Using gbpvr for content analysis projects?

[redwood1967]

Hi,

I'm a researcher who studies media content. I would like to create a relatively inexpensive system that will allow me to capture video content while also storing the closed captions in separate text files. This system should have at least four separate tuners, and it should be possible to easily skip between searchable transcripts and the actual stored video.

There are commercial systems that offer this functionality, but they are extremely expensive (upwards of $18,000). I would like to come up with a shoe-string solution that delivers comparable functionality.

Is gbpvr a reasonable platform for this type of project? Is there another platform that would be more workable?

I've done a bit of programming in the past with C# and ASP.NET, and am capable of writing some of the code from scratch. However, if there are affordable widgets out there that would perform these functions, that would definitely be preferable.

Thanks in advance for your time. If you think this question would be more appropriate in a different set of forums, please let me know.

[Dave72]

I think an important thing to define is what kind of 'media content' ?

Will you be extracting dvd's ? satellite tv ? cableco or ota ? podcasting rss feeds ?

[redwood1967]

Oops. You're right!

To clarify, I will be analyzing television content. In a typical content analysis scenario, researchers capture anywhere between 30 and 150 hours of a particular program (or type of program).

Ideally, I would like to be able to record four input channels simultaneously though I will typically only be recording one program at a time. The input will be via analog coaxial cable from a Time Warner feed. As the program is archived, the software will need to extract the captions and convert that to a separate text-file.

Does this help explain the scenario?

[martint123]

Be aware that the licence for gbpvr is for personal use only.. http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=30610 and popup box when installing the software.

[redwood1967]

Hi,

I'm not sure what the licensing terms have to do with my question. This machine would be for personal use in my capacity as a media scholar. Are you suggesting that using gbpvr for this type of application would violate the terms of the license?

Aaron

[martint123]

I'm not suggesting anything, that would be for sub, the author. "researcher" could cover many things - I didn't want you to spend large amounts of time getting it up and running only to find the licence would be unsuitable.

Your US subtitle system is different from mine, so I can only point you to the wiki where there is some info on extracting CC subtitles and converting them to STR files (which I think are text).

I'm not sure what comes out of your analogue coax, but if there is an encryption I think you will be out of luck as this isn't supported.

Out of the box, I don't think there would be a way to go to a selected portion of a recorded video from a defined position in the converted text file. Positions in recorded video are easy to skip to, the problem being that there is no timeline in the subtitle files to know where to skip to.

[redwood1967]

Okey doke. Thanks for the help. It looks like MythTV may be more appropriate for this project. Snapstream has a commercial product, but it costs something like $18,000.

Thanks!