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
Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
121–130 of 738 posts
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#122The 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 entertain…
> [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 a…
>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.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#123The 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 entertain…
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.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#124I 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. Thr…
I've never heard of this. Is it something offered by all the big streaming services?
yes
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#125The 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
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#126A lot of movies have awful mastering and action scenes are ear-splittingly loud, while dialogue is quiet.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#127We 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 w…
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.
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.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#128Audio 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.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#129Not 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.
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…
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#130I 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.
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.