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

wsj.com

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

#261

Post by willis936 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #256
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…

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 watch…

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.

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

#262

Post by mackrevinack »

jamesbfb wrote: post #198
mattnewton wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would have paid extra for subtitles when I saw Tenet at IMAX. The audio mix made it extremely difficult to follow.

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

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

#265

Post by csours »

hedora wrote: post #263

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.

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

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

#266

Post by dghughes »

bluedino wrote: post #222
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…

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.

I seem to have a Youtube feature of CC in a random language.

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

#267

Post by nomilk »

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...

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

#268

Post by [deleted] »

IgorPartola wrote: post #249
Klonoar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#269

Post by runarberg »

ninkendo wrote: post #131
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 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]”, et…

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].

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