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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?

#681

Post by brokenmachine »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #400
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.

It’s honestly ridiculous how bad the stereo (aka what 99% of viewers will experience) mixes are. The explosions can be heard by my neighbors yet I can barely hear the dialogue at the same volume. Find myself basically doing half the mix work myself with the volume control. Too many audiophiles in the production chain focusing on something that barely matters at the expense of most viewers.

It's the same on the 5.1 mix.

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

#682

Post by brokenmachine »

hedora wrote: post #260
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.

Yeah; playing 5.1 mixes on stereo equipment make the side and back channels too loud and the center channel too quiet. Also, it is now fashionable for actors to mumble. I'm reasonably sure I am not going deaf, since I have no problem following audio fiction podcasts with the windows down in my car during my commute.

Even listening on a good, calibrated 5.1 setup, the center dialog is way too quiet.

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

#683

Post by brokenmachine »

radicalbyte wrote: post #453
zbuf wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversion isn't so much as "automatic" or opinionated, but clearly defined in a spec. And it _is_ mathematically correct in terms of sound energy entering the ears. A device may be doing the conversion incorrectly of course. But there is still an omission, which is the introduction of the centre speaker was (as I understand it) to "pin" dialogue to the screen more effectively. That implies there _is_ some physic…

I have a 3.1 set-up with the center boosted by the maximum amount allowable. Will eventually upgrade to 5.1 once the kids are old enough to not climb on the rear speakers.

You will find that even with a 5.1 setup, you will still want to boost the center a lot.

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

#684

Post by brokenmachine »

mrweasel wrote: post #448
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.

So it’s similar to when a developer great an Electron app that works great on a 24 core machine with 32GB of RAM. It’s not going to be great unless we’re forced to test it on the average dual core laptop with 4GB of RAM?

Even on a good calibrated 5.1 setup the dialog is still way too quiet, so in your analogy the Electron app is still crappy on the best PC.

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

#685

Post by brokenmachine »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #462
itronitron wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the new 4K TVs by default have some 'video enhancement' processing steps turned on by default which ends up making everything look fake. If you go into the TV settings and turn all of those things off it should make the world look more natural.

this processing can create desync issues where the audio is in front of the video by just a bit. this creates a lip sync issue which makes people feel the audio is dubbed over and can tear you out of suspense of disbelief. but i don't think that's what they mean here. rings is just bad acting - or rather, bad direction that forces bad acting. i have no doubt the actors are capable of much more than what they're being…

I think OP was talking about frame interpolation aka "soap opera effect", which is both horrible and enabled-by-default on most large TVs nowadays.

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

#686

Post by elzbardico »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #508
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.

The 5.1 vs 2.0 is a bit of a red herring, it used to be a big problem a decade or two ago, but today it is just a small to insignificant contributor to the problem. The real problem now a days is not technical, it is 100% director's choice. Having deafening "wooooon" organ music, and ear popping explosions is simply in vogue, so all directors want that in their movie, and mix like that on purpose. And it is not about…

The last time I went to a theather was before the pandemic, and frankly, I didn't bother going back exactly because the audio became almost an agression to my senses.

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

#687

Post by Godel_unicode »

hedora wrote: post #633
Godel_unicode wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those scenes look amazing on good TVs. Making bad screens show them well seems like a problem for the producers of bad screens to solve.

By "good TV" do you mean one that is stuck in demo mode with blown out saturation and gamma?

Of course not, that would look awful.

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

#688

Post by Godel_unicode »

knorker wrote: post #418
Godel_unicode wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those scenes look amazing on good TVs. Making bad screens show them well seems like a problem for the producers of bad screens to solve.

On good TVs under perfect lighting conditions only. Try watching handmaid's tale without blackout blinds.

Good, sounds like we agree that the problem is the way they’re displayed, not the way they’re mastered.

If you want to watch a dark scene in bright light then you should have a button on your display/remote that adjusts the settings to make that possible. Tons of people have produced brightened versions of those scenes and put them on YouTube, it’s definitely possible. You can always remove dynamic range in post, hard to create it if the source material doesn’t have it though.

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

#689

Post by tibbon »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #508
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.

The 5.1 vs 2.0 is a bit of a red herring, it used to be a big problem a decade or two ago, but today it is just a small to insignificant contributor to the problem. The real problem now a days is not technical, it is 100% director's choice. Having deafening "wooooon" organ music, and ear popping explosions is simply in vogue, so all directors want that in their movie, and mix like that on purpose. And it is not about…

Fwiw, I just wish more systems had built in dynamics controls.

I both sympathize with the problem that people are having (and sometimes have it myself), but I also really enjoy focused movie listening time on a nice Atmos system with subwoofers that has a huge dynamic range. Most people don’t enjoy watching films this way however, or not most of the time

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

#690

Post by cout »

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…

Seems like a compressor would solve your problem nicely -- the quiet parts stay the same level and the loud parts get quieter.
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