Adding a black bar to an avi?

[visitor13]

I have an avi file with the burned in Chinese subs that I would like to cover with a black bar. It's a pretty straightforward procedure in Quick Time Pro but the resulting file is not only formatted as .mov but it has two video tracks - the original video and the graphic mask - unplayable in VLC. Could ffmpegx be helpful in any way?

[AlanHK]

I'd write a three-line Avisynth script to
1) load DirectShowSource("youravifile.avi")
2) crop http://www.avisynth.org/Crop
3) (optionally) add bars. http://www.avisynth.org/AddBorders

Then open the avs and output from VirtualDub.

[major]

You should probably first re-export the two-track movie with Quicktime Player, so as to recreate a single-track movie.

[visitor13]

The cropping thing is an idea but I don't just want to chop off the bottom of the screen (plus I could crop in ffmpegX and avoid Windows). Exporting from QT doesn't quite work either: if it's done without reencoding, there still are two video tracks included. Can ffmpegX encode avi with burned in idx/sub file? Perhaps I could just create a black bar bitmap, an idx file that would span entire length of the movie and "fool" ffmpeX into thinking that it's the subtitles it's dealing with?

[major]

No, subtitles are anyway applied in transparency. You should either crop, either export with QT by re-encoding (you can reencode to a lossless format so the quality will not suffer).

[visitor13]

I don't have space on my hd for the uncompressed 2hr long QT - even if it's temporary
Eventually I opted for less elegant solution: I converted subtitles to .ssa format and moved them above the Chinese ones. Somehow I wasn't able to create a background for them even though the format seems to allow it. Anyway, at least I can read the text without getting a headache.

[tbluewater]

You are using wrong applications. What you are trying to do is editing a video clip. Use iMovie or Final Cut Pro. I don't know for sure if iMovie does the job because I don't use it. Create just one image file with black background. Import it and the video clip into Final Cut Pro. Put the background image in track 1 and the video clip in track 2. Then re-encode the entire video. That'll be it.

[visitor13]

I don't need FCP for that: Quick Time Pro could do just fine. The "problem", from the beginning, is reencoding of the original avi file: apparently impossible to avoid.