How to remove SDH tags from subtitles

What SDH adds

SDH subtitles follow the same timing as normal subtitles but add what a hearing viewer gets from the sound. Netflix’s English style guide, for example, puts sound effects and speaker IDs in square brackets and wraps song lyrics in ♪ symbols. Other files use parentheses or speaker names in capitals:

• Sound effects: [door slams], (phone ringing)
• Music: ♪ Hold on to me ♪, [menacing electronic music plays]
• Speaker labels: JOHN: We should go., [man] Over here!
• Manner of speaking: [whispering] Don't move.

These notes are an accessibility feature. If you publish a video for others, keep an SDH version available: removing them makes the video harder to follow for viewers who rely on them.

Remove them with Clean subtitles

1. Open Clean subtitles and add your files.
2. Choose what to remove. By default the tool removes text in brackets and parentheses, music lines and SPEAKER NAMES:, tidies extra spaces and deletes subtitles that end up empty. Formatting tags such as italics are kept unless you turn that option on.
3. Select Clean subtitles, then compare the lines and read the report of what was removed.
4. Download the files.

With the default settings, this file:

1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000
[door slams]

2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
JOHN: We should go.
(phone ringing)

3
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:09,000
♪ Hold on to me ♪

4
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:12,000
[whispering] Don't move.

becomes:

1
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
We should go.

2
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:12,000
Don't move.

The empty subtitles are gone and the rest are renumbered.

When to keep some notes

• Off-screen speakers or two speakers — if a scene is hard to follow without names, turn off Remove SPEAKER NAMES:.
• Dialogue in parentheses — some files put whispered or off-screen lines in parentheses. Turn off the parentheses rule and remove only brackets.
• Language learners — a sound note can explain a joke or a pause. Keep the SDH file and make a clean copy.

Common mistakes

• Cleaning before fixing broken letters. If the file shows é or �, fix the encoding first; otherwise the patterns may not match.
• Not checking the report. A count much higher than you expect means a rule is removing dialogue.
• Cleaning the only copy. Keep the original SDH file. The tool never changes your file; it saves a new one.

For a plain-text transcript without sound notes, clean the file first and then use SRT to TXT.

Source: Netflix Partner Help Center, English (USA) Timed Text Style Guide (SDH section).

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