Question about extraction of subtitles and cue points for "USM" containers.

[L33THAK0R]

Originally Posted by :( Sad8669

Yo man, you've been dealing with .usm files.

Can you explain a little about cue points in a simple manner?

Cue points are essentially a set of instructions executed at a given point (or duration) within the runtime of a given video file. These can, for example, include instructions when to end rendering and when to activate controller rumble features and at what intensity to do so.

Thankfully not all titles that utilises CRIWARE's container format include cue points, as some engines allow for such instructions to be executed in-engine. It can also be a developers choice to include/exclude the use of cue points, for reasons I'm not yet clear on. Deciphering these cue-points can be trivial (for titles such as "Batman: Arkham City"), but can also be trickier for other titles, as there is no universal set of instructions, and even formatting of the cue points can change from title to title. So far I've had success with each title I've attempted this with, however more testing is required to determine whether these methods can be applied universally (depending on how the ".usm" is loaded by a given title (not engine-specific) into memory, and a guide can be published, as some encoded videos will not terminate correctly, even if the methodology is identical to a working, encoded ".usm".

I'm also reluctant to release a guide just to spite some users over at the Xentax forums who were really unhelpful buggers, but were still expecting me to educate them should I be successful.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Originally Posted by L33THAK0R

I'm also reluctant to release a guide just to spite some users over at the Xentax forums who were really unhelpful buggers, but were still expecting me to educate them should I be successful.

Concentrate on having fun with your experiments. Then releasing your results (which you should do) or keeping them for yourself won't matter anymore. Just like it makes no sense to not release the source of a piece of software that is freely distributable anyway.

[L33THAK0R]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

Concentrate on having fun with your experiments. Then releasing your results (which you should do) or keeping them for yourself won't matter anymore. Just like it makes no sense to not release the source of a piece of software that is freely distributable anyway.

Honestly I'll probably release my findings in depth eventually, but just haven't the energy to write things up formally, it was a bit draining thinking I found a universal solution when I had actually just gotten lucky with an aspect of the process. On top of this I only really want to release a guide when I completely understand the container type, with subtitle meta-data (time-stamps), and attempting to identify whether or not a given track can have its track-number identified in a universal way (some tracks are labeled outside of the standard 0 - 11 numbering system). For now I've managed to create a proof of concept and apply my technique only to one title fully.