Subtitle Cleaner

How to clean a subtitle file

1. Open your subtitle file

   Drop one file into the box above, or click to browse: .srt, .vtt, .ass, .sbv or .sub. It’s read by your browser and never uploaded.

2. Pick what to clean

   “Tidy spaces and leftover lines” and “Remove ads and credits” are on from the start. Add “Remove hearing-impaired descriptions” or “Remove formatting tags” if you want those gone too.

3. Check the preview and download

   Every line is listed. Changed lines show the old text struck through above the new one, and removed lines carry a label that says why. The summary counts what each clean-up found.

The four clean-ups

Tidy spaces and leftover lines. Subtitle files pick up clutter as they pass through editors and converters. Rows start or end with spaces, two spaces sit where one should be, an empty row hangs inside a subtitle, or a block has no text at all. Tidying fixes those. It also folds a line that is repeated while the first copy is still on screen into one line that lasts as long as both.

Remove ads and credits. Files from subtitle sites often open or close with lines that are not part of the film: “Downloaded from” a site, “Subtitles by” a group, “Support us and become a VIP member”, or a bare web address. A row is removed when it holds a web address, names a well-known subtitle site, or starts with a credit phrase in English or Vietnamese. The subtitle goes with it when nothing else is on it; a line of dialogue above or below the ad stays.

Remove hearing-impaired descriptions. Sound descriptions in square brackets and parentheses, and rows of song lyrics marked with ♪, are taken out. A subtitle left with no words is removed. For finer control, including speaker names in capitals, use Remove SDH from Subtitles.

Remove formatting tags. Italic, bold, colour, font and position tags are stripped and the words stay. To keep the italics, use Remove Formatting from Subtitles.

What the cleaner never touches

The cleaner removes things, so it is strict about what it leaves alone.

The times. No line is moved. Removing a subtitle doesn’t shift the ones after it, because each carries its own start and end time.

The format. A .vtt file is saved as .vtt, an .ass file as .ass with its styles section intact. Comment lines in ASS files are kept as they are.

Lines it has no reason to change. A line that needs no cleaning is written back exactly as it was. With all four switches off, the Download button offers a plain copy of the file.

Your original. The cleaned file is a new file with .clean in its name, such as movie.clean.en.srt. The one on your disk is not modified.

Tips

Review the removed lines. Ad detection works from patterns. A character reading a web address aloud would match, so glance at the lines marked “Ad or credit” before you save.

Clean first, then convert or sync. A tidy file gives better results in the other tools. If the lines also appear too early or too late, continue with Shift Subtitle Timing.

Broken letters are a different problem. If accents show as é, the file was saved in an old encoding. Repair it with Fix Subtitle Encoding before cleaning.