Black background on subtitles

Whenever I download subtitles—usually with white text—they often come with this washed-out, semi-transparent gray background. It’s a nightmare because if the movie scene happens to be bright, the text just disappears into the screen. Does anyone know a good subtitle editor where I can actually change the background color (like setting it to solid black)? I’ve messed around with a few different programs, but I haven't been able to find that specific setting anywhere.🤷

Drew Harris2 said:Whenever I strip the subtitles off a movie—they're usually white text—I often find they have this weird, washed-out, semi-transparent gray background. It gets really annoying because if the scene turns bright, the subtitles basically disappear. I've been looking for a subtitle editor where I can just swap that background out for something solid, like black, but I haven't had much luck finding that specific setting in the apps I've tried.🤷

Honestly, it might be way easier to just change the background, font, or colors directly in whatever media player you're using to watch the movies... So, what kind of player are you running?

If you’re using AviADDXSubs to burn in your subtitles and then popping in a DVD player to watch them, you actually have the option to pick out a specific color or even add a black outline with whatever thickness you prefer. On the other hand, if you’re just sitting at your desk using a media player on your PC, you’ll most likely find those exact same customization settings tucked away right in the software's own options menu!!

Drew Harris2 said:Whenever I strip the subtitles from a movie—they’re usually white—I often find they’ve got this faint, semi-transparent gray background attached. If the scene gets too bright, that background blends in and makes the text basically unreadable. Is there a specific subtitle editor I can use to change that background color? Like, maybe to solid black? I’ve messed around with a few different programs, but I haven't actually found an option to do that yet.🤷

You don't really need to mess with the background color. Just change the font color instead. You can pretty much do that in any standard media player—just switch it to yellow or orange and it should be perfectly legible. 🙂

Actually, most of those same players will let you set a custom background color too, if you really want to go that route. 🙂

Here’s the deal: I usually just toss my DivX movies and SRT subtitle files onto a USB drive to watch them on my media player. The problem is, once they're playing, the subtitles are a nightmare to read. It feels like I need to edit the file before I even put it on the thumb drive. Does anyone know how or where I can do that, and what kind of software should I be using?

Have you ever considered hardcoding the subtitles directly into the film file?

Drew Harris2 said:The issue is that I usually just put movie files and SRT subtitle files onto a USB drive to play them on my home theater system. Even then, the subtitles can be really hard to read. Is there a way to edit them before I put everything on the thumb drive? If so, what software should I use?

We've all been there! You can use a program like AviADDXSubs (Jack Alvarez already mentioned this one) to hardcode the subtitles directly into the video. You could change the text color to yellow or add a black outline to the font so it pops. Once that's done, just save it to your USB stick and you're good to go.

Thanks, man. I'll give that a shot over the weekend and let you know if I run into any snags.🙂