Subtitle cleanup tool
SDH subtitles, written for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, add sound descriptions, speaker names and music cues to the dialogue. This cleaner strips the parts you choose, removes cues that end up empty and renumbers the file, leaving plain dialogue. It runs in your browser and the file is never uploaded.
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Three steps
Paste or open the SRT you want to clean.
Tick what to remove: sound descriptions, speaker labels, tags, music symbols.
Review the cleaned cues, then download clean.srt.
Useful for
What it checks
SDH explained
SDH is not a different file format. It is ordinary SRT text with extra information for viewers who cannot hear the audio.
Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing describe sounds as well as speech: [DOOR SLAMS], (laughs), speaker names such as JOHN: when it is unclear who is talking, and music notes such as ♪ around sung lines. That information matters to people who rely on it. If you publish subtitles for an audience, keep an SDH version available and use the cleaned file as a second track or a working copy.
Sound descriptions removes anything in square brackets or round brackets, together with the brackets. Speaker labels removes a name in capitals followed by a colon at the start of a line, including after a dialogue dash, so "- MAN: It came from upstairs." becomes "- It came from upstairs." Tags removes HTML-style tags such as <i>, <b> and <font> and ASS-style tags such as {\an8}. Music symbols removes ♪, ♫, ♬ and ♩.
A cue that held only a sound description, such as [DOOR SLAMS], is empty after cleaning. Empty cues are removed and the rest are renumbered from 1, so there are no gaps in the numbering. When only one line remains in a cue that used a dialogue dash, the dash is removed too; when two speakers still share a cue, both dashes stay.
The rules are simple, so read the result. Words people actually say inside round brackets are removed. A line that starts with a capitalised word and a colon, such as "NOTE:" or "OK:", loses that word. Removing tags also removes italics, which subtitles often use for off-screen voices, songs or foreign words; untick the tags option to keep them. Fix anything odd in the SRT editor before you use the file.
Questions
Paste the SRT here, keep sound descriptions, speaker labels and music symbols ticked, and download clean.srt. Cues that held only a sound description are removed and the file is renumbered.
SDH subtitles add non-speech information such as sound effects, speaker names and music cues for viewers who cannot hear the audio. Regular subtitles carry only the dialogue. Our guide to English, English CC and SDH subtitles explains the labels you see on streaming services.
It can. Everything in brackets is treated as a description, and a capitalised word with a colon at the start of a line is treated as a speaker label. Review the output and restore anything that was speech.
Only if you untick the tags option. With it ticked, <i>, <b>, <u> and <font> tags are removed along with their formatting, while the words inside them are kept.
No. Cleaning runs in your browser. The tool is free and needs no account.
Yes. Paste or open a VTT file and the cleaner reads it, but the cleaned file downloads as SRT. Use the SRT to VTT converter afterwards if you need VTT back.
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