Black bars appearing above/below subtitles

I need a program that can add a black bar behind the subtitles in a movie—basically, I downloaded this film that already has hardcoded subs burned in, and when I try to overlay my own American subtitles, the whole thing looks like absolute garbage because they're overlapping. If anyone knows a fix, please help me out

Subtitle workshop, and honestly, I think pretty much any decent subtitle editing software out there, lets you mess with transparency and background colors...
I can't really walk you through the exact menu path right now...

Edit:
My bad, turns out those settings only show up in the software's preview window...

lonecanyon38 said:I'm looking for some software that can add a black background behind subtitles in a movie. I downloaded a file that already has hardcoded subtitles, and now when I try to add my own American subtitles, it's just a total mess because they overlap. If anyone knows a fix, please help.

For instance, if you're watching a movie using a player like VLC, once you start the film, right-click anywhere on the video window, go to Subtitles > Subtitle Settings > Background color, pick black from the palette, and hit OK. That should give you a black background behind the text. 🙂

Just a heads up, you'll need to make sure the "Transparent" box isn't checked. 🙂