[HN Gopher] Movie dialogue has gotten more difficult to understand
___________________________________________________________________
Movie dialogue has gotten more difficult to understand
Author : andyjohnson0
Score : 204 points
Date : 2021-12-02 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.slashfilm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.slashfilm.com)
| nimbius wrote:
| with regard to the art of cinema, purposefully and clearly
| communicating the story is an absolutely critical requirement.
| without coherent dialogue, you've released a million dollar
| screen saver.
|
| for executives: this type of failure can crucify everything from
| box office earnings to streaming. every copy you send to an emmy
| voter will be shrugged off as dark-and-mumbly.
| junon wrote:
| The writing style of this article really drives me nuts. Let me
| tell you why.
|
| <ad>
|
| I talked to some people. Some of them wanted to. Others didn't.
| Some were anonymous. Some weren't. Let's get to the bottom of
| this topic.
|
| <NSFW ad>
|
| "It's really a lot of problems all at once." said one person I
| talked to. What they say next will shock you.
|
| <ad>
|
| This article drags on so long I almost forgot what I was reading
| about. Maybe they should investigate the decreasing signal:noise
| ratio of modern journalism next.
| jrace wrote:
| And the headline states (And Three Ways To Fix
| It)
|
| Which it does not deliver any fixes for the listener.
|
| The only real fix is to use a dynamic compression algorithm.
| Most AVRs (home theater receivers) have this, and I now always
| use the chrome plugin AudioChannel for playback to devices that
| do not have that feature.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 1. you could make sure you read articles like this on a
| platform that sensibly allows effective ad blocking like ublock
| origin.
|
| 2. the fact that you consider this a long article says a lot
| more about you than the article or the author. I read the whole
| thing (with ublock origin active) and I did not notice much if
| anything that I would consider "noise" in the context.
| junon wrote:
| > you could make sure you read articles like this on a
| platform that sensibly allows effective ad blocking like
| ublock origin.
|
| Ah yes, victim blame.
|
| > the fact that you consider this a long article
|
| I didn't say that. I said the article drags on so long before
| it gets to the actual content. Not that the article itself
| was long.
|
| > I did not notice much if anything that I would consider
| "noise" in the context.
|
| Good for you. We had different experiences, then.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I'm not victim blaming you. Anyone who reads HN understands
| that a huge chunk of the contemporary web provides a fucked
| up experience for readers and viewers because of ad
| placement. I consider that complaining about any particular
| instance of ads doing that is essentially redundant at this
| point. The web is screwed up by ads, use an ad blocker or
| complain about online ads in general, not any particular
| article.
|
| > I didn't say that. I said the article drags on so long
| before it gets to the actual content.
|
| There are 6 paragraphs of introduction before jumping right
| into the Nolan case. With default font sizing, it's a bit
| less than 1 page of content in my web browser. How is that
| "drags on so long before it gets to the actual content"?
|
| I tried to restrict my remarks to the article in question.
| You closed with the sweeping generalization "Maybe they
| should investigate the decreasing signal:noise ratio of
| modern journalism next."
| jrace wrote:
| This is the part that bothers me: "I think in the
| case of Mr. Nolan, with ["Tenet"], the characters have a mask,
| and he wants to keep the original sound because I think for him
| it's more real," he says. Presumably, that mentality also extends
| to "The Dark Knight Rises," in which Bane's mask muffled a
| significant percentage of that character's lines.
|
| Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-
| dialogue-ha...
|
| ---If that is the case, that the director does not want us to
| understand the dialogue then why make it so important to the
| story? Why make it so dialogue heavy then?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Right? In such a world where people can't understand each
| other's voices, wouldn't they use hand signals and other
| gestures? That's how his movies would look if realism is the
| real goal (and not just laziness or a lack of care).
| finder83 wrote:
| Tenet was just unintelligible; we ended up just turning it off.
| It had nothing to do with masks (we couldn't understand the
| non-masked sections either). It was purely sound mixing and a
| bad call from Nolan.
|
| I won't be seeing another Nolan film until he changes his mind
| on the importance of voice quality, as I like to enjoy movies
| and not strain to have any idea what is going on. His choices
| in sound quality and mixing completely breaks any sense of
| immersion for me...if they were outstanding plot-wise I would
| possibly struggle through. But without that sense of immersion,
| they're just not worth watching imho, as his films are all
| about the immersion factor.
| lunatuna wrote:
| Understanding every word seems to be a personal preference and
| if that is someones preference don't see a Nolan movie. Most of
| his movies fool around with timeline, visuals and speech to
| create some disorientation. Memento would be a screaming
| example of that. You could find the dvd chapter order and watch
| it linearly if you wanted to. But that would seem to me to
| completely avoid the purpose of the movie.
|
| When I watched Tenet I had to let parts of my thinking go and
| just let it wash through me as it went without constantly
| trying to think too hard about what was happening. Dark corners
| were later illuminated, some weren't, but ok. My wife couldn't
| handle the start of it as there was too much not understood. I
| thought it was great and worth another watch.
|
| For other movies, as discussed in the piece, there is more
| going on with dialogue quality that isn't intended. That's the
| real shame.
| jrace wrote:
| Part of what made Momento great was discovering that the
| timeline was backwards, you were just as confused as the main
| character...that was the point.
| lunatuna wrote:
| Agreed that it was meant to be confusing. What I found cool
| was there was a forward and backward plot line and you had
| to piece it together and just run with it as it went. Lots
| of people didn't like it. I thought it was a really good
| use of editing to create an effect.
| bmitc wrote:
| In Nolan's case, it's simply because he's a poor filmmaker.
| Lewton wrote:
| FWIW a couple of friends of mine really enjoyed tenet watching
| it in the cinema
|
| They all wanted to rewatch it so we saw it in my home cinema
| and I put on subtitles, and everyone agreed that once they
| could actually understand the dialog, it was not a very good
| movie at all...
| csours wrote:
| I've long claimed that Transformers movies would be greatly
| improved by having untranslated, non-subtitled Japanese
| dialog.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I'm not even sure that would have helped Transformers: The
| Last Knight.
| csours wrote:
| TLK looped around to being enjoyable for me. Sanity
| buffer overflow.
| omnicognate wrote:
| I tried to watch Tenet at the cinema and had to walk out after
| a minute or two and get a refund. The sound was cranked up
| insanely loud. I don't know if the people who sat through the
| full running time were at risk of hearing damage but it
| certainly felt that way to me, and that is not something I care
| to risk.
|
| The staff said that the requirement to play it at this volume
| had come from the distributors and ultimately from the
| director, in response to complaints of inaudible dialog. No
| idea if that's true but they also said they were now getting
| loads of complaints about the volume and having to refund
| tickets, unsurprisingly. What a ridiculous mess.
|
| Anyway, I eventually watched at home with subtitles and it
| seems I didn't miss much. Michael Spicer summed it up
| beautifully [1].
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/s2FXfFeRtJo
| ctdonath wrote:
| I watched Tenet at home with subtitles, and had no problem
| with it. Between wife going "what are they saying?" halfway
| thru many movies, and getting kids to read fast, subtitles
| are just left on all the time now. I'm a bit annoyed at my
| own propensity to stare at them instead of the action, but
| it's better than "wait, what?".
| neuronic wrote:
| The film was horrible. I watched it with 6 people at home and
| everyone hated it, for good reason. It's peak Nolan-thinks-
| he-is-artsy.
| handrous wrote:
| Nolan would be a decent film maker if all his movies didn't
| _think_ they were a solid two notches smarter than they
| actually are.
| noahtallen wrote:
| I'm sure it was damaging, honestly. I have to think most
| professional sound mixers have lost part of their hearing,
| because the standards for "good audio" are far too loud. For
| example, IMAX, which is supposed to have technically well
| calibrated sound in the theatre, clocks around 95db in the
| especially loud parts, and over 80db for large portions. This
| is after watching Dune in two different IMAX theaters and
| checking my watch's audio level sensor :)
|
| But Tenet is probably the loudest I've ever heard in a
| theatre. It had to be more than 90db for large parts of it.
|
| And then I attended a wedding reception with a DJ recently,
| and it was over 90db for the whole two hours in a small-ish
| hall. Imo, that's unacceptable.
|
| In both of these experiences, my ears hurt bad. I can only
| think that the people making the decision to go this loud
| have already had their hearing damaged enough that they don't
| think it's loud enough. Well, why don't we fix the problem by
| not busting people's ears in the first place!
|
| Maybe we should start suing folks who try to damage our
| hearing? Or get some legislation to set a cap on the average
| and max db allowed at various events? I'm not really sure how
| this problem will get solved.
|
| And don't get me wrong, I love immersive audio! I really
| enjoyed a lot of Dune's soundtrack and mixing. I'm just
| shocked that immersive audio today basically means "turn it
| up to 90db to kill their ears" and not "let's have a really
| meticulously mixed and nicely balanced experience." But that
| enjoyment ends when my ears hurt.
| leetcrew wrote:
| is the dialogue _that_ important in a batman movie? they are
| more dialogue heavy than most superhero movies, but I don 't
| think it hurts the experience that much to miss some words here
| and there.
|
| I wonder if there's a parallel worth making to music. some
| kinds of music (eg, metal subgenres) feature vocals that are
| basically unintelligible unless you look them up. it can be
| nice to know the lyrics, but it's not essential to enjoying the
| music.
| technobabbler wrote:
| I dunno, Batman spans the gamut from "campy bang pows" to
| "lite morality plays" -- not quite to the extent of, say,
| Joker, but some of the Nolan Batmans were way more
| existential and dialogue/monologue-driven than the older
| Batmans.
|
| Maybe a more similar distinction would be the X-Men/Wolverine
| movies vs Logan, where the latter is a more introspective
| take on the character, and so the story is relatively more
| important than the action sequences.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I'm not trying to shit on nolan's batman movies; they are
| definitely a cut above most superhero fare. I'm pointing
| out that dialogue is only one of the ways in which the
| content of a movie is expressed. superhero movies are an
| easy example; you can deduce a lot about the plot just be
| observing who fights whom in what order. there are also
| subtler cues like body language, lighting, costume design,
| etc. some visual content (eg, belter creole in the expanse)
| has deliberately unintelligible dialogue. as long as it's
| an intentional choice (or at least a known tradeoff), it
| can still work.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Yeah, but with the Nolan Batmans in particular, I
| rewatched them again at home with subtitles on and got a
| way different (better, IMO) experience than the
| unintelligible garble at the theater.
|
| When I first saw Batman Begins, I didn't at all
| understand that there was some connection between Henri
| Ducard and Ra's al Ghul (both played by Liam Neeson)...
| was really confused why Batman's apparent friend/mentor
| suddenly became the villain, and then somehow a bunch of
| other villains showed up and wanted to do something to
| Gotham (but couldn't understand what). At first watch,
| all I got was that "Batman went through some hard shit
| before Gotham". It didn't at all prepare me for the
| plotlines of the subsequent movies and none of the
| characters made sense until I could rewatch it with
| subtitles on.
|
| My understanding is that Nolan chose that
| unintelligibility for some artistic reason, but as a
| moviegoer, it just means I miss most of the entire plot
| of his movies. That's especially the case when you
| combine unintelligible dialogue with fast dark scenes...
| just a lot of blurry fists and wheels that's incredibly
| hard to keep track of.
|
| Also Interstellar... first time I watched it, all I
| really got was "corn farmer goes to space and gets
| betrayed". None of the intricacies of the Bookshelf of
| Time(tm) got through because it was all unintelligible.
| Argh.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| For Tenet specifically, lots of dialogue without masks was
| still nearly inaudible on my home theater, while gunplay was
| deafening. It's not a mask issue, or at least not exclusively -
| it's an audio mix issue. There are scenes with just two
| unmasked people that were inaudible to me without having the
| background sounds painfully loud.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| What you describe is infuriating. Many shows suffer from the
| same issue that even background noise obscures dialogue of
| main characters that is crucial for the story. It got so
| prevalent and so annoying that I started to vote with my
| feet.
|
| If in the first few minutes I have problems hearing the
| dialogue, I just stop watching, leave a 1-star review with a
| comment that the audio is incomprehensible and ask for a
| refund in case I paid for watching. Hopefully, the others
| would start doing the same and the trend will go away.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I had the same problem. A fairly high end 5.1 system and I
| was unable to hear most of the dialogue. I have no idea what
| was going on in that movie, but I could hear the firing pin
| hit the primer in crystal clarity.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I always blamed it on my declining hearing and assumed I could
| understand the dialog in older movies because I'd already seen
| them and knew the dialog.
|
| I usually turn on subtitles not just because it's hard to
| understand the dialog, but I often watch movies at night after my
| spouse is in bed and if I turn it up to the point where the
| dialog is easy to hear, the sound effects/music are often way too
| loud.
|
| My soundbar has a "night" mode that compresses the volume levels
| and makes it a bit more tolerable, but I still generally leave
| the volume turned down so low that I need to use subtitles to
| understand all of the dialog.
| handrous wrote:
| One thing that happened was that home copies of movies used to
| have a stereo audio mix, I assume professionally and manually
| mixed down and rebalanced, even if they didn't originally
| (though older movies--and not even _that_ old--mostly were
| stereo to begin with) but then at some point in the DVD era
| they started only shipping 5.1 or better, even though _very_
| few home viewers have a 5.1 or better speaker setup, and even
| fewer have it calibrated anything like correctly. Result: most
| people are getting 5.1 dowmnixed to 2 by whatever shit-tier
| hardware + software their TV or budget-level DVD
| /Bluray/streaming player has, then played over bad TV speakers
| or, at best, a mediocre soundbar. To be clear, this isn't their
| fault, it's the fault of media distributors for no longer
| distributing an audio mix appropriate for _most_ people, which
| would be a stereo mix focused on clarity of dialog at normal
| playback volume.
|
| The result is that all the trends of making the 'splosions
| louder and the dialogue quieter are amplified (haha) for _the
| vast majority_ of home viewers, to the point that they can 't
| understand any of the dialog unless the background music and
| explosions are waking up the neighbors. And that's _without_
| the film itself having made some questionable choices to begin
| with (as--which others have mentioned here--Tenet)
| technobabbler wrote:
| FYI, most of the big theater chains can provide subtitles in
| their theaters. There are two types of devices they'll give
| you... one is a personal two-line LED display that fits in your
| cupholder and sits around eye level, the other is a pair of
| electronic glasses that overlays them onto the picture. Both sync
| to a wireless signal that gets broadcast in the theater itself.
|
| I can't watch movies without those anymore. You just have to go
| to guest services and ask for them; sometimes the frontline staff
| won't know they have them, but a manager almost always knows how
| to get one and set it up for you. It's free.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's also a lower-tech solution in some places, with a
| display at the back of the theater showing subtitles and a
| mirror on a stick that fits into a cupholder to reflect it.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Yikes! That seems like it'd a real PITA for anyone sitting
| behind you, constantly seeing flashes of light from the
| projector if you happened to hold it the wrong angle for just
| a second.
| jrace wrote:
| I recommend using the chrome plugin
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/audio-channel/hafd...
|
| to apply your own compression to the audio signal for chrome-
| based playback.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| In music, you would listen to the mix on different speakers.
| Also, an impulse response helps a lot to emulate certain
| situations.
| tyingq wrote:
| The worst one ever for me was "Public Enemies". I had to walk out
| of the theater because I couldn't hear the dialogue. I did end up
| watching at home, even there it was a challenge so I turned on
| the subtitles. I recall someone saying it was typical for films
| directed by Michael Mann.
| lazyeye wrote:
| I had a thought that subtitles could also be used to provide an
| "explainer" for those movies where the plot is so complex and so
| much knowledge is assumed, its almost impossible to understand
| what is going on. This would have been great for the Foundation
| movie.
| efields wrote:
| Would it be so hard to offer a "high vocals" mix? Even if it was
| just a simple filter/preset in whatever sound software studios
| use???
| handrous wrote:
| I just got a new 7.2 receiver (thanks, Black Friday) and it has
| a "don't wake the baby" mode of some sort, that I think is
| pretty much exactly what you're asking for. Flattens out the
| dynamics and raises the level of channels that tend to carry
| dialog.
|
| [EDIT] But yes, a better option would be for production
| companies to deliver that as an option to begin with, complete
| with professional attention to make sure it's good for its
| purpose.
| steve76 wrote:
| What worked for me:
|
| 1. Move front and surround and height if you have them speakers
| to full range.
|
| 2. Set center speaker cutoff a few hz higher than normal, like 80
| or 100
|
| 3. Turn up level going to sub. Turn down volume knob on the sub.
| This prevents auto off
|
| You get a lot of the low end effects off the sub, and the center
| and sub is just for dialogue. You get that depth effect without
| the dialogue being muted. I feel filmmakers do this so their
| movies don't age. Supposedly they're going to have a laser
| speaker, and the flat panel tv will be a speaker itself with the
| sound shot across the screen. All those movies get a new release
| for that.
| difosfor wrote:
| I hate it how volume is maxed out in movie theaters way too often
| these days. I can't remember the last time I was able to watch a
| movie without putting my fingers in my ears for some parts of it.
| I've even Sat through whole movies with ear plugs in like I was
| at a concert (same problem there). I guess they pander to the
| physical sensation of loud music and/or people with damaged
| hearing? I'd be happy to find a theater where they lower the
| volume and even happier to find one where they would reasonably
| normalize it.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I enjoyed this quote:
|
| "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took
| my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's
| happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old,
| said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I
| did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'"
|
| I've been in a meeting where a third-party vendor was explaining
| how I was incorrect about how some particular functionality in an
| application worked, and I had to stop him and inform him that I
| was the one who _developed_ that functionality and knew exactly
| how it worked.
| malshe wrote:
| Your story reminds of a research seminar I attended where one
| of my finance professors pointed out a flaw in the economic
| argument made by the speaker. The speaker, who is a noted
| finance researcher, confidently said that the professor was
| wrong because a paper by A, B, and C had shown otherwise. My
| prof replied that perhaps the speaker was misinterpreting A, B,
| and C's results. At this point, another professor chimed in and
| gently informed the speaker that he was talking to B who is a
| co-author on the paper by A, B, and C! I don't remember the
| reaction of the speaker much but I recall that he handled it in
| a dignified way and backtracked from his claim.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I had the same sort of experience with a third party IT
| solution who was in on a call with my client and I... he
| started babbling on how his company had years of experience
| dealing with this exact piece of software and it would be no
| problem at all to take over the development and maintenance for
| it.
|
| I was the ONLY developer who had ever touched a line of code in
| that software.
|
| Which is just as funny as the recruiter who wanted to recruit
| me for a position and said I'd be a great fit and a shoe-in for
| the interview because he had years of experience working with
| the company in question as a partner.
|
| ...I wrote the job description. It was literally an open
| position for my direct subordinate. I was the hiring manager
| and had never heard of the recruiter before. So I replied with
| "interest," we went through the interview process, I submitted
| my resume, and then he called us up to speak to the person
| hiring for the position saying that he had a GREAT candidate.
| This guy hadn't even read the resume, because my current
| employer was on it as it was obviously my current job. I let
| him in on my secret, and also let his manager know about my
| experience with him too. She used to work for me on my team as
| a recruiter before taking the job to start the firm's New
| Orleans office.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| There's a fun story about David Korn, author of the Korn shell,
| embarrassing a Microsoft presenter at a USENIX Windows NT
| conference. The presenter was making assertions about a Korn
| shell that Microsoft licensed being a "real" Korn shell.
|
| Question 5: https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-
| korn-tells...
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and
| disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly
| "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't
| sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal
| conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the
| target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with
| imperfect equipment and acoustics (or for the even worse real
| life living rooms with crappy sound system and acoustics), but
| instead he mixes to sound perfect in his perfect lab. He is
| doing it wrong, optimizing for the wrong metrics, but he can't
| fathom being wrong, so he will keep screwing up and people will
| keep not being able to understand movies. It is the sound
| engineer version of "You're holding it wrong".
| vondur wrote:
| Going off topic a bit, when I was in a hardcore band back in
| the early 90s, and we went into the studio to record, the
| engineer would give us rough mix downs of the music to go
| play in our car stereo as a quick check on it. In the
| recording studio with those high end studio monitors, it can
| make things sound far different then the more average sound
| system most people have access to.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment re: "mix it for the real world",
| but aren't theaters required to adhere to some degree of
| compliance with presentation standards as part of their
| licensing agreements with film distributors? I know that the
| "THX" mark carries specific requirements, as do "IMAX" and
| "OMNIMAX".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and
| disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is
| exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it
| didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the
| ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is
| the target he should be mixing for, for the real life
| matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics
|
| This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're
| hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of
| what's written.
|
| Here's more:
|
| > Mann says this isn't a new problem -- it's actually been
| happening for decades:
|
| >> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that
| felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes - I
| didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers
| and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that
| was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would
| get to the theater, there would be complaints from the
| patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the
| mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the
| level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low
| for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors
| have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still
| happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not
| play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where
| the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor.
|
| > The idea that a significant theater chain would
| purposefully ignore industry standards for something as
| crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1]
|
| > "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the
| processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by
| the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people
| because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people
| can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all
| of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.'
| And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how
| it was done.'"
|
| > When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of
| separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says
| there can be a schism about the best way to move forward:
|
| > "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who
| want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7]
| to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low.
| But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are
| calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that
| theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing
| we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy
| with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when
| you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be
| blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to
| happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all
| of that."
|
| There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The
| problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume,
| theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now
| movies that don't cheat are too quiet.
|
| [1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The
| theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate
| volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned
| down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be
| louder than the competition.
| jbigelow76 wrote:
| _I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and
| disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is
| exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it
| didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the
| ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life._
|
| I'd be really surprised if sound engineers working in film
| never bother to listen to a cut of the movie in a theater.
| But then again the number of times I've seen "you didn't try
| compiling before committing did you?" crop up in chat while
| discussing a broken build that maybe they don't :)
| brokenmachine wrote:
| A movie cinema is calibrated to a certain decibel level and
| should have a predictable frequency response.
|
| So it should sound the same, or very similar to, his sound
| lab.
|
| If the quality of the sound in the cinema is bad, that's the
| cinema's fault.
| [deleted]
| radicality wrote:
| Did you read the full article? It sounds like you are
| misrepresenting the quote.
|
| It's apparently industry standard to have the cinemas set
| their volume to value 7. The sound engineers then prepare the
| soundtrack with the expectation it will be set to 7. This
| particular theatre was set to 5.5 (perhaps to compensate for
| a previous movie that didn't follow the standard and was
| mixed "too loud"), and hence the movie was significantly more
| quiet than the sound engineer intended.
| djbusby wrote:
| I've a friend who's done sound for some of those grunge bands
| in Seattle back in the day, mixing down from those 2inch
| tape. Had a killer sound lab setup. And also a few sets of
| real-shit amps and speakers - to check the sound on more
| common equipment.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| We have this very famous writer in our country whos works are
| in the secondary school curriculum. So one day a teacher is
| giving a lesson to the kids and off she goes into the
| wilderness about the man. One girl in the class quickly points
| out that she's wrong about this and that and in fact it
| happened this way. Teacher quickly goes into a meltdown
| accusing the girl of being out of her place. The she asks who
| is she to tell these kind of things to her. "I'm his
| granddaughter"- replied the girl...
| thih9 wrote:
| I'd love to hear more details; who was the writer if you
| don't mind sharing?
| handrous wrote:
| There is, famously, a similar episode involving Kurt
| Vonnegut, Jr., in the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy _Back to
| School_.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I took a class on religion in college and had a professor
| tell me what the rituals in my religion were and what they
| meant to me personally. I don't think she understood the
| difference between Catholic and Protestant because she argued
| I was wrong when I brought it up after class.
| bobthechef wrote:
| What was the point of disagreement?
|
| Your average Catholic, for example, isn't going to be
| especially knowledgeable about liturgy, much less theology.
| Ask your average Catholic what the mass fundamentally is
| and chances are he won't be able to tell you in any
| "academic" sense. So the situation isn't quite analogous.
| Now had she contradicted Jesus about the meaning of the
| last supper...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's curious that when the memetically-preferred version of
| this story is told, it's always the person in power who is
| revealed to lack expertise and the person without power who has
| hidden, superior expertise.
|
| There never seem to be versions of this story shared where, to
| use the link's example, the movie manager turns out to be a
| semi-retired audio engineer.
|
| But statistically, surely that happens at least equally?
| afiori wrote:
| That version exists in two forms: subordinate complaning
| about or bad mouthing a colleague or a colleague's work
| before discovering that they are are actually criticizing the
| boss they are talking to or someone of higher rank (boss'
| spouse, boss' boss); or the analogous of a child teaching
| their pokemon expert parents to play pokemon
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Good example! Forgot about that one. I guess that's a bit
| more of hidden identity than expertise though.
| enobrev wrote:
| The manager would be the one telling the story, with the
| patron being the confidently-incorrect character in said
| story.
|
| Meme-wise, the "loser" of the exchange doesn't go on the
| recite the story. Then again, I love to tell my friends
| stories about the times I was the idiot. But I generally
| don't announce them to the universe.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > There never seem to be versions of this story shared where,
| to use the link's example, the movie manager turns out to be
| a semi-retired audio engineer.
|
| > But statistically, surely that happens at least equally?
|
| You think theater owners are statistically at least as likely
| to hold a non-theater-owner job as audience members of no
| specified profession are?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The story is not about "power" vs. "powerless." I know that's
| how people like to analyze everything these days, but this
| ain't it.
|
| It's about "smug and arrogant and thinks he knows" vs.
| "really _does_ know. " That's why it's an evergreen.
|
| A favorite example is in _Annie Hall_ where a smug guy is
| explaining Marshall McLuhan to his date, and Woody drags out
| the real McLuhan to tell the guy he 's full of it.
| jayd16 wrote:
| If the movie manager was a retired audio engineer, wouldn't
| the sound be correct? How would the story fit?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Per the article, an example would be if the movie were
| incorrectly mastered (overly loud or quiet) and therefore
| the movie manager took it upon themselves to correct for
| that via theater settings.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Great, great article.
|
| A long time ago, I took a tour of some recording studios. Many of
| them had some car radio speakers in the booth, so they could hear
| what the record sounded like in the car with shitty sound. Now,
| of course, cars have much better sound.
|
| It does seem like a movie sound guy would need the equivalent,
| with some home theater setups that simulate how people are
| actually hearing it.
| simonblack wrote:
| Not just movie dialogue. I find that some TV dialogue is
| difficult also. Often enough, I will replay some pieces of
| dialogue only to give up after several attempts in working out
| what was said.
| mjgoeke wrote:
| The fix for me has been surround sound.
|
| I have the center channel bumped several steps louder than the
| others on my receiver. This makes a world of difference over
| stereo mixes. (I will admit the voice sound can be more uneven -
| wind noise etc starts to show through)
|
| Hmm, thinking out loud - I bet a multichannel mix could be
| calibrated on your system to bump the center channel, even if
| outputting to 2 speaker
| qalmakka wrote:
| So it's not only me then. Fair enough, English isn't my first
| language but I have been studying it since I was very little, and
| usually in the real world I tend to have close to zero issues at
| understanding speech, be it in first person, YouTube videos, talk
| shows, radio or animated shows.
|
| I always watch BBC documentaries or clips from the previous night
| late shows (such as Colbert's or Kimmel's), often while cooking
| or doing chores, and I can follow basically the entire thing
| without having to go back, even if I'm distracted or if there's
| some environmental noise.
|
| I can't say that it's the same with films, though. They are often
| hard to follow for me without subtitles, I suspect due to IMHO
| just how terribly they are mixed. Sound effects and music are
| usually boosted up to outrageous levels, which cause the dialogue
| to become muffled or close to inaudible. It just sucks and it's
| not a good experience at all.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not only me then_
|
| I wonder if this explains part of TV's surging popularity
| relative to film. I also find modern movies frustrating to
| watch, in part because I can't follow the dialogue. (I assumed
| it was a hearing thing.)
| everybodyknows wrote:
| News we can use (as home video consumers):
|
| "Very often, the streamed audio is a compressed version that you
| wouldn't get on a Blu-ray," Mangini explains:
|
| "On Blu-ray, if you select 7.1, that is our full fidelity, 48
| kilohertz, 24-bit master audio, just as it came from the mixing
| studio. You can get that on a Blu-ray, and you can get that on
| certain premium platforms. I think you have to pay extra money
| for that.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I've been wrestling with this problem lately.
|
| 5.1 audio tracks tend to put most of the voices in the center
| channel only.
|
| If you listen in stereo, there is a challenge here with down-
| mixing to left and right.
|
| Several band-aids to alleviate it:
|
| If you watch using MPC-HC, turn normalize on at 400% in the
| settings, or alternatively if using anything else, turn on
| Realtek's loudness equalization to do the same thing.
|
| If not wishing to use normalization, then if using LAV change
| center mix level to 1.00 from 0.71, or if using MPC-BE in the
| mixer change center from 0.0 dB to 3.0 dB.
|
| I use normalize myself, because it's still too quiet even with a
| mixing boost to the center channel.
| mjgoeke wrote:
| upvoted - and MPC-HC isn't really available anymore - MPC-BC is
| a good replacement
| Sunspark wrote:
| It actually is still around: https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-
| hc/releases
|
| I use both players actually.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There's also the technical fix in AC4 and some other modern
| formats where the dialog track can be split out and additional
| metadata added so that the audio can be "remixed" for whatever
| listening environment people are in.
|
| The truth about it is that people listen to audio in less-than-
| perfect environments all the time. The ideal "Home Theater" is a
| room that has one door and isn't a passage from one place to
| another and doesn't have people doing other things. In real life
| a lot of people have a big TV in an room that's part of an open
| plan and a "boomy" soundtrack which is great in the theater will
| drive people apart in their home.
| musicale wrote:
| This is a nice idea. Theater mix is definitely different from
| what I want at home, and being able to switch between various
| mixes (e.g. headphone, binaural, small speaker, home theater,
| stereo image/surround, clarity, immersive music, immersive
| effects, personal preference, etc.) would be great.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Syracuse New York has an ATSC 3.0 TV transmitter that I pick
| up with
|
| https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-flex-4k/
|
| I'd like to say that this is a wonderful product that "just
| works" but unfortunately some of the devices I have (XBOX
| ONE, 8th gen iPad) don't support the AC4 soundtrack even
| though my various trashy Android devices handle it just fine.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > "Mumbling, breathy, I call it self-conscious type of acting, is
| so frustrating," she says. "I would say a lot of the younger
| actors have adopted that style. I think the onus also falls on
| the directors to say, 'I can't understand a word you're saying.
| I'm listening to dailies, and I can't understand.' No amount of
| volume is going to fix that."
|
| In _Star Trek: Discovery_ , all other issues aside, one that irks
| me a lot is the main character delivers about 2/3rds of her lines
| in a literal whisper.
|
| This is meant to convey emotion, since the writing on Star Trek
| now is dripping with deep emotion in every scene.
|
| I'm not sure if it's the direction or the acting, but when every
| line is whispered, then nothing is.
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| For me-- I rarely watch movies without subtitles nowadays; can't
| understand half the dialog.
|
| Part is the too many audio tracks being mixed in, that the
| article talks about. Also, I've noticed American actors seem to
| mumble their lines a lot, I dont know why. British actors
| (usually) speak clearly. Maybe its a cultural thing, like
| Americans prefer method acting more?
|
| Also, I've noticed that stage actors like Patrick Stewart , speak
| clearly, maybe because on stage you have to enunciate properly.
|
| The end result is: If a movie doesn't have subtitles, we don't
| watch it. (And havent been to a cinema for 2+ years, obviously,
| in cinemas you rarely get the option).
|
| On an unrelated note: I dont know why so many movies are shot in
| the dark. It might make sense when viewed in a theater, but when
| viewing at home, I can't see anything. The last few scenes of
| Edge of Tomorrow were impossible to understand because of this.
|
| My impression is: The "arteestes" have taken over Hollywood, and
| making stylish movies take precedence over making movies that are
| easy to watch and hear.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > dark. The last few scenes of Edge of Tomorrow were impossible
| to understand because of this. My impression is: The
| "arteestes" have taken over Hollywood
|
| 1. I thought movie firms were paid to sell more modern screens
| with contrast ratios 3000:1, so they made it look pitch black
| for everyone with an older screen. Didn't occur to me that it
| could be for art.
|
| 2. Oh, in terms of unwatchable shooting style, there was the
| hype of shoulder cameras in the 2010s, with its apogee in
| Bourne Legacy (4th). Most shots were 0,5s to 1 second for 20
| minutes in a row, unbearable. Especially when it's a dialog
| with someone expressing feelings, feels like the director is
| surfing on the view selectors.
| Tagbert wrote:
| "British actors (usually) speak clearly"
|
| Until the last couple of decades, most British movies/TV tended
| to use a lot of "Received Pronunciation" English (the Queen's
| English) which has very crisp enunciation. Other accents were
| usually relegated to very specific character roles that
| highlighted the rustic "cockney" or "Yorkshire" character.
|
| More recently, other British accents have been used more and
| many of them are the opposite of crisp enunciation. Some seem
| to be talking with marbles in their mouths. This seems to
| represent a greater democratization of the characters
| represented with less of an emphasis on upper classes.
| j_not_j wrote:
| British actors are usually better actors too.
|
| Some US programs used British actors to "raise the game" for
| their US co-workers.
|
| Examples: The Americans, The Wire, Homeland, Deadwood, etc
| etc.
|
| And as a side-effect, the dialogue was generally more
| understandable.
| giobox wrote:
| This is by design to some degree over the last few decades
| for much of the UK television landscape too. Successive UK
| governments have directed the BBC (state run broadcaster
| responsible for huge amount of UK TV) to incorporate more
| regional content/actors/accents. Historically the BBC had
| often been accused of a London/"Received Pronunciation" bias.
|
| This has been accomplished in a number of ways - opening more
| regional TV production studios, commissioning more content
| from regions outside London, hiring presenters/actors with
| regional accents etc, the net effect of all of which has been
| to broaden BBC talent pool beyond the usual cadre of
| "Received Pronunciation"-style presenters.
|
| As one example, I personally find the presenter Freddie
| Flintoff to be almost impossible to understand on any BBC
| show he appears on, but he has exactly the sort of accent you
| would never have heard on BBC 40 years ago.
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| Does have a down side if you move production to Wales /
| Scotland etc you don't have many BAME Actors and Technical
| Staff.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm well aware of the BBC shift in practice myself,
| understand many of the arguments for it, and yet ... if the
| end result is incomprehensible mush, well, They're Doing It
| Wrong.
|
| I've cut back tremendously on my listening _in part_ on
| this basis. (Overall quality of coverage also seems to have
| flagged, also often with an eye toward popularity over
| significance. I 'm aware that there's been a war against
| the BBC by political elements within the UK, I disagree
| strongly with it, and feel that also has a large role in
| these trends.)
|
| But as with online content: if your design and/or
| presentation are getting in the way of your message and
| ability to communicate ... _please stop doing that._
| foldr wrote:
| Pedantic point: Cockneys are about as far from "rustic" as it
| gets.
| nvarsj wrote:
| Video sounds like a calibration issue, streaming issue, or just
| a poor TV. Generally only OLED and Plasma are good at showing
| dark scenes due to very high contrast ratios. On everything
| else dark scenes just become a washed mess. Another issue is
| bitrate - dark scenes need very high bitrates to preserve
| detail. Streaming services almost across the board destroy dark
| detail (for a counter-example, see Meridian on Netflix, but
| most of Netflix's streams are not great in this regard).
|
| If you care about it, Blu-ray and OLED should give you
| excellent dark scene detail.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think the onus is on the movie+software to display right on
| my hardware, not on me to buy special hardware so I can see
| what's going on. This kind of hubris (most famously seen in
| the battle scenes from the last season of Game of Thrones) is
| really incredible.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm not hard of hearing at all and since switching to subtitles
| I've come across several scenes where conversations were taking
| place off-screen and I had no idea but for the captions.
| svachalek wrote:
| Yeah my wife is not an English native speaker so we tend to
| leave subtitles on all the time. It's amazing how often they
| refer to a bit of off-screen sound or dialog that's relevant
| to the plot, that I didn't even notice at all.
| [deleted]
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Patrick Stewart is Royal Shakespeare Company trained. You won't
| find an actor trained by the Royal Shakespeare Company that
| mumbles their lines.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's interesting to note that Patrick Steward might be
| responsible for changing the way people commonly pronounce
| the word Data. If so, I wonder how much impact his stage
| training had on how he chose to pronounce the word.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If you mumble on the stage anywhere the director will (or
| should!) kick your ass.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Same. I started turning on subtitles because of noisy kids, but
| now I have them on most of the time. I hear lots of people say
| they are distracting or they ruin comedic or dramatic timing,
| but you quickly get used to it. You learn to read them only
| when you need to.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Yeah, you definitely get used to it. I still laugh at a lot
| of things and I think it's a good way to broaden your watch
| choices significantly because it opens up foreign films/tv.
|
| Netflix has been slowly pushing more international content in
| the US as many of Americans are starting to become more
| comfortable with reading subtitles.
|
| I do think there is some room for improvement though in that
| subtitles should absolutely have standardized options for how
| they display on screen. Some people really like the yellow,
| others find that much more distracting compared to a bold
| white lettering on a semi-opaque black background. Let the
| viewer decide which one they are most comfortable with unless
| you have some specific art directed reason why they need to
| be formatted a certain way.
| emsy wrote:
| On the other hand German TV/movie acting is heavily influenced
| by theater so you will have dialogues that are easy to
| understand but sound completely unnatural. This combined with
| bad cinematography makes German films unwatchable for me.
| (German dubs of foreign movies on the other hand are usually
| quite good)
| drcongo wrote:
| In a lot of European movies the dialogue is added in post
| rather than recorded live.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| The Hollywood term for film recorded without synchronous
| audio is MOS.
|
| One of the many alleged origins for the term is a German
| director (which director varies according to the story)
| declaring that a scene should be shot "mit out sound".
| cafard wrote:
| Anthony Burgess, who wrote English dialogue for Italian
| movies--whether for subtitles or dubbing I forget--said
| that Fellini had his cast say sequential numbers; that way,
| he could just order them to start again from 10. I do
| recall seeing someone credited with Michel Piccioli's lines
| on an Austrian film.
| emsy wrote:
| I don't (just) mean with regards to audibility but also lip
| sync and intonation. It depends on the original language of
| course. The lip sync in squid game was noticeably off for
| example (Watched it with my family who dont like subs).
| whartung wrote:
| When I'm alone, I watch most everything with subtitles. Not
| just for this reason, but because the vocal track tends to be
| really low and the MUSIC and GUN FIRE track really high, so I
| need to crank the overall sound down. (And, yes, I've turned up
| my center channel on my sound system to try and compensate for
| this.)
|
| My Apple TV has a "tone down the explosions" setting, which
| helps a lot.
|
| Even still, at times I wish I had a volume knob on my remote to
| swing one way or the other as the scene change in the thing I'm
| watching. The remote is too slow.
|
| But it's annoying to have these wide ranges. Then you watch a
| news or talk program or something like that, and the voices are
| front and center and everything is peachy.
|
| Later, we can talk about how dark things have become on screen
| as well.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I watch most everything with subtitles. Not just for this
| reason, but because the vocal track tends to be really low
| and the MUSIC and GUN FIRE track really high
|
| I just noticed this trying to watch Amazon's new Wheel of
| Time series. It doesn't matter what the volume on the TV is -
| the background music and effects are so much louder than the
| dialog that I can't understand what people are saying.
| wincy wrote:
| I had the same issue with Wheel of Time! I'd nearly blow
| out my ear drums wearing AirPods in a battle, so I'd turn
| down the volume, then there'd be dialogue and I couldn't
| hear it. Very frustrating.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Even still, at times I wish I had a volume knob on my
| remote to swing one way or the other as the scene change in
| the thing I'm watching. The remote is too slow.
|
| > But it's annoying to have these wide ranges. Then you watch
| a news or talk program or something like that, and the voices
| are front and center and everything is peachy.
|
| I've often thought a lot of these problems could be solved
| just by adding a "minimum volume" knob to all the "maximum
| volume" knobs we currently use, allowing users to forcefully
| reduce the dynamic range in an easy-to-understand way (while
| still being loud enough to hear dialogue). I remember "large
| dynamic range" being advertised as something you want for
| home theatres/etc, but in general I think it's more a
| misfeature/antipattern.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It should be easy to add a compressor dial to audio devices
| nowadays
| ukyrgf wrote:
| Windows 7 had a "loudness equalizer" that was basically
| just a limiter, and that made my computer my my go-to for
| watching movies. It still exists in Windows 10 but
| doesn't seem to work as universally with different
| devices.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Or at least some statistically-relevant volume knobs. E.g.
| percentile or most recent peak.
|
| EEs, correct me if I'm wrong, but the amplifier circuitry
| is digitally-controlled now, no? So hypothetically could be
| rapidly adjusted with low latency?
| neura wrote:
| misused feature
| Causality1 wrote:
| I would use subtitles all the time if it didn't ruin dramatic
| and comedic timing. I often find myself wishing movies and
| video games had "proper nouns only" subtitles.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Nice idea. Sounds pretty easy to implement, just filter the
| subtitles with an NER function.
| skydhash wrote:
| I got so used to subtitles (learning English + anime). That
| I can put them in the background when I focus on the movie
| and quickly check them in case I did not understand
| something. Kinda like when you blur out the surrounding
| controls when watching YouTube.
| Wistar wrote:
| I used to live in Denmark but never understood Danish,
| spoken or written, very well (at all).
|
| In movie theaters, they'd show English language films with
| Danish subtitles and, often, I'd miss a comic piece of
| dialog because the subtitles let the audience in on the
| joke before I could hear it spoken, and then the audience
| laughter would drown out any chance I had of hearing the
| joke.
|
| It was a bit frustrating.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I've had similar issues, but it's when they subtitle the
| aliens talking and then I have no idea what they're
| saying.
| throwaway803453 wrote:
| Simply adding a delay to ensure the sentence doesn't appear
| after it is spoken would fix this. It's something that
| unavoidably happens with Saturday Night Live's transcript,
| for example, and I prefer it for comedy.
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _I often find myself wishing movies and video games had
| "proper nouns only" subtitles._
|
| This would be an excellent idea! Oftentimes I'll watch
| something, then in the middle turn on the subtitles and
| learn that I was misunderstanding the name of
| someone/something.
|
| Even if I hear it correctly the spelling may be different
| and can give better context and cultural flavor.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The article quoted a sound designer who was oblivious to your
| take:
|
| > _... when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be
| based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the
| dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that 's a big
| action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the
| result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-
| impactful mix ..._
|
| Yes, I want it somewhat squashed up! Please do that! I
| understand the artistry and desire for dynamic range, but
| when the character is whispering some critical plot detail,
| you can zoom in for a feeling of intimacy/privacy and have
| the actor stage whisper so everyone knows what was said. It
| shouldn't actually be a whisper that people a few feet away
| can't hear. When you follow it up with an explosion, sure,
| make it a little louder, but not real-life loud! That would
| you blow out your speakers and wake the baby.
|
| And yes, darkness on-screen is another problem. Not everyone
| has plasma or OLED displays (though the latter are becoming
| more available), nor watches in pitch black. And when
| downconverted from 10 bits to 8 bits, streamed through
| compression algorithms, and displayed on average TN
| displays...no, you can't see what's going on. Tom Scott did
| an excellent video on this subject a while ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. Game of Thrones
| in particular was unwatchable for me because of this.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Good point. I do have OLED, and yet the scene in _Invasion_
| (on Apple TV) where they 're up in the attic of a house and
| the aliens are downstairs, was completely unintelligible
| for me. It was all in darkness and there was just not
| enough contrast to make out anything.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > And yes, darkness on-screen is another problem. Not
| everyone has plasma or OLED displays
|
| The goal is to sell. They probably get paid by TV
| manufacturers (like a product placement).
|
| > Game of Thrones in particular
|
| That confirms, they definitely get paid ;)
| pault wrote:
| You can get a compressor/limiter for pretty cheap, but only
| if you have wires somewhere between the DAC and your
| speakers.
| laumars wrote:
| I've often wished DVDs and Blu-ray has an audio track where
| sound was compressed. The wider ranges of volume are fine for
| cinemas but absolutely terrible for casual viewing (which is
| 99% of home viewing). It's even worse when you have kids who
| are trying to sleep while you watch your movie.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Dolby Digital audio tracks are supposed to support dynamic
| range compression in your A/V receiver for exactly this
| reason. There is a dialog normalization field in the audio
| data that says how loud dialog is, and then the receiver is
| supposed to apply compression using predefined curves based
| on that value. Try looking for a DRC setting.
| laumars wrote:
| The problem with that is you need a receiver that
| supports Dolby Digital and most homes won't have that. In
| fact my lounge TV doesn't even have external speakers nor
| amp attached. So DD does t really help the casual viewers
| I was describing.
| nitrogen wrote:
| DVD and Blu-ray players that do internal decoding of the
| DD soundtrack (most DVDs and Blu-rays will have a DD
| soundtrack, plus others, last time I checked a few years
| ago) are supposed to apply DRC. Some might have an option
| to change the DRC strength. If you're watching over-the-
| air ATSC broadcasts in the US, those will have DD (AKA
| AC3) audio, and the TV should be applying DRC based on
| the same metadata.
|
| Streaming services have taken a massive step backward in
| this regard. TVs should have better signal processing
| options for this (and some do). I have a custom "night
| mode" set up that deals with mixed streaming volume
| levels in my system, but I'm using highly customized pro
| audio gear in ways that the average user won't want to
| pay for or deal with.
| laumars wrote:
| Good point. Most of my movie consumption these days is
| via streaming services.
|
| I am fortunate enough to have a home cinema room with a
| projector and some pretty beefy audio gear hooked up. But
| most of the time we watch in the lounge where it's a more
| casual affair.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Some speakers (Sonos comes to mind) have a "night mode"
| that basically does that, compressing the dynamic range.
| There is also a dialogue mode that emphasizes the human
| speech frequencies.
| laumars wrote:
| I really dislike post production dynamic equalisers
| because they're altering the sound in a way that wasn't
| intended. Sure it sometimes sounds better, but it doesn't
| always. You get a lot better results when the compression
| is added to the tracks before they're rendered down to a
| single master.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Apple TV has a similar feature, described simply as
| "reduce loud sounds".
| caskstrength wrote:
| > On an unrelated note: I dont know why so many movies are shot
| in the dark. It might make sense when viewed in a theater, but
| when viewing at home, I can't see anything. The last few scenes
| of Edge of Tomorrow were impossible to understand because of
| this.
|
| Actually after re-watching BladeRunner 2049 on my q95t I came
| to conclusion that I like watching dark scenes on my TV as much
| or even more then in cinema.
| foobarian wrote:
| I do enjoy subtitles as well, but for me I have the most
| trouble with accents I'm not used to. My favorite examples are
| scifi/fantasy/historical shows where for some reason the "way
| the peoples talk" is invariably a heavy English, Irish or
| Scottish accent that is very hard to follow for me, used to
| American accents, even if enunciated properly. Add in the other
| sounds and it becomes even more difficult.
|
| The other nice feature of subtitles is sometimes there is
| helpful metadata there, like identifying the song playing in
| the background or some words not intended to be heard like a
| whisper or voice coming from a phone receiver.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| It's always such a relief to me when someone speaks with an
| Irish accent - my cognitive load goes right down
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| As some one originally from Birmingham I found the accents
| in peaky blinders oddly relaxing.
|
| Though I could see full "yam yam" being hard - that's the
| rural dialect from the black country.
| rebuilder wrote:
| The Expanse went really thick on the Belter creole, to the
| point that it was genuinely hard to understand, although
| subtitles helped. For the latest season they changed it into
| more of an accent rather than a new language, which I
| understand the reasoning for, but ultimately the show
| suffered for it IMO. So I guess I'm saying sometimes less
| understandable can still be better!
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I have tried starting the expanse twice. Both times the
| dialogue compared with the overall darkness of the scenes
| made me stop watching. I think I'd like the show, but I
| want to be able to see and hear what's happening!
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Few years back, India theaters started adding subtitles in
| Hollywood/English movies. It increased viewership dramatically.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Flashback to "Interstellar", where the first 40 minutes
| involved this guy speaking in some deep-south US accent with a
| mouth so full of marbles that he was incomprehensible. At some
| point later in the movie, I bailed. Apart from the black-hole
| CGI it was utter crap. Perhaps the incomprehensible dialogue
| was a deliberate attempt to hide the paucity of plot, logic or
| story.
| 1_player wrote:
| Nonsense. The black hole CGI was made with the help of Kip
| Thorne, a friend of Nolan and a theoretical astrophysicist,
| who ever published a paper from his research on what
| supermassive black holes actually look like.
|
| Why do you say it looks utter crap then?
| globalise83 wrote:
| _Apart from_ the black-hole CGI it was utter crap.
| handrous wrote:
| Interstellar is a bunch of neat and well-realized space sci-
| fi situations stitched together by a mediocre-at-best
| unjustifiably-proud-of-itself plot and a solid 30 minutes too
| much runtime.
| 1_player wrote:
| > I rarely watch movies without subtitles nowadays
|
| Thank you. I've been in England for 8 years now and I've become
| fluent with any type of accent, yet I've still been watching
| movies with subs at home and it's been a crutch hard to get rid
| of; it made me second guess my ability to understand spoken
| English.
|
| I have no issues in real life, or when watching YouTube, but
| movies, man... there's times I miss some words or I don't
| understand what's going on and I am unsure if I missed some
| kind of plot-crucial idiomatic joke whispered 30 minutes ago.
| And let's not speak of Tenet. Nolan is one of my favourite
| film-makers, but I hated that movie because I couldn't
| understand half the dialogue and the plot.
|
| I'm happy to know it's not me, nor my ears failing.
| pitspotter2 wrote:
| For me it's not an issue of perception, but sheer lack of
| _working memory:_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FXfFeRtJo
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| This is brilliant. I need to show this to anyone wondering
| what having a short-term memory issue feels like. I need a
| whiteboard and subtitles to figure that one out.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > And let's not speak of Tenet. Nolan is one of my favourite
| film-makers, but I hated that movie because I couldn't
| understand half the dialogue and the plot.
|
| This one is definitely not just you... I'm not sure
| Christopher Nolan himself understood the plot beyond
| "Inception, but for time machines".
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| >I dont know why so many movies are shot in the dark. Your TV
| is not doing HDR properly, cannot get bright enough, or is not
| calibrated correctly. If it's 4k, it's done in HDR which
| requires a TV to get bright enough, otherwise you will have to
| do tone mapping and turn up the gamma which can't be done in
| many setups.
|
| >For me-- I rarely watch movies without subtitles nowadays;
| can't understand half the dialog. try enabling dynamic range
| compression on your TV/Sound Receiver. Many movies are mastered
| for Cinema, which means voices are whsiper quiet and other
| sounds are loud af, this compresses it down to a more
| reasonable range for a home setup.
| wffurr wrote:
| Dark scenes don't compress well. You get tons of banding and
| blocking and artifacts in dark scenes.
|
| You also have to control the ambient lighting around the TV
| which can be a pain in the ass.
|
| If directors want movies to be seen, they should consider the
| home viewing environment. Just as the article says many films
| consider the home sound environment and mixing for non-
| pristine environments.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Having watched all of Game of Thrones on Blueray, when the
| final season came out I was stuck with a UK streaming
| service called "nowtv", which my router reported was
| pulling in at 4mbit a second.
|
| The entire battle of winterfell was just mush.
|
| Needless to say nowTV get no money from me.
| michaelt wrote:
| Now TV is owned by a traditional premium broadcaster
| called Sky. I'm pretty sure they deliberately handicap
| the service, so as not to cannibalise their more
| expensive traditional packages.
| wffurr wrote:
| Given that was specifically filmed to be streamed, it's
| amazing how poorly the director considered what the
| streamed, compressed version would look like. Or that HBO
| didn't insist on something that would stream better.
| greatwave1 wrote:
| > _My impression is: The "arteestes" have taken over Hollywood,
| and making stylish movies take precedence over making movies
| that are easy to watch and hear._
|
| Based on what? In my experience, most of the worst audio
| experiences are middle-brow action movies (such as Edge of
| Tomorrow and Nolan's movies), not auteur.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I think the dark thing is to hide crappy CGI, which doesn't
| blend well with physical sets and costumes under good lighting.
|
| The actual article content here about the reasons for dialogue
| getting worse is interesting. I'd have suspected it's mostly
| about the actors no longer being predominantly stage-trained,
| but apparently that is part of it but a small part. I don't
| really notice it personally, though, since my wife is deaf, so
| ever since marrying her, I've watched everything with closed
| captioning on.
| drcongo wrote:
| I gave up watching Ozark because I couldn't see a damn thing
| that was happening, and that has no CGI at all. Sometimes it
| really is just a (bad) stylistic choice.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I think it's probably more related to the move to HDR
| content. Modern movies/tv are shot and edited with HDR in
| mind. HDR usually has much more granular control over the
| brightness within a scene, not just that one part can get
| super bright.
|
| That's great for people with TV's capable of that type of
| playback, but for everyone else, tough luck unless you have
| a blacked-out home theatre room to watch all you casual TV
| in.
|
| I saw a great example of this in a recent LTT video[0] of a
| cheap "HDR" TV. The shadows all blended together and the
| highlights just looked like a flat white instead of a very
| lightly shadowed sparkle.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHwYMwXX88
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| If only the artists have taken over Hollywood...
|
| Do you genuinely believe films like Edge of Tomorrow are works
| directed by a genuine auteur with full control? That is almost
| certainly not the case. The director is Doug Liman. He's not a
| bad director by any means but if you look at his filmography--
| Mr & Mrs Smith, Jumper, Bourne Identity--he's not exactly
| Francois Truffaut.
|
| Besides, artists do not behave consistently. Some may care less
| about comprehension, while others may care deeply. Lumping them
| all into one category and making a false dichotomy between
| style and comprehension are both vast oversimplifications.
| psyc wrote:
| I'm in an endless cycle of watching without subtitles until I
| reach max frustration with understanding the dialogue, and then
| with subtitles until I reach max frustration with darting my
| eyes up and down. Upgrading my headphones did help a lot, but
| hasn't completely solved the problem. The fact that so many
| people feel compelled to use subtitles for a language they
| speak is kind of absurd.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I use subtitles all the time because I can't filter out the
| sounds easily.
|
| There's a baseline assumption with a lot of "high quality"
| movies and television that every member of the audience has
| perfectly working senses. The sad fact is "low quality"
| reality TV is much more accessible. Sporting events are also
| a lot easier because you can hear the people talking clearly.
|
| For a more concrete example Star Trek: Discovery is difficult
| for me to hear and follow everything, whereas the older TV
| series and the new the animated ones are much easier.
| teeray wrote:
| > When it comes to dialogue unintelligibility, one name looms
| above all others: Christopher Nolan
|
| I'm glad this was called out. I was super-excited for Tenet last
| year. I had a brand-new 7.2 Atmos setup... and I had to watch
| with subtitles on because I couldn't understand anyone. Very
| frustrating... glad it wasn't just me!
| gkop wrote:
| > "If you listen to, say, 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' you'll
| hear every word ... the sound was _cut on film_ back then, and
| with limited time, track count, and budget, these are the results
| you got. "
|
| Can somebody translate this, what is meant by "cut on film" in
| this context?
|
| I found [0] via web search, but it seems to be about distribution
| and not production. It seems unlikely to me that a 1994 movie's
| sound was _initially recorded_ in an optical format. But I can
| see how if it was planned to be _distributed_ with sound-on-film,
| that could influence the production. Is that what was meant by
| the quote above? What do movie sound people mean by the word
| "cut" in this context, or does it have no specific meaning?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound-on-film
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The sound track was an analog track, rendered onto the film
| itself (either as a magnetic tape strip on the film or an
| optical track outside the projected image) and was read by the
| projector as the film rolled through.
| gkop wrote:
| Thanks. Would you spell out the implications of this
| distribution format, for production? Why does the number of
| channels (for example) that the film is distributed with,
| matter for production, with regard to recording and
| processing techniques to do with dialogue?
|
| Also, can you speculate on how the dialogue on that movie was
| initially recorded? Digitally? Analog tape?
| jamesmaniscalco wrote:
| I think the "track count" has to do with the number of
| tracks available for mixing in the sound editing stage, not
| how many channels are in the final mix. At the time the
| sound editors would have been limited by the mixing board
| itself - how many tapes can run simultaneously. These days,
| computer audio workstations can have essentially an
| unlimited number of tracks, allowing endless tinkering and
| post-production that can become a crutch. My experience is
| in music production but I think the same applies to film.
| pkulak wrote:
| The article starts at the headline "It's in the Acting".
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Anybody else find it very weird and off-putting that folks
| thought even _talking_ about these issues would affect their
| careers? I mean, does that not speak volumes about the toxic
| professional atmosphere hollywood labors in?
| colordrops wrote:
| I'd be afraid to talk negatively about any of the jobs I've had
| at a FAANG while working there.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I assumed this was breathless overstatement designed to hook
| the reader with some 'forbidden knowledge.' Not anything real.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is hard to find any industry where skilled consultants are
| willing to trash talk their repeat customers.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You're often going to have to cite specific movies, specific
| directors when talking about this. With Nolan, it's easy
| because he's acknowledged this stuff and it's well known. Same
| with Tom Hardy. But start mentioning other directors, actors
| and films with specific complaints about how the vocal mix was
| handled, and I imagine you'll be persona non grata for vocal
| mixing fairly soon.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I like to think they tried to talk to more sound engineers but
| their dialog was inaudible.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| The problem is multiplied by an information-theory phenomenon:
| like a mathematics textbook, each line of dialog these days is
| distilled to contain maximum information. There is little
| redundancy. If you miss a line, it really matters.
|
| Combine that with this trend of filming long, brooding pauses
| punctuated by only occasional dialog, and you get a lot of
| resentful watchers after they've waited for 30 seconds for the
| actor to finally _say_ something, and then it trails off
| unintelligibly, leading to a 90-second adventure in rewinding not
| far enough, then too far, then waiting for buffering...
| cwilkes wrote:
| To add to that: this gives the show some (undeserved) re-
| watchablility in that you'll finally be able to understand some
| bit of dialog.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I'll admit - I don't watch much tv or movies anymore, but I can't
| help but think the "problem" here is how many of these programs
| are the equivalent of "ouch my balls" from Idiocracy - that is to
| say, the dialog is just filler between explosions anyway (IE:
| it's being watched for the over-the-top action, it isn't like the
| dialog is Goethe.)
| goostavos wrote:
| Yep. You nailed it, man. Everyone who watches TV or movies is a
| big ol' dum-dum consuming real bottom of the barrel
| entertainment. They should really be doing more enlightened
| things with their time, like... commenting on Hacker News about
| things to let people know that they're not involved in the
| consumption of such drivel.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| No - you misunderstand my point. My point isn't to denigrate
| the viewer, but rather to acknowledge that in some genres the
| dialog simply isn't the point. Even in the article they
| appear to acknowledge this, noting that in romcom and whatnot
| that the audio is more clearly articulated and audible,
| versus the various examples of action type movies.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A lot of blame can be put on the mumbly pseudo-naturalistic trend
| of prestige acting, but the real blame is dynamic ranges that are
| too wide in order to make effects/soundtracks ass-quakingly loud.
| I thought they were going to mention that in the last item.
|
| If the dialog were mixed louder, lower volume at the cinema
| wouldn't be corrected (because everybody would understand what
| was going on) but sound meant to make the audience jump,
| wouldn't. This transfers to home viewing, because people at home
| aren't going to max out the volume of their TVs to watch your
| movie, so they now can't hear the dialog (unless you remix home
| releases.)
|
| It's like the opposite of the loudness war. Enforcing loudness
| when the viewer has control of the volume knob requires making
| the _necessary_ sound (the dialog) so quiet that people have to
| turn it up. It 's like the volume blast of TV commercials before
| it was regulated.
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials
| wolverine876 wrote:
| In music, often you can't understand the lyrics at first, and
| sometimes not at all. When talking to people, often you can't
| understand every word or syllable. People go to operas where they
| can't understand the language at all.
|
| There is much more to communication than the literal words.
| daveslash wrote:
| During the pandemic's "shelter in place", I started watching (and
| re-watching) older movies (anything pre 2000). I'm still on that
| binge.... I also got into 35mm film photography (developing it at
| home in my bathroom), and learning a ton about the chemistry,
| etc... I've discovered, and in some cases re-discovered, how much
| I prefer the older movies over newer ones. And my work in
| 35mm/analog gives me a new appreciation for movies shot on film.
| Movies like the original " _Planet of the Apes_ " has found new
| appreciation in my eyes. There are some real, true, gems from the
| 60s - 90s.
|
| Edit: I know this comment isn't about the audio, specifically -
| but rather, just about how movies have changed more generally.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I sure miss my darkroom. Don't miss ST:TNG in 1080p. So glad it
| was shot on film.
| daveslash wrote:
| Same. I miss the darkroom, and ST:TNG looks so great on film!
|
| In case you're unaware, you don't need a darkroom to develop
| 35mm film. I don't use an enlarger to transfer my photos onto
| photo paper _(which would require a darkroom)_. Instead, I
| develop in the light but using a light-proof changing bag to
| load my film into a light-proof Paterson developing tank.
| After I pull the developed film out and let it dry, I scan
| the negatives using a photo scanner (I use an Epson v600, but
| there are plenty of options out there for scanning film
| negatives). Reddit 's r/analog and r/analogcommunity is a
| thriving community.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Another problem is movies that race over important plot points so
| quickly that if you blink you can't understand what's going on. I
| hate it when I have to read the wikipedia article to get half the
| plot explained.
| soneca wrote:
| Oh, what a great article! Such a relief to not a read a long form
| that starts with a long anecdote with literary pretensions nor a
| listicle with bullet points explained in one paragraph.
|
| A very short introduction in the form of a personal experience to
| explain the issue clearly and objectively and then explaining
| each issue with good research and relevant quotes. I learned a
| lot!
| beebeepka wrote:
| Has a movie creator explained the shift to incompressible
| dialogue coupled with obnoxiously loud music and effects and
| stuff. It's really annoying but strangely persistent so ther must
| be a very concerned effort
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think it's the interpretation/bias of louder as
| better/clearer. If the sound effects are louder, they're seen
| as better. This bias even works on the small scale when testing
| audiophiles: You play them a sample of music twice but tell
| them the sound is coming from two different sources. If you
| play one sample slightly louder than the other, they'll
| identify it as coming from from a higher-quality system.
|
| Sound people complain about compression (muddy), not wide
| dynamic range (drama and depth.)
| acuozzo wrote:
| High dynamic range sound mixes have been with us for a long
| time. Have you ever watched Lawrence of Arabia in a movie
| theater?
|
| If you do the mixdown to stereo poorly and/or refuse to
| compress the DR and then play the result from built-in TV
| speakers I guarantee that you won't be able to hear the
| dialogue at an acceptable volume even though the film is from
| 1962 and features clearly-spoken lines from former professional
| stage actors.
| stunt wrote:
| I first thought it's because new TVs hide speakers on the back,
| but even a decent soundbar didn't help much. Best you can do is
| to use a headphone.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Relatedly, does anyone know why subtitles are displayed over the
| video itself, as opposed to in the black rectangle that often
| exists below? I can see that it might be a little harder to look
| down to the text, but it would be much easier to have sufficient
| contrast against a black background. I wish this were at least an
| option!
| thegoleffect wrote:
| The black rectangles exist because the video is a different
| aspect ratio than your monitor. Not all displays have the same
| ratio, a monitor with a matching ratio will have no black bars
| on any side. So by nature, closed captioning _has_ to be within
| the video bounds.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm aware of the reason for the black bars. The point is that
| the captions that are not part of the video stream (I believe
| on DVDs they are not) can be presented below the video if
| that space exists and the user desires.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I believe that DVD subtitles are just dumb bitmaps overlaid
| onto the video. You'd have to have logic to slice up the bitmap
| and relocate it off-screen.
|
| Closed caption is textual stream with metadata (x/y position).
| That would be a cinch to play in an off-screen area.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| In my naive younger years, when Blu-Ray was being announced, I
| thought, "Hey, they could put the dialogue on one track, the
| music on another, and the foley business somewhere else, then you
| could mix those as you needed." Just put the baby down? Switch to
| dialogue, with only ten percent explosions and soundtrack.
|
| (This of course would only be useful where you had original audio
| tracks)
| thanatos519 wrote:
| That's power user thinking! Nothing is built for power users
| anymore, except most FOSS.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| The video games have pretty much universally been having at
| least two separate volume sliders (one for music, other for
| SFX, optionally the third one for the dialog) for about 15? 20?
| years. Maybe in another 20 years the cinema industry will adopt
| something like it, who knows?
| elliekelly wrote:
| I keep waiting for this setting and I don't understand why a
| service like Netflix or HBO hasn't offered it yet.
| josefx wrote:
| Do they have access to the individual audio tracks for
| anything that they haven't produced themselves?
| the-pigeon wrote:
| Unlikely but if they offered it on their own stuff it
| could create a trend.
|
| And increasingly they are losing the quality content that
| they didn't produce themselves.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Directors and the like would probably refuse to cooperate.
|
| This is mostly prevalent in video games because they lack
| auteurs obsessed with this kind of thing.
| psyc wrote:
| Satisfactory went ballistic in the latest update, adding 50
| separate volume sliders for every sound effect. Not sure it
| was necessary, but I did use it for a couple of items I find
| especially irritating.
| TillE wrote:
| In some cases this winds up being an abdication of
| responsibility, as I've found the default can be mixed quite
| poorly, with eg music drowning out the dialogue. But it's
| certainly nice to have that control.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Some games go even further. For example, Uncharted 2 had
| different dynamic ranges and even a midnight mode. A Naughty
| Dog audio engineer explained it at the time on the AVS Forum
| [0]. It's a great post, here's an excerpt:
|
| > Dialog always pans across center, but in movies, most FX
| generally don't. In games, since much of the action happens
| up front, even with full-range centers, putting all of the
| volume in one speaker for all the dialog _and_ FX happening
| directly in front of you generally doesn 't sound as good as
| spreading the power for the FX around to the front mains.
|
| It says a lot about Naughty Dog that they wanted players to
| have the best experience, no matter what setup they had.
|
| [0] https://www.avsforum.com/threads/uncharted-among-
| thieves.109...
| mjgoeke wrote:
| In 5.1/7.1 audio mixes, the center channel is the magic channel
| with the dialogue.
|
| It gives plenty of control. It's pretty great in practice.
| IvyMike wrote:
| Until people don't have a center speaker hooked up.
| musicale wrote:
| I thought it was common practice to re-record dialogue tracks
| (i.e. ADR) to make them clearer.
|
| Another option (if they wanted to use it) would be to use signal
| processing techniques to extract and improve the dialogue tracks.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| It's interesting AMC cites surveys. I haven't seen a survey but
| even if I did I'm not sure I'd complain to them about
| unintelligible dialogue -- as a layman, I've assumed that's
| mostly a problem with the movie and not the theater (they don't
| have a separate dialogue track they can boost). And I guess now
| that I read this I'm not sure how much it'd matter, given
| directors themselves are complaining about the problem.
| macintux wrote:
| There are few things more frustrating than researching a
| problem, taking it to the people responsible, and having them
| dismiss it with "no one has complained before."
|
| I don't think I've ever dismissed someone coming to me in that
| way, and I hope if I ever do that I'm fired for it.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Maybe one thing is more frustrating: stalebot closing issues
| that have recent responses (I count emoji reactions).
| axiomdata316 wrote:
| I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that struggled
| understanding Tenet. I think it's almost impossible to understand
| that movie without subtitles (I've watched Tenet over five times
| and still struggle at parts, especially the end). Interesting
| point to is with subtitles it identifies the main character as
| the Protagonist. Just watching the movie with subtitles is very
| difficult to come to that conclusion.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > "Not everything really has a very crisp, cinematic sound to it
| in real life, and I think some of these people are trying to
| replicate that," he tells me.
|
| Well... there's no loud background music in real life, and some
| sounds (like rain, etc...) are usually less loud in real life
| than in movies...
| el_don_almighty wrote:
| I seriously thought my wife and I were going deaf and crazy
| because we only watch movies at home with subs on. This article
| eliminates one of those concerns, but now we are crazy and mad.
|
| This is worse than compression of pop music for Spotify
| broadcasting, this affects the core storytelling of the media. We
| purposely did _NOT_ go see James Bond in the theater knowing that
| we wouldn 't understand anything people were saying.
|
| My first instinct is to throw a Raspberry PI at the problem, but
| I am not sure where to start.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Theaters are deploying captioning solutions for ADA compliance.
| I'm not sure what amount of "proof" of need you'd have to
| provide, though.
|
| Hopefully I'll get to go back to a theater someday!
| vhold wrote:
| One of the most interesting technical details is buried in a
| giant quote.
|
| _> All it took was a little bit of collaboration and
| communication, and all of a sudden, grip and electric are moving
| generators a hundred yards away instead of having them right
| around the corner from the set._
| rootsudo wrote:
| That link is horrible, it's all posture and no content.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| As someone living in the city with a lot of neighbors, I mostly
| have the problem with high dynamic range. I hate it so much and
| you cannot deactivate it in most streaming media. I get that it
| is effect-full, but either I need subtitles or I blast my
| neighbors to insanity. Ever watched a Youtube video and then
| switched to Netflix and you couldn't hear anything? That is
| because the amplitude is set to very low for them to have a
| buffer with which they suddenly blast you out of the window in
| case anything happens.
|
| That sound guys aren't even allowed to utter criticism of
| director or risk career speaks volumes about the industry.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| You can rebalance movie files with ffmpeg, but not a solution
| with streaming.
|
| Funny how dynamic compression became all the range in music,
| but the opposite happened to movies.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Maybe you could inline some LADSPA compression filter with
| PulseAudio?
|
| I recently struggled to find all of the channels in my DTS
| audio collection. Turns out that it many tracks the important
| bits were hiding in the front-left-center and right-left-
| center channels which the hardware decoder in the sound
| system send nowhere but I was able to find via software
| decoding.
|
| Completely absurd to have to hack so hard on this stuff, even
| if I love the process!
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, I saw that in a sibling post but unfortunately
| streaming platforms don't support Linux. For the explicit
| reason to keep control of such things.
| _0ffh wrote:
| If you are on Linux, you can use JACK or PipeWire and simply
| insert a compressor (I use the one from Calf) into the route to
| your audio sink.
| etskinner wrote:
| Some receivers also have this function. On my Onkyo, it's
| called Dynamic Volume.
|
| In my setup, I go one step further. I have a 'no subwoofer'
| activity on my Harmony hub that turns off a smart outlet
| switch to the sub and turns on Dynamic Volume. No more
| keeping my roommate up by watching movies late at night.
| recursive wrote:
| A limiter might work for the purpose even better.
| canniballectern wrote:
| I was really surprised to read that most movies have a
| different mix for streaming. Most of what I stream has such
| high dynamic range that it feels like a cinema mix to me. I can
| only imagine how bad it would be if we _actually_ got the
| cinema mix.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's not even just the neighbors. Sometimes (almost always) I
| don't want ear-splitting explosions just to be able to barely
| hear dialog.
| goostavos wrote:
| Yeah, it's always immediately frustrating when you realize
| it's "one of those movies" where I'm going to have to ride
| the volume the entire time.
|
| The nice side-effect from that constant volume changing is
| that the volume display covers the subtitles, which means I
| can neither hear nor even read the subtitles the dialogue >:(
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yeah, I really wished home video releases had a separate
| professional surround mix with a much lower dynamic range
| between normal dialog and the loudest sounds. Dynamic range
| compression works, but it's often heavy-handed and very
| noticeable (especially on an Apple TV).
|
| I think cinema mixes are conventionally around 30 dB
| between dialog and the loudest sounds, which works great in
| the cinema (both because there is less ambient sound, and
| because you expect really loud sounds in the cinema), but
| is pretty extreme at home if you don't have a proper "home
| theater" setup. That's like the difference between normal
| conversation and a lawn mower. If you're watching a movie
| at home and two characters are talking and then one of them
| starts their lawn mower, do you actually want it to be as
| loud as if you fired up a lawn mower in your living room?
| For sustained sounds I generally wouldn't want it much more
| than 10 dB above dialog (that's like running a washing
| machine) and for _very_ peaky effects like gunshots 20 dB
| is probably pushing it for most people 's living room
| setups.
| etskinner wrote:
| Some receivers have a function to help. On my Onkyo, it's
| called Dynamic Volume. It's essentially just a compressor to
| turn quiet sounds to medium quiet and loud sounds to medium
| loud.
|
| In my setup, I go one step further. I have a 'no subwoofer'
| activity on my Harmony hub that turns off a smart outlet switch
| to the sub and turns on Dynamic Volume. No more keeping my
| roommate up by watching movies late at night.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| And not just receivers. When I had traditional cable TV, the
| cable box had a setting like that. Some TVs probably have it.
| Some streaming devices might as well, at least Roku's
| documentation (https://support.roku.com/article/226802507)
| says theirs have it.
| gkop wrote:
| Just want to share a completely different cause of the same
| symptom, I'm curious if anyone else has experienced: I watch
| movies at home with Netflix on a PS4 Slim plugged into an TX-
| NR636 receiver running in bi-amp stereo mode. Netflix defaults
| the audio to 5.1, and this causes muffled dialog and extremely
| loud music and explosions. When I manually choose stereo in
| Netflix, the sound comes out perfect. My searching online
| suggests my receiver is not doing its job properly, since it
| should losslessly mux the 5.1 to stereo (it officially supports
| the four speakers in bi-amp stereo mode configuration), but I've
| gone through all its settings and gave up trying to fix it. I
| notice this issue because I'm compulsive, but other people that
| still have stereo speakers but receive 5.1 signals are just
| presumably "living with it", and suffering muddled dialogue...
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > it should losslessly mux the 5.1 to stereo
|
| Downmixing 5.1 to stereo is almost always trash. I've never
| come across a solution that does it well out-of-the-box.
|
| Most people imagine 5.1 as stereo, just subdivided into front
| and back, with an added center channel for funsies.
|
| In reality, it's basically mono.
|
| The center channel is the _main_ thing, which delivers most of
| the dialogue, and there are 4 auxiliary speakers sprinkled
| around you for sound effects.
|
| When downmixing 5.1 to stereo, you _should_ turn up the volume
| of the center channel a _ton_ before splitting it up to the
| left and right speakers. This is rarely done in reality, so you
| end up with a weird mix where the sound effects and off-screen
| noises are way too loud, and the would-be-center-channel
| dialogue is way too quiet.
| gkop wrote:
| Thank you! Who do I blame in my setup then? Any idea why
| Netflix doesn't allow configuring a default to stereo? Or why
| my PS4 doesn't have a choice for stereo for HDMI Audio Output
| (it just allows choosing between 5.1 and 7.1)? Is it just a
| conspiracy to sell speakers??
|
| More to the point: in a world where Netflix and PS4 default
| to 5.1 output, should we not expect everyone with just two
| speakers to be getting crappy sound?
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I think Netflix _does_ default to stereo for 720p streams.
| If you 're streaming video in higher quality than some
| threshold, only then does it default to surround sound.
|
| Basically, your TV may be better than your sound system.
|
| Stereo is the standard way to mix music (because
| headphones), but a dedicated center channel has been pretty
| much required for any home theater for a good long while.
| Most non-Netflix streaming services just straight-up assume
| you've got a setup that can properly handle surround sound
| if you're streaming any 4K content.
| gkop wrote:
| Ok then! Thanks. I hereby posit that an entire category
| of viewers are streaming HD (1080 in my case) with only
| stereo speakers, and suffering crappy sound for that
| reason. It's sad to me because there's no technical
| reason for this situation. After all, when I torrent HD
| movies and play them off my laptop through the same
| speakers, I have no problem. Somehow Sony and Netflix's
| incentives are aligned against those of us with stereo
| speakers...
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Fascinating and, I have to admit, a relief to hear this isn't
| just my hearing. I am finding, more and more, that I have to turn
| closed captioning/subtitles on.
| goshx wrote:
| And I thought I couldn't understand some dialogs because I am an
| immigrant...
| ilaksh wrote:
| When they are talking about familiarity, it really is about a
| change in perception rather than lack of focus. Once you know
| what it is supposed to say, you can't just concentrate and then
| not understand it anymore. All of our perception including
| understanding spoken language is based on pre-knowledge.
| simplyaccont wrote:
| As countermeasure, some of the higher end receivers have Dialogue
| Enhancement functionality
| bob332 wrote:
| Boring
| ww520 wrote:
| The one thing really grinds my gear is the music volume has been
| tuned up so loud while the conversation volume turned so low.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Yeah, if I found a remote control with a "QUIET" button instead
| of just "MUTE", I'd buy it in an instant.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Baker Landers knows on which side of that divide she falls. "We
| mix and release the film for the best case scenario, saying,
| 'This is how it should be.' A lot of times, we'll hear people
| say, 'They're not going to be able to hear this in certain
| theaters in the Midwest, so should we do this louder?' But then
| you don't have a standard any longer. You have to say, 'This is
| the standard. We're doing it for the optimum viewing experience.'
| And hopefully theaters and everyone else rise to that."
|
| That and other parts of the article seem like clear analogs to IT
| design issues: If we follow the standard, then we get a lot of
| failures by people not following the standard. Think of web
| design, for example.
|
| IME, the answer in IT is: Deal with it. Appealing to the standard
| as an excuse for the failures is BS. If your website fails
| because some end-user platform doesn't implement standards
| properly, that's on you. You need to build for the messy real
| world, not for an idealistic, perfect, clean-room world of
| standards.
|
| Is there no user-centric design concept in film?
| post_break wrote:
| My center channel is at like +12db permanently. It's a fucking
| joke these days.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Mine's at +3 and I just assumed my hearing was shit so stopped
| there. Glad to see it's not me it's streaming. I might actually
| consider going back to in mail Netflix blu-ray for better
| quality.
| gnicholas wrote:
| We actually stopped watching Man in the High Castle due to audio
| issues with the dialog. The volume difference was so great, we
| were constantly increasing/decreasing the volume depending on
| whether there was dialog or not. This was using a Mac mini,
| plugged into a Bose Wave Radio, which normally works great for
| TV/movies.
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