How to hide hardcoded subtitles in a Macintosh

[oicram]

I have a video with Dutch hardcoded subs. Is there a way I could hide these subs using some kind of mask and insert other subs over it?
Thanks.

[rumplestiltskin]

Yes, with Quicktime Pro enabled (in QuickTime Player 7).

Create a black or grey box of the appropriate width and height in whatever app that can create a png (or jpg, IIRC). Add it to the -entire- movie. Press Command-J and move the box forward or back as necessary. Also set the position as required. Save as a .mov (not a reference movie). Now your hardcoded subs have been overwritten, so to speak. Add your subtitles as required. I use Submerge for this latter task although there are other apps that are nice for this task: MP4Tools, Handbrake come to mind. Others will chime in with their recommendations.

[oicram]

Hi, Rumpeltitskin,
Thank you so much for your reply.
I have all the software you mentioned but far from being a video expert I don't have the knowhow to perform the operations you suggested.
I don't want to take advantage of your patience but could you describe in greater detail the necessary steps to achieve the subtitle masking?


Create a black or grey box of the appropriate width and height in whatever app that can create a png (or jpg, IIRC). Add it to the -entire- movie. Press Command-J and move the box forward or back as necessary. Also set the position as required. Save as a .mov (not a reference movie). Now your hardcoded subs have been overwritten, so to speak. Add your subtitles as required. I use Submerge for this latter task although there are other apps that are nice for this task: MP4Tools, Handbrake come to mind. Others will chime in with their recommendations.[/QUOTE]

[manono]

And have this black box in the video for its entire length?

This is much better and more easily done on a PC. At least there you can easily have the black box on the video only when there's dialog, and you can have the dimensions of the box adjust for the subs. That is, when there's a single line of dialog it'll be much smaller than when there are two lines. And you can also easily adjust the size of the box around the subs by increasing or decreasing its outline size.

This is done using SSA format subs (and probably ASS also). If a Mac can read those, then maybe it can be done on a Mac as well. Don't really know.

Edit: I was reading the Submerge version history here:

http://www.bitfield.se/submerge/versionhistory.html

and apparently it does support SSA subs. If you know how to create or use SSA subs, do this:

[V4 Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, TertiaryColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, AlphaLevel, Encoding
Style: Style1,Tahoma,20,11842740,8421504,8421504,0,0,0,3,20,0,2,20,20,30,0,0

That's from near the top of any SSA file. The bold '3' says to create a black box around the subs, the bold 20 says how thick it's to be. Raise or lower the number as you wish. You can also choose the font, subs size, position on the screen, etc. Here it is in action:

[oicram]

Wish I had a PC but I don't.
Thanks, anyway.

And have this black box in the video for its entire length?

This is much better and more easily done on a PC. At least there you can easily have the black box on the video only when there's dialog, and you can have the dimensions of the box adjust for the subs. That is, when there's a single line of dialog it'll be much smaller than when there are two lines. And you can also easily adjust the size of the box around the subs by increasing or decreasing its outline size.

This is done using SSA format subs (and probably ASS also). If a Mac can read those, then maybe it can be done on a Mac as well. Don't really know.

Edit: I was reading the Submerge version history here:

http://www.bitfield.se/submerge/versionhistory.html

and apparently it does support SSA subs. If you know how to create or use SSA subs, do this:

[V4 Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, TertiaryColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, AlphaLevel, Encoding
Style: Style1,Tahoma,20,11842740,8421504,8421504,0,0,0,3,20,0,2,20,20,30,0,0

That's from near the top of any SSA file. The bold '3' says to create a black box around the subs, the bold 20 says how thick it's to be. Raise or lower the number as you wish. You can also choose the font, subs size, position on the screen, etc. Here it is in action:

[manono]

Wish I had a PC but I don't.
Thanks, anyway.

Did you read the whole post? You can use Submerge on an SSA subtitle file. Whether or not there are Mac programs to convert an SRT (which is what I suppose you have) to SSA, only you and other Mac users might know. Or take the SRT to a PC owning friend's home and do the conversion there (in SubResynch or some such).