The invention discloses a subtitling data handling method and an apparatus. The method comprises: acquiring the subtitling data and a subtitling control data; acquiring an effective zone of a subtitling bitmap; re-generating the subtitling image data according to the effective zone and modifying the subtitling control data; synthesizing the re-generated subtitling image data and the modified subtitling control data to a subtitling stream data and outputting the data. The apparatus comprises: a subtitling stream data analytical element for acquiring the subtitling image data and the subtitlingcontrol data; an effective zone identification unit for acquiring the effective zone of the subtitling bitmap; a tailoring synthesis unit for re-generating the subtitling image data according to the effective zone, and modifying the subtitling control data; an output unit for synthesizing the re-generated subtitling image data and modified subtitling control data to the subtitling stream data andoutputting the data. The invention reduces the subtitling data bulk, improves a network band-width use ratio of an applied system and hoists the efficiency of the subtitling data following handling unit.