Removing caption boxes, bars and stickers

Updated October 26, 2026 · Peelframe

Videos made in an editor often carry more than plain subtitle text: a colored bar behind the words, a speech-bubble caption box, arrows or a “To be continued” sticker. When the editing project is gone and you need to strip these from the finished video, erasing only the letters leaves an empty bar that looks even stranger. Here is how to remove each kind of decoration you added to your own video.

First: may you edit this video?

This guide is for fixing videos you made or have permission to edit. Removing a logo, watermark, channel or broadcaster mark, or a credit from someone else's video or a broadcast can be prohibited by copyright law and is prohibited by Peelframe's terms, and the responsibility lies with you. See subtitle and watermark removal and copyright.

Which setting for which overlay

Text and bar together (default setting)

In Select an area, draw a box that holds the whole bar. The default, Subtitle text · when visible, finds the text in the box, erases the bar or box behind it as well, and only works in frames where the text shows. It suits decorations that slide in and out, like name captions rising from the bottom.

Even when the bar spans the whole width, make the box a little taller than the bar so its shadow or border does not stay behind.

A graphic without text (whole fixed overlay)

1. Where the graphic first appears, press Set start to current position; where it disappears, press Set end to current position.
2. Draw the box tightly around the graphic, because this setting fills in everything inside it.
3. For a round sticker, paint its shape in Precision mask · fixed mode so less of the picture around it is touched.
4. Check with Test current frame.

This setting does not follow movement. If a sticker pops in and grows or travels across the frame, draw one box over the whole path, or split the time across several boxes (up to four).

Sideways-scrolling captions

A caption made to scroll sideways keeps its bar still while the text moves. A box over the whole bar with the default setting finds the text again in every frame and erases it with the bar. If the bar stays on screen for the whole video, setting the bar itself to Whole fixed overlay sometimes gives a more even result. Compare both with Test current frame.

If the erased spot looks off

• The wider the bar, the more the AI has to draw, and the more visible the trace can be. Setting AI restoration quality in the advanced settings to Precise · always full resolution can improve fine detail.
• If a face or a busy pattern was largely hidden by the bar, it may come out different from the original, because the AI estimates what was hidden.
• Clean up a leftover edge with the brush in Leftover subtitle check, which redoes only that range. When it is not text, turn off “Refill only the caption letters inside the paint”.