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cipricus
Asked: 2023-01-22 14:23:17 +0800 CST

Any video player other than VLC to add background to subtitles?

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The title is saying it all: I would like a player other than VLC to play videos that have embedded subs and hide these under my own + a background.

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I use VLC much more often than I have this need for subtitle background, and, as adding removing & background in VLC is not instant, I would like to have a separate player for this rare case.

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1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    MPV

    As expected, mpv has a CLI option (--sub-back-color=<color>) that can be used to start a separate instance with subtitle background. For example:

    mpv --sub-back-color=#131415 path/to/video

    Editing applications menu, a new entry can be added:

    enter image description here

    enter image description here

    Such commands can be used with MPV front-ends, like Haruna (see below for supplementary options to toggle etc), SMPlayer, Celluloid.

    SMPLAYER

    Those arguments can be used with SMPlayer:

    enter image description here

    Celluloid

    enter image description here

    The subs background can be made transparent.

    CC is the value to be added before the 6-digit color number in order to set a 80% opacity level (e.g. for black: #CC000000). See all such values here.

    Haruna

    Haruna can take better advantage of this possibility, because it has the option to trigger the background with a shortcut (without restarting the player) using a somewhat different custom command to be added to its configuration settings (of the form set sub-back-color #xxxxxx). Thus, with different shortcuts different colors and/or transparency levels can be triggered, while another shortcut can be used to remove the background by setting a 100% transparency (0% opacity) level (00):

    enter image description here

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