Hide Hardcoded Subtitles and Put New Ones on Top

A blur, not an eraser

Burned-in subtitles are not a layer sitting on the video. When they were rendered, the letters became ordinary pixels, exactly like the sky or the speaker's shirt behind them, and no file anywhere still holds them separately. That leaves two broad ways to deal with them: hide the strip they occupy, or try to invent the picture that used to be behind them. The editor on this page does the first, and only the first.

What the band does

Blurs a full-width strip on every frame so the letters inside it can no longer be read, then draws your new subtitles on top.

What it does not do

It does not detect text, follow subtitles that jump around, or rebuild the background behind the old words.

What else gets blurred

Everything inside the strip: a chin, a lower-third name card, a product on a desk, a channel logo in the corner.

Where it starts

Near the bottom of the frame, from roughly three-quarters of the way down to just above the bottom edge, which is where most hardcoded subtitles sit.

If that trade is acceptable for your video, the rest of this page shows how to make it look tidy. If it isn't, skip to the section on when the band is the wrong tool.

Covering old subtitles step by step

1. Open the editor and choose the video file (MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM or MKV).
2. Get the replacement subtitles: generate them with AI, import an SRT or VTT file, or type them line by line at the playhead.
3. Open the Style tab, find the "Original subtitles" section and switch on "Hide subtitles already in the video".
4. Pause on a moment where the old subtitles run to two lines, then move "Band position" until the strip is centred on them and raise "Band height" until both lines are covered with a little room to spare.
5. Scrub to a few other moments, such as a long line, a one-word line and a bright scene, and confirm no letter tops or descenders peek out above or below the strip.
6. Set the subtitle position to bottom and adjust the vertical offset so your new lines land inside the blurred strip.
7. Click Render video, check the summary, start the render and download the MP4 when it finishes.

The band settings are saved with the draft in this browser, alongside your lines and style, so reopening the same video brings the strip back where you left it.

Sizing the band

"Band height" runs from a thin sliver of 4 percent of the frame height up to 40 percent. Getting it right is mostly about the worst case in your video, not the typical line. Old subtitles that are usually one line but occasionally two need a band tall enough for two; otherwise the top line of every two-line subtitle leaks out as readable text.

Too generous is a problem too. A band that covers the bottom third of the frame starts swallowing hands, products and on-screen graphics, and viewers notice a large smudge more than a narrow one. Aim for the old text plus a small margin and nothing more.

Some videos put their subtitles at the top of the frame, often because a name card or a scoreboard occupies the bottom. Drag "Band position" upward to follow them, then move your new subtitles to the top with the position setting so the two line up. There is one band per video, so if the old subtitles switch between top and bottom within the same file, you will have to choose which set to hide.

Making the cover look deliberate

A blur on its own leaves a soft smear, and on high-contrast footage viewers can still make out the rough shape of each old line: where a word was long, where a line ended. Stacking a box on top hides those shapes and makes the strip read as a design choice rather than a repair.

• Pick a background type of Box or Rounded in the Style tab and raise the box opacity close to solid. A dark grey usually blends with the blur better than pure black.
• Widen the box padding so the box overlaps the edges of the old lines.
• Make the new text at least as large as the old text, so the box naturally covers more of the strip.
• Keep the outline modest. Inside a solid box, a thick outline adds clutter without improving legibility.

The subtitle background guide goes deeper on box colour and opacity, and customizing subtitles covers fonts, spacing and position.

The most common reason to do all this is language: the video carries subtitles your audience can't read. In that case you can let the AI write new subtitles from the speech in one of 21 languages and burn them straight over the band; burning translated subtitles walks through that job, and translated subtitles gives you just the file if you'd rather publish it separately.

When the band is the wrong tool

• Text that moves. Lyric videos with words placed all over the frame, signs, and titles in different positions can't be followed by a single fixed strip.
• Subtitles over the action. If the old text sits on a speaker's mouth, a product demo or a scoreboard, blurring it blurs the thing people came to watch.
• A clean frame is required. Inpainting tools, offered by various AI services and desktop apps, try to paint in what was behind the letters. On a static background they can look convincing; over moving faces or textured scenes they tend to smear or flicker, and many of them process the video on their own servers. Review any result frame by frame before trusting it.
• Cropping is acceptable. Cutting off the bottom of the frame gets rid of the old text entirely but changes the shape of the video. A desktop editor or FFmpeg's command-line tools can crop; this editor keeps the source dimensions.

The cleanest answer is usually a version without text from whoever made the video. Editors and distributors often keep one; textless versions explains what to ask for. If the video is yours and you still have the project, re-export it without the subtitle track.

Three real situations

Before you share it

Watch the rendered file once at full screen. Scene cuts are where problems show up: a bright shot after a dark one can make residual letter shapes visible again, and a two-line subtitle you didn't check can poke out of the band. If the video is heading to a vertical feed, turn on the safe-area guide and make sure your new text sits clear of the app's buttons, as described in the subtitle safe area.

Finally, covering someone else's subtitles doesn't change who owns the video. If you are republishing footage you didn't make, get permission first; translating someone else's video covers the questions to ask.

About the subtitle editor on this page

Opens

MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV videos your browser can decode

Subtitles from

AI (from the speech, optionally translated into one of 21 languages), an SRT or VTT file, or typing them in

You download

An MP4 with the subtitles drawn into the picture at the original resolution and frame rate, plus SRT and VTT files

Cost

Editing, styling, rendering and SRT/VTT export are free, with no account and no watermark. AI subtitles cost 1 credit per minute (5-credit minimum per video); signing in with Google gives 100 free credits and accounts get 10 free credits a day

Privacy

The video never leaves your device and is rendered in your browser. Only for AI subtitles is the audio sent, over HTTPS, and it is deleted within 30 minutes of delivery

Rendering needs

Chrome or Edge 94+, Safari 16.4+, or Firefox 130+ on a computer. Editing and SRT/VTT export work in any current browser