subtitle aesthetics question

[ZAP]

Hey there, folks -

Been using VirtualDub a lot for some time, but there are some basic techniques that still elude me. For example, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add subtitles to a movie underneath the original image in one step. Here is exactly what I want to do:

I have a video that is (say) 640 x 480
I want to resize the video to (say) 640 x 540 by adding a black background, but I want the black to be ONLY underneath the video
I want to add subtitles to my movie (ssa subtitler filter or vobsub), but I want those subtitles to appear in the black area below the movie (NOT on top of the movie, which I find aesthetically unbearable)

Is there some combination of resizing and cropping that will allow me to do this? Or a third-party filter? I haven't found any way yet to do this within vdub in one step.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[Don2050]

This guide goes over Vdub's subtitles..

http://www.nanomessiah.com/subtitles.html

Not sure about adding the black borders that the subs show up in though.....but, hope this helps.

EDIT: now that I am re-reading your post...it seems the subs in the black border is all you are looking on how to do....so I guess this guide wont help..sorry for not reading your post more carefully.

EDIT 2 just thought of something ( though I never tried it) you may be able to use Adobe Premiere to add a black mask over a small portion of the lower part of the movie (though you would loose that part of the movie) and then overlay the subs on that black mask.

[ZAP]

Thanks for the reply.

I also posted to the unofficial VirtualDub board, and someone there was able to answer my question specifically:

http://virtualdub.everwicked.com/index.php?s=122904ecc5816b4d873a6337b251bfa0&act=ST&f...=0&#entry19004

There seems to be a bug in the vdub cropping preview that made me think that it wouldn't work the way I wanted, but if you ignore the preview it does in fact work correctly.

[Don2050]

ok...cool.....

just read that link...much easier then what I was thinking.....