What is SDH and why remove it?

SDH stands for Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing. It adds non-dialogue cues such as [dramatic music] or (door creaks) and speaker labels. Removing them leaves only spoken dialogue, which some viewers and downstream tools prefer.

Which HTML and style tags are stripped?

The cleaner removes paired and self-closing tags like , , and , as well as ASS-style override blocks in curly braces. Only the visible text remains, so a line like Hello becomes Hello.

How does ad and credit removal work?

Lines matching common patterns are dropped, including 'Subtitles by …', 'Synced by …', release-group names, and any line containing a web address. This clears the injected promo cues that many downloaded subtitles carry at the start or end.

What happens to a cue that becomes empty?

If cleaning removes everything from a cue — for example a cue that was only an [MUSIC] annotation — that cue is dropped entirely. The remaining cues are then renumbered from 1 so the file stays valid.

Is my subtitle file uploaded anywhere?

No. Every rule runs in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is sent to a server, so your subtitle files stay private on your own device.

SRT Subtitle Cleaner

The SRT subtitle cleaner strips the clutter out of downloaded subtitles: formatting tags, hearing-description annotations, speaker labels and the promotional or credit lines that release groups inject. The result is a tidy .srt containing just the dialogue, correctly renumbered and ready to use.

How it works

Each cue is parsed into its index, timing and text. The text is then passed through whichever rules you enable, line by line:

Strip tags removes HTML-style markup such as \<i\>, \<b\> and \<font\>, plus ASS-style override blocks in curly braces.
Remove SDH deletes bracketed descriptions in […] and parenthetical cues in (…), such as [dramatic music playing] or (whispering).
Remove speaker labels strips a leading uppercase name followed by a colon, like JOHN:.
Remove ads drops lines matching known patterns — Subtitles by …, Synced by …, release-group names, and any line containing a URL.

After cleaning, a cue whose text is now empty is discarded, and the surviving cues are renumbered from 1 with their original timings preserved.

Example and notes

An input cue like:

3
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:11,000
JOHN: <font color="#ffff00">Over here!</font>

with all rules on becomes:

3
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:11,000
Over here!

Notes: timing is never altered, so the cleaned file stays in sync. If you only want the words with no timing at all, the subtitle-to-text tool produces a flat transcript instead. All cleaning happens locally in your browser.