Subtitle Background Box, Outline or Shadow

Five ways to separate text from the picture

None

Plain text with no outline, shadow or box. Safe only when the text always sits over a dark, flat area such as letterbox bars or a studio backdrop.

Outline

A stroke around every letter. The picture stays visible between words and lines, and any fill that contrasts with the stroke works.

Shadow

A soft, blurred copy of the letters behind them, optionally offset. The subtlest option: it lifts text off mid-tone footage but can't rescue it over white.

Box

A rectangle behind each line. Contrast is guaranteed whatever the footage does, at the cost of covering part of the frame.

Rounded

The same box with rounded corners, from gently softened to a full pill shape.

One detail matters once you start tweaking: the types aren't exclusive. Outline and shadow are drawn in every type except None whenever their width or blur is above zero, so a box can also carry an outline, and an outline style can sit on a shadow. Picking a type mainly decides whether a box is drawn and switches on sensible defaults for that effect. The Classic preset, for instance, is an outline with a faint shadow underneath.

Outline versus box

This is the decision most people are really making.

An outline keeps the video visible. It suits footage where the frame matters, such as films, travel and anything shot with care. Its weak spots are thin or light fonts, where the stroke eats into the letter, and dense textures like foliage or crowds, where a thin outline gets lost among similar edges. Thicken it under Advanced appearance; the width is set relative to the font size, so it scales with the video.

A box removes doubt. On screen recordings, slides, white walls, snow and shots that already contain text, a box is the quickest way to make every line readable. Viewers also associate it with TV and player captions, so it reads as "this is a caption" rather than "this is a title". The price is visual weight: a heavy black box over a beautiful shot is a strong choice to make on the cinematographer's behalf.

The middle ground is a translucent box. With opacity somewhere around two-thirds to three-quarters, the picture shows faintly through, enough to keep the frame alive while the words stay crisp.

Subtitles with a black background

1. Open the Style tab and choose the YouTube preset for a translucent dark box, or High Contrast for a solid one.
2. Under Background, keep the type on Box, or switch to Rounded for softer corners.
3. Under Colours, set Background to black and drag its opacity: all the way for an opaque box, lower to let the picture through.
4. Open Advanced appearance and adjust Padding X and Padding Y until the words have breathing room inside the box.
5. Play the video over its brightest shot and check that the box edges look deliberate, not cramped.

Each line gets its own box, sized to that line, the way broadcast and player captions do it. A two-line subtitle therefore shows two boxes of different widths rather than one large rectangle, which hides less of the picture.

Padding, corner radius and opacity

Padding X

Space left and right of the text inside the box. Too little looks cramped; too much paints a wide band across the frame.

Padding Y

Space above and below. Small values keep two-line boxes snug; larger ones give a chunky, label-like look.

Corner radius

Rounded only. Low values soften the corners; at the top of the range the ends turn fully round.

Box opacity

From invisible to solid, and the most important of these for legibility.

Box colour

Any hex value. Dark boxes with light text are the norm; a light box needs dark text, as in the Social Media preset.

Padding and radius are measured relative to the font size, so the box keeps its proportions when you change the size or render a higher-resolution source. Colour choices for the box itself are covered in readable subtitle colours.

Shadow done well

A shadow is the background for people who don't want a visible background. It works on footage that is mostly mid-tone or dark, and with serif or light-weight fonts where an outline would look heavy. Raise the blur for a soft halo and add a small downward offset for depth. Keep shadow opacity high, because a faint shadow behind white text over a bright shot does nothing at all. Minimal and Cinema are both shadow-based starting points.

If you find yourself pushing blur and opacity to the limit just to keep text readable, the footage is telling you it needs an outline or a box.

Which background for which video

When the background isn't the problem

Sometimes the clash comes from something already in the frame. If the video has old subtitles burned in, a box helps only if it covers them completely. The "Hide subtitles already in the video" option blurs a horizontal band so the old words can't be read and draws the new subtitles on top; it blurs everything in that band rather than cleaning the letters away, as hiding burned-in subtitles explains in detail. If the real issue is placement rather than contrast, moving subtitles to the top or checking the subtitle safe area will do more than any box. And for how size, font and contrast work together, the readability guide on the blog takes the wider view.

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