How to add solid background to subtitles?

[visitor13]

I have srt subtitles that I need to display on top of the Chinese subs hardcoded into an avi. Is there a way of converting my subs into something that could be displayed with a black bar behind - to cover the Chinese characters? Perhaps a sub/idx file with a BG?

[mats.hogberg]

It is technically possible, yes, as subtitles are just images. I'm not sure of what tool to use, tho...

/Mats

[manono]

Hi-

I don't know if this is what you had in mind or not, but it's easy to accomplish:

Convert to SSA format, and then open it with Notepad and fool with the outline thickness:

Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, TertiaryColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, BorderStyle, ,Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, AlphaLevel, Encoding
Style: Default,Tahoma,70,65535,65535,65535,-2147483640,-1,0,1,40,0,2,30,30,40,0,0

If you need them for DVD, there are ways to accomplish the same thing.

[AlanHK]

In Subtitle Creator, one option is the background, which defaults to transparent. You can make that any colour. Then export that as a SUP file, which is a bitmap format you can import into most authoring apps.

Subtitle Workshop will let you export to several text-format files, some of which support background. (Note "BackColour" in the previous post's attribute for SSA subs.)

[kinetizer]

Use TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress to crop out the chinese subs. Resize video. Add in your subs using variety of subtitle tools.