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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?

#291

Post by vel0city »

imgabe wrote: post #284
IgorPartola wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

#292

Post by epistasis »

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.

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.

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

#293

Post by vel0city »

nogridbag wrote: post #232
boltzmann-brain wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

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.

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.

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

#294

Post by bigzyg33k »

19h wrote: post #144

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".

TikTok’s audio is on by default

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

#295

Post by sph »

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.

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

#296

Post by epistasis »

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…

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?

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

#297

Post by noisem4ker »

imgabe wrote: post #284
IgorPartola wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

#298

Post by vel0city »

ryandrake wrote: post #217
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.

> 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.

> 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.

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

#299

Post by ordu »

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…

> 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.

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

#300

Post by least »

ryandrake wrote: post #217
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.

> 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.

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.

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