Remove hearing-impaired (SDH) notes from subtitles

SDH subtitles (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing) add sound descriptions and speaker labels. Useful for many viewers – distracting if you just want dialogue.

Updated 2026-10-26 · 4 min read

What counts as SDH

Sound descriptions in brackets: [DOOR SLAMS], (laughs)
Music lines: ♪ ... ♪, #
Speaker labels: JOHN: Where are you?

Manual method (regex)

In a text editor with regular expressions (Notepad++, VS Code): replace \[[^\]]*\]|$[^)]*$ with nothing, then ^[A-Z][A-Z .'-]+:\s* with nothing. Afterwards you must delete cues that became empty and renumber – that's where manual editing gets tedious.

One-click clean-up

In Cuemend: open the SRT › Clean-up › tick hearing-impaired notes, music lines and empty lines › apply. Emptied cues are removed and the file is renumbered. Review the list – a line like “(whispering) I know” keeps “I know”.

Fix the file once, for every player. Cuemend shifts, syncs (also automatically to the film's audio), converts and repairs subtitle files – SRT, VTT, ASS/SSA, SUB, SBV, TTML/DFXP – in your browser. The video and subtitles stay on your computer. Every single-file tool is free; a $7 lifetime license adds one-click auto-sync apply, batch work on many files and two-language subtitles.

Open Cuemend – free

Questions and answers

Will it remove text in parentheses that is dialogue?

Bracketed text is treated as a note. Check the result; you can edit any line.

Does it work on ASS or VTT?

Yes, on every format Cuemend reads.

Sources and product names: Common SDH conventions (e.g. broadcaster subtitle guidelines). VLC is a trademark of VideoLAN; YouTube is a trademark of Google; other names belong to their owners. Cuemend is independent and not affiliated with them.