SRT cleaner
Strip the non-dialogue extras out of an SRT: SDH sound annotations like [door slams] and (whispers), ♪ and #…# music lines, ALL-CAPS speaker labels, and styling tags. Back-to-back duplicate cues merge, out-of-order cues re-sort, emptied cues drop, and the rest renumber — timing otherwise untouched. Runs entirely in your browser.
The cleaned file appears here with a summary of what was removed. Timing is never changed — only text and formatting. Cues left empty are dropped and the rest renumbered.
What gets removed — and what never is
The cleaner targets the three things that separate an SDH caption file from plain dialogue subtitles: sound annotations in square brackets or parentheses, speaker labels written as ALL-CAPS names with a colon, and music lines marked with ♪. Each is optional — untick what you want to keep. Styling tags are a separate pass: <i>, <b>,<font>, and ASS-style {\an8}overrides all render as literal garbage in tools that don't support them, so stripping them is usually safe.
What's never touched: dialogue text, line breaks within kept lines, and — most importantly — timing. Mixed-case colon text like "Note: this stays" survives, because the label pattern requires capitals; dialogue dashes at line starts are preserved. If a file needs actual re-timing, that's the shifter's job; if it needs word-level editing, convert to CSV and back.
Why editors clean SRTs before importing
NLE subtitle importers are literal: Premiere and Resolve will happily put [MUSIC PLAYING] and JOHN: on screen, and render unsupported <font> tags as text. Cleaning before import means the timeline gets dialogue only — and if the destination is a transcript workflow rather than captions, a cleaned SRT converts far better to a Premiere transcript or a broadcast caption file, where SDH brackets would otherwise eat the tight 32-character line budget.
FAQ
How do I remove SDH from an SRT file?
Load or paste the SRT above with "Remove SDH annotations" ticked — it strips [bracketed] and (parenthesized) sound descriptions and ♪ music lines, drops any cue left empty, renumbers the rest, and gives you a clean file to download. Timing is never changed.
What is SDH in subtitles?
Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing — regular subtitles plus non-dialogue information: sound effects in brackets ([door slams]), speaker identification (JOHN:), and music cues (♪). Converting SDH subtitles into plain dialogue subtitles means removing exactly those extras, which is what this tool automates.
Will cleaning change my subtitle timing?
No — the cleaner only edits text. Every surviving cue keeps its exact start and end times. The only timing-related change it can make is rewriting VTT-style dot timestamps (00:00:01.000) to the SRT comma form, which fixes files without altering when anything appears.
Why remove speaker labels or italics tags?
Speaker labels (JOHN:) and styling tags (<i>, <font>, {\an8}) render as literal text in players and NLEs that don't support them — which includes most editing-software subtitle importers. Stripping them first is the difference between clean captions and captions full of angle brackets.
Some cues disappeared after cleaning — why?
A cue that contained only SDH content (just [applause], or only a ♪ lyric line) has nothing left after cleaning, so the tool drops it and renumbers the remaining cues — players require gapless numbering. With "Merge duplicate cues" on, back-to-back repeats of the same text also collapse into one longer cue. The "Cues kept" counter shows exactly how many survived.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No — cleaning runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server.
Related tools & converters
- SRT validatorCheck the cleaned file for timing and reading-speed issues.
- SRT shifterFix a constant sync offset without re-timing by hand.
- SRT to Premiere transcriptClean first, then bring dialogue into Text-Based Editing.
- SRT to SCCBroadcast CEA-608 captions from a cleaned SRT.
- SRT to CSVHeavier edits in a spreadsheet, then convert back.
- Transcript to SRT guideWhere messy subtitle files usually come from.