Problem 1: My DVR ran out of storage space, but I wanted to save all my recorded programs. However, the content on the DVR is encrypted and not transferrable.
Solution 1: I researched ways to break the HDMI encryption and transfer videos to an external hark drive. In breaking the HDMI encryption, there was a software route and hardware route, and I chose to take the hardware route after analyzing both solutions. I now had all the videos saved as MP4s on an external drive.
Problem 2: Many of the videos, such as movies and concerts, had subtitles that were useful. These were hardcoded in the video and could not be turned off.
Solution 2:
- First, I transferred each program from the DVR twice (once with hardcoded subtitles, once without subtitles). However, keeping two copies of each program is very inefficient.
- I wrote a Python program to analyze the video and detect when subtitles were present on the screen. It output an SRT file with timestamps and extracted a frame at every subtitle.
- I fed the frames into an open-source OCR software, which output the completed SRT file, with my timestamps and the correct text from the subtitle.
To store all this content, I created a media server using a Raspberry Pi running Linux OS. The content is now accessible from anywhere.