Check first: soft subtitles only need switching off

Updated October 14, 2026 · Peelframe

Many people open an editor to remove subtitles, but if they are soft subtitles there is nothing to remove. Switch them off or drop the track and you are done in seconds, with no loss in quality. It is worth a minute to check first.

Why check first

Soft subtitles are stored apart from the picture, so removing them leaves the original image untouched. Removing hard subtitles means repainting where the letters were and re-encoding the whole video, which takes time and can never match the original exactly. Treating soft subtitles like hard ones loses both time and quality.

Check 1: can the player turn them off?

• VLC: while playing, choose Subtitle → Sub Track → Disable. If the text disappears, it is a soft subtitle.
• Other desktop players: if the right-click menu or a subtitle button can turn the text off, it is soft.
• YouTube: captions that the CC button turns off are added by YouTube. Text that stays with CC off is part of the video.

Check 2: look for a subtitle file next to the video

A .srt, .smi, .ass or .vtt file with the same name as the video is loaded automatically by most players. Move or rename it and the subtitles stop showing. The video file itself does not need touching.

Check 3: look for a subtitle track in the file

MKV files often carry several subtitle tracks, and MP4 can carry them too. Open the file in the free MediaInfo tool: a Text section means there is a subtitle track. On the command line, ffprobe (part of FFmpeg) shows the same.

ffprobe -v error -select_streams s -show_entries stream=index,codec_name -of csv=p=0 input.mkv

No output means no subtitle track; a line such as 2,subrip means track 2 is a subtitle.

Save a copy without the subtitle tracks

If switching them off in every player is a nuisance, make a copy without them. This command copies video and audio as they are, without re-encoding, so it takes seconds and keeps the quality.

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0 -map -0:s -c copy output.mkv

-map 0 selects every track, -map -0:s removes the subtitle tracks from that selection, and -c copy copies without re-encoding. It works the same for MP4; just change the file names.

Signs of hard subtitles

• No player can turn them off, and they look the same on anyone else's computer.
• The file has no subtitle (Text) track.
• Paused and zoomed in, the edges of the letters carry the same compression noise as the picture.

Hard subtitles can only be removed by repainting the picture. Compare the options in four ways to remove burned-in subtitles, or open the workspace to try it now.