Remove subtitle in black bar

[sltr1234]

I have mkv video file that has a black bar under the screen and unknown language subtitle displayed in this area ( I think it is hard sub because when I use mkvmerge to extract video only, I still see this subtile in the video). But when I play this video with soft sub, soft sub always displays above the black bar (so the unknown language subtitle is not totally hard-sub I think because if it is hard sub, the soft sub will display OVER the hard sub, not ABOVE the hard sub as in this case)
So is there anyway to remove this unknown subtitle and black bar from the video without re-encoding or if we can't remove them, how can we erase or hide the unknown subtitle and let the soft sub to display in this black bar? I want the video to display the soft sub only when playing this video

Please help. Thanks

[Bonie81]

... I think it is hard sub because when I use mkvmerge to extract video only, I still see this subtile in the video). But when I play this video with soft sub, soft sub always displays above the black bar...
Please help. Thanks

You can use any free or professional Video Editing Software having feature of crop and pad.
You can crop bottom black bar completely either in mod4, mod8 or mod16 (multiples of 4,8, or 16) and pad with blank black again.
I guess AVIDemux and TVC -Total Video Converter can do it, but, not sure about re-padding.

[sltr1234]

Thanks Bonie
If we crop the video, does it re-encode the video? I read some posts that when we crop the video, the video will be re-encoded.

[Bonie81]

yeah, crop i wud like to consider as a filter, applying any filter requires video to be re-encoded.
i cross-check for AVIDemux, you can pad (blank -black bar) too. You can go for loss less compressions, if you so particular about compression losses.

[sltr1234]

Thanks Bonie