Anyone know how to work with Boeing?

So, I’ve been messing around with some DivX movies lately, and I managed to track down all the subtitles I needed using this little tool called "subtitle workshop". But here’s the kicker: whenever I try to sit down and watch them on my home DVD player, the text is tiny—like, practically microscopic! It’s impossible to read from a normal distance from the TV, and if a scene has a bright white background, the letters just sort of vanish into thin air
. A buddy of mine suggested I try out Boeing to hardcode the subtitles directly onto the video files. Man, was he right! He knocked it out in maybe two or three minutes flat. It’s a total night-and-day difference compared to those other programs I tried, like PocketDivxEncoder, AviRecomp, or AllokVideoJoiner, which used to make me wait about an hour every single time
. .
Now, when I pop these into my DVD player, the quality is just stellar. The text is nice and big, and it even has this black outline around the letters, so they pop against any background. Honestly, it’s such a fantastic little program
. The thing is, since I’m still rocking an old-school 4:3 aspect ratio TV, almost all these movies have those black bars at the top and bottom, which makes sense since most films are shot in 16:9 nowadays
. And that brings me to the question I’m stuck on:
I’ve noticed that on some movies, the subtitles sit right at the bottom of the picture, but on others, they’re tucked away in that black bar area. Then there are those weird ones where the first line of text is on the image and the second line drops down into the black bar
. Does anyone happen to know why that happens? And more importantly, is there a way to tweak the settings so the subtitles always stay within the actual picture instead of drifting down into the black bars?

I'm not sure why you're having issues, but on my end, the subtitles always sit at 100% in the right spot, regardless of the aspect ratio. I guess you could just manually adjust the subtitle position until it looks right to you. You can probably tweak the aspect ratio settings right above that too.

Do exactly what "he who shall not be named" says and stop messing around!
If you're watching a movie on your PC, you'll have subtitles right in the middle of the screen, but for a computer, you don't even need to bother... There's a whole ton of software that will handle reading them for you perfectly well.
For media players, this program is the gold standard. You won't find anything better.
If anyone knows of a superior alternative, let me know.

350-550 with black bars (16:9), or 350-450 full frame at 4:3. That’s how I run mine.

By default, my subtitle position is set to 320(cp) - 450(vp)
. Sorry, I didn't quite catch what you meant—how would you recommend setting things up if I'm watching on a 4:3 aspect ratio TV screen?
Also, could you explain what those options full screen and overscan actually do for me?

Hey man, I could really use a hand here.
I'm trying to figure out which settings I should actually be using if I want to watch stuff on my old-school 4:3 TV versus what works best for a modern 16:9 widescreen set, specifically regarding these options:

-the subtitle map field
fullscreen vs. overscan

-the subtitle position field
center at and vertical position

So, I’ve been playing around with some tests lately, trying out three different ways to burn those subtitles in
-First off, I just toggled fullscreen
-Then, I tried just the overscan
-And finally, I went with both fullscreen and overscan
I had my subtitle position set right at 350 x 450
But here's the kicker: when I sat down to check everything on my TV (running at 4:3), there wasn't a single bit of difference between those three methods regarding how the subs looked. It was like they were all identical
I'm honestly scratching my head a bit—if they all look the same, what's even the point of having these options?

Hey everyone, I have a question too.
If I'm watching movies with subtitles burned in on a 4:3 TV screen, I want to know how to tell ahead of time if a film will have black bars. That way, I can decide whether to set the vertical subtitle position to 450 or 550.
Can I figure this out just by looking at the film's dimensions, or is there another way?
Here are the dimensions for a few movies I have:
848:464
624:336
696:396
720:576
Which of these will have black bars and which won't?