|
Synchronized Accessible Media
Interchange (SAMI) is a format standard developed by Microsoft designed
to deliver synchronized text such as captions, subtitles, or audio descriptions
with digital media content. Integrated into the Windows Media Player (WMP), SAMI
promotes accessibility and provides rich media content for a large, diverse audience.
T2Sami is a software
utility program originally designed to parse files transferred from a Tivo
PVR to a computer to extract the information in the Closed Captioning for viewing.
During processing, it transfered
the closed captioning information to SAMI
or SRT formated files.
This allows WMP and other DirectShow media players to display the captioning information
while the video is played back. Subsequently the
of the program has been extended to provide additional capability:
- Command line interfaces
for the extraction and injection processes.
-
Download and format conversion management of programming recorded by a
Tivo PVR
-
Closed caption or subtitle stream processing from unencrypted content in DVD VOB and IFO files.
-
Support for QuickTime 3GPP Timed Text.
-
Support for W3C Distribution Format eXchange Profile (DFXP) Timed Text.
-
The ability to reformat the program stream of video material destined for a
Tivo PVR using DVD closed captions or srt caption files so that these captions will display
correctly on the screen during playback. Open or closed captions may
be created to
support downloadable
and streaming video formats.
- Optional, integrated
support for the pyTivo server
T2Sami supports
watching closed captioned video on your computer in a couple of different ways.
- The original mechanism
was designed to work with the Tivo Desktop and the Windows Media Player. To
watch a video using this mechanism, it is necessary to process the .TiVo files
with T2Sami to extract the SAMI information and to enable captioning
in WMP. In the Windows Media Player SAMI processing is built in and simply
needs to be turned on using the security tabs. Once this is done, the presence of
a properly named .smi file will turn on the display.
- If you are using
another DirectShow media player, you also need to download and install the VobSub
DirectShow subtitling component to render the captioning information. Information
on these steps can be found in the help file provided with the T2Sami
program. To watch video using this mechanism, it is necessary to process the .TiVo files with T2Sami to extract the captioning information in the form of a SubRip (.srt) file.
VOBSUB will be invoked to handle the caption display when a properly named .srt
file exists.
- The latest version
of the program introduces its own playback mechanism. This allows the user to watch captioned video
from .tivo or .mpg files without extracting the the captions to a separate captioning
file in advance of viewing. This is designed to get around difficulties DirectShow
usually presents when an attempt is made to add captioning filters to a playback
graph created to display a .tivo file. It is also intended to provide captioning
support for streaming video that does not allow captions to be extracted to an external
file before being played back. To do this, the player extracts and displays the
captioning along with the video in a single pass. The initial release requires the
use of the Microsoft DirectShow Video Mixing Render. It is recommended that the
latest version of Microsoft DirectX9 be installed on your computer if you want to
try out this capability. Future T2Sami releases will support a wider range of video
software environments.
|
