”.

–Kevin

9

“RokuKevin” wrote:
SRT files do not currently work with HLS streaming. You currently must use streamformat = “mp4”.

–Kevin
I was actually testing this the other day, and they did work with VOD HLS streams.

10

Also, seems to me it wouldn’t be impossible to implement your own SRT subtitle player, using position notification and a timer.

  • Joel