# SDH Annotation Cleaner Strip hearing-impaired (SDH) noise from subtitles: bracketed sound effects like [APPLAUSE] and (engine rumbles), speaker labels like JOHN: or NARRATOR -, music-note lines ♪ ♫ — then drop the empty cues left behind. > Canonical page: https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/srt-sdh-annotation-cleaner - **Category:** Media - **Keywords:** sdh remover, remove sound effects subtitles, hearing impaired subtitles clean, srt cleaner, remove speaker labels, music notes subtitles, subtitle cleanup, annotations ## Overview Subtitles downloaded for the deaf and hard-of-hearing carry annotations plain viewers never asked for: [APPLAUSE], (LAUGHTER), {WIND BLOWING}, *SIGHS*, speaker prefixes like "JOHN:" or "MAN 1:", and ♪ music-note lines. Translators trip over them, viewers see clutter, and re-timing gets harder. This cleaner removes them and writes a normal subtitle back — not just an extracted text dump. Standard mode removes every bracket-only annotation line; Safe mode removes only fully-uppercase annotations (like [APPLAUSE]) and a long list of known sound keywords (applause, laughter, engine, doorbell, gunshot, …), protecting lowercase parentheticals that are real dialogue like "(quietly, to himself)". Speaker labels are an option (JOHN:, MAN 1:, and the "NARRATOR -" dash form). Music notes can be removed whole-line, or with lyric-keeping mode that strips the ♪ markers but keeps the words between them. Cues that end up empty are dropped, and the report counts cleaned cues, removed cues and removals by category so you can audit exactly what happened. Input and output stay SRT or WebVTT; nothing is uploaded. ## Inputs - **Subtitle text** (textarea): Paste SDH SRT / WebVTT text here - **Cleaning mode** (select) - **Remove speaker labels** (checkbox) - **Remove music notes** (checkbox) - **Keep lyric text between notes** (checkbox) - **Output format** (select) ## When to use - Preparing subtitle files for general audiences who prefer spoken dialogue without visual sound descriptions. - Cleaning subtitle transcripts before running machine translation or importing text into translation memory tools. - Removing redundant speaker prefixes, music-note symbols, and empty cues left behind after subtitle editing. ## How it works - Paste your raw SRT or WebVTT subtitle text into the input field. - Choose your cleaning mode (Standard or Safe) and toggle options for speaker labels, music notes, and lyric preservation. - Select your target output format (SRT or WebVTT) and copy the cleaned subtitle markup directly. ## Use cases - Stripping \[LAUGHTER\], \[APPLAUSE\], and {WIND BLOWING} sound effects from downloaded movie subtitles. - Converting SDH closed captions into non-SDH subtitle files for streaming platform publication. - Cleaning speaker labels and background sound markers from lecture or interview WebVTT tracks. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the difference between Standard and Safe cleaning modes? Standard mode removes all bracketed annotation lines, while Safe mode only strips uppercase tags and known sound keywords to protect lowercase spoken parentheticals. ### What happens to subtitle cues that only contained sound effects? Any cue that becomes completely empty after removing sound effects or music lines is automatically dropped from the final output. ### Can I remove musical note symbols without losing the song lyrics? Yes. Enable the 'Keep lyric text between notes' option to strip ♪ and ♫ markers while retaining the words between them. ### Which speaker label formats are supported for removal? The cleaner detects colon prefixes like 'JOHN:' or 'MAN 1:' as well as dash formats like 'NARRATOR -'. ### Is my subtitle data sent to an external server? No. All text parsing, SDH filtering, and output generation run entirely in your local browser. ## Related tools - [BOM Character Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/data-bom-remover): Remove BOM (Byte Order Mark) characters from text and file content. Perfect for cleaning up text files that have encoding issues, fixing CSV imports, and preparing data for processing. Features: - Detect and remove UTF-8 BOM (EF BB BF) - Detect and remove UTF-16 BOM (FE FF or FF FE) - Detect and remove UTF-32 BOM (00 00 FE FF or FF FE 00 00) - Support multiple input formats - Visual BOM character display - Detailed detection report - Support for batch text processing Common Use Cases: - Fix CSV file import errors - Clean up text file encoding issues - Prepare data for JSON parsing - Fix XML parsing problems - Resolve API data encoding conflicts - Standardize text data format - [Empty Line Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/empty-line-remover): Remove all empty lines from text (lines with no content) - [Line Number Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/line-number-remover): Remove line numbers from text or code with intelligent pattern recognition - [Prefix Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/prefix-remover): Remove common prefixes from each line with intelligent detection and customizable options - [Suffix Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/suffix-remover): Remove common suffixes from each line with intelligent detection and customizable options - [Text Emoji Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/text-emoji-remover): Remove emojis and special symbols from text content - [Remove All Empty Lines](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/text-empty-lines-remover): Quickly delete all blank lines from text - [Zero Width Character Remover](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/zero-width-remover): Remove zero-width and invisible characters from text ## Samples - [Duplicate Line Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/text-duplicate-line-samples): Sample files with various types of duplicate lines for testing duplicate removal tools - [Special Characters Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/text-special-characters-samples): Sample text files with various special characters, punctuation, and symbols for testing non-alphanumeric character removal - [Code Comment Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/code-comment-samples): Sample code files with various comment styles for testing comment removal - [Android File Operations Java Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/android-file-operations-java): Android Java file operations examples including text file read/write, file copy/move, directory traversal, and file validation