Picute

Subtitle cleaner

Takes formatting tags, sound descriptions and speaker labels out of SRT or WebVTT subtitles and gives you an SRT file back. What you paste or upload stays in your browser.

Clean your subtitle file

How to use it

  1. Paste the subtitles, or upload a .srt or .vtt file.
  2. All three options are on. Untick an option to keep what it would remove.
  3. Click Clean, read through the result, then download subtitles.clean.srt or copy it.

What each option removes

  • Formatting tags: anything in angle brackets that doesn't start with a space, such as i, b, u, font and WebVTT voice tags, plus ASS codes in curly braces that start with a backslash. A less-than sign followed by a space stays.
  • SDH notes: anything in square brackets, parentheses at the start of a line, the full-width （ ） and 【 】 brackets, and the ♪ and ♫ signs. Parentheses later in a line are kept, since they are usually part of the dialogue.
  • Speaker labels at the start of a line: all-caps names like JOHN: or MAN #1:, one capitalized word like Narrator:, or a short Korean, Chinese or Japanese name like 철수:. The colon must be followed by a space, so times like 12:30 are left alone.
  • Lines left empty are removed, and a cue with nothing left is dropped. The remaining cues are renumbered; their times don't change.

Example

A two-cue file with all three options on.

Before
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:02,000
[music]

2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:05,000
JOHN: <i>Hello</i> there.
(laughs) I mean it (really).
After
1
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:05,000
Hello there.
I mean it (really).

Questions

Can it remove words that aren't speaker names?
Yes. A single capitalized word followed by a colon and a space at the start of a line counts as a label, so “Look: we’re late” becomes “we’re late”. If your subtitles have lines like that, untick Remove speaker labels.
What happens to the dash before a second speaker?
It is removed only together with a speaker label: “- MARY: Hi” becomes “Hi”, while “- Hi” stays as it is.
If I upload a .vtt file, do I get WebVTT back?
No, the result is always SRT. To get WebVTT, put the cleaned file through the SRT to VTT converter.
What is SDH?
Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Besides the dialogue they describe sounds and name speakers, as in [door slams] or (laughing). They get removed when only the dialogue is needed, for a translation or a transcript.