Remove Music and Sound Cues from Subtitles
Or paste subtitle text
Options
One box, five choices, and each choice has a page of its own. Brackets removes paired [square] asides, parentheses removes paired (round) ones, speaker removes an all-capitals name and the colon after it at the start of a line, and music removes the note symbols. All four at once is the choice called All. Every one of them edits the words themselves rather than the styling, so the line gets shorter — and unlike the styling pages, an annotation that was removed cannot be put back by the tool that reads the result. This page fills the box in with the choice its title names and lists no other.
Which frame rate the timings are counted in. On the format pages this is what MicroDVD needs, because it stores timing as frame numbers. On the frame rate pages it is the rate the file was timed against — the version the subtitles were made for — and the page's second box takes the rate of the video you are going to use them with. 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 are the common ones. Getting it wrong shifts the whole timeline, and on the frame rate pages it shifts it by a ratio rather than by a fixed amount.
This page removes the note symbols from a subtitle file, and with a pair of them, everything in between. Read that sentence twice, because the second half is the part that surprises people: in a hearing-impaired track a pair of notes means this line is sung, so the words inside the pair are the song rather than the dialogue. `♪ We can be heroes ♪ just for one day` comes out as `just for one day` — the song title is gone, and that is what the removal is for.
A single note with no closing one is a different case, and it is handled differently. `We can be heroes ♪` has one symbol and nothing after it, so only the symbol is deleted and the words stay. Deleting to the end of the line would be deciding that the rest of the subtitle was disposable, and after a lone note the text is usually the lyrics themselves — the only thing in the cue a hearing viewer can actually hear.
A line that was nothing but the pair of notes has nothing left once they are gone, so the cue goes with them rather than staying in the file as an empty subtitle that occupies two seconds of screen time and displays nothing. That is counted separately in the report, and it is the one case where this page changes how many cues the file has. Because the cue numbers are the file's own, a removed cue leaves a gap in the numbering — the same gap the overlap page leaves when it drops a cue.
If what you want is the lyrics kept and only the symbols gone, this is the wrong page: `Remove Bracketed Text` handles the other convention, where music is marked in brackets instead of notes, and it leaves the words alone. Nothing is uploaded, and all twelve formats the site reads are accepted, since a note is a character in the cue text like any other.
Examples
A sung line with dialogue after it
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000
♪ We can be heroes ♪ just for one day
2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
I heard that.
Output
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000
just for one day
2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
I heard that.
Read this one before running the page on your own files. The notes mark the line as sung, so the whole span between them goes with it, including the words of the song title. What survives is the half of the line that was never inside the pair. The second cue has no notes in it and comes back untouched.
One note, no closing note
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000
We can be heroes ♪
Output
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000
We can be heroes
Only the symbol is deleted, and the lyrics stay. The trailing space the deletion left behind is tidied away, which is why the line does not end with a space before the line break. Deleting to the end of the line here would have removed the only words in the cue.
A cue that was nothing but the two notes
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000
♪ ♪
2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
I heard that.
Output
2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
I heard that.
With the notes removed there is no text left, so the cue is removed as well instead of being left on screen with nothing in it. The output begins at 2 because the cue numbers belong to the file — the page does not renumber, and the report says how many cues were dropped.
Frequently asked questions
Why are the lyrics removed along with the note symbols?
Because a pair of notes in a hearing-impaired track means the line is sung, and the words between the pair are the song. The page reads the pair as one span and deletes the span, which is the same reading a viewer takes from it: the notes are punctuation around the singing. If you want the words kept and only the symbols gone, that is a different job and this page will not do it for you.
What happens when a line has only one note symbol?
Only the symbol is removed. A lone note has no partner, so the page cannot tell how far the sung section extends, and deleting to the end of the line would take whatever words follow. In practice those words are the lyrics, which is exactly the material you would not want to lose by accident, so the conservative reading is the one that keeps them.
Can I remove the note symbols without removing the words between them?
Not with this page. The pair is treated as a single span, so the symbols and their contents go together. If the symbols are what bothers you and the lyrics are worth keeping, take the symbols out with the find and replace page instead: searching for the note character and replacing it with nothing removes the symbols and leaves every word exactly where it was.
Do I need to give the page a frame rate?
Only for MicroDVD files, whose timecodes are frame numbers rather than clock times. The frame rate box is there for that one format; on SRT, WebVTT, ASS, SSA, SBV, SAMI, LRC, TTML, JSON, plain text and CSV files it is ignored, and you can leave it at the default. The file's format is worked out from its contents, so you do not have to tell the page which one you are feeding it.
Why does removing a music cue leave a gap in the cue numbering?
Because the numbers are the file's own and the page does not rewrite them. If the removed cue was number 3, the output runs 2, 4. Players address cues by their timecodes rather than by the number on the line, so playback is unaffected, and the report tells you how many cues went. Renumbering is a separate job from removing notes, and doing it silently here would hide the count.
Which formats can the notes be removed from?
All twelve the site reads: SRT, WebVTT, ASS, SSA, SBV, SAMI, LRC, MicroDVD, TTML, JSON, plain text and CSV. The note is a character in the cue text, so any format that carries cue text can have it removed. The page reads the file for what it is rather than for what its extension claims, which matters for caption files that have been renamed from another format.