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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?

#281

Post by bscphil »

Barrin92 wrote: post #122
bscphil wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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.

I watch a lot of things in foreign languages, but still feel that having to use subtitles is a worse experience.

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

#282

Post by aidenn0 »

lostlogin wrote: post #237
nogridbag wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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...

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

#283

Post by hindsightbias »

mattnewton wrote: post #192
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…

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.

Nolan is just trolling us, he knows we’ll pay good money for crap we can’t understand or hear.

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

#284

Post by imgabe »

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.

Would it not be possible to have multiple audio mixes available and play the one that is appropriate for your setup?

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

#285

Post by PcChip »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #199
cronix wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a 5.1 system, boost the center channel. That's mainly dialog.

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 sometime…

Are you sure? I thought a lot of people were successfully running "phantom centers" by just using L and R

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

#286

Post by noveltyaccount »

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.

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

#287

Post by noisem4ker »

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.

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".

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

#288

Post by least »

ekianjo wrote: post #254
least wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

so you have people in real life that emit slurred intelligible sounds instead of speaking properly? that sounds terrible.

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.

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

#289

Post by lttlrck »

octobus2021 wrote: post #233
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'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 hous…

Have you tried night mode? It compresses the dynamic range.
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