Removing hardcoded subs from an avi

June 4, 2012 8:10 PM

Is there a way to remove hardcoded subtitles from an avi file?

This is probably impossible but I thought I'd give it a shot. I have an avi movie file that's in English but has foreign-language subtitles hardcoded in. (No .srt file attached). I know there are programs that can blur that part of the screen out but I thought I'd ask if anyone knew of a program that could remove them entirely.

posted by cozenedindigo to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

There is no way to do this. As you know, positioning one opaque or translucent image over another and then recording only the sum of the output at a particular pixel is a lossy process - the original data in the background image is thrown away. Given the size that subtitles must be to be legible to the viewer, interpolation of the missing pixels will not provide a satisfactory result.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:15 PM on June 4, 2012

I did this back in 2007 for one of those "Downfall" Hitler videos, as I wanted my own version without the hardcoded titles. It was done as an AVI in VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod with an add-on that specifically removes lettering like this by blurring a target color with surrounding video pixels in a pre-set envelope box. Unfortunately I can't remember what it was. It did a great job, though. Hopefully this helps a bit.
posted by crapmatic at 8:26 PM on June 4, 2012

This VirtualDub MSU Subtitle Remover sounds like what crapmatic described and looks extremely promising.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:36 PM on June 4, 2012 [4 favorites]