[HN Gopher] Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions ...
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Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
Author : malshe
Score : 363 points
Date : 2022-09-17 18:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| mutt2016 wrote:
| I used CC for the same reason as many. Speech audio is of poor
| quality, back in the old days in my CRT television it wasn't a
| problem. Speech was clear. Now for whatever reason it's too loud
| for comfort if I want to hear the words. My tv has speech clarity
| options but it is marginal at best.
|
| I'm using a Roku streambar with a couple of wireless speakers.
| Still poo audio. And I'm not convinced a system of higher cost
| and quality would solve it.
| veryfancy wrote:
| 40yo here. I turned the subtitles on the help my little kids
| learn words as they watch. Now I love them. I'll watch old movies
| - ones I've seen dozens of times - with the subs on and pick up
| things I never heard before.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'll add one more reason -- TV shows often require you to pay
| attention to every word now.
|
| Thirty years ago, if you missed a line of dialog, it wasn't
| usually a big deal.
|
| Now if you're watching _Westworld_? If you misunderstand a single
| line that might be the entire difference between "solving" the
| episode or not.
|
| TV has gone from a "casual" experience you can tune in and out
| of, to a kind of literary-precision experience that demands your
| undivided attention, for many shows. CC makes sure you understand
| every word, which just wasn't usually that important previously.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Agreed. There's still older shows, or even new simple "popcorn-
| flick" movies that I can watch without subtitles just fine,
| because of a simpler plot line and cast of characters.
|
| For example, compare a show like Lost against Westworld. With
| Lost each scene was so drawn out, that even if you missed a
| line, you'd be able to figure out what's going on from the
| general context.
| mehphp wrote:
| I've had the same experience. Watching shows like that with the
| captions on makes me realize how much I miss with them off.
|
| I've had a few instances where I didn't "get" what had
| happened; I thought maybe it was just over my head. Turns out,
| I just missed some key dialogue is all.
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| It helps them to "consume content"
| phyalow wrote:
| I watch nearly everything I can at somewhere between 1.8-2.5x
| speed, this means subs are largely required to maintain
| comprehension. I prefer watching this way as I can cover far
| greater amounts of content (or devote less time on the otherhand)
| just as enjoyably as I could watching at regular speed.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This highlights a thought I have.
|
| There are 2 schools of thought. 1 - People on average behave
| differently now because of something to do with the people (their
| age usually, sometimes their wokeness, or there race, or there
| politics) and 2 - People on average behave differently now
| because of something to do with the environment (having internet
| now, different economics now, ratio of cost of living to income
| now, etc).
|
| I tend to fall into more #2. It's not that "kids these days" do
| this. It's that movies and TV these days does this. If a younger
| person is watching an Seinfeld episode from 30 years ago there is
| no need for subtitles, if an older person like me is watching a
| TV show or movie that came out this week It's likely that
| subtitles would help anyone, of any age, follow the story.
|
| As other comments here have noted. It has to do with the huge
| dynamic range on audio in most new film/TV. In my view it's not a
| "kids these days" thing, it's a "content these days" thing. I
| think that most things are this way. We read about how younger
| generations aren't as into home buying, nope. Economics have
| changed, they're not as able.
| perrygeo wrote:
| The fact that there's a claimed generational gap here speaks more
| to the values of the generations re: passive vs active
| entertainment. I could also ask: "Why do all these 60-Somethings
| have the TV on as background noise while doing other tasks?"
|
| To me it seems closed-caption usage is correlated with actually
| paying attention to television consumption.
|
| People who have their TV on at all hours, as background
| entertainment to support their lifestyle, tend to not use CC. Why
| should they? The words literally don't matter, it's just an
| aesthetic.
|
| People who actually desire an immersive experience, who
| deliberately pay attention to the shows they watch, tend to care
| about CC since it complements the audio & visual nicely. I don't
| have any evidence for this but I'd wager that plot synthesis and
| comprehension of television shows is greatly improved by CC. Or
| maybe it's that people who use CC tend to value and perform
| better at synthesis and comprehension? Regardless of causality,
| CC seems related to an individual's desire for more active
| entertainment.
| astura wrote:
| Sounds right - my parents (early 70s) don't pay attention to
| what they are watching even tho watching TV is the only thing
| they are doing at that time. They both even regularly fall
| asleep watching TV/movies at night and literally don't care
| that they missed most of the show/movie they were "watching."
| They aren't interested in watching the parts they slept through
| in the morning.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >To me it seems closed-caption usage is correlated with
| actually paying attention to television consumption.
|
| The alternative is that the new generation has no ability to
| focus on anything and needs the same information piped to their
| brain through both their eyes and ears. Up next: smellovision
| captions.
| rileyphone wrote:
| This aligns pretty well with McLuhan's concept of cool and hot
| media [0]. The younger generations prefer it cool - perhaps
| their hotness is found in newer forms like video games.
|
| [0]
| https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/MIDDMedia/Hot_versus_cool_m...
| [deleted]
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Underrated comment. These are such critical concepts and
| really the way we should all be discussing out media
| consumption.
| sph wrote:
| This is an insightful observation but also feels incomplete
| and outdated. They use hot and cold to distinguish between
| "one sense" and "all senses", for some reason, which doesn't
| quite match modern media.
|
| But I definitely agree that there is something to it, and
| video games occupy a different niche of entertainment than
| movies for me. Video games are a pastime and a hobby, movies
| and shows are not unlike books: I don't want to miss a single
| piece of the action.
|
| When I have dinner I watch something off Youtube. Movie time
| is after dinner when I can give my full attention to it.
| code_biologist wrote:
| For context, I'm in my mid-30s and grew up playing video
| games. When doing chores I listen to podcasts or audio books.
|
| I really like to think of media consumption in terms of
| attentional pressure. How long can you not pay attention
| without "missing something". For movies and TV shows it seems
| like 15 seconds, plus or minus depending on the content
| itself. Chatty podcasts give you 30 seconds or a minute.
|
| I enjoy the fast video games I play (shoutout to Deep Rock
| Galactic, killer PVE FPS with a non-toxic player base!)
| because they modulate their attentional pressure and ratchet
| it up intensely at moments. It feels great to handle a
| situation where even a subsecond lapse in attention would
| result in failure.
|
| From wikipedia: _Cool media are those that require high
| participation from users, due to their low definition (the
| receiver /user must fill in missing information). Since many
| senses may be used, they foster involvement. Conversely, hot
| media are low in audience participation due to their high
| resolution or definition._
|
| Seems like it's hard to place fast video games? You don't
| have to fill in much of anything (hot) but they require full
| participation (cool).
| fhsm wrote:
| One of the things I love about podcasts is the ability to
| titrate the playback speed multiplier as a means of
| selecting a context appropriate window of permissible
| inattention. Sitting in an airline seat 3x... driving to an
| unfamiliar urban destination 1.25x.
| [deleted]
| philwelch wrote:
| Your tone is a little smug here. If I'm paying attention to
| something I'm watching on TV, I can hear the dialogue. I want
| to be able to actually watch the performances of the actors, or
| whatever else is on the screen, instead of reading captions.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This whole framing is bull. People who grew up without closed
| captions are just used to watching a show without it. For them,
| it's distracting to constantly have words to look down and read
| when they are trying to pay attention to what is happening on
| the screen. Like trying to read the words on every single road
| sign when you drive somewhere.
|
| You may notice that in movie theaters--the most focused and
| immersive watching experience there is--they don't show
| captions except maybe when translating foreign language.
|
| Or you may not, if you only watch movies at home on your TV.
| knorker wrote:
| No, that's not it. I grew up with literally everything in
| English being subtitled. Always hated it, but all I can do is
| make an effort to not have my eyes there.
|
| Even some DVDs did not have the option to turn off subtitles.
| I never had subtitles on for anything that gave me the
| option. (I even bought DVDs from overseas occasionally to not
| get subtitles)
|
| But now every other show is frequently incomprehensible.
|
| Either they've put lead in the drinking water, making us all
| not understand the spoken word, or they've made dialog audio
| shit.
| d3ckard wrote:
| > You may notice that in movie theaters--the most focused and
| immersive watching experience there is--they don't show
| captions except maybe when translating foreign language.
|
| Well, it just tells you come from the English speaking
| country. For the rest of us, subtitles in a movie theatre are
| among most normal things in the world.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I bet they don't show subtitles when the film is in your
| native language.
| willis936 wrote:
| I'm closer to 20 than 60. I did not grow up with CCs. I use
| them because they are an option and give me something I want.
|
| If there is bullshit framing then it is the very notion of
| assumptions based on age, which is caked into the headline.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The bullshit framing is that there is any correlation
| between having CC on, and how closely the viewer is paying
| attention to the show or movie. There is not, as evidenced
| by a century of cinema and TV.
|
| Movies originally had captions, because there was no
| dialogue track. As soon as they figured out synchronized
| sound, the captions went away. Even if people were paying
| very close attention.
| ordu wrote:
| _> You may notice that in movie theaters--the most focused
| and immersive watching experience there is_
|
| Movie theaters have the same influence on a mind as any other
| experience of collective attention. It keeps your attention
| aligned with attention of a crowd. It may be a case of herd
| behavior, or it may be something special, I dont know, but it
| works.
|
| I believe that this collective attention is the main reason
| why movie threaters are still profitable. But not just it:
| surroundings associated with attention on a screen and all
| these rituals, like eating pop corn, also do their part as
| stimuli leading to a learned response. You get highly focused
| attention without any conscious effort. You need conscious to
| fight it and to divert attention from a screen.
|
| But it doesn't matter when you try to watch a movie or a
| lecture at home. Despite of all your experience of collective
| attention it would be much harder to keep your attention
| focused.
| asdff wrote:
| Closed captioning only very recently become not crap. It used
| to be mainly served as those black bars with white text coming
| in about 30 seconds too late and with ridiculous typos.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I think it's not as universal as you believe. I personally use
| closed captioning as a crutch when I'm half-ass watching
| something, because if my mind wanders and I miss hearing a line
| I can usually just read it without having to pause and rewind.
|
| If I'm actually fully immersed in the movie or whatever, and I
| can understand the dialogue, then I don't need the captions and
| I leave them off.
| afterburner wrote:
| I have an additional theory:
|
| In the past, that line needed to come in loud and clear, or
| people would just miss it, probably forever. Now, we can
| rewind, or of course turn on subtitles, so there's not as much
| pressure on the audio finishing to be super clear.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I agree, but also find it surprising that younger generations
| are more focused on what they are watching.
|
| I'm a background watcher for sure, and this trend with CC
| suggests to me that the whole "2nd screen" thing isn't playing
| with the younger generation.
|
| Any insights as to why that may be?
|
| To give more context, I was always a "background media" person.
| Even as a kid I'd draw while in front of the TV, I was never a
| focused participant.
| camoufleur wrote:
| With television you turn it on and there are a few mediocre
| choices you can tune out. On streaming platforms you have to
| specifically select a program to watch. When Gen Z
| watches/listens to something in the background it's much more
| likely to be a long YouTube video or a podcast.
| kuschku wrote:
| Because the younger generation is watching Netflix on their
| phones. There is no second screen phenomenon because there is
| no second screen.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I use CC even in my native language especially when I
| background watch. It's easy to work while watching a tv show
| (only works with relatively boring work) if I know I can
| quickly glance at the subtitles if I missed anything.
| sph wrote:
| What kind of work can you do while watching? You're just
| doing two things badly. Unless you mean physical work that
| doesn't engage the mind like cleaning or doing the dishes?
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Work that's mind numbingly easy to do... Anything that I
| know exactly how to solve but need to just spend the time
| implementing.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They mix sound differently now as well. I can't follow speech
| in many shows and movies because voice volume is low and the
| background crap is too high.
|
| Ditto with excessive darkness.
| seydor wrote:
| Well sure if the actors mumble all the time trying to appear
| enigmatic, the comprehension is surely greatly improved. I m
| not american and often i find it very hard to listen to what is
| said in tv series/movies. This is a new trend in acting btw,
| older TV was not like that.
|
| Older people are more likely to be alone and the TV helps to
| break the silence. TV is usually tv shows where people speak
| properly so that helps i guess
| ninkendo wrote:
| I wish there was a CC mode for "I'm not deaf, I just don't
| catch the quiet mumbly dialog sometimes so give me captions
| only of the dialog."
|
| Bonus if it's delayed by exactly 2 seconds, so that it doesn't
| spoil jokes, and I can quickly reference it if I missed
| something someone said (helping me avoid fixating on the
| captions.)
|
| Because it's the CC descriptions of music swells and things
| like "[laughs] and "[crying]", etc that are distracting for me,
| and not needed.
|
| What's worse, sometimes they ruin comedic timing by putting the
| punchline on the screen before the setup has finished (or
| logical equivalent of a punchline... comedy is often found in
| timing) and the captions ruin the timing.
| Sylamore wrote:
| Roku with captions on replay is my goto way of dealing with
| muddy dialog
| pritambaral wrote:
| > Bonus if it's delayed by exactly 2 seconds, so that it
| doesn't spoil jokes, and I can quickly reference it if I
| missed something someone said (helping me avoid fixating on
| the captions.)
|
| This is the exact reason why I vastly prefer playing media on
| my own media player. I have it set to always delay subtitles
| by exactly 2 seconds. I even have the font overridden to use
| a nice geometric sans (Josefin Sans, to be exact); subtitles
| with bitmap fonts (like they are on DVD and Blu-ray) are
| disabled outright.
|
| Every time there's a new person watching something with me,
| they comment on the subtitle delay. It usually starts with a
| complaint that the subs are off-sync. Never had someone (yet)
| stick to that complaint though, after this explanation. But,
| nobody I've met has previously recognised a need for such a
| delay, either. Until they watch something with me, of course.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| [pants] is my favourite. I'm waiting for [t-shirt] but it
| never arrives.
| flotzam wrote:
| mpv --sub-filter-sdh [--sub-filter-sdh-harder] --sub-delay=2
|
| https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-sub-filter-sdh
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| If only I could pipe Netflix or HBO through mpv. Stallman
| was right yet again.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Because it's the CC descriptions of music swells and things
| like "[laughs] and "[crying]", etc that are distracting for
| me, and not needed.
|
| This drives me nuts too, especially when they're being
| subjective and I'm asking myself things like 'Was that music
| really "ominous"? Didn't seem that way...'
|
| Another thing that bugs me is when captions reveal a
| character's name to indicate who is speaking when the name of
| that character hasn't actually been revealed in the story
| yet.
| runarberg wrote:
| There usually is (but not always). It is something like
| English vs English [for hearing impaired].
|
| As a non-native English speaker I'm used to watching most
| television and movies with subtitles. The extra sound
| descriptions don't bother me too much actually. Sometimes it
| is kind of funny actually, it is a running joke in my home to
| count the times a show has [ominous music].
| ajhurliman wrote:
| That's the difference between subtitles and closed captions:
| one is for people who don't speak that language but can hear
| in general, the other is for people who can't hear at all.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Bonus if it's delayed by exactly 2 seconds, so that it
| doesn't spoil jokes, and I can quickly reference it if I
| missed something someone said (helping me avoid fixating on
| the captions.)
|
| I think that'd ruin me more than not having subtitles at all,
| because I just get stuck at reading the subtitles all the
| time if they are on (which, I have on 99% of the time). I go
| so far to avoid content that doesn't have subtitles.
|
| What I'd love to have, would be a "speed-reading" version of
| subtitles, that just show each word individually as it's
| spoken (or maybe two/three) instead of the full sentence.
| That way it can still be in sync, while not ruining
| punchlines. Would be a real hassle to actually write/make the
| subtitles though, but with all the AI/ML around today, there
| is probably a way to automate it.
| smeej wrote:
| 3Play Media's format could do this. Their output is usually
| a transcript where you can click on any word and it will
| take you to that second of the video. The software they've
| developed for the people who create the captions does go
| second by second as well.
|
| I don't know if they've ever considered having that as a
| display option. They're just one of the only companies I
| can think of for whom it wouldn't involve a whole
| rethinking of how they create the captions.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| There is on some shows. For those the choice is between
| "English" and "English [CC]" or similar; the former omits
| descriptions of noises. Most don't have this, probably
| because it's not provided by the producers.
|
| Agreed on timing issues. This also seems to vary by
| show/producer.
| generalizations wrote:
| VLC lets you adjust the timing of the closed captions. It's
| totally possible to set a delay of 2 sec.
| FabHK wrote:
| H/J to decrease/increase subtitle delay.
| sprkwd wrote:
| [whooshing intensifies]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I die on the inside when I go into houses with multiple TVs on
| in the background as noise.
| jamespullar wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker and grew up mostly overseas in
| non-English speaking countries. Subtitles helped me understand
| American slang and conversational English that I wasn't used to
| hearing at home. I've also always struggled with distinctly
| understanding dialogue in films. It never had anything to do
| with active vs passive viewing. Another reason I always had
| them on was because I grew up in apartments and was always
| mindful of my noise levels for my neighbors. Using subtitles
| let me actively consume the film without worrying about
| bothering people around me. Now as an adult subtitles are my
| default for all media when available and I prefer it.
| adamisom wrote:
| I personally use my phone sometimes when CC are on, splitting
| my attention--CC make it easier to not miss too much flirting
| back n forth.
|
| By contrast I always pay attention when CC is off.
|
| Given how much younger people use their my phone, I'm gonna say
| my hypothesis is plausible.
| bscphil wrote:
| > [CC] complements the audio & visual nicely. I don't have any
| evidence for this but I'd wager that plot synthesis and
| comprehension of television shows is greatly improved by CC
|
| As you say, you don't have any evidence for this, so I'll just
| add that my subjective impression is the absolute opposite. I
| find it impossible to concentrate on what is happening
| _visually_ on screen in a film when closed captions are on.
|
| I associate CC with the one place I ever see them - at the
| laundromat, where they are always on because you can't hear the
| TV clearly above the background noise. Hard to think of a
| setting where "background entertainment" is a better
| descriptor.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It's really very fast to get used to if you try.
|
| I'm from Europe so used to subtitles from early age. My wife
| is Canadian, and first little while of our dating was
| bewildered with subtitles.
|
| Now though, literally all my Canadian in-laws use subtitles,
| intergenerationalLy - they're used to them, and addicted to
| knowing what the heck is going on :)
| bscphil wrote:
| I mean, I do "try" in the sense that about half the movies
| I watch are foreign, and therefore require subtitles.
| Despite this, I really do feel that I miss out on a lot of
| what is happening in terms of cinematography and creative
| directorial choices because I'm spending about 1/3 to 1/2
| of the time reading the subtitles.
| Entinel wrote:
| I grew up watching anime with subs and at a certain point it
| just became natural to have subtitles on even when the
| content is in English.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| For the longest time I couldn't follow anime with
| subtitles, it kept me from watching the action.
|
| I think practice helped, but so did reducing the size of
| the video frame. Turns out having the whole frame in my
| field of view was a big deal.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Depending on the title you're watching, the subs are
| easier to read. Like one of the episodes from DBZ.
|
| Goku: AHHHHHH!
|
| Vegeta: ARGHHHH!
|
| Goku: OOOMPH!!!
|
| Vegta: HMMMMM!
|
| The visuals were just as simple. For like most of the
| episode
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I think it depends on your reading speed and ability to
| skim. If you can read faster than people can talk,
| subtitles aren't really distracting because you can
| glance down and then go back to reading the visual
| expressions and background details of the dialogue.
| xani_ wrote:
| As non english-native speaker I watched so much stuff with
| captions it's second nature for me.
|
| But for any language that I understand well I only turn them
| on when the accent is so thick I can't get what the actors
| are saying.
|
| Similarly I always turn on all subtitles in video games
| because it's easy to miss something if say ingame explosion
| or other sound effect covers the voice, or it is just too
| silent (say NPC talking that's a bit far)
|
| But the article claim it helps multitasking seems weird - how
| _having to look at screen_ would help when multitasking?
| toast0 wrote:
| > But the article claim it helps multitasking seems weird -
| how having to look at screen would help when multitasking?
|
| You have the audio on and are doing something else with
| your eyes. You don't quite hear something that's been said,
| glance at the screen, read the captions to fill in what was
| missed, return your eyes to your other task.
|
| If it was audio only, you missed whatever it was, and have
| to live with it or replay a little bit of content. Going
| back a few seconds is often a UI challenge not worth the
| gained context, IMHO, but if it happens a lot, might as
| well not be watching anything.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| There are a number of tasks that have varying noise levels,
| yet aren't so involved that you can't keep glancing at the
| screen. Washing dishes, for example.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >I associate CC with the one place I ever see them - at the
| laundromat
|
| never watched anything in a foreign language? It's just
| familiarity, after a while you get used to reading and
| watching at the same time.
| bscphil wrote:
| I watch a lot of things in foreign languages, but still
| feel that having to use subtitles is a worse experience.
| astura wrote:
| >I find it impossible to concentrate on what is happening
| visually on screen in a film when closed captions are on.
|
| This is a skill. I would have agreed with you 20 years ago
| but at some point I started putting them on because I could
| only afford a shitty audio setup and dramas got really
| mumbly. Took a while, but I learned to not be distracted by
| the subtitles.
| shever73 wrote:
| I am exactly the same. Even with the audio on, I can't focus
| on what's happening on the screen when captions are on.
|
| My 26 year-old son watches everything with captions, so
| there's always a battle because I switch them off and he
| switches them back on again.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| Note: if you want to read the article, copy the title, paste it
| into Google search, and click on the first result. When you do
| that, the whole article will be displayed.
|
| If you just click on the link above, WSJ will display a paywall.
|
| This is due to one of Google's requirements that if they index
| your page, it needs to be fully accessible when clicked.
| JALTU wrote:
| I sort of doubt there's really a so-called generational gap. I
| suspect it's just the usual click bait.
|
| I'm sorry I don't have the link but there actually was an online
| lament by professional sound crews for film/TV that I read a few
| months back. Sound is apparently compromised by the usual
| suspects: creative egos, competing priorities, actors' failure to
| enunciate clearly, and failure to appreciate the technical nature
| of audio recording. In some cases, the director instructs the
| sound crew to "capture" the performance after the scene is shot.
| I've never worked on a set before so I'll leave it at that and
| say that as an older person, I love CC and use it all the time
| whether I'm other-tasking or not!
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| The article cites
|
| > In a May survey of about 1,200 Americans, 70% of adult Gen Z
| respondents (ages 18 to 25) and 53% of millennial respondents
| (up to age 41) said they watch content with text most of the
| time. That's compared with slightly more than a third of older
| respondents, according to the report commissioned by language-
| teaching app Preply.
|
| Not sure if you want to trust Preply over your clickbait spidey
| sense. I've never heard of them. But FYI.
| nottorp wrote:
| I'm from a country that has always subtitled movies so this
| doesn't even sound weird to me. (I watch foreign movies in a
| language that i know with subtitles in the original language
| though.)
|
| But in the case of tiktok and netflix, it's probably because the
| content isn't worth your full attention...
| acconrad wrote:
| 1. I watch foreign films so that's how I got started
|
| 2. Then I put on CC so I could watch things at 2-3x and still
| keep up
|
| 3. I've got young kids and I can't watch shows at times with the
| volume up if everyone else is sleeping
|
| 4. I got it as a tip for kids shows too so children can see the
| words they are hearing. Helps them reinforce their vocabulary. So
| it's always on if the kids are watching tv.
|
| What's not to like about CC?
| weinzierl wrote:
| For the language learners: There is an extension for Chrome that
| lets you display captions in two languages simultaneously. You
| can also lookup every word in the dictionary with a single click.
|
| It used to be called _" Language Learning with Netflix"_ but they
| rebranded it and I can't remember the new name right now. I'm not
| affiliated in any way, just a happy user.
| bertman wrote:
| It's called "Language Reactor" now.
|
| https://www.languagereactor.com/
| [deleted]
| procinct wrote:
| I'm also a big fan of watching with CC (sometimes it can be
| genuinely hard to pick up what someone says and it can be key
| dialogue). However anything in the comedy genre is the exception
| since CC ruin the timing of the jokes.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I absolutely get the worry (and reality) of jokes being ruined.
| In the end I bite the bullet because of the same reason I want
| CC's on all the time: I just miss or mishear things when I
| don't, sometimes to the point I don't understand the joke.
|
| That said, sometimes subs (from places like OpenSubtitles) are
| laughable bad in that they don't know the "in-universe" words
| for a show (comedy or otherwise) and do best-guesses/phonetic
| spellings of things they aren't sure of which is it's own
| issue.
| vba616 wrote:
| If you have audio on, you can't so easily ignore ads. It's
| intrusive.
|
| Also, for those who think viewers are morally obligated to watch
| ads, my experience has been that if I don't click the "Skip Ad"
| button, I will keep getting more ads and never get to the
| feature!
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Wider selection of movies, from all over the world. Dialect,
| accent, unexpected word choices can make whole conversations
| illegible in that sense.
| 19h wrote:
| 1) The reason TikTok etc. have closed captions on is that audio
| is off by default. If you want people to listen to your words but
| audio is off, put it into closed captions.
|
| 2) With closed captions you can watch a movie on low volume
| without disturbing others and still understand every word even of
| the girl in the corner of the room barely utters a word.
|
| Source: I'm a "20-something".
| jarboot wrote:
| tiktok audio is not off by default. But it's right in the idea
| that some people will have the audio off, and cc means you can
| consume the content in either case.
| bigzyg33k wrote:
| TikTok's audio is on by default
| hot_gril wrote:
| > The reason TikTok etc. have closed captions on is that audio
| is off by default. If you want people to listen to your words
| but audio is off, put it into closed captions.
|
| I can't believe that whole dramatic article missed this very
| obvious reason.
| jjulius wrote:
| It didn't. When I downloaded it the other week to see what
| all the hubbub was about (spoiler alert: I killed it with
| fire lol), audio was on by default and I had to change that
| setting. I'd wager that OP forgot that they set it
| themselves.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| As a closed caption user, I partially use it to try and improve
| my vocabulary. On the fly, it's very easy to hear a word like
| "hoi polloi" and not know how to spell it. In that case, that's a
| missed learning opportunity.
|
| Also, closed captions make watching TV on mute seamless and
| that's fantastic if you like to intersperse your viewing with
| conversation.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I'm sure the audio mixes have something to do with it, but I also
| just like to read. I hear just fine but I wish I had closed
| captioning in real life!
| esharte wrote:
| Why don't cinemas have them then?
|
| It's because people are listening to shows through terrible audio
| setups by default
| callalex wrote:
| Don't most cinemas have a personal screen with captions
| available on request?
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Maybe I need to improve ours!
|
| I have zero problem at movies. But I always watch TV with
| subcaptions. There's usually some words that I miss
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is one (of many to be fair) reasons I quite dislike the
| theater. Others being "free" food/drinks, my dog, my
| comfortable couch, pausing, and my bathroom. I've wondered
| before if they could give people special glasses (a la 3D
| glasses) that would show the "hidden" subtitles at the bottom.
| But even that wouldn't get me back in a theater.
| dymk wrote:
| Personally, I've never had a problem hearing dialog at the
| movies. The volume is far too cranked up to miss it.
| Sugimot0 wrote:
| This!! Most speakers/soundbars suck, and if you don't have a
| center channel in your sound system, voices will wash out with
| the background noise/music since the speaker (as in person
| speaking) is usually the focus of the shot and mostly audible
| in the center channel.
|
| There's supposed to be sound engineers on every show/movie to
| make sure it sounds good but the gap lies between your audio
| system and the reference systems they use. A good analogy is
| the infamous Game of Thrones battle that was too dark. They
| edited that episode on reference grade monitors where you could
| see what was happening, but the average lower end tv and
| viewing environment couldn't translate the same black levels
| and details that the editor's had seen when they worked those
| scenes (they were also intemtionally edited to look dark and
| chaotic on the reference grade monitors*, which added to the
| problem)
|
| That being said I still use cc with a lot of content. I think
| it would be less prevalent though if it were not for the gaping
| holes in most audio setups.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I started using captions as a teen because of watching anime, and
| then I started doing it with normal tv. I am not in my 20s but I
| think a big part of it is that most tv shows and movies have
| become absolutely impossible to hear what they are saying. I
| think speakers on TVs have gotten really bad with the transition
| to flat screen, and even with a sound system the mixing of audio
| has gotten really bad. Music and sound effects go over the
| dialogue too much. Movie theaters its fine, so I am not sure what
| they are doing differently.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| Maybe spatially separating where sound is coming from helps? Or
| perhaps not having to overlay multiple audio tracks on a single
| speaker output allows for higher fidelity due to better dynamic
| range.
|
| In any case I think my anime watching has resulted in a slight
| dislike for CC if only because I find it all too easy to
| accidentally only read, and actually the action going on. I
| only realized this when I go back and rewatched some old
| youtube clips and found myself not remembering the actual
| animation and physical comedy.
| lanstin wrote:
| And the volume levels vary so much. If you don't want hearing
| loss or angry housemates you turn it down and then can't hear
| the normal dialog. If I am watching very closely I will
| incessantly fiddle with the volume, but otherwise then captions
| are nice. I agree tho I miss visual side of the film while
| reading the captions. But I also tend to watch stuff I really
| like more than once so I get the body language second run thru.
| loonster wrote:
| Buy a sound system. I now have a 3.1 setup and can hear the
| dialogue. A dedicated center channel makes a huge difference.
| Its amazing.
|
| Many AVRs can also adjust it so the dialogue is louder, but I
| haven't found a need.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| It's definitely better but I still find mixing inconsistent
| enough that I have to cycle through profiles on my
| AVR(denon)/system(performa3) to find a mixing that works.
| Mostly seems to be an issue with stuff in the last couple
| of decades.
| Sakos wrote:
| Why would I buy something from people in the same industry
| to fix a problem that they caused? I'll just take
| subtitles. Especially when all the suggestions for 3.1
| systems cost 500+. That's just ridiculous when all I want
| is a system to make the audio not terrible (loud sounds
| don't blow out my ears yet voices are clear and
| understandable).
| stevenwoo wrote:
| With the heavy accents I can barely understand every other word
| in shows like Brassic or sometimes an English word that means
| one thing for Americans but with a period/place specific
| meaning so I am not sure what I just heard like in Derry Girls
| (1980's Northern Ireland) without captioning.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Peaky Blinders and Letterkenny, for me.
| RichardCA wrote:
| I remember when "The Wire" came out, I started turning on
| captions because the Baltimore vernacular was so thick. And
| the Caucasian and African-American characters spoke separate
| dialects of it. Especially the constant use of "a'ight" as a
| contraction for "all right".
|
| Derry Girls is interesting in that the actresses sound mostly
| like trained Brits doing an Irish accent. I've never been to
| Ulster, I don't know how people actually talk there, maybe
| the Irish have a softer brogue from having to interact with
| the British/Protestant people they share the region with.
| stack_framer wrote:
| My kids watch everything with closed captioning on (ages 10 and
| 7)! I think now I know why, and it's my fault: I used to always
| tell them to turn the dang volume down. I guess then they
| couldn't hear the dialogue, so they figured out how to turn on
| closed captioning.
| jessaustin wrote:
| It's probably good that your 7yo is better at reading than many
| adults.
| PrivateButts wrote:
| We often have to turn them on because media mastered for
| different sound systems tend to get mixed up on our basic tv
| setup.
|
| Also if we're watching something with loud ads (Hulu), we'd
| rather have the show be quiet and have CC on then have to
| constantly adjust the volume.
| diziet wrote:
| Closed Captions are more available now through settings, great
| audio <> text models, exposure of people to foreign language
| films and shows, etc. The 20-somethings are exposed to it more
| and adopt to using them. Youtube's closed captions are both a
| noticeable button and a "c" keyboard shortcut.
| Sirened wrote:
| TikTok even has caption on by default!
| jamiek88 wrote:
| You know what, I never even noticed that!
|
| It does.
|
| I guess I figured that as the TikTok aesthetic and never even
| really thought more than that.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| I always have subtitles on in games. Especially since I find it
| hard to focus on the words being spoken and video game cutscenes
| are almost always unable to be rewound. During gameplay it's
| harder to read and play at the same time though, although over
| the years it's gotten easier.
|
| Through my years of watching Anime it's also quite easy for me to
| watch and read at the same time.
|
| I think for watching movies they can be useful too, because it
| feels like almost every movie coming out now has terrible audio
| mixing for the average person. Even the audio mixing in a Dolby
| Atmos theatre doesn't seem right. If you watch any modern film
| mastered in Dobly Atmos on a TV with a sound bar you will have a
| bad time. You'll have a worse time if you're watching with just
| the TV speakers.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| I've found that a lot of games initially start with subtitles
| on. I usually switch them off pretty quickly. I'm not used to
| them and they break the immersion for me.
| lnauta wrote:
| I have them on for games so I can read the conversation and
| skip to the next sentence. For open world RPG games that are
| 50+ hours long it really helps staying engaged, as some quest
| lines are not that interesting and I like to complete all side
| quests.
| hinkley wrote:
| I had to buy a 3.1 bar just to get a center channel. Basically
| one of us couldn't make out voices without it, and there were a
| couple movies/shows where it was just unwatchable. I'm not sure
| why things like Apple TV can't do a more credible job remixing
| the audio for 2 speakers.
| ericcholis wrote:
| I think the speakers in most TV's these days are a big
| culprit.
| idonotknowwhy wrote:
| Audio mixing has been shit for a good 15 years. I don't want a
| cinema experience when the kids are trying to sleep.
|
| If I play a 1990s movie on my crt with the built in speaker (yes,
| in 2022) it's fine.
|
| Try to play something on Netflix and the sound effects and music
| are full blast while the mumbled voices are really quiet.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Not only subs, but I wonder what the uptake on describe audio is.
| Disney does a particulalry good job, and I treat many shows as
| radio drama for background now.
| rvba wrote:
| Theory: older americans never liked foreign movies since they
| couldnt keep up with reading subtitles.
|
| (Some) Younger ones learned to read better thanks to subtitles in
| computer games.
| [deleted]
| krzyk wrote:
| More important question: Why subtitles are called "closed
| captions"?
| epakai wrote:
| Open captions refer to captions that are part of the video
| image (sometimes called burned in). In movies they might be
| used to pass setting information for a scene like time or
| location.
|
| Closed captions are encoded separately and their display is
| elective.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Today I Learned. Thank you.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| I was watching "Our Flag Means Death" recently. I turned on
| closed captions because I don't speak pirate.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| I started doing this when watching Game of Thrones. Had a hard
| time with some of the accents so periodically would rewind and
| turn on captions. After a while, I just left them on and
| literally never turned them off, all these years later.
| Especially now that I have a toddler I like that I can have the
| volume low and not miss anything.
| captainbland wrote:
| I started using them for two reasons: at one place we were
| living, there was a lot of ambient noise which would sometimes
| periodically drown out the sound which can make you miss key
| pieces of dialogue. It's also the case that the large amount of
| dynamic range in many modern shows/films means that for the loud
| sounds to be at a reasonable volume, some speech gets almost
| inaudibly quiet so subtitles help with that.
| lloeki wrote:
| Seconding that. Also some movies/shows have potent actors yet
| somehow they have terrible delivery^, but the subs are good. In
| that case I either lower volume (and mentally shut away voices)
| or outright turn sound off and use the power of imagination^^.
|
| ^ also applies to bad dubbing + original audio not available
|
| ^^ seems to be an increasingly rare skill these days
| RattlesnakeJake wrote:
| 1) Dialogue is mixed too quietly these days 2) Thin LCD TVs have
| bad speakers, and I haven't gotten around to researching
| soundboard yet 3) My kids talk through everything and I can't
| hear over them
| aasasd wrote:
| Idk what you can do with streaming services, but old-school VLC
| users can dodge ,,whisper and explosions" by turning dynamic
| compression to the max.
|
| In theory one can use systemwide in-line effects with something
| like AU Lab to the same end, but that's kind of a pain at least
| on Mac, mostly because virtual audio devices like 'Blackhole'
| tend to not work. Perhaps the paid 'Loopback' does work, dunno.
|
| Also funny how USians complain en masse about volume too loud
| (with the trademark 'shaking the house'), when with a simple pair
| of desktop speakers it would be physically impossible to have
| that problem. Man buys big speakers, surprised to discover that
| they provide loud sound.
| antiterra wrote:
| The other trend I notice is not caring much at all about video
| quality. If there's social interaction, young people I know are
| happy with a low bitrate 720p streamed over discord in a small
| window. Maybe this is an artifact of videos on phones?
| Bakary wrote:
| This trend is as old as filesharing, probably much older
| antiterra wrote:
| There have always been people who don't care,
|
| I'm saying that the demographic corresponding with tech
| enthusiasts who were excited about DTS, THX, 4k, Blu-Ray, or
| complained about 240p video on YouTube seem to care much less
| now.
| Bakary wrote:
| The market is a bit more streamlined now, so once you check
| the 4K OLED smart TV surround speaker box there's less to
| discuss about hardware. With the rise of streaming, the
| decision is binary: use it or don't. And if you do use it
| your choice is more limited when it comes to discussing
| video quality itself.
|
| Tech enthusiasts focused on quality will be found
| discussing encoding methods on private torrenting groups or
| emerging tech like e-ink. And the "audiophile" crowd is as
| vibrant as ever.
| Macha wrote:
| Yep, the 12-14" CRT was a fixture in basically every kids
| bedroom in my childhood and a decade later it was flip top
| portable dvd players with built in screen. Absolutely garbage
| picture quality even by the standards of the day, pretty
| popular because it gave them control and could be shared with
| friends
| antiterra wrote:
| I have never seen someone of big-screen means choose to
| watch a flip top dvd player outside of a portable
| environment or the kitchen or something. There are people
| with 4k TVs viewable from their desk who primarily watch
| movies in a small Discord window because of the social
| element.
| egypturnash wrote:
| This is not new. People were absolutely delighted to watch
| smeary third-generation VHS dubs of Japanese cartoons back in
| the eighties.
| antiterra wrote:
| I was one of them which is maybe why I want to be as far from
| the low vertical resolution smeary VHS world as possible when
| it comes to film/Tv.
|
| Of course, the frustrating limitations of the past become the
| faux-nostalgic aesthetic of the future (there's like a Gibson
| quote for this I think?) I'm all for fake tracking artifacts
| in a music video.
| egypturnash wrote:
| "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty
| about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD
| distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap
| sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and
| emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It's the sound of
| failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going
| out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and
| breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of
| something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The
| blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an
| emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it.
| The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and
| white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous
| for the medium assigned to record them." -- Brian Eno, A
| Year With Swollen Appendices
| jononomo wrote:
| My favorite movie of all time is City of God, which is entirely
| in Portugese. Somehow the captions don't lessen that movie for me
| at all.
| davesque wrote:
| Wsj knows their audience. They're the folks who want to frame
| everything in terms of all the weird and entitled things that
| 20-somethings do. They're sure to get their clicks with that
| title.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why look at captions when you can look at the transcript?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Pushing 50, and don't really watch tv any more, but in my 20s and
| 30s I would regularly watch tv with captions on and sound off.
| Made it a lot easier to tune out ads.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > They're now a must-have for plenty of people without hearing
| loss, too, helping them better understand the audio or allowing
| them to multitask.
|
| Aha! I have some answers here. Kind of, anyway.
|
| This is something that people _older than_ 20-something do, too,
| and have done their whole lives.
|
| They're likely to do it if they grew up with the following often
| being true:
|
| 1) The TV is on.
|
| 2) At least some people are _actually trying to watch it_ (it 's
| not just "background noise")
|
| 3) The living space is fairly compact, such that if people are
| making noise in common areas there are _no other_ common areas to
| escape to (not with a TV, anyway).
|
| 4) Bedrooms maybe don't have a TV or they aren't equipped with
| the same stuff as the "good" (living room, probably) TV.
|
| 5) House chaotic, lots of people around doing various things,
| many of these people (adults and kids alike) talking much louder
| than what some of us may be used to.
|
| 6) TV often in use in this same way during large gatherings
| (family and friends over, holidays, whatever)
|
| In other words--drum roll--a Fussellian "Prole" (lower class)
| house.
|
| But, why is this showing up in stats _now_? I suspect two causes:
|
| 1) "Prole" kids growing up and getting more streaming services
| than their parents had, plus using them more.
|
| 2) Anime has gone very, very mainstream among "the youths", so
| (as some others have noted) this may be expanding the set of
| people for whom captions seem normal beyond the ones I'm
| otherwise describing here.
|
| Source: I know people for whom having the captioning on was
| normal when they were growing up, and they still do it because
| it's what they're used to, and I was in their houses when we were
| kids and saw _why_ they gained that habit /preference. They're
| older than their 20s.
|
| [EDIT] Others mentioned modern video sources coming with audio
| mixes that suck ass on most home entertainment systems--just
| flat-out incompatible with the reality of how most people watch
| TV/movies, where they want the highs (KABOOM! BLAM, BLAM!) to be
| _much lower_ than the highs in a modern movie theater, plus are
| very likely watching on a crappy "sound bar", if not built-in
| stereo speakers. That could be a 3) on my list of causes, with 2
| and 3 both being things _other than_ the main phenomenon I 'm
| describing int he rest of the post. This one would basically be
| the fault of movie and TV productions themselves, who aren't
| serving most home viewers well with the audio mixes they're
| providing.
| jononomo wrote:
| I have never understood surround sound: just mix the audio in
| mono and make sure that every word can be cleanly heard by my
| father who is 85 and uses a hearing aid. As an unintended side
| effect your movie will be more widely appreciated by every other
| demographic.
|
| The premise of surround sound is that it is extremely important
| to know the direction that the sound is coming from -- but when
| you sacrifice the audience's understanding of what is happening
| in the movie to achieve this sound directionality, then you've
| completely lost the plot.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I seem to be missing the gene that most people my age have that
| requires them to have 5.1 or 7.1 sound, and I consider myself
| to be somewhat of a movie connoisseur. Actually, maybe that's
| why.
|
| I can feel immersed in a movie without needing the sound to
| 'prove' it. The picture is still that little window in front of
| me, why does the sound need to be all over?
|
| Happy to be educated as to all the reasons I'm missing out on
| 'the real experience' though.
| everforward wrote:
| I think part of this is the relatively new diversity of media.
| People are getting used to subtitles because of foreign
| languages, and like being able to make out every word. Likewise
| for shows that have very thick accents; there are a few accents
| that become utterly undecipherable to me if they're thick enough,
| especially with the crap speakers built into TV's.
|
| Once I got used to having them on for stuff I needed them for, I
| tend to leave them on unless I'm watching carefully and it bugs
| me that they block part of the screen.
| baby wrote:
| Interestingly nobody in France needs subtitles. But when I watch
| english movies and shows I do need them. I was surprised when I
| realized that Americans used subtitles to watch American shows as
| well. It reminded me of China.
|
| I still remember watching Tenet and feeling like it was just
| another movie I couldn't understand because I didn't have
| subtitles. And then I realized that even native speakers couldn't
| understand it.
| rambojohnson wrote:
| this is not a generational thing, but more about immersion...
| extragood wrote:
| > Captions can also facilitate multitasking
|
| I have a hard time believing this. Captions demand _more_
| attention if anything. I can passively "watch" a video by only
| listening to the audio, but I can't passively read.
|
| I think that the phenomenon described in the article may actually
| be a symptom of a much deeper social change. Listening and
| auditory comprehension were critical skills for communication and
| preservation of knowledge in prehistory. Spoken word is
| inherently ephemeral. As civilizations developed or adopted
| writing systems, and the population became increasingly literate,
| text supplanted spoken communication and oral history in many
| areas. There are many obvious benefits to that change, but I
| believe that we also inadvertently sacrificed our listening and
| auditory comprehension skills in the process over many
| generations.
|
| Text messaging/SMS is increasingly preferred to phone calls, with
| many of the younger generations experiencing high levels of
| anxiety if they're required to call someone.
|
| This is completely anecdotal, but I've also observed several
| others who are unable to follow verbal navigation instructions -
| either spoken from another person or even live step by step
| instructions from a navigation app. They only feel confident if
| there's a visual representation.
|
| I think we've mistakenly classified that behavior as having a
| "visual learning style", when it is more accurately the result of
| our species losing its ability to process auditory language.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I won't pretend I'm fully multitasking, but sometimes I want a
| comfort show on in the background that I've seen before while I
| play a game on my phone/iPad. In those cases it's nice to be
| able to look up and see what was said if you just missed part
| of it. But I also leave subs on 100% the time I'm normally
| watching for the obvious reason of not missing anything, it's
| not just for background TV.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > I have a hard time believing this. Captions demand more
| attention if anything. I can passively "watch" a video by only
| listening to the audio, but I can't passively read.
|
| I do this. I can parse what is happening on screen and read the
| captions in a fraction of the time the thing actually plays
| out, then I got a few seconds to do something else. Usually I
| would be reading HN or something while I tune out the video for
| a few seconds, before glancing at it again to catch the next
| bit.
|
| _Listening_ to a video and reading something else at the same
| time doesn 't work for me. When I do that, I usually forget
| what I was reading or miss something in the video. Interleaving
| works much better for me.
|
| Also I don't normally do that, just when there's some
| particularly boring part that I don't want to skip but which
| doesn't demand my undivided attention.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _I do this. I can parse what is happening on screen and
| read the captions in a fraction of the time the thing
| actually plays out, then I got a few seconds to do something
| else. Usually I would be reading HN or something while I tune
| out the video for a few seconds, before glancing at it again
| to catch the next bit._
|
| That kind of context switching really does sound terrible to
| me. In my case, I speed up the content itself by 3 to 5x
| speed so that I can process more information at once and any
| boring bits are basically sped through. It's helped me retain
| a lot more information than simply watching at 1x speed.
| Bakary wrote:
| It's not so much the verbal aspect rather than the memory
| aspect. Written instructions are more soothing because you can
| refer to them verbatim and they stand no risk of being
| forgotten.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| I think you're right in absolute terms, that captions require
| more attention than audio generally, that's only true if you're
| choosing one or the other, when most people are doing both.
|
| With audio, if you missed a word, because you were focussing on
| something else for a moment, you have to rewind. If you have
| captions on, you can glance quickly at the screen, read the
| word or two that you missed, allowing you to 'recover'.
|
| That allows you to pay even less active attention to the audio,
| because you know you can always 'error-correct' later.
| [deleted]
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I can read considerably faster than people speak. I can keep up
| with a scene by glancing at the image and reading the text
| while focused on something else primarily. I can't do that with
| audio.
| bilekas wrote:
| This is an interesting take actually.. If we can assume that
| younger generations spend more time communicating
| electronically via some form of text messaging, at least the
| majority so, are you saying that that just becomes the
| "default" form of communication naturally?
|
| Where are older generations would have spend far more time
| communicating verbally..
|
| That makes some sense to me anyway. Would be super interesting
| to see some further studies done. And to philosophise the
| results that could mean.
| extragood wrote:
| I was thinking along those lines, yeah. Extrapolating that
| out, I can imagine a future where writing is the _only_ form
| of language. It 'd make for some interesting dystopian
| fiction, if nothing else.
|
| I'd be interested in some formal studies as well. My thoughts
| aren't well researched or anything. Just ideas.
| gommm wrote:
| I disagree, I have a harder time paying attention to people
| speaking than reading. Reading is faster, much faster than
| waiting for people finish a sentence.
|
| Then again, maybe you're right, I don't process auditory
| language and when I was in university, I skipped classes to
| instead read the textbook back to back without a teacher
| distracting me by yammering around.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's simpler than this. If you're watching a movie/show on a
| phone or laptop in a shared area, it'll probably be at low
| volume, so you can't hear the dialog. I've watched entire
| series with CC for exactly this reason.
|
| With social media videos, CC is even more important cause
| nobody wants their phone making noise in public, and any wise
| app will mute by default anyway.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| I can browse my phone/watch instagram videos with a NFLX show
| playing. If something interesting happens I can look up and
| quickly catch up on the dialogue by reading the caption.
| xena wrote:
| Why is it so hard to hear dialogue in modern TV shows and movies?
| topspin wrote:
| Because they're producing for surround sound systems you can't
| be bothered to deploy or operate optimally. 5.1, 7.1, etc. The
| "center" channel, in particular, is where the bulk of dialog is
| rendered and if your system can't synthesize that channel
| extremely well on the loud speakers you have then dialog
| suffers. Also, if you lack a surround sound system -- say
| you're using a pair of stereo speakers -- all the audio is
| mixed to these few loud speakers and the spatial segregation
| that we two-eared beings use to isolate sound is lost. There is
| no fix for that; the work was produced with the assumption of
| surround sound and driving all of that audio through a pair of
| closely spaced flat screen speakers/sound bar/whatever screws
| everything up spatially and dynamic range wise.
|
| The audio is tailored for the minority of people that invest in
| "home theater" while most people, even those that can afford
| to, don't care enough about teevee to build such a system. In
| theory one should expect media to support non-optimal cases,
| and provision for exactly that exists, but this costs more
| production money to do correctly and so it gets neglected in
| various ways. Obviously they don't neglect the demanding
| consumer with his costly home theater setup because they'll get
| pilloried, so they half ass the other side.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I use captions too, even though I can (usually) hear the TV.
| There are many reasons for this:
|
| - I think it makes it somewhat easier to understand than audio
| only, for one thing.
|
| - If you do not know what they said, because you have missed it,
| possibly due to other noise in the room (telephone, other people
| speaking, etc).
|
| - Sometimes the speech of the movie is difficult due to e.g. you
| do not understand the accent of their speech, etc.
|
| - If you want to reduce the volume or mute to not bother other
| people.
|
| - If you do not know how to spell someone's name, or an obscure
| word. (Unfortunately, sometimes the caption writers do not know,
| and do it wrong.)
|
| - In some shows, they will mention the name of a piece of music;
| this can help in case you do not know. (They do not always do
| this, though.)
|
| However, there are often problems with them. For example,
| sometimes the caption writers do not know what they are saying,
| either. The caption writers should try to make an effort to find
| out what they are saying (and the proper spelling), by whatever
| means are appropriate, e.g. referring to the script, asking the
| people there, watching the show twice to make corrections if
| necessary, etc. (This might not always be possible, e.g. live
| shows that are broadcast as they are being filmed rather than
| being edited later, but they should do it when possible.)
|
| I also sometimes see worthless captions, e.g. "male announcer
| reads words on screen". I think that is worthless, and should be
| omitted.
|
| (If you can specify "hidden captions", then it may be useful to
| encode the text which is already part of the picture, as a hidden
| caption and then allow it to be displayed in a caption scrollback
| menu if the TV system you are using has such a menu (I do not
| know of any that do have it, but it is something that I would
| think would be good to have).)
|
| A good feature of captions is that you can turn on/off, and can
| customize fonts/opacity on some receivers (I personally prefer
| translucent captions). (DVD video only allows on/off (and
| selection by language, sometimes), although it should also be
| possible to allow adjusting colours/opacity (since DVD subtitles
| are encoded as pictures using indexed colours), although font
| changing will not be possible.)
| pnut wrote:
| Those worthless captions are audio description for the hearing
| impaired.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I think they are not very useful even for someone who cannot
| hear them, though. The picture should be obvious what it is
| meaning and the captions might cover up the words in the
| picture (I have seen that happen before).
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Two reasons from my perspective, other than my ears are getting
| older:
|
| 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action
| scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down,
| and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the
| neighbors.
|
| 2. Dialects and accents seem to be more prevalent in content, and
| CC helps to cut down the cognitive load of "translation" while
| being entertained. Frankly, I enjoy the diversity of content, but
| I don't want to have to work hard to watch TV.
| lumost wrote:
| > 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of
| action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the
| volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and
| you wake up the neighbors.
|
| I've also noticed a prevalence of mixing background noise/music
| into dialogue scenes which often overpowers the main dialogue,
| or overlaps in audio range enough to make it hard to hear. Add
| in sub-par audio equipment, or equipment which is compelled to
| emphasize one end of the audio over the other - and you have a
| recipe for difficult to understand dialogue.
|
| Turning on the closed captions is an easier solution than
| fussing with the audio in many cases.
| silisili wrote:
| > Dialects and accents seem to be more prevalent in content
|
| This is why they are always on in our house. I think people who
| understand fine take for granted how hard accents can be.
|
| My wife is ESL. She understands me fine, and the 'neutral tv
| accent.' She can't understand a word my father says(Appalachian
| accent). Can't understand British people, Boston accents, etc.
| She's learning, slowly, but I've never even thought about how
| amazing it is we're able to process all the different ways
| people speak, rather seamlessly.
| acron0 wrote:
| > 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of
| action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the
| volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and
| you wake up the neighbors.
|
| I was once told, by a salesperson in a TV store that this was
| essentially "by design" and that the solution they're taught to
| present is to "buy a soundbar". From his understanding, in the
| quest to get thinner TV manufacturers sacrificed built-in
| speaker size and quality, which results in the effect you
| describe. I am not sure how much is sales patter and how much
| is truth...but I bought a sound bar!
| brigade wrote:
| The smaller speakers in a TV naturally compress the dynamic
| range because they _can 't_ get loud, and especially can't
| get loud in the lower frequencies that travel more easily
| through walls. Getting good speakers actually makes the
| dynamic range problem worse since the loud parts get even
| louder and travel through walls even easier.
|
| Soundbars have really good margins though, so it's
| unsurprising that that's the solution they sell!
| duped wrote:
| Built in TV audio has always been bad. That said some TVs are
| starting to use the screen as a diaphragm now, which is
| interesting.
|
| It's not "by design" so much as bad audio setups are going to
| sound bad, and a lot of people don't know how to shop for or
| care about it.
| simooooo wrote:
| If you don't have a Center channel speaker, the vocals are
| regularly inaudible
| als0 wrote:
| > 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of
| action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the
| volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and
| you wake up the neighbors.
|
| I've found this really frustrating. I constantly have to
| control the volume when watching a movie. Commercials are also
| obnoxiously loud. It made me wonder whether the TV could
| automatically "balance" upcoming sounds so that quiet scenes
| are never quiet and loud ones are not too loud.
| dizhn wrote:
| Some TVs and receivers have a night mode that does what you
| want. It's basically a compressor that cuts off the high
| peaks.
|
| I've always been told that the ads are not really louder,
| that's another compression technique at work. There's no
| dynamic range and everything is at the top of the volume
| range. ( I think it amounts to the same thing )
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Apple TV has a "reduce loud sounds" setting that basically
| does this
| trog wrote:
| In my mid forties and gave up on trying to understand the audio a
| couple years ago.
|
| Recently bought a sound bar which has helped quite a bit with the
| audio quality - apparently it's one with emphasis on centre
| channel so should have better voice output? - but we're still
| rocking the subtitles.
|
| The big downside is I tend to read them much faster. So I'm often
| laughing at jokes several seconds before my partner as apparently
| I read faster than they do!
| Bakary wrote:
| It's not just a case of hearing loss. Much of the time, the
| soundmixing is just godawful.
| rch wrote:
| I watch Netflix with captions on and the sound low or muted, so I
| can multitask reading other things. It's easier to follow
| parallel streams of text than voice and text at the same time.
| egypturnash wrote:
| One reason neither the article nor the comments here are
| mentioning: lots of videos are now designed to be Content in an
| Endless Feed, and are made with the intent of capturing your
| interest even if you're sitting there with your phone muted. Text
| floating on the screen increases the chance of making you stop
| scrolling and rack up that precious view count.
| [deleted]
| pts_ wrote:
| I am not under 40 but I like reading captions because it's less
| effort than putting on headphones or buds, and keeps me aware of
| surroundings.
| Too wrote:
| Not mentioned in the article is the type of content watched.
| Concluding the audio mixing disaster discussed above, one theory
| would be: Young people watch fast Marvel actions with explosions
| and terrible audio mixing. Old people watch slow crime mysteries
| with no background music.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| As some one who has CC on all the time if possible, here is the
| simple reason why I do it: it saves time.
|
| - when I play game, I don't need to restart or rewind if I missed
| a sentence.
|
| - when I watch movie, similarly, I can capture way more context
| without having to ask "what did the character say?"
|
| - when I click on a short clip, I can understand without having
| to turn on and off audio.
|
| It's all about convenience and saving time for me.
| lanstin wrote:
| Also a lot of times you get plot info from the captions. Like I
| won't hear anything but the caption is [ominous foot steps] or
| [Krish slamming the door]
| rapjr9 wrote:
| If you find dialog is difficult to understand you might try
| adding a sonic maximizer (for example Behringer Sonic Ultramizer
| or BBE Maximizer), a sonic exciter (Behringer Sonic Exciter or
| Aphex Aural Exciter), and maybe a little compression and plate
| reverb.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Reiterating the many "sound mixes are terrible, subtitles are
| vital" comments but also adding that my ears basically can't
| process more than one sound at a time - if there's external noise
| (someone commenting on the TV, the feral children outside, a
| party in the park across the square, washing machine /
| dishwasher, etc.), it'll interfere with my understanding of the
| dialogue. Hence subtitles.
| hrbf wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something major, the article does not answer
| its headline question in any way. It just presents a bunch of
| examples but does not come to any conclusion.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Par for the course with question titles. Betteridge's law of
| headlines says: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can
| be answered by the word no."[1]. That rule, however, doesn't
| apply to "why?" questions because they are not yes/no
| constructions.
|
| Nevertheless, there's an aspect of Betteridge's law at work
| here. Running a story that doesn't really have anything to it
| yet needing to meet production targets - in the old days,
| column-inches to fill, today, space to place ads. Reporters are
| required to produce a certain number of articles of a certain
| length per week. An honest headline would just say, in effect,
| that after looking into it, the reporter didn't find an answer.
| An honest headline might be OK in newsprint. Online, the drive
| for "engagement" requires a headline that will lure readers in,
| and thus sell ads.
|
| tl;dr money.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Forgot the reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20090226202
| 006/http://www.techno...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I vote for subtitles as an over-40. I started literally requiring
| subtitles due to the presence of children (whom I dearly love) in
| the house and all the other various household sounds like kettles
| boiling or dishwashers or washing machines or toilet flushes or
| whatever the fuck else.
|
| But I can't go back. I've re-watched movies with subtitles and
| found explanations of things (non-plot critical, but contributory
| or interesting) that were previously drowned out by mumbling or
| poor mixing or just not having the volume high enough to vibrate
| the foundations.
|
| Subtitles explain all!
|
| (I actually find it's harder to multitask if I'm watching a show,
| because I need to read the screen - this isn't necessarily a bad
| thing if it's a show I've actually chosen to try to watch).
|
| P.S. 2nd episode of the latest season of Rick and Morty has an
| ... interesting ... differentiation between the subtitles and
| spoken words for one specific word starting with c, in which the
| subtitle was the original, category* 0, word, whilst the
| obviously replaced word also started with c but is a somewhat
| more acceptable category* 2 word.
|
| *categories made up by me on the spot.
| conorcleary wrote:
| Without subtitles you can go back later and rewatch a fairly
| different show for the first time :)
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I use captions often when I'm using 2x speed.
| Havoc wrote:
| There is also the reverse - I don't want hearing loss so I refuse
| to jack up the volume. Which in turn makes things harder to hear
| so captions help
|
| Plus yeah they're a little lagged so helpful for multitasking if
| you miss a fraction of a sentence. Lets you recover from the gap
| without rewinding the vid
| mynegation wrote:
| ESL here. Not so much for TikTok videos but I turn on subtitles
| when movie dialog is in some English dialect that is different
| from the standard North American one. I could not figure out 40%
| of what is happening in "No country for old men". British period
| dramas are sometimes hard too.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Maybe they were watching Tenet and left CC on.
| INGSOCIALITE wrote:
| I was a bartender for a long time and I just got so used to
| having the closed captioning on so I could watch tv that I cannot
| engage myself in any video media any more without closed
| captioning on
| zoid_ wrote:
| Having young kids makes subtitles essential if you want to watch
| the news or any other low quality media in the background whilst
| they are playing!
|
| Got used to it after a couple of years and found them useful for
| deciphering speech that would otherwise be missed.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I think that when you spend a lot of time reading, the cognitive
| load becomes almost free.
|
| On the contrary, listening is difficult, especially when people
| don't talk very well or loud enough, or with foreign accents.
|
| Combining reading and listening is a way to simply reduce the
| cognitive load.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Something like this occurred to me. I can watch movies and
| videos for entertainment and casual attention, but I follow and
| learn video terribly. I need words. I do OK with presentations
| and lectures where there's a slide deck. If it's solely
| talking, I don't keep up well. Captions make it possible for me
| to engage my better cognitive abilities.
|
| What I see happening is that the much-ballyhooed "pivot to
| video", though more hype than reality, is a thing - I see more
| stuff as just video, nothing written.
| lanstin wrote:
| Pretty sure practice also improves that. Even lip reading is
| possible with enough practice. And for sure accents
| understanding improve pretty fast if you bend your mind to it.
| The danger there for me is if I am trying to get a new accent,
| I might start copying the accent or word choices a bit and
| embarrass myself. Humans are amazingly flexible in what we can
| do without thought, after a bit of practice.
| hedora wrote:
| Does YouTube have auto captioning that works? Can I just use lynx
| or something to browse technical documentation on it instead of
| watching a slooowww PowerPoint presentation?
|
| The article suggests tiktok has such a thing.
| csours wrote:
| YouTube autogenerated subtitles are very hit or miss. They work
| pretty well for the 90% case, but the 10% they fail on are
| usually the interesting parts
| csours wrote:
| You know, maybe this is why I like YouTube better than movies and
| episodic "TV" content. YouTube videos have to have good audio, or
| they never survive the algorithm (I'm sure you can find
| counterexamples).
| sph wrote:
| I turned them on 15 years ago when I was trying to get better at
| understanding English accents and never turned them off. I don't
| use subs on Youtube for example, but I hate watching a movie or
| TV show without, and my movie download pipeline automatically
| fetches them for me. I tried to wean myself off, but I'd rather
| keep them on and never miss a line because of terrible mixing or
| noisy living room.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| One more vote for "it's not my age, it's the mumbling and the
| sound engineering."
| malshe wrote:
| Without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-all-
| these-20-somethings-...
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| all around bad audio engineering. sounds sound different on
| different hardware.
| ttjjtt wrote:
| One aspect that's under recognized is the widespread use of ADR
| (automatic dialog replacement) https://filmlifestyle.com/what-is-
| adr-in-filmmaking/
|
| In the 80s and 90s this was an occasionally used process to fix
| problematic scenes, now it's used for 70-100% of a full,
| particularly high budget.
|
| The actors sit in an anechoic sound recording room and whisper
| their lines a few cm from a microphone
|
| They'll do this even if the camera POV is meters away from the
| character in a busy environment, where the any human would be
| talking loudly straining to be heard over the background noise.
|
| ADR makes all dialog recording sound like soft pillow talk.
|
| Add incessant overproduced over compressed music score to the
| mix, a 5.1 to stereo downmix, and you have an incomprehensible
| movie.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Hard to hear for me. Also non-native English speaker.
| racl101 wrote:
| My hearing sucks. There.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Not being 20-something, I can't speak for them, but for me:
|
| A lot of dialog is mixed way down in relation to the music and
| background noise, actors tend to speed up and drop the volume at
| the ends of their sentences, and of course there are those pesky
| accents.
|
| I'm seeing a lot of other good reasons in this thread, too.
| stubish wrote:
| One cause of this is sending 5.1 audio through two speakers,
| where the center channel just gets dropped along with a lot of
| dialog. Another cause is of course crappy mixing.
| knaik94 wrote:
| I have never seen software or receivers that drops the center
| channel instead of doing a proper downmix. The exception is
| when the user has incorrectly set up the speakers to identify
| as 5.1 when they have only a 2.0 or 2.1 setup.
| balderdash wrote:
| I think it's this, if you want to have the volume at a level
| where conversations are understandable, the action scenes or
| other "high tension" moments are way too loud, and you spend
| your evening ride the volume control...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, this is our family too. Volume button up and down, up
| and down, for 3 hours. I don't recall this being a problem
| with older movies, either. I feel like maybe modern
| moviemakers have access to sound pipelines with crazy vast
| dynamic range, and audio engineers feel they have to use
| every setting from "mouse quiet" to "nuclear bomb" in order
| to do their jobs right.
| fleventynine wrote:
| The best thing I ever did for my den was put one of these
| between the TV and the speakers:
| https://www.fmraudio.com/rnc.html
|
| Twiddle a few knobs and now everything is the same volume
| and I can keep it at a nice low level and not wake the
| kids, but still hear everything.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Interesting. Audacity has various compression settings.
| Have you tried that?
| fleventynine wrote:
| Sure, but my TV can't run Audacity :)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Admittedly I haven't tried this so probably misguided,
| but if you can stick that box in front of the TV, could
| you not put a computer instead?
| fleventynine wrote:
| Yes, a computer with a good low-noise ad/da converter can
| be an excellent compressor. But it's likely to be much
| more expensive than a used RNC.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's just hard to hear the dialog in some movies, and I'm not
| hard of hearing. I think it was always like this, but you'd crank
| up the volume to overcome it. Now that I often watch on a laptop,
| that's not an option.
|
| Also there was the diner robbery scene in "Pulp Fiction." My
| brother said, "Let's turn on subtitles despite the fact that this
| guy is speaking English. I can't deal with the accent."
| nomilk wrote:
| TL;DR people are turning on closed captions (i.e. subtitles of
| the same language as the video) to increase their focus.
|
| I've been doing something slightly similar in reading Fawlty
| Towers scripts [1] on my phone while watching the episodes, and
| it yielded about 20% more jokes (ones I'd missed in the past,
| even from 10+ viewings of each episode!).
|
| For example, Basil mumbling this brilliancy in his initial
| exchange with Mr Hutchinson:
|
| > In a nutshell
|
| > Case, more like.
|
| [1]
| https://subslikescript.com/series/Fawlty_Towers-72500/season...
| godmode2019 wrote:
| I just want to leave a comment to the people who said they turn
| it on for movies because they can't hear the audio over other
| movie sounds.
|
| If you can't hear the audio clearly the director didn't want to
| you to hear the audio correctly. Some scenes especially with
| thick accents the point is to be ambiguous, you having captions
| on is basically a cheat code to get more context than the
| director wanted you to have.
|
| Same goes for when someone speaks a foreign language, if the CC
| is not baked into the video layer I assume the director wanted me
| to be in the shoes of someone who cant understand a conversion
| and guess the characters intent.
|
| It's like reading a novel with pictures on every page, you don't
| need that much context, it robs your brains ability to infer with
| missing context.
| pkamb wrote:
| Please, an Apple TV feature that just automatically turns on
| Closed Captioning whenever you Skip Back 15 seconds.
|
| I don't want to ask Siri every time.
| sowbug wrote:
| Netflix used to have this. I don't know why they got rid of it.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I grew up with Dutch subs and later English subs on the beeb (you
| could use teletext for that back in the day - maybe you still
| can?) in my teens. Then I watched stuff without subs for years
| just fine; I managed to watch Shameless without subs years ago
| (which was a bit hard at times; stuff didn't commonly come with
| subs back then). I turned on subs for The Expanse as the belter
| dialect was difficult to follow at times, and I've used it
| regularly ever since. It just makes things a tad easier; no more
| "wait, what did he say? ah well, whatever" At times it also makes
| things a bit easier to skip ahead when things aren't all that
| interesting.
| a-dub wrote:
| does zoom have auto-captioning yet?
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Because they are on their phone a lot, and reading is faster. So
| closed captions allow easier multitasking.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| As a gen-x'r I find it incredibly distracting to keep subtitles
| on, and always turn them off whenever possible.
| dhosek wrote:
| Speaking of captioning, why the expletive deleted do I have to
| turn on captions every single time I enter a meeting in Google
| Meet, Teams, Zoom (which makes it really hard to get captions),
| Slack Huddle (which I'm not sure if it has captions or not now
| because the last time I was in one I couldn't find a setting to
| turn it on), BlueJeans, etc.? I'm signed into every single one of
| these and using a dedicated app in many cases and yet every
| single one forgets that I _always_ need captions. In contrast,
| all the video streaming services that I use don't require me to
| turn on captioning after the first time.
| Bakary wrote:
| I believe this is because these settings are linked to the host
| in some of these apps. For instance, captions can be blocked by
| the host on Zoom. There is no such aspect to consider when
| streaming video for a single user.
|
| How do I know this? I once organized a session on accessibility
| and it turned out a deaf guest had the captions blocked by our
| IT guy who didn't understand what was going on...
| dangerwill wrote:
| I'm in my 30s and I use subtitles for everything because I don't
| have the absolute best hearing and I was an anime fan growing up
| so it never felt weird. Doesn't the Wall Street Journal have
| better things to be doing other than trying to make a false
| generational divide over subtitles?
|
| Like seriously, this kind of needless naval gazing from a
| supposedly serious outlet just frustrates me so much.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| Fully agreed - it's not a generational thing at all. They're
| just continuing the "nolan bad" meme that's been going around
| in double force since tenet came out. Watch them make another
| article about subtitles focusing on nolan soon enough, it's
| coming for sure.
| Bakary wrote:
| Ironically we could be creating a generational divide over the
| fact that older people seem to like to categorize and explain
| away the youth without proper insight into the matter.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| I started using subtitles to watch movies with my wife, who used
| to have trouble understanding American English. I've become so
| used to them that I use them on my own now.
|
| Could be a combination of:
|
| - Degraded hearing
|
| - Degraded audio comprehension, relying on the text
|
| - Realising how much I was missing, just due to bad audio mixing
| or low quality TV speakers
|
| - Getting over the 'annoyance' of having text pop up on screen &
| being able to view both the subject & text at once.
|
| I watched Top Gun (new) with my dad, he has a sound-bar setup and
| a HUGE TV. I honestly couldn't understand 50% of the dialogue,
| and when I asked him to enable the subtitles he refused and said
| I should get my hearing checked. So I started asking him "what
| did they say?", and to his surprise, half the time he couldn't
| actually tell me what the actors were saying. It's a mix of
| issues. I think that movie had horrible audio mastering and maybe
| a lot of media does these days too.
| presentation wrote:
| This article focuses on accessibility in the USA, but living in
| Asia, for many years pretty much every major show and YouTuber
| across most Asian countries I've been to always has bright
| colorful subtitles (and onomatopoeia reactions too). On one hand
| I wonder why that became the dominant motif here far earlier than
| in Western markets; on the other I wonder if the this prompted
| the Western phenomenon from the article.
| vivegi wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but one thing that annoys me is most movies
| made in the last 15 years that end up showing smartphones and
| text messages or the actors typing on their phone and most of the
| time the text is too small, or the camera cuts too fast and I end
| up pausing/rewinding to check it again.
|
| Very few movies actually put an overlay and show such
| conversations using legible text. If the messages are important
| for the plot, it would be great if the filmmakers took care of
| this aspect.
|
| This is quite bad with many streaming shows.
| pookeh wrote:
| Everyone has FOMO syndrome.
| pkrotich wrote:
| I can relate so much... I don't have any hearing loss and I'm in
| my mid 40s, but I no longer watch anything I truly need to pay
| attention to without captions or subtitles. In fact, I like
| foreign films because picture and caption is enough for my brain
| - it's like I have 2 brain channels and voice is simply a
| distraction / noise.
|
| I think partly it's because English is not my native language so
| caption in the early days helped. I also grew up with radio (no
| electricity / TV) - so I mostly listened and made up my own
| pictures. That said, I don't completely tune out the voice now -
| it's useful for tone and inflections but I depend on captions to
| get the the compete picture.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Even though English is my native language I'll always opt for
| subtitles for any movie or show I'm watching. It just helps to
| not miss anything in the story or scene, and I never even
| notice them. Reading them becomes completely subconscious.
| pkrotich wrote:
| You're right - perhaps it's normal for people who can read
| and listen to music at the same time.
| adhd1110101 wrote:
| Anyone else watch on mute _without_ subtitles?
| downrightmike wrote:
| Quiet talking so I have to turn it up and then a whole orchestra
| moves the fuck in and I have to scramble to lower the volume. No
| music please. The way they are handling it ruing the immersion.
| balderdash wrote:
| My personal view on this is that it's because the soundtracks are
| so poorly modulated for volume that either the tv is way too loud
| when the action scenes/musical score happens and if you turn it
| down, you can't hear when people are talking so people put their
| tv on a normal volume and turn cc on so they can read the 15% of
| the dialogue that is hard to track
| pensatoio wrote:
| Modern sound engineers seem to expect that I own several thousand
| dollars of high-end sound equipment capable of reproducing the
| full dynamic range they've sculpted. It's super annoying.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Speaking of shameful, anti-human behaviour related to closed
| captions, I have some pet peeves that would be _trivial_ to fix,
| but major production companies simply refuse to implement.
|
| (There are _ZERO_ excuses for all of the below. None. It 's just
| text on a screen, displayed by dedicated apps on Smart TVs, fully
| equipped with CPUs and GPUs! Netflix staff especially that come
| across this thread: You should be ashamed. Shame. Shame. Shame.)
|
| 1. _English subtitles != English subtitles for the hearing
| impaired._ I don 't want "Breathes loudly" and "Bang!" over
| action scenes. I live in a household where everyone's second
| language is English, and if I turn the subtitles on for them, the
| extra sound-effects subtitles drive me crazy.
|
| 2. _Can 't have multiple subtitles for mixed-language
| households._ My partner prefers subtitles in her language, but
| then if there's a scene in an English-language movie with a short
| foreign-language segment in it, I have to pause, switch to
| English for the hearing impaired (see point #1), and then pause
| and switch back when the scene is over. I should be able to
| select _any two or even three_ subtitle languages, such as "auto
| english + japanese", or whatever.
|
| 3. _Can 't have subtitles in some languages_. Netflix in
| particular loves to waste $500K annual total comp on data
| scientists who analyse their market segments to select the "top
| 5" languages in each market region. Don't speak one of those
| languages? Tough titties, no subtitles for you! It's not even a
| matter of copyright or distribution rights. They do this for
| their own productions too! They do it because some idiot at
| Netflix thought too many options was "hard to navigate". You know
| what's even harder? Trying to understand a movie when it doesn't
| have subtitles matching your language!!
|
| 4. _Eye-searing HDR subtitles_. Netflix again. On my Sony OLED TV
| the subtitles use the HDR max-brightness white. They illuminate
| my entire room and look like someone is trying to burn the text
| into my retinas with high-powered flashlights. This cannot be
| adjusted... for some languages. For like, no reason. English: can
| be fixed! French: yes. Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean,
| Romanian, Traditional Chinese, and Thai: BURN YOUR HEATHEN
| EYEBALLS! See: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/100267
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Because filmmakers don't know how to handle dialogue in
| multichannel mixes anymore.
| jarym wrote:
| Yea not 20-something but a couple of decades older... also prefer
| subtitles.
|
| As others have said, sometimes actors mumble stuff, dialogue is
| hard to hear and explosions and other side noises end up too
| loud.
|
| Shame but someone thought this was a good idea...
| quantified wrote:
| From the article: Because it's harder for them to concentrate.
|
| Plays to some stereotypes at least.
| Twirrim wrote:
| This article feels like the next generation of "Millennials are
| ruining...." much like "Gen Y is ruining..." etc. articles that
| came before those.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Millennials are Gen Y. Gen Z are the ones just now becoming
| adults. I think you meant Gen X. And yes, Boomers just love
| to complain about every subsequent generation. I, for one,
| will not miss them when they're gone.
| Twirrim wrote:
| It's not just boomers complaining, if you look at the ages
| of the journalists behind the articles, you'll generally
| find it's younger journalists, approaching 30s, maybe 40s,
| effectively taking the crap they got and passing it down
| the line.
|
| In this article's case, a quick google search shows the
| journalist is in their mid 20s.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The caption used has a bit of FOMO(fear of missing out)
| psychology involved because sometimes the actors mumble a bit or
| talk a little too fast during action scenes
| joshstrange wrote:
| 31 but yeah, I've had subs on for almost a decade now? Maybe only
| 6-7 years?
|
| For me I find I miss things without the subs on.
| Whispered/background dialog that I'm unsure how anyone is
| supposed to hear/understand being top of list but also sound
| mixing seems to be terrible by default and it's hard to
| hear/understand characters even in a quiet room sometimes. I read
| quickly so subs have never been an issue to me, I can scan and
| parse the subs and be looking back at the video in no time at
| all.
|
| For foreign content (like Anime) I use dubs + subs (the subs are
| of the initial English translation before the dubs were done)
| because it gives 2 passes at any given line. I find it very
| interesting to see how they change things between the two and it
| sometimes paints a fuller picture.
| hansbo wrote:
| That's interesting - I have subtitles on at all times (I am
| Swedish, we never dub adult content so I have used subtitles
| for a very long time), but when I do watch children's movies
| with my kids, they are dubbed, and then I find having subtitles
| on is extremely annoying.
|
| I cannot stand having subtitles in the same language as the
| dialogue, but which differs in phrasing/content. It is very
| distracting to me.
| jastuk wrote:
| I've moved to Germany a couple of years ago and this is a
| HUGE issue for me. I try to improve my German by watching
| German shows/movies in their native language. All German
| audio vs subtitles differ, constantly, and not in a minor
| way. It's practically never been an issue with English for
| the past two decades.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It happens in English a little, but usually only in a
| really tiny differences. So it ends up being more like a
| funny easter-egg.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > For me I find I miss things without the subs on.
| Whispered/background dialog that I'm unsure how anyone is
| supposed to hear/understand being top of list but also sound
| mixing seems to be terrible by default and it's hard to
| hear/understand characters even in a quiet room sometimes.
|
| So many video sources coming with only surround mixes, or lazy
| stereo mixes that were made automatically from surround mixes,
| while _very few_ homes have a surround system _at all_ , and
| even fewer have one that's at least decently-calibrated, has
| been absolute hell for being able to tell WTF anyone's saying
| in movies. I suspect many VHS releases had better audio _for
| most people 's actual system_ even today, than the blu-ray of
| the same movie does.
| Filligree wrote:
| > For foreign content (like Anime) I use dubs + subs (the subs
| are of the initial English translation before the dubs were
| done) because it gives 2 passes at any given line. I find it
| very interesting to see how they change things between the two
| and it sometimes paints a fuller picture.
|
| Anime is an interesting case, because -- remember, a lot of
| these threads are about poor enunciation and mixing? -- anime
| tends to be _really well_ enunciated, and the characters speak
| like they 're on stage. It's easy to follow along. I keep subs
| on, because I don't understand literally everything, but
| usually I don't read them.
|
| Surprise surprise, this doesn't reduce my immersion at all.
| presentation wrote:
| Also if you speak some Japanese and listen to the Japanese
| audio while reading the subs it makes for some interesting
| food for thought, often the translations aren't exactly what
| the characters are actually saying so you get a feel for how
| the languages and cultures differ.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Beginning to push 40 and I remember when this was observed
| about us. My spouse and I have been doing this for about 10
| yrs.
| rendaw wrote:
| Here's another speculation: A lot of movies, etc are mastered for
| surround sound and the single downmix is pretty terrible. It's
| actually quite a rabbit hole in the ffmpeg forums. But basically
| the non-front channels end up contributing too much volume and
| end up drowning out spoken voice a lot of the time.
|
| I know this happens on BD, but I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix
| + co are using the same source, and 20-somethings probably don't
| have large places with surround sound systems.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Not in that age group but I can't imagine not having cc on. I was
| hooked when watching anime and foreign movies but even with
| english movies they only have an upside. You don't have to guess
| what word they said or how someone's name is spelled. Loud scenes
| where you can barely hear them is one but also when you have
| characters that have accents or switch to a different language it
| helps (you don't get distracted by the sudden need to read cc).
|
| You have to get used to it but it only takes a few tries.
| seniorsassycat wrote:
| Subtitles can hurt jokes by spoiling the punchline without the
| actors timing or delivery.
|
| I wonder if delaying joke/punchline subtitles till after the
| spoken line is complete would improve this
| badrabbit wrote:
| I usually only laugh earlier as a result of this. But now
| that you bring it up they can spoil things a few seconds too
| early as well.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I've thought about this many times as well as it does suck to
| have it spoiled, especially if there is a long pause in the
| scene but the subs have been up revealing the joke/jump-
| scare/etc for a few seconds already. In the end I enjoy subs
| too much to turn them off for that reason but every time it
| happens I do wish the "reveal" in the subs was held until the
| reveal in the scene.
| lanstin wrote:
| Yeah I end up laughing too early. If I know it is going to
| be funny, I will move my eyes up to the faces.
| Zircom wrote:
| One downside of having captions on all the time is that forced
| subtitles when characters are speaking a foreign language in an
| otherwise native language show are usually burned into the
| actual video stream instead of being in the same text file that
| the normal subtitles pull from, so a lot of lazy captions
| providers will put something like "<Walter speaking Spanish>"
| in the captions, which will then be displayed over the same
| space the burned in subtitles are for the entirety of the time
| they are speaking, meaning I have to rewind, turn off
| subtitles, rewatch the scene, then re enable the subtitles if I
| want to actual know what is going on.
| thatsamonad wrote:
| I'm also not in that age group (I'm late 30s) but I've been
| watching TV and movies with closed captioning enabled since I
| was a kid and have found that it helps my comprehension of
| what's going on with plot lines, etc, immensely. Maybe I'm just
| a stronger reader than listener, but I'm at the point where I
| vastly prefer to watch movies at home rather than at a theater
| because I can have CC on by default.
|
| I've also always had CC on for my kid and they're an excellent
| reader. I don't have any concrete evidence for it but part of
| me thinks their strong reading skills are partly due to that.
| gareth_untether wrote:
| My wife loves having subtitles on for all the reasons listed in
| the article. I, on the other hand, prefer to just listen. I've
| found since watching with subtitles my ability to lip read and
| understand tricky accents has no dived.
| JTbane wrote:
| A lot of movies have awful mastering and action scenes are ear-
| splittingly loud, while dialogue is quiet.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Not mentioned: The increase in poor audio mixing that sounds like
| it was done by a monkey in addition to the prevalence of devices
| with speakers crammed in odd directions inside of enclosures that
| are in no way, shape, or form big enough to contain them. If
| there was one advantage of the days of big tube TVs it was you
| had plenty of space to also fit big speakers in too
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Even on my nice 2.1 setup on my PC, I always put captions on.
|
| It's because re-reading a word I didn't understand is much
| faster and easier than re-hearing (in my head) a word I didn't
| understand.
|
| It's even happened with my spouse, in the same room, speaking
| the same dialect of American English as me, with the same
| accent. I mis-hear one word, and it bleeds into the next word,
| and I need to think for a few seconds or ask them to repeat
| before the sentence makes any sense to me.
|
| Perhaps us, and the TV actors, just don't enunciate like we
| used to?
| a_e_k wrote:
| I think mishearing a word causes an effect that feels
| something like a mental mispredict leading to a pipeline
| flush. There's definitely a delay to refill that pipeline.
| ktkoffroth wrote:
| This is the best way I've ever heard it described
| analog31 wrote:
| In addition, I've read that young people are going deaf due to
| ear buds.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Tbf, that's been the case for a hundred years since
| headphones were invented. I doubt it's changed much.
| analog31 wrote:
| I suppose that's true. But at least most people took their
| headphones off when they weren't at home, which somewhat
| limited their exposure time. Today, when I'm outdoors, it
| seems like a large fraction of people are wearing earbuds.
| For instance when I'm riding on the bike path, I have to be
| alert to the fact that nearly everybody out there who's
| walking or jogging won't hear my signal from behind as I
| pass them, because they're all wearing earbuds.
| knaik94 wrote:
| Another reason that I can think of is that many people are
| watching content at a increased playback rate. I personally limit
| that to education content because for things like comedy it can
| mess with pacing. But I have friends that have used it while
| watching really long shows. It doesn't have to be much faster but
| if you think about a 10 hour series, that is approximately an
| hour saved. I recognize that this seems odd, but I have tried it
| on some shows and it honestly makes them more enjoyable. It's not
| universal to every show or to every person.
| userbinator wrote:
| I do that too - 1.5x seems to be the minimum I'll start with,
| and sometimes I'll go as high as 2.5x. Having subs definitely
| helps at the upper end of the range.
|
| On the other hand, the downside is that when you interact with
| people in realtime, you constantly feel like they're speaking
| too slowly, and others have trouble understanding what feels
| like a normal speed of talking for you.
| smeej wrote:
| I watch everything on 1.4x, but I would watch it faster if it
| wouldn't run into buffering issues and get glitchy. Podcasts
| are normally 2.2x.
|
| I just find I enjoy taking the information in more when I can
| do it quickly. If my brain has no trouble operating at that
| speed, I might as well take advantage of the chance to get more
| new ideas in my head!
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Same here. Many movies are nice but slow; watching at 1.5x
| speed makes it a better experience. But then it becomes
| difficult to understand some dialogs, so I turn CC on.
| glandium wrote:
| Tangentially: Youtube really likes to turn CC on randomly on its
| own, even when it's explicitly disabled. Both in the mobile app
| and the website.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| Is it possible that you're hitting a keyboard shortcut by
| accident? IIRC YouTube turns on captions if you ever press the
| "c" key, which I definitely do by accident once in a while.
| epakai wrote:
| I have the opposite. Youtube captions never stay on despite my
| account preferences and being logged in.
| [deleted]
| ENGNR wrote:
| This, it's a minor frustration but everything seems to be going
| cc by default, which would bump the usage numbers. I wonder if
| it's because there's a measurable engagement increase rather
| than just user preference? As someone who doesn't want them I
| have to keep actively turning them off everywhere
| XorNot wrote:
| I was looking for this comment. In the last couple of months
| every 3rd or so video seems to have CC switched on for no
| reason.
| glandium wrote:
| It's often even worse than that, with CC going back on during
| and/or after mid-roll ads.
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm the kind of person who concentrates when I watch TV -- if I
| can't give it my full attention I don't watch. I'm 45 BTW.
|
| I used to hate subtitles -- found them super distracting. Then I
| met my wife, whose family always watched with them on. In part
| because English is their second language, and as I learned later,
| in part because some of the relatives are very loud and talk over
| everything.
|
| Now I can't watch without them. Maybe between getting used to
| them and having kids and the crappy mixes with the dialogue too
| quiet, I need them now. I feel like I'm missing something without
| them.
| Ataraxic wrote:
| Audio mixing has been absolutely terrible in so many productions
| that I started using subtitles a few years back and then I got
| used to them.
|
| If I want to really focus on the movie I usually turn the
| subtitles off because sometimes the subtitles are ahead of the
| scene a bit and then it spoils some key moments slightly.
| HOWEVER, when I fail to understand a word and the subtitles are
| off I rewind, turn them back on, and just leave them that way. If
| audio mixing was consistent and good I would leave them off.
| hsjshdjsksj wrote:
| smeej wrote:
| The article mentions but doesn't get into the "audio description"
| option too. If you haven't ever tried this, it takes a little
| getting used to, but once you do, it makes multitasking _much_
| easier. I strongly recommend giving it a try.
|
| During the gaps in speech, a narrator comes on and describes the
| most important things happening on the screen.
|
| I had a gig for awhile actually writing the descriptions for this
| content, and it's really interesting work!
|
| I love that we're discovering that features invented for
| "accessibility" are appreciated by many people who would not
| otherwise have identified an accessibility need. I can't help but
| wonder if it means people who were only dealing with mild
| impairments are now receiving assistance they didn't know they
| would benefit from. How many people do you think can pass a
| hearing test in a silent room lab setting, but have a hard time
| in our noisy world?
| silisili wrote:
| I watched Super 8, on I think Amazon, when it came out. I
| thought it was about the weirdest movie I'd ever seen, a
| narrated in real time action movie.
|
| Come to find out, for whatever reason, it had audio description
| turned on by default.
|
| As someone who can see and hear fine, I found it rather
| odd(before learning what it was). But for a vision impaired
| person, such a thing must be a game changer.
| plushpuffin wrote:
| I had the opposite experience watching a vampire film called
| 30 Days of Night! For whatever reason my DVD player didn't
| show any subtitles, even the translation from the Aramaic
| spoken by the vampires. So, I got to watch a bunch of undead
| growl unintelligibly at each other throughout the movie. It
| actually improved the experience because not knowing what
| they were saying made it so much creeper!
| rdlw wrote:
| Related: Joel Haver - "When a character speaks a different
| language but doesn't get subtitles"
|
| https://youtu.be/xK3IYMRZ4EA
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I was without my glasses and contacts for a day and I tried
| this out. It helped a lot, and was actually a nice experience.
| It wasn't miserable like I assumed it would be.
|
| Wound up turning it off when I could see clearly, though. It
| felt strange to hear about what was happening in a scene just
| as I watched it happen.
|
| Definitely could see it being useful while multitasking,
| though. I want to try that out at some point.
| xattt wrote:
| > I love that we're discovering that features invented for
| "accessibility" are appreciated by many people ...
|
| These are called curb cuts, which were intended to help people
| who use wheelchairs, but we're quickly appreciated by moms with
| strollers.
|
| (1) https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/
| zach_garwood wrote:
| I like having CCs on for movies because the dialog is always so
| quiet compared to the music and sound effects. I can keep it at a
| reasonable volume and still catch what the characters are saying.
|
| Also, if I'm watching British shows, I like CCs because I'm
| really bad at accents.
|
| Edit: I'm coming up on 40 now, so I guess I'm not the people this
| article is complaining about.
| Somatochlora wrote:
| I don't understand how the people making movies/TV still
| haven't figured this out. Do they all just have home theaters
| and never try to watch something on a phone with crappy audio
| or when somebody is sleeping in the house?
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| Do you think those people actually _watch_ the stuff they
| make? If they did, half of it would never get released, and
| the next 49% would be way better than it is right now.
|
| An example of this being the case (that movie creators don't
| watch their stuff) is that most of the Star Trek TNG actors
| freely admit they've never watched most of their episodes.
| dnndev wrote:
| I have it on all the time due to the volume range going from soft
| to insanely loud to soft and it's annoying... when the kids are
| sleeping this is also a show stopper
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Because why not? It's far more often than not that for whatever
| reasons the dialog sounds are just terrible. They don't care
| about the audience hearing the dialog(see Tenet). A show which
| guarantees that you can hear every line clearly is the outlier
| now.
|
| Might as well just set cc on to default
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| It lets me and my friends talk over the movie without missing
| much. Do other people not do that?
|
| EDIT: Come to think of it, makes DVD commentaries much more
| useful as well.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/b25ea
| TT-392 wrote:
| Anyone else here super annoyed by the closed captions rendering
| on netflix. They basically don't have a usable font / color
| choice, and the captions are randomly ahead or behind the audio
| all the time. I have a netflix account, but I just don't bother
| watching foreign subtitled content on it anymore.
|
| Of course my solution is pirating content I already pay for.
| bsder wrote:
| Isn't this just because dumbass video sites are making it bloody
| impossible to scrub the video to a specific time point in order
| to increase "engagement"?
|
| If the audio is recorded on a potato (aka: standard Hollywood
| audio editing nowadays) and you can't move backward to try again,
| you need subtitles to not lose context.
| Twirrim wrote:
| We started putting captions on when our first kid was born, so we
| could still watch TV but have the volume down nice and low and
| not disturb her sleep.
|
| It made a radical difference. We now tend to just have them on
| all the time. It's really mostly more modern movies and TV that
| we get value from it on, the audio mix is becoming such a mess
| with dialogue sinking in to the mix, that it's taking so much
| more effort to watch & listen. Put something on from 20ish years
| ago and the mix is totally different. That's despite having a
| sound system with a multiple speakers.
| julianlam wrote:
| One wonders what the judging criteria are for sound mixing at
| the Academy Awards, since it certainly seems like "legible
| speech" isn't one of them.
| nick__m wrote:
| Most production are not made with the passable quality of
| reproduction that a sound bar provides in mind.
|
| Mix are made for a THX compliant setup where the center
| speaker is responsible for over 50% of the dialog delivery.
| If you skimp on the center speaker quality and placement, the
| dialog mix gets muddy quite quickly.
| Jolter wrote:
| Not to mention that they are mixed for reference volume. If
| people weren't concerned about neighbors, sleeping babies
| or protecting their hearing, I'm sure they would just crank
| it up and not miss any dialog. Of course, that's just not
| possible (or enjoyable on most equipment).
| toast0 wrote:
| I go to the local movie house a fair bit, and while it may
| not be THX certified or compliant, it's certainly not too
| bad. Some movies include speech that's easy to understand
| and others are kind of hard to hear.
|
| Certainly, modern very thin TVs have a very uphill battle
| to fight, but a good center doesn't fix everything.
| zrail wrote:
| In our house captions went on the same day our first baby came
| home from the hospital and haven't been turned off since.
| Captions let parents of small children enjoy entertainment
| without bothering kids who may be sensitive to noise.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| I'm 40. When I was 9 I made friends with a girl who was a CODA, a
| child of deaf adults. Her parents' TV was the first time I
| learned captions existed and I was immediately hooked.
|
| Back then you couldn't rewind if you didn't understand and
| important piece of dialogue, and being able to read while you
| watch absolutely helped with not missing those moments. My
| parents didn't like my shows too loud, so captions just made them
| better.
|
| I got in the habit of turning on CC all the time, except live
| shows which were usually not worth the effort.
|
| 30 years later I still love captions. When my children are
| sleeping in the next room, I can keep the volume low.
|
| The only downside is that sometimes captions ruin the jokes.
| raydiatian wrote:
| The irony of having the word "accessibility" in your article
| headline
|
| Followed by a stout paywall.
| legrande wrote:
| I religiously have CCs turned on for everything I watch. Open
| Subtitles[0] is my daily staple. I sometimes miss little
| phrases/words in a movie, and if I miss them, the whole plot
| could be ruined for me and I wouldn't know what was going on. I
| pay attention to every word.
|
| [0] https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search/subs
| simonw wrote:
| I recently graduated to the next step beyond closed captions:
| I've started enabling audio descriptions for TV shows too.
|
| It's SO interesting.
|
| They are generally really well put together. And they often
| highlight things that I would have missed - mentioning the name
| of a character who joins a scene who I don't instantly recognize,
| for example.
|
| Even more fun: audio descriptions of the title sequences for a TV
| show. Three that I particularly enjoyed were Severance, Moon
| Night and Star Trek: Picard - in all three cases the titles are
| rich with visual metaphors relating to the show, which the audio
| description then carefully spells out for you!
| bilekas wrote:
| This is something I might do with a movie I love and could act
| in, actually I used to do it with DVD's that offered it.
|
| But as a 'go to', that's like reading the comments before the
| article.
|
| Edit: Not exactly the same : I was referring to "Directors
| commentary" audio tracks.
|
| Edit 2: I'm a bit worried you need the environment and
| expressions explained to you...
| uno123 wrote:
| I find Amazon X-Ray similarily userful. It displays the current
| actors on screen, their screen names, and the current song
| playing in the background of any scene. As far as I know, no
| other streaming service has this feature.
| capableweb wrote:
| No other conglomerate owns IMDB either which is a huge
| treasure trove of data about all those things they display
| with X-Ray.
| zachthewf wrote:
| I've never heard of this. Is it something offered by all the
| big streaming services?
| jes5199 wrote:
| yes
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's intended for people with vision problems. My grandma
| uses it.
|
| "John enters the room, looking furious. He's holding some
| money. Simon stares at David."
|
| So at least in Britain, it's available on normal, broadcast
| TV.
| adwi wrote:
| Tangential: I've found subtitles to be a very useful tool for
| learning a language. In order of challenge, I'll at least watch
| everything in English with Spanish subtitles, then Spanish SAP
| with English subtitles, then Spanish SAP with Spanish subtitles,
| then just in Spanish.
| hnick wrote:
| Or Baltimore slang, like when I tried to watch The Wire back in
| the day.
|
| It was actually the show that I first turned on subs for and I
| usually keep them on now out of habit. I found the thick local
| accents hard to understand which is rare for me, and I didn't
| know if words were just slang or I'd misheard. Throw in a bunch
| of unique names to the mix too (I can rarely remember someone's
| name anyway after an introduction until I read it) as well as a
| few mumbley characters. Great show but I needed help.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I discovered something amusing about this. When I was living in
| Spain 20 years ago, my Spanish (ex-) wife and I bought a DVD
| collection of Friends. At first we'd watch it in English with
| Spanish captions so my ex could get the subtleties, then as her
| English improved, we'd watch it with English captions which
| helped with words she was unfamiliar with. Then we started
| doing the reverse, Spanish overdub with English captions so I
| could practice.
|
| But when it came time for me to try Spanish overdub with
| Spanish captions, it turned out that the scripts had obviously
| been translated by two different companies, and what was said
| could be _wildly different_ from what was written. Hysterically
| bad differences - to the point of completely changing the
| sentiment of something that was said. Mostly it was with
| insults or expressions, which could have various ways of
| translating, but sometimes they changed entire plot points,
| especially when a character 's relationship with another was
| ambiguous. An aunt could be just a friend, or a sister-in-law
| could be a co-worker. It was so confusing, after a little while
| I just turned off the captions completely. Since I had seen all
| the shows at least once, it wasn't a problem.
|
| A fun thing to do on Disney Plus is change between the various
| Spanish regions to see how they overdub characters. I did this
| for Guardians of the Galaxy and it's fantastic how Rocket would
| go from being a Mexicano gangster to a Spanish thug.
| jdofaz wrote:
| I see that a lot on Netflix, I like to watch with the
| captions on but not for the foreign stuff with English
| dubbing. Squid Games is one that comes to mind where I'd have
| to turn the captions off because the mismatch between the
| english audio and captions was too distracting for me.
| aix1 wrote:
| Language Reactor is an absolutely incredible tool along these
| lines: https://www.languagereactor.com/
|
| I've been using it with Netflix and YouTube to study a couple
| of languages, with really good results.
|
| The gist is that it adds dual-language subtitles,
| translation/dictionary tools, precise subtitle-based playback
| controls etc to the player UI.
|
| It can also colour-code every word based on its frequency in
| the language and on whether I already know it or am actively
| trying to learn it. This makes it very easy to identify common
| words I don't yet know and make them the focus of my vocab
| learning.
|
| The main shortcomings (for me) are: 1. Word
| translations are sometimes weird (but then I can get to a real
| dictionary with two clicks). 2. It does not understand
| grammar (e.g. separable prefixes in German). 3. Different
| forms of the same word are sometimes treated as unrelated words
| for the purposes of colour-coding (e.g. the infinitive and
| Prateritum for some verbs). 4. Word frequency
| highlighting (e.g. highlight the 1500 most common words) is
| configured globally rather than per-language. 5.
| TurtleTube sounds cool but I find the contents a bit meh and
| the levelling inconsistent. I have found a couple of great
| YouTube channels through it though. 6. Local file
| playback requires an SRT file and can only play the default
| audio track. The former is no biggie but the latter completely
| breaks the feature for me (since the default audio track is
| usually English and not the language I'm learning). 7.
| Plex integration would make it even more useful.
|
| But overall, what an amazing tool.
| joshka wrote:
| Words per minute spoken - 120-150
|
| Words per minute read - 220-350
|
| When doing some other task side by side with consuming a movie
| with captions, the combination of reading and hearing allow a
| better comprehension than just one or the other. E.g. side tasks
| like reading twitter, playing a game, sending a text message.
| When captions replace the aural mode, this allows enough time to
| interleave attention (e.g. watching a movie while browsing TikTok
| on mute).
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I always have them on because I have audio processing issues. Due
| to ADHD and other problems, my brain can't process in real time.
| If I have difficulty understanding something, my brain stops
| hearing while I attempt to figure out what was said. My auditory
| memory has no buffering ability.
|
| If I'm reading, I'm both able to understand faster and reread if
| I need to.
| viburnum wrote:
| Same here. I'm also less like to reach for my phone if I have
| something to read on screen.
| ryandrake wrote:
| One more vote for terrible audio mixes and one for actors who
| mumble their dialog.
|
| Whenever I watch movies with my wife, we constantly have to
| fiddle with the remote control. The loud parts (including
| explosions and music) are too loud for her, so we have to turn
| the volume down during those parts, but the dialog is too quiet
| and mumbly for me to hear, so we turn the volume up during those
| parts. We now just keep the volume low and turn on subtitles--
| easy but shitty solution.
|
| Sound engineers need to stop needlessly flexing all that dynamic
| range that modern tools give them, and just produce a watchable
| movie. Actors need to go do some stage acting and learn how to e
| n u n c i a t e and project their voices.
| ISO-morphism wrote:
| Dynamic range compression is called different things on
| different platforms, "midnight mode", "reduce loud sounds", on
| Windows it's "loudness equalization".
| lisper wrote:
| I love how you wrote "enunciate". :-)
| deltasevennine wrote:
| >Actors need to go do some stage acting and learn how to e n u
| n c i a t e and project their voices.
|
| Hard disagree. I want realism. The sophistication of modern
| audiences is now so high that the level of enunciation and
| clarity in older movies now sounds comical to modern audiences.
| Believe it or not this old style speak you see in Older movies
| was Literally artificial and made for acting:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpv_IkO_ZBU
|
| Modern Audiences want realism. They want a certain level of
| believably that matches with reality. And a dialect
| artificially designed for "clarity" on radio just doesn't work.
|
| Clarity takes a hit in the name of realism... but who cares? I
| have closed captions for that. Literally I don't see what's
| wrong with it.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _The sophistication of modern audiences is now so high that
| the level of enunciation and clarity in older movies now
| sounds comical to modern audiences._
|
| My mind immediately went to that scene in idiocracy - "You
| talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded"
| deltasevennine wrote:
| That wasn't the intention. Watch the video. If anything old
| style talking in movies sounds _less_ intelligent and
| artificial.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| It's pretty clear to me that modern mumbling smarmy
| sarcasm is the low culture, and the Shakespearian trained
| actors of the past are high culture.
|
| It's just like with fashion. We may pretend that hoodies
| and patagonia vests are just as respectable as a 20th
| century suit, but if we see two photos side by side we
| deep down know who is better dressed.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| Not that far past. Did you even watch the video? I'm
| talking about the Mid-Atlantic accent not Shakespeare.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I feel the same way, it's strangely mixed. You look at movies
| that are 30 years old and the music is very quiet or in
| different bands than speech, very carefully done. You can still
| hear speech in Jurassic Park or The Matrix. A Marvel Movie?
| Good luck...
|
| Maybe it's a lost art. I have found that turning off subtitles
| and forcing myself to get used to their accents does improve my
| listening comprehension, but it's a much easier choice when you
| can't otherwise understand it just due to mixing.
|
| I don't know that it helps me focus, if anything I have to
| focus harder when they're talking so I can hope that their lips
| will be enough to figure it out. But it does mean that if I'm
| watching something in a place with roomates I can use a much
| lower volume and figure out what is going on by combining the
| text with the low SNR audio I hear.
|
| Listening at a low volume should mean better overall hearing
| over time too right? My default volume went from like -20dB to
| -45dB on the same system over the last decade, I think either
| I'm being polite to roomates or just more careful with my
| hearing.
| prmoustache wrote:
| who needs dialogs in a Marvel movie anyway? Isn'tthe whole
| point to watch people fight in pyjamas?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| EXPLOSIONS and _whispers_
| rokweom wrote:
| AFAIK, there's only one audio mix done with theaters in mind,
| and studios don't do separate mixes for home viewing. It's down
| to the distributor do make sure that the average home viewer
| gets a good experience. That's why it boggles my mind that big
| players like Netflix don't have any dynamic range compression
| and surround downmixing options in their settings. Also the way
| most TVs handle surround downmixing is straight up broken. I
| watch my movies from mkv files on a PC, so for me it's not a
| problem because there's tons of options available for that in
| players like mpv, VLC and MPC-HC, but I do feel bad for your
| average person that has no business knowing about this stuff.
| They should just have a simple DRC setting available with maybe
| 3 levels and a clear explanation of what it does.
| Klonoar wrote:
| There's an article that's been floating around that notes this
| phenomenon started after Nolan's movies became the style to
| emulate, and there are various sound engineers who state they
| would _like to do what you want_ but they have to produce what
| the paying entity asks for. Someone should feel free to link it
| here - I 'm mobile at the moment so can't dig it up.
|
| But anyway, I just wanted to jump in and say... all the time on
| this site we see programmers complaining about management/etc
| forcing things to happen that you don't want happening. Sound
| engineers may be in a similar boat here. ;P
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Wait it isn't because 5.1 became the norm for recording
| movies bust most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most? I
| thought that was the conventional wisedom.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes that was going to be my suggestion. I rarely have this
| issue with my own (5.1) system, which I also use a lot
| more, but often struggle on others' (TV speakers, or
| external but <5.1).
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| I don't think that's true. In fact movie producers are
| notorious for "phoning in" the 5.1 mixes for the streaming
| platforms, focusing most of their energy on the theatre mix
| with Dolby atmos and what not. Usually the 5.1 mix you get
| on netflix is hurriedly put together as an afterthought.
| OJFord wrote:
| That's basically the same point though - it's not that
| special attention is given to specifically 5.1, it's that
| a) more separate speakers helps in itself; b) it's
| primarily mixed for such a multi-separate-speaker system.
| novok wrote:
| I have a 5.0 system, and the dynamic range mumble voice +
| super loud explosion is still very present, even when I
| artificially boost the center channel. I think voices are
| actually better on a typical tv speaker 2.0 setup.
| zepearl wrote:
| I agree.
|
| In my case I had a huge problem with eg. the music in
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knives_Out being a lot
| louder then the rest (source blue ray).
|
| The only fix I found was to rip all tracks, apply
| normalization + compression filters to the audio tracks
| in Audacity, finally to repackage everything as MKV.
| jakzurr wrote:
| I'd buy more videos if they'd hire you to make alternate
| audio tracks.
| ncmncm wrote:
| That would be plausible except I miss much of the dialog
| in theaters, too.
|
| I am not a 20-something, but I always turn on subtitles.
| I never could make out most of song lyrics, either, with
| some exceptions. Most usually, only the chorus.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's honestly ridiculous how bad the stereo (aka what 99%
| of viewers will experience) mixes are.
|
| The explosions can be heard by my neighbors yet I can
| barely hear the dialogue at the same volume.
|
| Find myself basically doing half the mix work myself with
| the volume control. Too many audiophiles in the production
| chain focusing on something that barely matters at the
| expense of most viewers.
| mindslight wrote:
| What is your setup like? I feel like your comment better
| describes a problem with subwoofers. I've had plenty of
| enjoyment from bass throughout my life, but I still don't
| see the need for a sub anywhere near watching TV or
| movies. Never mind the related issue of highly-resonant
| perfunctory ones bundled with cheap consumer gear.
|
| Just the other day I was helping a relative who had
| gotten a soundbar because her TV's speakers broke. She
| was complaining the sound carried too far to other rooms.
| I found the equalizer settings and turned down "woofer"
| which seemed to help, but then I read the manual that it
| only applied to an external subwoofer so I was left
| wondering if it was the placebo effect. Turns out there
| was a wireless subwoofer placed some distance away. I
| showed her the equalizer settings if she wanted to turn
| it down even more, and told her she could also just
| unplug the subwoofer if she wanted. To her, the inclusion
| of that box was actually an anti-feature.
|
| And for other frequencies, I'd say middle-cost "prosumer"
| gear generally exacerbates dynamic range problems, being
| decent at low levels but distorted at higher levels. My
| Thinkpad speakers sound like crap all the time, and my
| receiver+speaker setup handles higher volumes without
| sounding louder due to distortion.
| leeter wrote:
| Theory: Because distribution companies for movies made
| having DTS/Dolby Atmos/Whatever mandatory in the theater,
| sound engineers primarily focus on that because that
| takes 99% of the time. Because theaters with just optical
| stereo (yes I'm aware most theaters use digital
| distribution and projectors now, that just hammers home
| the point) aren't really a thing any more they don't
| really bother optimizing it because "nobody will hear
| that anyway". Then when the film goes to home
| distribution the distribution company takes the automatic
| downmix that is the existing stereo track for the optical
| stereo on a print and use that because they don't want to
| second guess the sound engineers or the director.
|
| Long theory short: it's the same reason the Beatles mono
| album versions sound a ton better than the stereo
| versions, because that was the optimized version because
| that's what people listened too at the time. Sound
| engineers aren't being paid to optimize the stereo or
| even 5.1 versions of the audio, only the theater version
| in whatever multi-channel standard is popular at the
| moment, so they don't bother they let the standard
| downmix stand.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah but this is 2022 are there even movie theaters
| anymore? The box office sales are deep in the red and
| many theaters are going bankrupt. Most of What I watch
| are tv shows
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Yeah but this is 2022 are there even movie theaters
| anymore?
|
| My uninformed and probably stupid thoughts:
|
| Hollywood was doing some amazing movies in the 90ish
| (think Seven, The Matrix, Requiem for a Dream etc). It
| was a mix of new and established players that were
| allowed to innovate and be creative. Then Hollywood
| became more risk averse, I assume because sales were
| unpredictable and production companies wanted guarantees
| similar to other industries' large investments. So they
| started recycling ideas, produce sequels and trading IP
| rights for dudes in specifically colored spandex suits,
| which came with a guaranteed fanbase that would watch
| anything with the brand. This eventually became the MCU-
| type of crap where everything is a 4th wall joke packed
| with references to current events, leading to a shelf
| life less than a year and plots became an afterthought.
| The sales mindset went as far as putting stuff in the
| movie for the sake of producing a compelling trailer. At
| the same time TV was taking the Hollywood's lunch money,
| but for some reason they doubled down on the approach and
| blamed streaming for their failures.
|
| The issue isn't the format though, or that everyone has
| Netflix on their microwave display now. There are still
| great movies today, and if you get a chance to watch one
| in a good theatre it's a mesmerizing experience. Me and
| my partner watched The Joker, 1917 and Dune in Alamo
| Drafthouse (a theater that has zero-tolerance to
| texting/talking and serves food & drinks). It's an
| experience that trumps even great TV shows, when done
| right. It's just sad that it's so rare.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| People have been saying cinema is dying since Netflix
| took off. It's not true and still isn't true. Movies
| continue to set box office records.
|
| Covid caused a lot of smaller cinemas and chains high in
| debt to shut. But a lot of them are still going.
|
| Cinemas are pivoting more to the luxury experience rather
| than just being the place you watch new movies. So they
| will get bigger screens, better projectors, better audio,
| etc. It's already started near me.
| rdtwo wrote:
| I mean that works for the theater companies but itv
| doesn't really generate more revenue for studios. Their
| audience is shifting to the home experience
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Why is it similarly bad in TV and movies they always knew
| would be direct to streaming?
| orlp wrote:
| Begs the question: why not ship 2 mixes? Not like audio
| is a significant chunk of the data of a modern blu-ray
| movie.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I mean they do, I purposefully select stereo on Netflix,
| but I get the feeling the sound engineers don't change it
| and just hammer the 5.1 down in a way that sounds bad.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Can you recommend a good explanation of the different
| types, how they are recorded encoded etc.? From a naive
| sonar perspective it seems like two mics one on each side
| of a head sized camera would do fine for encoding all the
| angle information. But then you would have to register
| and apply that knowledge to each boom mic input, and
| synthesize it for every sound effect that wasn't there at
| recording. Tl;dr Why isnt two channels enough to generate
| the correct output for N speakers spread around me?
| lebuffon wrote:
| Left/right sound localization is partially a function of
| "shadow" created by the head. However more important to
| localization is the pinna, the outer ear. Sound enters
| the earhole directly AND reflects off the folds in the
| pinna. This causes complex comb filtering. (cancellation)
| Our brain learns how to correlate sound direction with
| these complex filterings. It's quite amazing.
|
| Some audio workstations (Logic) have "binaural"
| processing to try and emulate this effect. It can never
| be perfect because everyone's ears are shaped a little
| different.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Right, that is how _we_ do it. But isn 't all the phase
| information present in two channels of audio to know how
| to map all the signals to an arbitrary number of angles?
| You'd need to know the spacing of the mics, but that
| could be a standard.
|
| About the pinna, a fun way to demonstrate this is to have
| someone close their eyes, then you snap or jangle keys at
| various locations and have them point. Then tape their
| ears to their head and repeat. They will be way off in
| the vertical. We can do left right-ish (with coning
| error) without the outer ear. But up down is impossible.
| lebuffon wrote:
| No. The phase differences for FULL localization are not
| in the incident sound. (There are phase and amplitude
| differences for left/right only)
|
| 3D phase changes occur and create comb filters at you ear
| and your ear is unique to you.
|
| This is why Kunstkopf(dummy head) recordings were never
| as successful as anticipated.
| imgabe wrote:
| Would it not be possible to have multiple audio mixes
| available and play the one that is appropriate for your
| setup?
| vel0city wrote:
| This is the idea of Atmos. They deliver the source with
| an absurd number of channels. Your local player knows
| your room and speaker arrangement (from setup tuning
| ahead of time) and remaps the stupid number of channels
| into the right playback based on the equipment available.
| Got 20 speakers all around the room? Cool. Have a 5.1
| setup? No problem. Just have the stereo speakers on your
| TV? Supposedly, no problem.
|
| Whether they actually achieved that depends a lot on your
| equipment and its tuning.
| izacus wrote:
| Atmos doesn't have channels - it has played tracks with
| their 3d location encoded to the receiver can convert it
| into the correct channel setup.
|
| It's fundamentally different from the "static" channel
| mixes we had before.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Yes, but audio tracks used to take up valuable space on
| physical media, so you might indeed sometimes find
| distinct 5.1 and 2.0 tracks, but usually for the main
| language only. And of course this duplication is one of
| the first things pirate releases do away with, in order
| to reduce the final file size, so you won't find them on
| most mainstream scene releases either.
| Too wrote:
| Yes, on Netflix you can choose. Choosing the stereo mix
| does offer a significant improvement on hearing dialogue.
| Regrettably, it has no idea of sensible default or even
| choice of default, so it always goes to 5.1 even if your
| setup doesn't have it.
| eastbound wrote:
| It's a form of product advertising: "You should hear
| Steve's 5.1 system, he can hear the movie properly, the
| sound is so great!", "He also has a 1:500000 contrast ratio
| so he can see faces on his screen that we can't see on our
| pitch-dark screens. He can actually see the orcs on LOTR!"
|
| And when half the consumers will be done with this upgrade,
| we'll invent something new.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| At least Dolby Digital takes the scenario into account,
| applying dynamic range control on 5.1 downmixing. Be sure
| to set the DD decoder to RF mode (as opposed to line mode)
| to adapt the range for stereo.
|
| With DTS there's no such feature that I know of. Depending
| on the setup, though, I guess one could always tweak the
| mix coefficients (privileging the center channel, where
| most of the voices should end up) and apply a DRC effect
| somewhere on the audio chain. TVs and receivers sometimes
| have this last bit built in and exposed as "night mode".
| epistasis wrote:
| It's hard to believe that TVs are still so buggy that they
| would intentionally play 5.1 in an unusable way on regular
| TVs.
|
| Of all the ways to deal with the situation, just adding up
| all the channels equally and dumping them out has to be the
| stupidest. It's ruined so many people's experiences over
| the years.
| zaroth wrote:
| There's been a bug for years in the Apple TV VLC app
| where it plays the audio channels _on the wrong
| speakers_.
|
| Center channel ends up on back right or something totally
| ridiculous. There's an open issue on the bug tracker.
| It's wild.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; playing 5.1 mixes on stereo equipment make the side
| and back channels too loud and the center channel too
| quiet.
|
| Also, it is now fashionable for actors to mumble.
|
| I'm reasonably sure I am not going deaf, since I have no
| problem following audio fiction podcasts with the windows
| down in my car during my commute.
| copperx wrote:
| > Yeah; playing 5.1 mixes on stereo equipment make the
| side and back channels too loud and the center channel
| too quiet.
|
| I thought the equipment selected the stereo mix (or did a
| perfectly compatible mixdown) when playing back a 5.1 mix
| in a stereo system. Is that not what happens? If it
| isn't, is it because user error?
| Sholmesy wrote:
| Not a sound guy, and have struggled for a while w/ this
| for my plex setup @ home, so grain of salt.
|
| If there's not a separate track for e.g 2.0, then the
| mixing down from 5.1 -> 2.0 will not have a human who
| validates the output. An automatic conversion can't
| accurately confirm that "this is legible for human ears
| at the right levels"
| zbuf wrote:
| The conversion isn't so much as "automatic" or
| opinionated, but clearly defined in a spec. And it _is_
| mathematically correct in terms of sound energy entering
| the ears. A device may be doing the conversion
| incorrectly of course.
|
| But there is still an omission, which is the introduction
| of the centre speaker was (as I understand it) to "pin"
| dialogue to the screen more effectively. That implies
| there _is_ some physical phenomenon takes place (eg.
| phasing/interference) which is not compensated for in the
| spec.
|
| My own system is set up to deliberately boost the centre
| channel in the mix and it does help a lot, however I'm
| interested to know how to define this amount of
| compensation in terms of an actual physics or acoustics
| phenomenon.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| The relevant phenomena are known as localization and the
| cocktail party effect. If you put a microphone in the
| middle of a cacophonous cocktail party, it would be hard
| to follow any given conversation by listening to just
| that one combined signal. But if you're actually there,
| your brain can hone in on any of several conversations.
|
| Having dialog in a center speaker means it comes from a
| different location than the music/fx, so it's easy to
| hone in on it even if it's a little quieter than the
| music/fx. Having dialog in the same speakers as music/fx
| makes it much harder. The specified 5.1 to 2.x mixdown
| ratios might be good or might be inadequate depending on
| how correlated the original left track is with the
| original right track. A ridiculously loud blast only on
| the 5.1 left means your brain can hear dialog from your
| 2.1 right unimpeded. A medium volume explosion on the 5.1
| left and right (but not center!) leaves you with no 2.1
| speaker producing dialog without it being masked by the
| explosion, especially if the explosion sound is mono-ish.
| noasaservice wrote:
| > The relevant phenomena are known as localization and
| the cocktail party effect. If you put a microphone in the
| middle of a cacophonous cocktail party, it would be hard
| to follow any given conversation by listening to just
| that one combined signal. But if you're actually there,
| your brain can hone in on any of several conversations.
|
| That's because a human is not 1 microphone. It's 2
| microphones, with a known distance between the 2, which
| allows realtime 3d positioning and isolation of sound to
| an area.
|
| The open source hardware "ReSpeaker" allows to start
| experimenting how a microphone array works, including why
| the cocktail party effect doesn't really affect us in
| most cases.
|
| The notable exception is if there's a signal that is
| generated perfectly on the plane perpendicular to the 2
| ears. Then, humans have a hard time localizing it between
| front or back (180deg swap). We can still get an angular
| vector where the sound is. However simply turning your
| head removes this constraint exception.
|
| (Also bring able to your your head and move your body
| also shows a visual-acoustic SLAM algorithm going on in
| your brain.)
| lebuffon wrote:
| 1. "That's because a human is not 1 microphone." true 2.
| "It's 2 microphones, with a known distance between the 2"
| 3. "which allows realtime 3d positioning and isolation of
| sound to an area"
|
| #3 does not follow from statement #2.
|
| The missing element is that 3D localization is due to the
| pinna.
|
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.1967.
| 005...
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I have a 3.1 set-up with the center boosted by the
| maximum amount allowable. Will eventually upgrade to 5.1
| once the kids are old enough to not climb on the rear
| speakers.
| derefr wrote:
| > Also, it is now fashionable for actors to mumble.
|
| Why does it matter that actors are mumbling, though?
| Don't most lines in Hollywood movies (that aren't already
| recorded on a soundstage with a boom mic inches from the
| actor's face) get ADRed these days?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If the actor's intention is to mumble instead of
| enunciatiting clearly (presumably because of some notion
| of authenticity), then they will also mumble the studio
| takes. It's not a problem of sound volume/background
| noise, which ADR can fix, it's a problem of style over
| ease of understanding the dialogue. This mirrors the
| problem of TV series sometimes becoming too dark to
| easily follow the action on a TV screen in usual
| conditions (infamously so in the Long Night episode of
| Game of Thrones).
| rdtwo wrote:
| The mandolorian is so dark my iPad has issues with not
| enough dynamic range. I think they shoot that way too
| cover bad cg
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Those scenes look amazing on good TVs. Making bad screens
| show them well seems like a problem for the producers of
| bad screens to solve.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 99.9% of the audience will strain to see what is going
| on, but let's blame their screen buying acumen (and their
| viewing practices - even the best screen will not make
| those scenes easily watchable in a sunny room, which is
| how most people watch TV) instead of making them actually
| watchable.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| What part of "seems like a problem for the producers of
| bad screens to solve" makes it seem like this is blaming
| the people who buy the screens and not the people that
| make the screens.
|
| Don't make the art worse, hold the manufacturers
| accountable for selling terrible products.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Don't make the art worse, hold the manufacturers
| accountable for selling terrible products.
|
| A big part of this is the viewing conditions. The best
| screen in the world will not make a dark scene watchable
| in a bright sunny room. And lots of people watch TV in
| bright sunny rooms.
|
| Also, better screens = more money. A lot of the time,
| people just bought a cheap screen, and they would still
| like to know what happens in the series or movies they
| watch.
|
| I am absolutely for quality interesting dark scenes in
| cinema, where both the screen and viewing conditions are
| normalized. But TV is not the same (and HBO and Netflix
| are TV).
| dmitriid wrote:
| Art _is_ worse though. From intangible sludge
| https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-
| gray-d... to modern DPs and directors not being able to
| film a dark scene competently
| https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1564633641828884483
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| > colors, what happened to them?
|
| Did movies and TV copy video games' Real Is Brown trope?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| James Stephanie Sterling did a video a long time ago
| (which I currently cannot find) about "the best game for
| your HD TV" and concluded (IIRC) that it was Viva Pinata
| because of the ludicrous colourfulness of the game which
| really showed off the power of HD TVs. Contrasted with
| the "intangible sludge" of the Dooms, Quakes, etc.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Now I have the urge to play that and Guacamele will n myy
| brand new OLED :)
| watwut wrote:
| The screens and sound setups are fine. The movies are bad
| products here.
| hedora wrote:
| By "good TV" do you mean one that is stuck in demo mode
| with blown out saturation and gamma?
| knorker wrote:
| On good TVs under perfect lighting conditions only.
|
| Try watching handmaid's tale without blackout blinds.
| jldl805 wrote:
| You're 100% correct and also brave for saying it out loud
| on the internet. Prepare for gnashing of teeth from
| people with subpar picture quality.
| novok wrote:
| Dark scenes tend to look better on bad TVs because they
| tend to brighten everything too much with LCD bloom. I
| feel like it's an opposite problem with OLEDs, they're
| the one with scenes that are too dark.
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| So it's similar to when a developer great an Electron app
| that works great on a 24 core machine with 32GB of RAM.
| It's not going to be great unless we're forced to test it
| on the average dual core laptop with 4GB of RAM?
| jader201 wrote:
| > _most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most_
|
| Wait, is this true? I've always thought I was in the
| minority for "still" having "just" 2.0. I've been needing
| to upgrade my receiver for a while, but mostly putting it
| off since I can't find a decent 2.0 one with a good number
| of inputs. Almost every receiver is (5+2n).1 these days
| (where n >= 0).
|
| I feel so behind the times in my simple 2.0 system, even
| though I think it sounds better than almost any other setup
| I've heard -- and my speakers are probably 30 years old!
|
| So I really don't care if I'm behind the times, but would
| still be nice to find someone produce a first-class 2.0
| receiver.
| vel0city wrote:
| A massive number of people don't have anything other than
| the speakers included in their TV. The next massive
| percentage of people maybe have a sound bar, _maybe_ with
| an included subwoofer.
|
| A tiny, minuscule, microscopic percentage of consumers
| will have an external receiver. Maybe they'll have 5.1 on
| that. Maybe they'll have 9.2. An extremely small
| fraction, practically a rounding error, will have higher
| than that.
|
| Most of my extended family is decently well off in the
| US. Among a dozen or so households, I'm one of I think
| two with an actual receiver, and I've only got a 5.1
| setup. A few have a sound bar on their fancy movie
| watching setup. Most of my friends rely on the included
| speakers on their TVs. Its just not a priority for a lot
| of people, even people with enough income to afford
| vacation homes and boats and what not.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That pretty much sums it up. I wouldn't even be surprised
| if the percentage of households with anything over 2.0
| has dropped in the past two decades.
|
| Of those people with an external receiver, a significant
| percentage will deliberately have a stereo setup, often
| used for listening to music. Good speakers, but no
| surround sound.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I used to watch movies on an absurdly excessive 3000-watt
| sound system, equipped with dual 18" subwoofers... but I
| never bothered to get a surround decoder.
| zaroth wrote:
| What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap
| and easy to setup.
|
| Of course that's far from the truth, but good sound is so
| worth it! Being able to truly enjoy music, movies, we
| live in an incredible era for content, video is regularly
| available in 4K and people can play that!
|
| Why is sound stuck so far behind?
| adrianN wrote:
| I watch movies for the story. 480p and my laptop speakers
| are enough for that. I enjoyed movies just the same when
| they were 700mb DivX with 128kps mp3 sound.
| elteto wrote:
| It's an audiovisual art, it's way more than just the
| story.
|
| Have you seen Barry Lyndon in a 4K OLED TV? You should.
| badpun wrote:
| Yep, same here. Most of the movies which depend on
| "immersion" are just horrible. It doesn't matter if the
| dinosaur in "Jurrasic World Dominion" sounds realistic if
| I already want to quit the movie after seeing the first
| 10 minutes.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > and easy to setup.
|
| We all know this isn't gonna be true. Just another thing
| to faff about with that will stop working and have to be
| reset.
|
| Even the effort of finding how to place it around my
| furniture doesn't seem worth the effort to hear sound
| from different directions.
| paganel wrote:
| > What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap
| and easy to setup.
|
| It takes up space that some of us honestly don't have,
| especially people living in city apartments (like I do).
|
| And I used to have a separate sound system at a past
| place, some many years ago, I don't think I'd be able to
| set it up again, it felt like black magic to set it up
| back then, it will surely feel the same (and more) now.
| stuaxo wrote:
| It's a pain though, you have to take the time to setup
| the extra speakers, cable them and etc and have the space
| to do this, and of course the extra expense.
|
| Yes, it's cheap to some software developer on HN, but if
| you are on an average income it's harder to justify.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think our auditory system just isn't great. Compressed
| formats with bitrate of 320kbps is borderline
| indistinguishable from raw formats in audio, while it
| will be borderline unbearable in video.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| That's a really insightful way of putting it. My first
| reaction was, 'well, duh...', but then I realized that
| I'd taken for granted the fact that digital video of
| (arbitrarily defined) adequate quality must have a much
| higher information rate than audio of the same. But
| surely there are animals for which the opposite is true!
| michaelt wrote:
| Speaking as someone with a 5.1 system they haven't set
| up:
|
| Getting the rear speakers' cables installed into your
| walls is expensive, and requires you own your home.
|
| Getting a room large enough you can get several guests
| between the speakers without some of them ending up much
| closer to the speakers than others is even moreso.
| rocqua wrote:
| One big downside of 5.1 is that you now have 6 speakers
| to place all around you. Depending on the room and
| layout, that can be hard to impossible to do without
| looking ugly, or even to do at all.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Why is sound stuck so far behind?
|
| I know people who have as their primary method of
| watching movies and TV is on an iPad.
|
| Its not that the tech is stuck so far behind, its a
| matter of priorities. They just don't care to invest the
| time/space/effort/money into a fancy sound system. Not
| even always that they _couldn 't_, just that they don't
| bother doing so. Sure, many could easily afford a fancy
| sound system. But they don't care enough to bother
| figuring out what to buy, figuring out how to connect it
| all together, going through the whole effort of making
| sure to use the _right_ remote to get the sound working
| right, etc. They just want to press play on the one
| device when they feel like watching a movie, even if its
| not _the best experience possible_.
|
| I know a few couples who do own a nice sound system. One
| partner never bothers to turn on the receiver or use any
| of the extra devices, they'll just use the built-in apps
| on the TV and turn the TV speakers up instead of
| bothering to turn on the fancy sound system _already
| plugged in and otherwise ready to go_. Its just not worth
| it to them to figure it out, so they don 't bother using
| it.
| rane wrote:
| I upgraded my receiver and TV recently and it was a
| pleasant surprise that Apple TV remote now switches the
| receiver on and off automatically so the setup really
| requires no tech awareness to use.
| Izkata wrote:
| Mine's on my laptop with headphones. I don't even have a
| TV, let alone a fancy sound system setup (and have no
| clue what those numbers everyone's throwing around even
| refer to).
| vel0city wrote:
| And that's perfectly fine, don't get me wrong. If that
| gets you enjoyment from the media you watch, that's
| great. You definitely don't need a fancy theater room to
| be happy.
|
| And honestly if it's a nice laptop and a good pair of
| headphones you're probably ahead of a lot of people
| watching on a cheap TV with built in speakers. Once
| again, not that it truly matters.
| OJFord wrote:
| X.Y (e.g. 5.1) means X wide range speakers and Y
| subwoofers. You also sometimes see it like S/T.Y where
| S+T = X, and it refers to front/surround speakers.
|
| There are standard values and configurations, such as 2.0
| (aka stereo) both at the front, 2.1, 3.1 adds a centre
| channel mostly for on-screen dialogue positioned close to
| screen, 5.1 (3/2.1) adds a second stereo pair behind you,
| 7.1 - adds an extra surround stereo pair between the
| others, etc.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| For real enthusiasts, also X.Y.Z, adding ceiling/bounce
| speakers for vertical spatial audio.
|
| The real "stuck so far behind" that I don't get is why we
| use speaker arrays at all -- instead of binaural stereo
| tech. That virtual haircut demo, apparently from the
| 90s,[0] sounds _incredible_ on my cheap headphones, yet
| the technology seems to have gone nowhere since. Is there
| even spatial audio in VR setups?
|
| If the difficulty is in simulating the head/ears, then
| existing spatial recordings can at least be converted
| using a binaural microphone in a surround sound setup,
| no? Though, I guess with headphones any visceral
| sensation of bass is still lost, so you'd need to keep
| the subwoofer or a seat shaker.
|
| 0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
| vel0city wrote:
| Binaural audio starts to really fall apart when you don't
| have the sound _exactly_ as the microphone setup was.
| Moving the speakers even a couple of feet away, and then
| not having them _exactly_ lines up with your ears, it
| ruins the effect.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I don't much about audio, but wouldn't binaural stereo
| only work if the two speakers are to the sides of you,
| like with headphones? Would this work from a TV that's an
| ambiguous distance in front of you?
|
| As a side note, Windows (and Xbox) support Windows Sonic,
| Dolby Atmos for Headphones, and DTS:X, all of which
| simulate spatial audio for headphones. It'll simulate a
| 5.1 (and 7.1?) setup through the headphones. Some games
| have spatial audio simulation built-in as well, such as
| Elite Dangerous. I believe UE5 also has a spatial audio
| engine. Finally, I believe PlayStation emphasized spatial
| audio for the PS5, but I don't really know the details of
| that.
| branon wrote:
| Wondered this too. That video along with the millions of
| ASMR videos on YouTube have very nice binaural stereo
| sound, but I don't see this being done anywhere else.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think it only works/is a lot easier with
| head/earphones? Since you know exactly where the ears are
| w.r.t. the speakers in that case.
|
| Not that that's really an explanation - if that was the
| best sound and it was available on Blu-rays and streaming
| platforms, and legacy 5.1 content upmixed nicely, then
| yeah why wouldn't I use headphones even at home in front
| of the television. Less obvious for joint/family viewing
| I suppose.
| treve wrote:
| In my case I have a great receiver, but only 2 speakers.
| To get surround I'll need to put speakers in places that
| get in the way and run cables in place where I don't want
| to see them.
| avereveard wrote:
| Well for one I'm not going to run cables everywhere and
| the other solutions have their faults: wireless satellite
| lag sound, and still need a power cable; battery operated
| satellites require constant maintenance.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, unfortunately, my old 5.1 surround system of my
| bachelor days fails the "wife test." Currently, to get
| all the channels the sound mixers give you, you need 6
| ugly black boxes with speakers in them spread around your
| living room and another big black box receiver. And all
| the speaker wire everywhere. Yuck! Even if you hide the
| wires in the wall and use ceiling mounted speakers it's
| still intrusive and ugly.
| wazoox wrote:
| And among those with a 5.1 setup, most have the speakers
| placed haphazardly around the room and not at all as
| required for a correct rendering.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| I'm with you. After having a nice 5.1 system 20 years
| ago, and a space set up for it, I now have fallen back to
| nice 2.0 or 2.1 systems.
|
| Decent amp with a DAC to some quality speakers and a sub
| and poof: really great audio in a simple system that
| doesn't require running wires everywhere.
|
| With the advent of cheap, decent, small single-channel
| amps it's really easy to do something like Apple TV ->
| HDMI -> TV -> TOSLINK -> Amp -> Speakers and be done with
| it. (I know I could go Apple TV right to the Amp, but
| passing it through the TV mitigates image-audio delay.)
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| The 5.1 vs 2.0 is a bit of a red herring, it used to be a
| big problem a decade or two ago, but today it is just a
| small to insignificant contributor to the problem.
|
| The real problem now a days is not technical, it is 100%
| director's choice. Having deafening "wooooon" organ music,
| and ear popping explosions is simply in vogue, so all
| directors want that in their movie, and mix like that on
| purpose.
|
| And it is not about theatrical mix vs home mix either. The
| cinema experience also changed with this latest mixing
| trend, watching a modern movie in the cinema also became
| uncomfortable with much louder explosions/music/"wooon"
| than two decades ago. (To the point where I'm considering
| using ear protection if ever going back to a cinema).
|
| This is 100% a manufactured problem created on purpose by
| misguided (sound) directors.
| leephillips wrote:
| I've been using ear protection in my ears at the movies
| for decades. They're just too loud.
| dijit wrote:
| That used to be the problem.
|
| It became less of a problem because 5.1 became a lot more
| common and TVs are smarter about muxing 5.1 into 2.1 than
| they used to be.
|
| But something changed in the last ten years and having a
| real 5.1 setup (like I have) isn't helping anymore.
| YokoZar wrote:
| I've noticed some streaming platforms (eg Paramount Plus)
| occasionally fail to make use of the center speaker
| entirely when supposedly in 5.1; this makes the dialog
| nearly inaudible. I only get this issue with some content
| sources, and forcing the mixer into stereo mode alleviates
| the problem.
|
| There are almost surely a whole host of bugs just
| outputting in the format the user has, never mind mixing
| issues, copyright protection, and similar.
| copperx wrote:
| I would like to believe that, except that the dialog is
| almost always too quiet in a movie theater.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, I enjoyed watching Dune at home more than in the
| theater because I could turn on the captioning.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| Exactly, I saw Tenet at the cinema I really couldn't
| understand the dialog.
| omwow wrote:
| I think this is the article you mentioned:
| https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/03/tenet-
| dialogue-...
| Klonoar wrote:
| Thank you!
| JadoJodo wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29417309
| jclardy wrote:
| I had this issue recently watching Rings of Power, so much so
| that I have to keep the remote nearby to change every few
| minutes. Dialogue volume is so low you have to turn it up,
| then action scenes happen and the house is shaking.
| distances wrote:
| I have also been doing this for years already. I only watch
| with subtitles -- no subtitles, no movie -- but I still
| like the dialogue to be audible without explosions
| bothering my neighbours.
| azemetre wrote:
| One of the reasons why I bought an Apple TV was the
| ability to pair it with my airpods. Makes is super
| convenient to hear everything if you live in an
| apartment, also some shows take advantage of the spatial
| audio which is neat if you don't have a proper sound
| setup.
|
| I still turn on subtitles tho. On that front I've been
| noticing some subtitles will not match the english
| dialogue at all. This is noticeable on the Netflix shows
| Cyberpunk Edgerunners and Aggretsuko. I'm guessing these
| shows had their scripts written in non-english languages
| and that was what the translation teams worked with.
|
| I don't remember the exact lines but I do remember them
| different enough where you can tell the translations were
| "strict" whereas the dialogue was more "natural" sounding
| if that makes sense.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Roku has that feature; you can enable remote listening
| via the app and pipe sound to your earphones.
| azemetre wrote:
| Good to know! I love this feature a lot and only thought
| apple did it. Does it also work for game consoles too?
| Like playing switch on the tv but feeling audio to your
| earphones?
| jessaustin wrote:
| There are also separate devices that take an audio feed
| from the TV/monitor and feed it to (multiple) bluetooth
| earbuds. Very nice for viewing after the rest of the
| family has gone to bed.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > some subtitles will not match the english dialogue at
| all
|
| I have the same issues when watching shows and movies
| translated into German. Trying to improve my level of the
| language, but with both the dubbed soundtrack and the
| subs turned on almost every line of dialogue differs
| between the two. I assume it's because the subtitles
| generally reflect the original script very closely but
| the dubbed version requires more rewriting to match the
| sounds to the lips.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Interstellar is unwatchable to me because of the sound. It is
| literally painful.
| bckr wrote:
| Does your TV have dynamic range normalization (may be called
| "sound leveling" in the menu)?
| Covzire wrote:
| I've never seen an implementation of that that actually did
| what it claimed, even on a modestly high end Denon receiver
| it just ends up making all audio sound harsh.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| After watching The Boys season 3 I thought I was losing my
| listening comprehension of English. Glad to hear even native
| speakers struggle with modern movies. Karl Urban is great, but
| he just grumbles into his beard.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I have the same issue but instead of using subtitles I've
| embraced not knowing what's going on with the show. If it was
| important that I know for my enjoyment then I'm probably not
| watching the show anymore. Like if what the actor said was
| unintelligible I'm going to go with that's part of the plot, a
| puzzle for me to figure out on the show subreddit or something,
| but I'm not going to deal with the shitty blinding subtitles
| some shows display on blinding white over pitch OLED black,
| it's impossible.
| Dreami wrote:
| Just for reference: if you need Subtitles on an OLED, e.g. on
| Netflix you can set the subtitles to grey (only in the Web
| app, but is used on all other apps). Had that same problem
| with the OLED
| lawkwok wrote:
| That's how I watch movies in general. Maybe it's a symptom of
| ADHD or lack of interest but I find it hard to remember
| people's names and plot reveals that require me to remember
| to specific locations or details. I just watch movies and
| enjoy them "generally".
| coliveira wrote:
| I do some of that, because I'm bad with remembering names.
| If the plot involves talking about someone, I just learned
| to ignore it and consider non-important.
| sph wrote:
| I hate that feeling. Not knowing if the name they just
| mentioned is someone important I forgot about or the
| director is going for a convoluted timeline and they are
| talking about someone we haven't seen yet.
|
| I have better things to do than watch movies with the risk
| of not understanding them. It's like saying to read a book
| "generally." What a waste of time.
|
| But it also depends on the genre. If you're a fan of
| blockbuster action movies, most dialogue is unimportant
| anyway. If you enjoy drama or more artsy movies, you
| probably need to follow what's going on.
| least wrote:
| The Apple TV has a setting called "reduce loud sounds" which
| helps with this problem. I'm sure you can find it on other
| devices too. My Sony TV also has a sound setting for enhanced
| dialogue which might help as well.
|
| Can't really help with the actors thing, though I think I'd
| rather characters that are truer to life than sound like
| they're acting on stage, personally.
| Too wrote:
| That option actually works great for resurrecting the speech
| in a movie, but makes all the music utterly flat and boring.
| With this option on you might as well throw out your
| expensive speaker setup and use the built in TV speaker.
|
| If only there was a hotkey to toggle it on and off, instead
| of hidden 4 levels down the touch-and-swipe menu.
| bhj wrote:
| Even better would be for the compressor/limiter to detect
| whether the source is music, dialogue or explosion and
| adjust its parameters accordingly. Come on Apple, make it
| smarter!
| saalweachter wrote:
| Or movies could have separate audio tracks and volume
| sliders for dialog, sound effects and music, like a game
| from the year 2000.
| ekianjo wrote:
| so you have people in real life that emit slurred
| intelligible sounds instead of speaking properly? that sounds
| terrible.
| least wrote:
| I'm one of those people that mumble and/or struggle with
| speaking in real life, so I'm probably placing that burden
| more on other people than the other way around.
|
| I just find that stage acting sounds very unnatural. So do
| news anchors and you will find the same sort of unnatural
| voice in older classic films. No one talks like that in
| real life so of course it's something that is going to
| detach the tv show or movie I'm watching from reality if
| they speak like that. Does that make it impossible for me
| to enjoy the classics? No, but they pretty much never pull
| me into the story in a way that makes me forget for a
| second that they're actors doing a performance.
| bbarnett wrote:
| When you are sitting at home, with perhaps a friend on
| your couch, do they constantly say "What?"
|
| Or, if standing with a few people you know outside, is
| every sentence you speak replied to with a request to
| repeat yourself?
|
| I bet not. Maybe it happens sometimes, but my point is,
| being able to understand what someone says, regardless of
| how they say it, is the key part here.
|
| Yet it sounds as if you believe most people are barely
| understandable? Including yourself?
|
| And for example, listening to much of the dialog out
| there, the Picard reference. The guy is in command of the
| flagship of a fleet, in the military, and would not be in
| command, in that position, if there was any inability to
| clearly issue orders, and to communicate fluently.
|
| Beyond that, many of the characters we watch in media,
| are top tier of their professions, even if that
| profession is 'thief'.
|
| A CEO? An ex-world class military retiree? Someone
| working in upper management of the NSA? These people will
| be heard.
|
| There are indeed roles featuring the "regular person",
| but if you mumble, if you define your speach style as
| mumbling, that means you employ the word "mumble" to
| differentiate you, from how most people speak.
|
| Otherwise you wouldn't be mumbling, you'd just be
| speakkng.
|
| So that all said, I think your assertion is unfair.
| least wrote:
| The person I originally responded to was basically
| calling for actors to homogenize their speech in order to
| make them easier to understand. I disagree with this
| notion because I think that both altering how you
| enunciate things and how you "project" your voice alter
| them drastically and are not realistic for everyone to
| speak that way. They are inherently inauthentic,
| especially if you consider the speech patterns of various
| English accents and dialects. Certain accents are
| intrinsically linked to "mumbling." Certain types of
| voices are inherently not projected.
|
| A great example is this video of Baltimoreans attempting
| to say "Aaron earned an iron urn." [1] The same person
| says it how they would naturally and with "proper"
| enunciation. With "proper" enunciation he was very easy
| to understand, but it was also not authentic to how he
| actually speaks.
|
| > Beyond that, many of the characters we watch in media,
| are top tier of their professions, even if that
| profession is 'thief'.
|
| Yes, but there's just as many, if not more, that aren't.
| I'm not saying it's unrealistic for say, a CEO or a news
| reporter to have adapted a "General American" accent. I
| don't think it's weird for even most characters to have
| an accent that is very understandable to most Americans.
| I just don't think you can or should expect that actors
| always speak in a certain way just to make it
| understandable to the most amount of Americans.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Oj7a-p4psRA
| adastra22 wrote:
| Cheap hack for most setups is to boost the center speaker.
| Usually that's just used for dialogue.
| bhj wrote:
| > The Apple TV has a setting called "reduce loud sounds"
|
| This does help, but at some point Apple increased the
| compressor's release time so that it's far too quiet even
| 10-15s after the loud transient. I wish they would make it
| behave more like a brickwall limiter.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I had noticed that it had changed but wasn't sure what
| exactly the change was. Yes, far too quiet 10-15s after the
| loud transient is exactly why I ended up having to disable
| it.
|
| Before that it worked perfectly and better than my Denon
| receiver :(
| ace2358 wrote:
| I've definitely noticed this change but couldn't pick when
| exactly it happened. Super annoying because sometimes I
| start changing the volume then it starts changing the
| volume...
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I think I'd rather characters that are truer to life than
| sound like they're acting on stage, personally.
|
| You can have both though. A great example is Patrick Stewart
| as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
| He's never mumbled a line in his life and you can understand
| everything he says during quiet dialog. You can be true to
| life, quiet AND understandable.
| kirbys-memeteam wrote:
| vel0city wrote:
| > He's never mumbled a line in his life and you can
| understand everything he says during quiet dialog. You can
| be true to life, quiet AND understandable.
|
| Its almost all about projection. You can come across as a
| "quiet" speaker and still manage to be heard when you're
| projecting and enunciating properly. Projecting isn't about
| being loud, its about being heard.
|
| I have a tendency to mumble a lot when I'm not thinking
| about it. Thinking about projecting my voice brings things
| across better, and its not really all about being louder.
| least wrote:
| Jean-Luc Picard _is_ quite intelligible even when he is
| soft spoken like you said. There 's quite a few reasons for
| this. One is obvious. Patrick Stewart is a shakespearean
| actor so he learned how to speak in such a way. The other
| thing is his accent. It's an accent that lends itself well
| to intelligibility. Pidgin or Mountain talk or bayou
| certainly do not if you want something credible or
| authentic, for example. Thirdly, the character Jean-Luc
| Picard is one who has always carried himself properly and
| with dignity, so a voice that is loud and properly
| enunciated matches him perfectly.
|
| I think that you can have both, but you can't _always_ have
| both. Because it doesn 't always make sense to.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I do think Stewart's stage training shines through quite a
| lot. He does dial it back, but his performance is hardly
| realistic. (I'd also note how important recurring locations
| are even set up like a stage -- open with a clear
| unobstructed focus point for action to happen in; the
| bridge, ten forward and engineering especially notable).
|
| On the other hand, I'm not sure what hyper-realism would
| contribute to something like Star Trek. The show
| confidently embraces the fact that it's basically a bunch
| of fairy tales for nerds. That's what allows it to be as
| great as it is.
|
| Not everything needs to be The Wire (even though that was
| great too, if you enabled subtitles).
| samatman wrote:
| Wow I don't agree at all (haven't seen the latest series,
| talking about TNG and the movies).
|
| But, if I hadn't seen _maybe two_ episodes, I might have
| the same impression.
|
| How often do you see Captain (!) Picard out of uniform?
| The character of Picard-as-officer is constantly on
| stage, he's the master and commander of an entire
| starship!
|
| Second most often, we see him on the Holodeck, where he's
| playing a captain playing an actor playing a role! Of
| course he chews the scenery there.
|
| But when we see Jean-Luc, the civilian, something
| changes. All the Royal Shakespeare is invisible, he's an
| old man who carries a great burden, and has put it down
| for just a moment.
|
| Patrick Steward is very, very good at what he does.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I don't deny he has range, but at the same time, it's
| hard to get way from the fact he is a stage actor playing
| a character that sounds and acts like a stage actor in
| almost every scene. He fits the role like a glove, and
| the role makes a lot of sense in the show (his dignity
| and gravitas is something that is arguably missing in the
| reboots and new takes on the show).
| jakzurr wrote:
| _... it 's basically a bunch of fairy tales for nerds._
|
| omg that's embarrassing, but I guess it's true
| zh3 wrote:
| I recall an episode where it's all going to hell due to the
| holodeck, and Picard asks what happened. Geordie, I think,
| explains they asked the holodeck to create a character that
| could outsmart Data...at which point Picard lowers his head
| into his hands and mumbles "Merde!" (pretty clear, despite
| the mumble).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Agreed. Background levels higher than dialog are a chronic
| problem. Actors turned away from the camera, so you don't get
| any facial cues. Yelled or hurried or mumbled lines, which
| don't get re-shot because, cost.
|
| Add all that to the usual nodding actors - they don't
| understand what they're supposed to be feeling so they just nod
| as they talk. Sorry to call that out, now you will never be
| able to un-see it again.
|
| And whispering as a substitute for emotion! What the hell?
| Character is supposed to be feeling intense emotion, so the
| actor whispers. The director should slap them every time, and
| re-shoot.
| Seanambers wrote:
| I totally agree.
|
| The sound mixes today are so far off a pleasant experience that
| the people who do make them should feel ashamed - How do many
| actually have a home cinema room with soundproofing and 20
| speakers ?
|
| Most people watch movies with a headset / a TV / 2.1 / 5.1
| surround system and they may even be limited by other factors
| like neighbours and you know real life..
|
| And the the voice levels is obnoxiously low and way
| (negatively) beyond what i would call a good experience.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > The sound mixes today are so far off a pleasant experience
| that the people who do make them should feel ashamed - How do
| many actually have a home cinema room with soundproofing and
| 20 speakers ?
|
| Also, digital camera manufacturers should be feel ashamed for
| cameras providing photos that don't even fit on my monitor.
| My 24MP Sony camera outputs photo's at 6000x4000 pixel
| resolution! Who the hell has a monitor that big ? I can only
| see a small part of the photo at one time.
|
| Oh way, no, that's absolutely crazy. Because maybe some
| people _do_ have a monitor that high-res, or maybe they want
| to print it or edit it or.., or... And guess what, there is
| no need to have the photos be smaller to display them, you
| can simply use a viewer that scales them to fit on your
| display. There is absolutely no need to throw away that extra
| information and you might want it in the future.
|
| Same goes for audio in a movie. If it doesn't fit the dynamic
| range suitable for your setup, then scale it to whatever you
| need it to be. You may not have a setup to enjoy that, but
| others might, and they shouldn't have to deal with sub-par
| mixes because other people don't know how to configure their
| playback equipment.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| The slurred dialog is obnoxious and a sign of laziness on
| everyone's part. The miking, the post processing, the
| overdubbing (if there's any at all - recent film makers don't
| seem to know that this is a thing). The actor's speech
| pattern, where they direct their speech while acting, even
| how they stand and where. The choice of location and
| additional preparation of the stage so the speech can be
| picked up clearly.
|
| It's not your hearing, it's the mix. Source: I'm a mastering
| engineer with a monitoring setup worth six figures and I use
| closed captions too.
|
| Speakers in TVs used to be tailored to making speech
| intelligible. Nowadays it's... well whatever it is, it's not
| really meant to do anything. Not even the more high-end
| popular speaker systems are meant to do anything at all,
| really. They all just kinda sorta make whatever is coming out
| of them sound flashy and whooshy. That's another reason why
| movies are even more difficult to understand.
|
| And let's be honest - a lot of it nowadays is just not
| _worth_ hearing... Staple tv shows form the 70s that fell
| into obscurity for being extremely pedestrian had better
| writing than nearly all big-budget movies nowadays. I
| remember when Pig came out recently, it was the only good
| movie during a span of maybe 3 months. That's how dire it is
| nowadays.
|
| Edit: oh, and I forgot about the ubiquitous 5.1-to-stereo
| downmixing bug: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32883588
| nogridbag wrote:
| Would a soundbar help the situation or make it worse? With
| two kids 90% of the time I'm watching kids movies but I
| still turn on the closed captions. Any background noise and
| it's nearly impossible to hear the dialogue without
| cranking up the volume to an undesirable level.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| It might to some extent, but it's not the perfect way to
| go.
|
| Speech reproduction gets muddled by distortion and by
| masking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking
| ).
|
| If you have one speaker reproducing both speech and other
| sound, this is what happens:
|
| 1. additional sound output means heightened distortion
|
| 2. when two sounds come from two places, our brains can
| separate them due to phase differences and spatial
| perception, so those two sounds mask each other less than
| if the same two sounds come out of a single speaker, even
| if it's perfect, with no distortion etc
|
| 3. the speaker is made for broad range reproduction and
| not voice reproduction, so it'll de-emphasize speech
| frequencies, which are exactly those frequencies that
| also make music sound like it's coming out of a cardboard
| box. ultimately the applied eq (equalizer) curve will
| create speech that's slightly muddy, like someone talking
| from behind a blanket.
|
| 4. sound bars use tiny transducers which are woefully
| underpowered compared to the SPL (sound pressure level)
| they're tasked with producing. This is done by using
| multi-band compression and limiting. This sometimes
| creates situations where the limiting might be recovering
| after a slightly louder sound, and the very next syllable
| will be muted.
|
| However, having a dedicated speaker for the center
| channel is none the less way better than not having one
| at all. If that's all you can try, you can try your luck.
| But be aware that getting a cheap one will probably not
| get you where you want to be - you'll have to spend a
| pretty penny. At that point if you have the space you
| might want to get a 3.1 bookshelf speaker setup. They
| don't have to be very large to provide great value-for-
| space-used.
| arh68 wrote:
| FWIW, adding a Center channel to my former 2.0 seems to
| have really helped me hear dialogue.
| nogridbag wrote:
| I've had a few 5.1 systems in the past (energy, Polk
| audio speakers) but I found while the center channel
| quality is excellent there's just too much bass. Even at
| low volumes the bass disturbed others in the home (even
| after playing with eq, boosting center channel, and
| enabling night mode on the receiver). Currently I have an
| LG Gallery TV. I like the ease of just using TV for audio
| and even after raising the volume it doesn't vibrate the
| whole house.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| It's not from the speakers - it's from your room. Read up
| on standing modes. Placing the bass producing speaker
| (usually the subwoofer) in a different spot can help
| alleviate this tremendously.
| vel0city wrote:
| I don't know your current setup, but I'd highly recommend
| external speakers with most modern TVs.
|
| Back in the day with CRTs and projection screens, the TV
| would be pretty big regardless. They didn't have to worry
| about bundling in some nice speakers with a TV, because
| hey the TV is going to be quite large and that cavity can
| be a nice resonance chamber if done right.
|
| Now, all TVs need to be super thin which can be a nice
| thing don't get me wrong. But their packaging means their
| speakers are often very compromised. Sure, they're OK in
| a pinch, but even a cheap sound bar will often out
| perform most TV's built in speakers. So unless you're
| using the TV in a space where you just don't care about
| the sound quality, you'll get a lot out from having at
| least a sound bar or some other external speaker setup.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Many devices have a night mode to help keep the range of
| volumes small. The Sonos one is perfect for my use case.
| It changed my evening life when I found this.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I wish my Denon AVR had a usable night mode. Instead it
| has a setting called "dynamic volume" that makes it so
| all dialog right after an explosion is inaudible...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Unhelpful but probably accurate.
| throwawayForMe2 wrote:
| A Bose sound bar with an "enhanced dialogue" mode helped
| me greatly.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I have a 3.1 setup and the center channel helps, but it's
| still really bad with many mixes. If you happen to use an
| ffmpeg based player, and are targeting a stereo, this
| audio-filter helps a lot (I stole this from someone
| somewhere on the internet). I use it for encoding movies
| for car-trips (where there is both no center channel and
| a lot of background noise).
| aformat=channel_layouts=stereo, compand=0 0:1 1:-90/-900
| -70/-70 -30/-9 0/-3:6:0:0:0
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| A little off topic but it's really surprising how so few of
| the shows and movies these days give off any vibe of
| sincerity. From the acting to the writing to the CGI,
| everything seems to be winking at the audience and trying
| to tell them that they are all actors and its all make
| believe.
|
| The perfect example is Lord of the Rings vs The Rings of
| Power. I had no problems believing that Aragorn really
| lived in Middle Earth. But every single actor in Rings of
| Power feels like...an actor - just someone playing a part.
|
| Maybe its the overuse of bad CGI, but so few of the worlds
| feel "lived in".
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I find all of these TV shows have the same pattern that
| breaks the immersion: too many close up face shots, and
| the characters look too clean. Watch the original LOTR
| and see the composition of the shots ("every scene a
| painting"): it's not just a close up of a face with a
| bokeh behind it; there is a visual composition and
| blocking like a scene designed for a play. The characters
| looking too clean is another issue, and the Wheel of Time
| series on Amazon has this problem as well. Every
| character is perfectly manicured, no dirt or grime
| despite the setting... it breaks the immersion!
| rtpg wrote:
| I remember... maybe 10 years ago? seeing a big OLED
| screen playing a very high def version of LOTR. You could
| see that the props were made of styrofoam.
|
| Of course there is a lot of other stuff going on, but I
| do think that high fidelity really makes stuff hard. That
| combined with much more pressure to cut corners in post
| production (on top of more stuff needing to actually
| happen in post!) just makes it all fall apart.
|
| Part of the problem when every story has to be the
| biggest thing ever, and a problem that other industries
| have hit (games in the PS3/PS4 generation).
| itronitron wrote:
| A lot of the new 4K TVs by default have some 'video
| enhancement' processing steps turned on by default which
| ends up making everything look fake. If you go into the
| TV settings and turn all of those things off it should
| make the world look more natural.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| this processing can create desync issues where the audio
| is in front of the video by just a bit. this creates a
| lip sync issue which makes people feel the audio is
| dubbed over and can tear you out of suspense of
| disbelief. but i don't think that's what they mean here.
| rings is just bad acting - or rather, bad direction that
| forces bad acting. i have no doubt the actors are capable
| of much more than what they're being confined to.
| itronitron wrote:
| Prior HN discussion on the 'soap opera effect' I'm
| referring to >>
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613575
| hef19898 wrote:
| The majority of Netflix series produced in Europe are
| actually a pleasant surprise in that regard. When to
| comes to writing and acting as well as production, and
| yes, sound mixing.
|
| I consider myself a fantasy and sci-fi nerd, binge read
| the Lord of The Rings, starting with the Hobbit, between
| Christmas Eve and when the first movie came out. Read the
| Simarilion. Loved the LotR triology. Like the Hobbit,
| ehich already strechted the source material a lot, but in
| a way that could be justified as a lead up to LotR. I did
| not manage to dare whatching the Amazon series, and
| propably never will. Thr LotR films, The Expense and the
| Star Wars series and first two triologies are the last
| movie ftanchises I still get immersion and suspenson of
| disbelieve from, I'm not taking any risks eith LotR.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| Agreed. But then comes along something like The Expanse
| with impeccable writing, a gripping, high-octane story,
| with every episode being pretty much perfect, and great
| set design, and it falls into obscurity and gets
| prematurely cancelled because it's not being shoved down
| people's throats.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > between Christmas Eve and when the first movie came out
|
| That potentially gives you _decades_ to binge-read the
| books... how many depends on what do you consider "the
| first movie". :-)
| hef19898 wrote:
| I shoupd have been more precise: I didn't read the books
| before, I knew they would be my Christmas gift. So I
| started with the Hobbit on, if memory serves well, on
| Dec. 23rd. Was finished in time for the unpacking of the
| triology on 24th. And was through, for go one, with all
| three books before going to see the first movie. I never
| read as many pages in as little time before or after. And
| I totally loved it!
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| With something like that new LOTR show, the budgets are
| so astronomical but where's the auteur? It's a series so
| presumably directors are not consistent.
|
| Might be an issue that there isn't a single person
| pushing the world, aesthetic, vibe and vision making the
| actors immersed in their roles. In the end getting all
| dressed up and standing against a green screen probably
| feels a bit silly without someone selling it to you.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| Agreed. Who knew that corporate structures are not
| conducive to creative expression?
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Good to know this isn't just my ears or my setup. This was
| most noticeable to me recently in Dune. So much whispering
| dialogue, with massive dynamic range and BRAAAM [0]. Using
| night mode on my receiver and cranking the center channel
| to +10dB works pretty well for me, though.
|
| [0] https://longreads.com/2016/12/08/braaam-inception-
| hollywood-...
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| I recommend people watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers
| (1978) to test that. I was impressed with the sound in
| general and the fact that I felt no need to turn on
| subtitles. But in particular there's a least one scene
| where characters are whispering to each other. I didn't
| need subtitles or to adjust the audio, every word was
| perfectly intelligble.
|
| It's also a clear sign that it's not my ears, it's not my
| setup, it's the sound mix of modern movies.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Dune sounds great on my 2.0 system at home (low mid-range
| receiver and ~$200 yamaha floorstanders). Sicario too,
| from the same director, I generally think he does a
| fantastic job with audio mixes.
|
| Strange that article doesn't talk about the tripod noise
| from the '05 War of the Worlds.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jzY099ihULs
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| The '05 tripod noises are meant to sound like V1 bomb
| scare-sounds, which is originally made to sound like
| mythical Horns of Jericho:
|
| https://www.factmag.com/2016/10/09/sound-fear-
| room40-boss-la...
|
| Listen to the V1 bomb sound in the clip on that page -
| there's no surprise they're being referred to in
| following works of fiction.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Huh, that's neat. You can definitely see the influence of
| that sound then following on into Inception which seemed
| to really popularise it.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| It's always been around. In fact it's been very popular
| in games like the Modern Warfare series, which have major
| popular appeal.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Those were definitely not a big deal (compared to now)
| and were a very different game back in '05
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| That article kind of confuses a few different kinds of
| sounds. Just because there's a staccato (
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9v-UpM9flY ) sound
| happening doesn't mean it serves the same function. The
| loud meme they're talking about is a loud horn meant to
| overwhelm. The sound at 0:40 in the video is clearly a
| meant to create suspense: it's an earlier trope in movies
| and other media: scary staccato strings backed by all
| sorts of random sybilant string sounds that create a
| nervous atmosphere (like starting at 2:52 here https://yo
| utu.be/_nVkHXTeiOg?list=PL7F72E09D4C28FECD&t=172 ). My
| favourite use of these is in the Dead Space soundtrack.
| Note that in the clip I linked you first get the sybilant
| strings building nervous tension, then some overwhelming
| loud bangs, but then at 3:50 you get slower sounds which
| are not meant to overwhelm, just maintain a scary
| atmosphere. You get both of those uses of sound in one
| passage.
|
| BTW, here's what the timbre of the "BRAM" sound is based
| on for the most part:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32886196
| UpstandingUser wrote:
| > Pig
|
| ...was terrible, I wanted more screentime with that
| adorable pig...sorry Nic, you're in the shadow of a real
| star...
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| Underrated tweet. I agree fully.
| sph wrote:
| Eh, I've seen worse films from him, and worse acclaimed
| films this past couple years. In fact, 2 of the 6 movies
| I've watched the past couple years have been with
| Nicholas Cage, and I'm not even a fan of his.
|
| I don't know if it's just me but cinema has become really
| shit, unless you're into superhero movies. It's like
| nothing matters any more to executives and moviegoers of
| all ages than superheroes. Are we living in Idiocracy?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| No, we're living in a world where piracy and exploded
| budgets mean every movie needs to be a hit. One flop and
| the studio is gone. So the studios produce movies that
| are certain to be not flops, like the endless sequels,
| and that will draw people to cinemas where there is no
| piracy, which means impressive spectacles with
| explosions.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| No one pirates anymore. That's such a tiny tiny minority
| in a post Netflix world.
|
| It's actually difficult to even do now the community is
| so small.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| How will the studios ever deal with that given last years
| excuse, that piracy actually increases sales!
| tpxl wrote:
| I'm sorry but piracy is not to blame for a 100 million
| movie budget. I live in a small country and we're able to
| produce very enjoyable films for far less than 10
| million.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| Pig is a great example because it essentially could have
| been a student project. The only thing you really needed
| was one good main actor, and who's to say a student of
| art couldn't have done a good job just as well. The
| location shots, the various scenes are all ultra low
| budget.
| hedora wrote:
| I really want to see it.
|
| I have decided it is the sequel to Color Out of Space,
| which was, by far, the best alpaca-themed rendition of an
| HP Lovecraft story at the time.
|
| Also, the audio mix didn't really get in the way of that
| one for me.
|
| (It probably still is the best, but I'd love to be
| corrected.)
| brnt wrote:
| Things are too god damn loud. I need to hear what people say,
| the rest is sugar.
|
| I avoid stuff without captions. Sorry, your shite is almost
| certainly mixed horribly.
| 83457 wrote:
| I think some of it is surround sound that modern streaming and
| televisions use without actual surround sound speakers. I've
| found if a movie/show is in surround sound, changing audio to
| non-surround sound helps a lot.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I also suspect the hardware they master for is not the hardware
| most consumers have. My cheap soundbar isn't going to produce
| the sounds they want, and im not going to hear dialog. But when
| I visit a theater, I have no problems hearing the dialog.
| [deleted]
| graton wrote:
| Why I have been doing this to the movies I have:
| ffmpeg-normalize -v --progress -c:a aac -b:a 768k -ar 48000 -t
| -14 *mkv
|
| To normalize the audio levels so that they don't get too loud
| or too soft. Though I wouldn't use it if you have less than 64
| kbit/second/track.
|
| https://github.com/slhck/ffmpeg-normalize
| mattnewton wrote:
| Christopher Nolan is one of the biggest offenders in this
| regard, often having barely audible dialog drowned out by music
| or background noise by stylistic choice. I understand the
| intent is to let it wash over you but I can't help but struggle
| to understand and it ends up just making me feel frustrated and
| taking me out of the film.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Nolan is just trolling us, he knows we'll pay good money for
| crap we can't understand or hear.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| If you can't hear it, you can't criticize it.
|
| "But he said it with such an air of gravity..."
| jamesbfb wrote:
| I would have paid extra for subtitles when I saw Tenet at
| IMAX. The audio mix made it extremely difficult to follow.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| watched it in imax the first time and i thought it sounded
| terrible as well. watching at home with subtitles on the
| second time around really helped clear up a few things.
|
| it doesn't help that they also have masks on for most of
| the movie, or they're having to talk over the sound of loud
| speedboat, or the accents are foreign, either russian or
| indian
| Sakos wrote:
| The worst thing is that apparently the audio mix in Tenet
| was intentional according to Nolan.
| sschueller wrote:
| In Switzerland every movie has German and French sub-
| titles. Sadly you can't turn them off in the theater but
| it's helpful id you can't understand what the actors are
| mumbling.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Taking up a lot of screen space too?
|
| Reminds me my dad said when he first moved abroad before
| he learned the local language, everyone would read the
| subtitles and laugh at the joke and then he couldn't hear
| what they had just laughed at.
| thelittleone wrote:
| All I wanted after seeing Tenet was my time back.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| And inverted you wants your time _forward_
| ckw wrote:
| I love Tenet, but it has the worst sound mix I've ever
| heard.
| PcChip wrote:
| Try playing AC: Valhalla
| cerved wrote:
| Tenet is an accidental Christopher Nolan parody
| JimiofEden wrote:
| Invoking a pretty old video that still makes me smile to this
| day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ukMXA0SJaM
| asdff wrote:
| To be fair the consumer audio stack is crap in the average
| home. I bet a CRT TV would be a big improvement in audio
| quality compared to most flat screens on the market.
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| But shouldn't the product be created for the typical end user
| and not the 1% of cinemaphiles with a blessed setup?
|
| A pretty common complaint is that developers only test things
| on their latest generation i9, with unlimited ram, and 8k
| displays.
| asdff wrote:
| What is the typical end user? Is it you with your TV? Me
| with mine? My neighbor with their soundbar I can hear
| through the walls? The guy on the train with his airpods?
| There is no standard, its all over the place. You might as
| well engineer so it sounds good when people actually care
| enough to string together some half decent components than
| to take a shot in the dark at building around some audio
| spec that doesn't exist.
| agilob wrote:
| I observed this in The Walking Dead, in the first seasons I
| could clearly hear the dialogue, but since 4-5 seasons I need
| subtitles for everything. Zombie noises from 200m away are
| louder than main characters speaking next to the camera.
| ruuda wrote:
| If you use MPV, you can pass it ffmpeg filters, and ffmpeg has
| many ways of compressing the dynamic range. See [1] for the set
| of audio filters. Here are the settings I use [2]. If you can't
| run your video through ffmpeg, I guess you could run your audio
| signal through a physical compressor if you use external
| speakers, but that can get quite involved.
|
| [1]: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#acompressor [2]:
| https://github.com/ruuda/dotfiles/blob/fff8d1d905767e85b57d7...
| coliveira wrote:
| If you know a foreign language, an option that works is to
| watch the dubbed version. I sometimes do this, especially for
| action movies: the foreign dubbed version is often easier to
| understand than the original english, because people doing the
| dubbing want to be understood.
| skydhash wrote:
| French version are always so clear (friends and family watch
| movies on laptop and phones). But I know enough English to
| notice that the movement of the actor's mouth does not
| correspond to the sound.
| coliveira wrote:
| That's correct, but if the option is to read subtitles, I
| prefer to listen to the translated version.
| brabel wrote:
| > The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud
| for her...
|
| Exact same problem at home... it was so bad on Interstellar
| that after that movie, she never went to a cinema with me
| again, or watched any movies together at all :(.
| chubot wrote:
| What kind of speakers do you have? Let me say that voices
| become greatly more intelligible with traditional speakers with
| a full midrange than modern speakers with exaggerated treble
| and bass.
|
| What may be happening is that your speakers have a scooped
| profile, and audio mixes often have a scooped profile too. The
| sound effects and music tend to be bass and treble heavy, so
| you hear a lot of that.
|
| But the lack of midrange means voices are hard to understand.
| You need range that to distinguish vowels, etc
|
| I don't understand how anyone can watch a movie with iPad or
| iPhone speakers. They are missing the exact part of the
| spectrum where important info in voices live. It's just painful
| for me to pay attention with those speakers.
|
| My parents were doing this, and I got them a simple Bluetooth
| speaker with midrange, and they immediately noticed the
| difference. Their faces lit up.
|
| Judging by the comments here, it does seem there is a "double"
| race to the bottom of more treble and bass -- on the audio mix
| side and on the speaker side. So it's a compounding effect,
| which would explain a lot. So the least you can do is get some
| better speakers.
|
| Or honestly if you have an EQ, you can just experiment with
| turning up the midrange and the treble/bass down, although with
| some speakers this will make things sound bad.
|
| ----
|
| Also I just skimmed the original article!! Isn't it obvious
| that the problem is iPad and iPhone speakers ????
|
| I see young people listening to MUSIC on these things and it
| boggles my mind
|
| They can't understand dialogue out of these crappy tinny
| speakers, so they turned on closed captioning ?? Makes total
| sense.
|
| Or are they also using them with ear buds, which shouldn't have
| the problem? I notice more people NOT using ear buds (annoying
| people on the train), which makes me think the problem is the
| speakers
| cronix wrote:
| If you have a 5.1 system, boost the center channel. That's
| mainly dialog.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| I have a home theater (do they still call it that?) with 5.1,
| 5 speakers and all that jazz. I tried everything but with
| many movies (esp. all the superhero stuff) the only option is
| to lower the volume and turn on the subtitles to be able to
| follow the dialog. I wish there was an option to make the
| loud parts less louder and quiet less quiet, but I couldn't't
| find it (it's an older onkyo).
| SuperQue wrote:
| Dynamic Range Compression. Pretty much every HT system has
| had it for 15+ years.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| That's actually close to another very important point. Most
| movies come with a 5.1 mix nowadays, and people watch them on
| a stereo system. Most players use a very simple formula when
| converting 5.1 to stereo, something like say Lout = 1/2 Lin +
| 1/3 SLin, Rout = 1/2 Rin + 1/3 SRin, and leave out the center
| channel completely. This is also done inside of TVs etc. The
| center channel gets dropped completely! And sometimes
| dialogue is only in the center channel - not all of it, but
| there are some lines every now and then that just only ever
| come out of the center channel. Those are lost.
| PcChip wrote:
| Are you sure? I thought a lot of people were successfully
| running "phantom centers" by just using L and R
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| If the information from the C channel is dropped, and the
| speech information was only in C or for the most part in
| C, it won't be in L+R, or it will be to some insufficient
| extent because it'll get obscured by whatever else is
| happening.
| epistasis wrote:
| This sounds too stupid to actually be true, but it also
| seems to correspond to my experience. It makes me sad that
| there's an engineer or produce designer out there,
| anywhere, who would intentionally pull something like this.
| It's sadistic. Why ruin your product?
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| The issue is that most programmers think there's nothing
| to know about the non-programming-related engineering
| they're encoding into their programs. So we get crappy
| audio, we get cars driving into bollards, delivery robots
| driving over crime scenes, home automation destroying
| houses, smart locks that can be picked without tools,
| etc. People severely overestimate their knowledge of
| what's going on, and underestimate how much complexity
| there is to the phenomena they're dealing with.
| leovander wrote:
| I'm going to guess that most folks now-a-days go with a
| single soundbar that acts as the whole sound system, maybe
| there is still a center channel in the bar? Whether that be
| for; price, small living space or a partner doesn't want
| speakers around the world, its a convenient space saver that
| sits under the TV, sight mostly unseen.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Have you tried adjusting the dynamic range of your audio
| system?
| RetunToForever wrote:
| Agreed, mixing at 'reference level', which is deafening, isn't
| doing anyone any favours. Very few people have a home theatre
| set at reference level when watching a film or show.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Sound engineers need to stop needlessly flexing all that
| dynamic range that modern tools give them, and just produce a
| watchable movie.
|
| And not just sound engineers! So many TV shows these days are
| filmed in nearly pitch black. If there are any lights on in the
| room (or it's still bright on a northern summer night and the
| living room doesn't have blackout curtains), I can't see the
| action. At first I thought I was just being cranky and old, but
| then we watched The Neverending Story with my kid and lo and
| behold, they film in "dark scenes" with torches etc so you can
| still see the actors well enough to read their lips! I'm sure
| it would be fine if I was watching it in a proper theater, but
| it's a frikkin TV show and who even goes to the cinema anymore?
| mihaaly wrote:
| Exactly!!
|
| Things became worse in the past 10 or something years (I am a
| 40 something btw.). As the article states we used subtitles in
| movies to learn language and to understand thick accent.
| However throughout time while we got better and better in
| comprehension the use of subtitles remained the same in
| overall. But very uneven too.
|
| Old movies (not yet seen) and movies for children are never a
| problem. Also some properly made movies. The atmosphere and
| sound effects are fine as well as the dialogs.
|
| But it became too much of a trend to make muttery a mushy
| dialogs where people seemingly unable to articulate. To the
| level never heard in real life (where muttering may be more
| common due to the more causal and mood or situation affected
| nature of conversations, unlike the carefully created and
| heavily controlled ones in movies). Also it is uneven. Some
| movies are still fine, but others (perhaps the newest Batman
| comes to mind, unsure, forgot that movie mostly, being so
| obscure) are a struggle, not fun at all. Aggrevated by the loud
| bangs and muttery dialog combo.
|
| A sign that this is a systematic and intentionally manufactured
| problem, that sound engineers and directors lost their touch
| completely, is the existence of a feature in the newest Apple
| TV for equalizing the sound level in a movie. Streaming
| hardware manufacturers had to come up with solution to correct
| what sound engineers ruined or unable to get right nowadays.
|
| Older movies are almost never a problem. New movies are in an
| uncomfortable amount.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Well the whole industry flips burgers in order to serve
| caviar on the side. The business is the burger. Great
| actresses are burger flippers, box office, dude critics are
| 1000 tickets that's it.
| elteto wrote:
| I wish I could turn subtitles on for this comment. I have
| no idea what you are saying.
| alvah wrote:
| The account you replied to replied to a comment of mine
| on another thread with a weird word salad. It was
| suggested to me that said account may be a bot...
| moistly wrote:
| I'm convinced they're not a bot. I believe they're either
| deliberately engaged in "artistically" expressing
| themselves, or have mental health issues of the
| schizophrenic variety.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/brainspotting/2
| 022...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Yeah pretty much. Am in fact expressing myself in a very
| "flowery" manner, artistically. I'm elevating the HN
| comment to an artform. I actually was thought to be
| schizophrenic by doctors once upon a time. Diagnosed
| secretly. Then they walked back on the diagnosis.
| Rescinded. I still get treated for it, because you don't
| need to stop taking the medication for it if you don't
| want to. Loophole.
|
| I wouldn't say mental health issues, either. I pay a lot
| for psychiatry and get my money's worth, have a handle on
| it, pretty good patient according to many doctors. Often
| the favorite. Alpha in the psych ward always, alpha in
| rehab. Hey somebody gets dealt this hand, what if he
| plays his cards right?
|
| What if he pulls off checkmates?
| usefulcat wrote:
| Particular comments maybe, but probably not the account
| as a whole since it dates from 2007
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| SUBTITLES: The film industry makes high art as well as
| common fare. The high art is what the artists want to
| make and enjoy but it has a very small market. The common
| fare is what pays the bills, because it sells like 100x
| more tickets than high art. High art = caviar,
| Shakespeare "caviar for the general" whereas common fare
| is hamburgers, flipping burgers, which is a real
| business, many more servings of hamburgers than caviar.
| simonh wrote:
| There plenty of films made by very creative film makers
| that had plenty of artistic freedom, but still have muddy
| dialogue so I don't see how any of that is relevant to
| the particular issue.
| elteto wrote:
| Thank you.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| You're welcome elteto, all the way.
|
| I have little idea when I cannot be understood, and it
| helps me to know when I do in fact communicate plainly.
| moistly wrote:
| You too-frequently convey your ideas through the use of
| obscure metaphor and convoluted sentence structure. Yet
| you clearly know how to write plainly, as you just
| demonstrated in your subsequent replies.
|
| It is odd that you apparently wish to be understood, but
| more often than not choose opacity instead of clarity.
| Which is a bit of a shame, because if a person makes the
| effort to decipher your posts, they often do say
| something meaningful or insightful.
|
| But others also have insights and useful information, and
| are much, much easier to understand; given this
| competition, of course your illucid rambling is skipped
| and downvoted.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| OK I'll step up my game. Very constructive actionable
| advice, thanks.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Sounds like a parallel topic to the poor sound mixing
| trouble to me. High art existed before muffled
| conversations mixed with loud sound effects or music.
| Also high art can coexist with balanced sound and
| articulate conversation. Or balanced sound can be used
| for 'burger' movies for their benefit.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Well back then just making a movie was cool, now you
| gotta make it better, use all the technology available,
| leave nothing on the table. They're trying to impress
| each other, stedda making good movies everybody can
| enjoy.
| strunz wrote:
| I use that feature on Apple TV (normalize audio levels) and
| it's STILL too dramatic for watching unless you want to wake
| everyone in the house up. I have a 5.1 setup with the center
| channel even increased (to try and boost talking) and I still
| have to play the volume game at times.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Admittedly it is not solving all cases but for me it helps
| in seveal case. We have a simple stereo configuration
| though.
| odiroot wrote:
| It seems having a compressor stage in TVs would be a good idea.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Don't forget watching on tiny laptop speakers, cheap earbuds,
| or little bluetooth speakers. Even older movies are an issue
| when the sound quality isn't good.
| bowsamic wrote:
| My wife is also very sensitive to loud or harsh sounds and we
| have to do a similar thing. Sometimes I set up a compressor in
| VLC, but it's a pain to get the settings right. Really we need
| something more like a limiter but I don't think VLC has that.
| It's not very fun to watch a movie on the TV nowadays
| donclark wrote:
| Why do our devices not have an option to normalize audio (or
| something along those lines)?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A lot of devices do have this option, but it's buried in the
| menus and it isn't always the best quality.
| donclark wrote:
| Thank you for inspiring me to dig around.
|
| However, the only thing I found for Android was:
|
| ViPER4Android FX For Android 12 & 13 (rooted only?)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOeNGy-xhxs
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/viper4android-v2-7-new-ui-
| pro...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Oh, I don't think there's one for android or iOS, but
| most TVs have this setting.
|
| My computer audio driver has one also.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| You accurately diagnose symptoms, but you blame the wrong
| people. Engineers and actors don't make creative choices, they
| merely obey directors and producers.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| I'm very much outside of the age range mentioned in the article
| but +100 for crappy audio mixing.
|
| When my family was going through all the Marvel movies at first
| I tried to control the volume by making it higher during the
| dialog and lower during the battles etc but it was an exercise
| in futility, as I'm only human and there would be some delay in
| volume change and we would still miss what the guy/gal said or
| my house would start noticeably shaking from the unexpected
| explosion happening during a scene where a guy was intensely
| whispering his rescue plan to his compatriots or whatever. Plus
| it started feeling like I'm working instead of enjoying the
| movie. So lower volume and subtitles it is.
|
| I have home theater with 5.2 and 5 speakers, all it does is
| that when stuff in the movie goes boom my house starts to
| shake.
| lttlrck wrote:
| Have you tried night mode? It compresses the dynamic range.
| Upgrayyed_U wrote:
| The problem with night mode is that it compresses the
| dynamic range of the audio which undermines one of the main
| benefits of having a home theater system. It's a poor
| compromise for bad audio mixing.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Manually turning the volume up and down is literally
| compressing the dynamic range; that's the goal here.
| bhj wrote:
| Most home theater systems are in a home where the noise
| floor is significantly higher than a theater, which the
| audio mix was targeting. Dynamic range compression is
| often appropriate and when applied correctly improves the
| experience in homes.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| When I had a 5.1 setup, I had the center channel volume set
| higher than the side/rear channels and it made speech
| understandable while explosions weren't overpowering. Maybe
| the receiver you have allows the same?
| nabakin wrote:
| I do this too. It works decently as long as the media
| supports 5.1
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > when stuff in the movie goes boom my house starts to shake.
|
| That's how it's supposed to sound. Explosions _are_ loud.
|
| This is not a problem with the source material, it's a
| problem with the setup of the playback equipment. The source
| contains all the original data, it's the playback equipment's
| job to render that information in the appropriate way
| considering the space and circumstances where it's played.
|
| The 'problem' is that the sound is mixed to a cinema-level
| dynamic range. If you don't want the full dynamic range you
| can compress it at playback. They store it at the full range
| since you can't exactly un-compress it and the exact amount
| of compression depends on your setup and situation anyway.
|
| Any half-decent A/V receiver has this capability. If your
| receiver has Audyssey you may want to look into the "dynamic
| eq" and "dynamic volume" settings.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Apple TV had to introduce a feature that makes exactly that
| for you. Apparently this problem is that systematic. Movie
| makers ruin sound that the streamer device have to correct.
|
| (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/tv/atvba773c3c9/tvos>
| "Reduce Loud Sounds")
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > Movie makers ruin sound that the streamer device have to
| correct.
|
| It's not the movie maker's job to adjust the sound to your
| particular environment and taste. That is the job of the
| playback equipment and the person configuring it. The movie
| should be, and is, stored at the highest fidelity and with
| as much information as possible. This includes the original
| intended dynamic range. If your situation or taste calls
| for a smaller dynamic range you can easily adjust that at
| playback.
|
| You can hardly expect movies to include hundreds of
| different soundtracks to cover all possible playback
| scenarios.
| squarefoot wrote:
| That difference in loudness between voice and effects happens
| often when the stereo material is derived by a badly mixed down
| 5+1 material. Having control of the 6 channels levels before
| mixdown may help to eliminate it, otherwise some sort of
| compression/limiting is necessary. Many TVs have the option to
| set the audio output level to automatic, which doesn't mean the
| volume can't be changed but that around a given volume the
| dynamics are less extreme so that faint sounds are amplified
| and loud ones are attenuated.
| gareth_untether wrote:
| You could get an audio limiter. Would mean a bunch of
| additional hardware though.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I know Sonos are not loved here, and other companies probably
| do it too, but Sonos sound bars allow you to enhance speech and
| also go into night mode. Night mode reduces the dynamic range -
| louder quiet bits and quieter loud bits.
|
| I like the tv on quietly relative to other people I know, and
| continually messing with the volume is tedious.
| lathiat wrote:
| Having an audio receiver and cranking the centre channel helped
| a lot for me.
|
| Turns out I'm also half deaf in one ear.
|
| Anyway I'd recommend both a centre channel with adjustable
| volume and a hearing test.
| atmosx wrote:
| I thought it was my tv having completely broken audio... Or the
| broadcaster. I noticed that, the volume goes up when
| commercials kick in, but also explosions, shootings, etc. the
| volume has to be adjusted every 5 minutes and we are watching
| 90% of content with captions on since I can remember...
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| The volume doesn't go up, it goes down when adverts kick in.
| The peak level is slightly lower than programme material.
|
| The difference is that adverts are very heavily compressed so
| the quiet bits are much much louder making the whole thing
| seem loud.
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| Whenever I'm watching a modern movie, sticking a compressor on
| the audio is a must. Open VLC settings, search for
| "compressor". It's programmer UI, but it does exactly what it
| says.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I assume "compressor" here means dynamic range compressor and
| not quality compressor?
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| Yes. Unfortunate overloaded jargon.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
|
| It reduces variation in volume, so you can hear the quiet
| parts without having your ears blown out by explosions or
| gunfire
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Actors need to go do some stage acting and learn how to e n u
| n c i a t e and project their voices.
|
| Watch some German shows (notably: Not Netflix's Dark as that
| was untypical, I mean actually produced for the German market
| shows). It's horrible. Everything sounds super fake. Yes,
| everything is easy to understand, but I (a German) can't watch
| anything because nothing sounds real.
|
| It's usually claimed this is because German actors do more
| stage acting, but as Dark (or other German actors in US
| productions where they don't sound fake) show, it goes much
| deeper.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I live in Germany and honestly it just seems to me from
| speaking to Germans that they have the worst mixture of a
| lack of sense of quality and also an uncaring-ness/sense of
| futility about it. I think it is kind of like the "poor
| service at restaurants" thing. It is a negative point that
| has become accepted and almost expected by Germans, so there
| is literally no desire to change it, which would take a lot
| of effort for very little gain.
|
| Tangentially, it also reminds me of going back to the UK last
| week to visit a conference. The trains were just so much
| different to those in Germany, even the crappy "Stansted
| Express", those here in Germany feel very utilitarian and
| unfriendly (particularly the Deutsche Bahn "Bombardier
| Double-deck Coach") while in the UK similarly priced train
| services are more explicitly friendly and caring in their
| design.
|
| I do think it is a systematic or cultural "problem", but also
| it's kind of one of the things I like about Germany. The
| emphasis is on things that are completely tangible to
| everyone rather than more removed concerns like aesthetics
| and friendliness. And, I think this bleeds into the cultural
| arts too. I have noticed the same thing with a lot of popular
| German music too. It just lacks the sense of "coolness" that
| there is in other countries, and feels almost like an cringey
| imitation of other countries popular music
| Tainnor wrote:
| I don't think anyone can reasonably dispute that Germans
| don't value great customer service much -
|
| but it's ridiculous to claim that the culture that produced
| Goethe, Schiller and, to a large part, the Romantic era
| doesn't value aesthetics.
|
| I think that most "popular" (i.e. charts-topping) German
| music is rather bland, but I feel the same about chart hits
| from other countries. Meanwhile there is some German music
| that is really good - though of course whether you'll like
| what I like will depend on your taste.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Tangentially, it also reminds me of going back to the UK
| last week to visit a conference. The trains were just so
| much different to those in Germany, even the crappy
| "Stansted Express", those here in Germany feel very
| utilitarian and unfriendly (particularly the Deutsche Bahn
| "Bombardier Double-deck Coach") while in the UK similarly
| priced train services are more explicitly friendly and
| caring in their design.
|
| The friendliest thing a train can do is bloody show up on
| time, which National Rail seems to have had a problem with
| lately.
| Semaphor wrote:
| To be fair, that's not exactly what German trains are
| known for either :D
| Semaphor wrote:
| Honestly, I disagree with pretty much everything you said.
| I don't feel like I get poor service, trains aren't
| designed unfriendly, and we certainly shouldn't strive to
| make things less functional for some feeling of kindness.
|
| Can't talk about popular German music, as I don't listen to
| that or to other popular music.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Have you spent much times in other countries? I just
| spent a week in the UK with a German who had culture
| shock that strangers were actually talking to each other,
| that waiters called him "sir", and that the trains were
| so high-tech.
|
| Mainly I find that Germans who disagree with these things
| have not lived in other countries, and those that do
| immediately agree.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Yeah, you prefer the forced fake-friendlyness of anglo
| countries, most of us actually do not want that. And yes,
| I have lived in other countries.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The fact that you think the friendliness of people in
| anglo countries is fake is very sad...
|
| EDIT: trust me the banter between two strangers chatting
| in the UK is not fake. We are not americans. We are
| simply willing to talk to people we don't know. Germans
| do not do this. Isolating yourself from strangers is not
| something to be proud of.
| LVB wrote:
| 10 years after I bought some pairs of wireless headphones to
| avoid waking our newborn baby while watching a movie, they
| still get daily use for exactly this reason. Having the drivers
| right by our ears with individual volume controls gives us each
| the best audio, but it is unfortunate we need to resort to it.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| I feel you. I solved it by adding a pair of HomePods to my
| Samsung-TV-plus-Apple-TV setup. This makes voices much better
| to understand.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| There's a lot of podcasts with egregiously bad audio mixing.
| Which...c'mon guys it's a podcast. You should get that right.
| I've wondered if there's a way to use an algorithm to make
| people's voices a little easier to understand, like slightly
| exaggerating consonants or something.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Shout out to the ex-Cracked podcasts; a lot of those people
| -- presumably because of their experience with being part of
| actual productions -- have sound engineers for their
| podcasts.
| ei8ths wrote:
| We do the same thing, loud noises, quiet dialogues and im
| constantly adjusting the sound. I've tried the audio settings
| where you can normalize or do night mode, it just doesn't work
| well. I have kids trying to sleep. We recently started hooking
| up a bluetooth speaker that sits between us and on loud scenes
| we just flip it down into the couch. We both try to work on
| stuff while watching so subtitles isn't something we can just
| turn on.
| kelnos wrote:
| My old AV receiver had a "night mode" (I believe it was called)
| that did some really great, natural-sounding dynamic range
| compression. I ended up just keeping it on all the time, for
| the reasons the parent lists. Alas, the entire unit stopped
| working several years ago, and I learned it would cost more to
| repair it than replace it... and I didn't do great research
| when buying its replacement, so "night mode" is no more.
| nickcw wrote:
| I don't think this is a new phenomenon. It annoyed my Dad so
| much in the 1980s that he build an audio compressor for the TV
| which quietened the loud parts and amplified the quiet parts.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I know I'm in the minority here, but let me explain why it's
| not terrible audio mixes or bad actors.
|
| The overall trend in TV and movies has been towards greater
| _realism_ in all aspects. Less stage-audience sitcoms, more
| single-cam. Less "look at this actor" and more "look at this
| real person".
|
| Actors aren't mumbling, they're speaking how real people speak.
| Trust me, screen actors have more stage training than ever --
| they _know_ how to enunciate but if they do, the director tells
| them to stop because they seem like they 're giving a fake
| theatrical performance rather than being a slice of real life.
|
| And because more and more people have huge TV's with great
| contrast, 5.1 surround systems, or are watching with AirPods
| with spatial audio... TV is becoming more film-like both in
| range of brightness and loudness. For many people (like myself)
| this is a godsend. It's like I'm at the cinema every time I
| watch an hour-long drama. It's amazing.
|
| We could go back to low-contrast everything and overly
| enunciated actors, the way sitcom TV was, designed for small
| screens and terrible speakers. But that just feels so...
| backwards and limited and fake.
|
| HOWEVER, I do firmly believe that modern TV content _should_ be
| made more accessible, and that it 's high time to build
| adjustable "end-user compression" into all TV's and video
| players. Let the _user_ apply automatic volume equalization so
| quiet parts are just as loud as the loud parts when you 're
| watching TV in your living room with lots of activity around.
| (And with 5.1 signals, you can even always keep dialog louder
| than sound effects and music.) And brightness equalization so
| you can see what's happening in the dark scenes of _Game of
| Thrones_ when you 're in a sunlit room.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I don't watch a movie to get confused as I may in real life.
| The director is confused if they don't understand the
| fundamental rules of cinema - speak clearly and face the
| camera.
|
| No matter the size of the screen, bad acting is bad.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...fundamental rules of cinema..._
|
| This is a matter of taste. Does anyone really expect to
| enjoy every movie?
|
| I love subtitles, but I accept that not everyone is
| comfortable using them.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| The subject was about how it's all going to the dogs. So
| no, not every movie. But _some movies_
| jessaustin wrote:
| The wonderful thing about having old-fashioned tastes in
| cinema is that there are already thousands of old-
| fashioned films available to watch. b^)
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _the fundamental rules of cinema - speak clearly and face
| the camera_
|
| You're literally describing the fundamental rules of
| cinema... in the 1940's. Back in the studio system, that
| was exactly with they did, so clearly they even used a fake
| "transatlantic accent" with heightened enunciation to do
| it.
|
| And these rules (minus the accent) are still followed to a
| large degree in middlebrow TV fare like what you watch on
| ABC or the CW Network. It's also more present in comedies.
|
| But if you're watching a prestige drama on HBO or Netflix?
| If you're watching _The Wire_ or _Succession_? If a drug
| dealer or cop suddenly starts speaking clearly and facing
| the camera, all believability is instantly shattered.
|
| Your rules for "bad acting" are outdated by about seven
| decades. In fact, "method acting" in the 1950's was
| precisely a reaction to the stilted "speak clearly and face
| the camera" acting of the 1940's. By your standard, Marlon
| Brando would be a bad actor, since "speak clearly and face
| the camera" is the polar opposite of what he did.
| SilasX wrote:
| > Actors aren't mumbling, they're speaking how real people
| speak. Trust me, screen actors have more stage training than
| ever -- they know how to enunciate but if they do, the
| director tells them to stop because they seem like they're
| giving a fake theatrical performance rather than being a
| slice of real life.
|
| But if it translates into me not being able to understand
| them, that's _less_ realistic, because in a real-world
| scenario I'd be able to understand them, since our ears are
| adapted for the real world. A real world slurrer is about as
| easy to understand as an enunciator through movie speakers --
| at least, with how the meth-addled mixers do it now.
|
| Bottom line: speech being incomprehensible is _not_
| realistic, and is not accomplishing some wonderfully artistic
| gritty realism.
|
| Edit: To put it a different way: they may be speaking the way
| real people speak, but once you put it through a speaker, it
| will translate into something less comprehensible than that
| speech would be in a real-world scenario, and thus less true
| to how that situation would be in real life.
| crazygringo wrote:
| To the contrary, it _is_ realistic -- no, you wouldn 't
| understand them in real-life either. Movie speakers aren't
| slurring anything, as any audio engineer could easily prove
| to you.
|
| My mother complains about how she can't understand anything
| when there are Irish or Scottish or even northern English
| characters in a show.
|
| Decades ago, in an American TV show those characters would
| have been speaking an understandable American accent with
| just a few accent "suggestions" to indicate they were
| "foreign".
|
| Today, it's considered absurd if they speak in anything
| else but their actual full accent.
|
| It's realism. My mother can't understand it and has to use
| subtitles. I understand it all perfectly, but I've traveled
| a lot and learned other languages.
|
| But that's what subtitles are there for. And not all
| TV/film has to be culturally accessible to everybody, with
| fake ways of speaking.
| SilasX wrote:
| >To the contrary, it is realistic -- no, you wouldn't
| understand them in real-life either.
|
| Yes, I absolutely would, because, in practice, people
| speak in a way that others can understand them, or else
| they have to quickly adapt. (If they're not
| comprehensible, there will be a contextual reason why.)
|
| >Movie speakers aren't slurring anything, as any audio
| engineer could easily prove to you.
|
| That wasn't what I was saying. My point was that
| conveying sound through speakers has _inherent_
| differences from a person actually being there, and our
| ears /auditory processing are optimized for the latter,
| taking advantage of things that aren't present with
| speakers. So playing "the same" speech is going to be
| inherently less comprehensible, requiring some kind of
| compensation.
|
| These brilliant sound engineers, as judged by actual
| audiences, are turning comprensible speech-situations
| into incomprensible ones, some way or another.
|
| >My mother complains about how she can't understand
| anything when there are Irish or Scottish or even
| northern English characters in a show.
|
| That's a separate issue, whern there are genuine cultural
| differences with between the listener and the situation.
| That's not what's happening in Tenet.
|
| > But that's what subtitles are there for.
|
| No, it's not. Most sound engineers would consider it a
| failure if someone had to use subtitles for their own
| dialect, and most cinemaphiles consider the presence of
| subtitles to be a failure in itself, and everyone agrees
| that having to read off the screen to follow worsens the
| experience.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you... but in real life people
| misunderstand each other _all the time_. And don 't
| adjust.
|
| Listening to dialog in a movie theater is generally
| crystal clear in terms of audio engineering, coming from
| dedicated center speakers with very little audio
| artifacts due to the space. Directional sound waves are
| directional sound waves, and no there's nothing our ears
| are optimized for that isn't reproduced by speakers, for
| dialog coming from a few feet or more away. Muddiness is
| introduced when downmixed into stereo on crappy TV
| speakers in living rooms with a lot of sonic reflection
| from hard surfaces. If you listen with spatial audio
| AirPods with noise cancellation, for example, you'll get
| something much clearer akin to a theater experience.
|
| My point is that subtitles help people who have trouble
| understanding similar dialog in real life, or in bad
| acoustics. It's an accessibility option.
|
| When I listen to content with my AirPods, I never need
| subtitles at all. The audio is perfect. When I watch a
| movie in a friend's living room with kids running around,
| we absolutely put on subtitles. Because it's a terrible
| audio environment. So it all works out.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| I'm sorry but that is just not true. That kind of
| naturalistic acting has been the dominant trend in movies
| since Brando. TV may have been more stage like but definitely
| not movies.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You're right that it started with Brando and has only come
| more recently to TV in past decades. But I don't think I
| said anything to the contrary. I even said "TV is becoming
| more film-like".
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| You've got this backwards. Overly compressed dynamics are far
| more common than "excessive" dynamics. It's definitely not a
| case of sound engineers needlessly flexing.
|
| Your receiver will have a dynamic compression feature of some
| sort. Make sure that's maxed and it'll help. But frankly, an
| action movie isn't supposed to have explosions at the same
| sound level as dialog.
| qwertox wrote:
| This is why I sometimes choose the German-dubbed version of a
| movie, even though I prefer the original one in English. They
| either mumble that it's hard to understand, or have an accent,
| or it's just a bad mix there the dialog is disturbed by noises.
| Dubbing reduces those noises ans removes the mumbling and the
| accents.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I always thought it's the same problem as modern web design:
| razor thin fonts, "stylistically" low contrast ratios,
| hieroglyphic icons that don't show properly low resolution
| screens, slow loading times... because the designers and
| developers that made the thing are using maxxed-spec iMacs with
| 5k IPS color-accurate displays, so they never experience the
| "real world usage". I imagine the sound engineers have the
| "maxxed-spec" equivalent mixing studio, and the directors
| imagine everyone will experience the film in a theater or in a
| home theater, and not on the built-in Hisense TV speakers from
| across their living room.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| When I was working at a transcription company I had to build
| my test kit with spare parts from the Bin. The Bin was full
| of old discard parts, early Celeron and Pentium machines with
| PS/2 KB/M.
|
| Everything had to compile and run on that machine before I
| could ship builds to any of our transcriptionists. Our
| website needed to be able to load on it and so on.
|
| What you say rings true, sound engineers are also mixing
| audio at 24 bits uncompressed, and while DVDs and Blu-Ray
| have the ability to play it back, I doubt the streaming
| services are sending it in full bit depth and also that most
| people buy hardware capable of decoding it if they did.
| snarfy wrote:
| > Sound engineers need to stop needlessly flexing all that
| dynamic range that modern tools give them
|
| Most of this is a result of surround sound and people not
| setting it up. There are two main speakers, a center speaker,
| and various surround speakers depending on the setup.
|
| Dialog is primarily mixed to come out of the center speaker. If
| you turn the center volume up and the main speakers down you
| can fix the problem where explosions/music are too loud but
| dialog is too quiet.
| socraticmethod wrote:
| >Sound engineers need to stop needlessly flexing all that
| dynamic range that modern tools give them, and just produce a
| watchable movie.
|
| Audio component manufacturers have actually responded to this
| tendency by adding in-line compressors to the audio channels
| that can be enabled/disabled. Sometimes this is labelled as the
| "Dynamic Range" feature in AV systems. Essentially it squashes
| the loudest sounds, which in turn brings up the average volume
| of the quietest sounds, thus evening the overall volume and
| allowing for a single volume setting to be used throughout the
| movie.
| copperx wrote:
| > Sound engineers need to stop needlessly flexing all that
| dynamic range that modern tools give them, and just produce a
| watchable movie. Actors need to go do some stage acting and
| learn how to e n u n c i a t e and project their voices.
|
| I am all for a ruthless dialog loudness war, like the loudness
| war in the 1990s-2010s.
| Bancakes wrote:
| There seems to be a wave of naturalistic acting in TV series
| nowadays. Actors who simply play out the script verbatim as if
| in pre-premiere. No idea when this started. I'm thinking of the
| new she-hulk series.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| While we are teaching actors to enunciate can we do the same
| with musicians? When I listen to music in German, I can almost
| completely understand it despite speaking German at a
| kindergarten level. When I listen to music in English, despite
| being fluent, it is almost impossible to discern the lyrics
| they are mumbling.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| This! I came to the US when I was 14. I thought everyone
| understood Sting but me...
| dotancohen wrote:
| I suspect that a large part of this problem is Autotune.
| Singers need no training to hit the right pitches anymore, so
| they receive no training at all for any of the other skills
| as well.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Glottal stops.
| hedora wrote:
| Try listening to Boss Hoss sometime.
|
| (German band, lots of English language covers with "wait
| THAT'S why they're saying?!?" moments.)
| missblit wrote:
| Weird Al said it best:
|
| > It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss with all these marbles in
| my mouth.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Honestly I've often thought that many songs are only popular
| _because_ you can 't really understand the (trivial, vulgar,
| gross) lyrics.
| weinzierl wrote:
| > _" The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too
| loud for her, so we have to turn the volume down during those
| parts, but the dialog is too quiet [..]"_
|
| On YouTube the ads are the explosions. Ads are so loud compared
| to the regular videos that I often just turn the volume down
| and the captions on.
| bluedino wrote:
| I wish YouTube could fix this. As my playlist goes from video
| to video, channel to channel, the volume is all over the damn
| place.
| dghughes wrote:
| I seem to have a Youtube feature of CC in a random language.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Also probably because reading something is much faster than
| listening it. It takes just a second to visually read a sentence
| that is on the screen, instead of waiting for 2-3 seconds for the
| actor to actually say it out loud. Probably because we humans
| recognize words and word groups instead of letters (as how that
| Oxford study a few years back found out), and that's much faster.
| jostylr wrote:
| I'd be curious to know how many speed up the videos versus cc
| it. I know I prefer most videos at faster speeds unless there
| is a lot of music in it. But cc'ing it with faster speeds is
| difficult.
|
| As a side note, I think the Rings of Power would be way more
| enjoyable if I could just 2x it. Kind of hoping someone here
| will say "You can do that, just ..."
| jqgatsby wrote:
| I think there will be a trend of content being made
| specifically with a faster playback speed in mind. I watch my
| 10 year old son who habitually watches videos at 2x and I
| can't believe that its not the same for many other kids.
| tom_ wrote:
| I did this when I was 20-something too. A while ago now, as I am
| 45.
|
| UK TV back then had subtitles on teletext page 888. (And maybe it
| still does? I don't watch TV any more.) My flatmates and I would
| always switch this on when watching TV, as it meant we could
| talk, while still being able to keep track of what was going on
| in the programme.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| At first I assumed this was just going to be the writer being out
| of touch. Of course young people use subtitles. They're
| distracting and frequently ugly, but modern movies/shows have
| awful audio mixing, forcing you to turn it down, and
| mumbling/whispering dialogue. And we frequently watch things in
| environments where we don't want sound or headphones, e.g. TikTok
| or whatever in public or at night (and also, since these
| platforms start playback automatically, you'd otherwise miss
| something). And of course, we watch things that aren't in
| English.
|
| But then I read all the accounts of people who can't explain why
| they turn on subtitles, aside from "I just like it" or "I'm just
| used to it", and I just... I feel confused, angry. I AM the out
| of touch old person.
| zengief wrote:
| A new hearing loss modality seems to be gaining traction --
| "hidden" hearing loss. A core symptom is difficulty parsing
| speech in noisy environments. Caused by repeated exposure to loud
| noises. Don't know if folks around here are going clubbing much
| but I'm under the impression that it's gotten way louder
| recently. Live music as a whole is pretty popular these days.
|
| Apparently most who have it don't have the classic symptoms:
| tinnitus or hearing loss picked up at the audiologist's office.
| troad wrote:
| I definitely have this. My friends can usually understand one
| another shouting in a moderately loud bar; I can't understand
| them at all.
|
| I don't know if it's technically hearing loss though; I feel
| like I can hear the noises my friends are making, I just can't
| segregate them from the background noise enough to parse the
| former as speech.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I wear hearing aids for moderate hearing loss. They are
| optimised for picking out speech from the background sounds
| and in the open air or rooms that have good acoustics my
| comprehension can be better than people with notionally
| better hearing. But some sounds are very effective jammers
| for hearing aids, notably running water, boiling kettles and,
| unfortunately, the ambient noises in typical restaurants.
| novok wrote:
| For how popular this is, streaming providers and major video
| websites like youtube sure phone it in with subtitle placement.
| They could do basic shit, like force the subtitles to be within
| the black bars as much as possible with some basic algorithmic
| programming, or just spend one person day laying out the
| subtitles better or just approach an iota of the effort that most
| fansub groups do.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| AI caption sucks, not closed to the real captions.
|
| Is a 38 years old who watched anime since at least 20 years ago.
| There were people who delicates into translating new anime
| episodes with captions every week. The best teams have it done
| within 3 hours after the episode is aired in Japan.
| knorker wrote:
| being on the wrong side of 40 the CC was to me always available.
| I always hated them.
|
| So now I hate it double. Either can't understand dialog, or need
| obnoxious un-immersive subtitles turned on.
|
| So most of the time watching I have to have make an effort to my
| eyes stay away from the bottom part of the screen, only to "check
| the cheat sheet" when they start mumbling or ruin the movie with
| terrible mixing.
|
| It's not the viewer. It's the content.
|
| It seems like most content now. Tenet is just the parody of it,
| ironically parodying before most of the phenomenon had bloomed.
| Jolter wrote:
| I turn them on because I'll be eating chips.
| tomrod wrote:
| We started watching with closed captions so we could watch while
| the little ones were small. We never stopped.
| jdofaz wrote:
| I've done this for a long time, I first turned the captions on
| out of novelty when we got a TV that had a CC decoder built in.
| After a while I found it useful and left it on most of the time
| Eleison23 wrote:
| My Mom and Dad are avid TV watchers, and now my octogenarian
| father does have significant hearing loss. We've been using
| subtitles for decades, probably since the 90s when I started to
| play with the settings on our newly-purchased TV sets. We enjoy
| it, especially because we watch a lot of British TV, and although
| we are quite accustomed to many varied accents from around the
| Empire, subtitling definitely helps with the interesting turns of
| phrase, the barely-intelligible asides, and comprehension in
| general.
|
| I also love watching Spanish subtitles to learn the language
| better. However, I do tend to disable them on YouTube, because
| they distract and detract from the viewing experience when they
| are completely unnecessary.
| miked85 wrote:
| In my experience it's not just 20-somethings. I've sometimes
| started watching something with CC accidentally turned on, and
| then realized it made the clip/movie/whatever easier to
| understand. My parents use it as well, and it has nothing to do
| with hearing loss.
| strangescript wrote:
| I just get tired of shows with poor audio normalization and
| having the "what the heck did they just say" moments. Or one of
| my kids decides to randomly scream at the top of their lungs. And
| there is the whole blowing my ears out with rap music in my car
| because I thought it was cool growing up. I'm getting old.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I have auditory processing difficulties. Among many other sensory
| challenges. Sitting at a table in a restaurant, I struggle to
| understand what my friends are saying to me over the din of
| background chatter, a bartender shaking a drink, back of the
| house clinking a pan.
|
| I similarly struggle to understand what actors are saying when
| they're backed by theme music or other physical things going on
| as part of (or behind) the story. Captions help me actually
| consume video rather than feel lost in it. Without text I pretty
| much would stop consuming video entirely.
|
| Granted, I'm 40 so I can't speak for the youngs. And I hear just
| fine in that the sounds are all present in my ears and my brain.
| They just get jumbled and being able to catch up with text helps
| immensely.
| aviditas wrote:
| As one of the younger but not young crowd, I have a form of
| auditory dyslexia which is why I've used CC and subtitles most
| of my life. Good sound mixing and actor enunciation helps to a
| small degree, but my brain garbles the first part of
| conversation starts and when dialog happens without visual
| cues.
|
| My hearing is good, but the delays in processing dialog to
| content make watching movies or tv very frustrating when I
| can't see the actor's face to lip read or don't have CC to
| catch what I miss.
|
| On the other side of things, I have a very high level of
| internal voice so when I am reading text I can 'hear' the
| dialog in my head. I can listen to the first 20 minutes of a
| movie or episode or two of a tv show, then watch it muted with
| subtitles and will hear the actor's voices. It's nice because I
| can watch shows with my own background music or without
| disturbing anyone with the audio.
| iwanttocomment wrote:
| So, television captions were terrible until the dawn of
| streaming. One could argue that DVDs (circa late '90s) were OK,
| but the captions were cartoonish, pixelated nightmare captions
| that nobody wanted on their TV, just as bad as the typical
| "closed captioning" of live network television.
|
| Decent captioning really didn't occur until the age of Blu-ray
| and streaming, around 15 years ago; 1080p captions that were
| inobtrusive and in lockstep with the dialogue at hand. The
| 20-somethings would have grown up with perfectly acceptable,
| inobtrusive captions, and thus have no issue keeping them on-
| screen to avoid confusion when keeping the television volume at a
| reasonable volume.
|
| I'm no 20-something, and we keep Blu-ray and streaming captions
| on in our household. This is a new thing in the past 10-15 years,
| and it has to do entirely with the quality of captioning and
| nothing having to do with anything else.
| joshu wrote:
| does anyone else get intensely annoyed when a) the closed
| captions misspell a word (or use the wrong word entirely) or b)
| when the captions don't match the spoken words (often on
| translated materials)?
| bigmatto wrote:
| It's vitally important to have a 2 second delay with closed
| captions. Without the delay you may start reading the dialog in
| advance, this degrades your enjoyment of the movie. Better to
| listen, and have the subtitles there as a backup 2 seconds later
| for anything you miss.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| 35 now, but I've been using CC for as long as I can remember.
| Maybe since I was 7 or 8 years old.
|
| For me it was always that I could never really make out the
| dialogue much of the time, and with live tv there was no
| rewinding so CC gave me a second chance if I missed something.
| dopeboy wrote:
| The comments in this thread are unusually interesting because
| everyone is chiming in with different reasons. A lot of diversity
| in the reasoning.
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