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Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

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Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#241

Post by hydrogen7800 »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #197
Seanambers wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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'…

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-...

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#242

Post by jamespullar »

perrygeo wrote: post #45

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 entertain…

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.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#243

Post by pclmulqdq »

ryandrake wrote: post #136

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…

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.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#244

Post by iwanttocomment »

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.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#245

Post by bigmatto »

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.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#246

Post by pclmulqdq »

donclark wrote: post #200
ryandrake wrote: post #136

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…

Why do our devices not have an option to normalize audio (or something along those lines)?

A lot of devices do have this option, but it's buried in the menus and it isn't always the best quality.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#247

Post by FabHK »

generalizations wrote: post #156
ericbarrett wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

VLC lets you adjust the timing of the closed captions. It's totally possible to set a delay of 2 sec.

H/J to decrease/increase subtitle delay.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#248

Post by hota_mazi »

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.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#249

Post by IgorPartola »

Klonoar wrote: post #185
ryandrake wrote: post #136

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…

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 ti…

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.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#250

Post by IgorPartola »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #243
ryandrake wrote: post #136

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…

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.

This! I came to the US when I was 14. I thought everyone understood Sting but me…
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