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Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

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Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#221

Post by knorker »

saghm wrote: post #207

> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. I know I'm pretty unsophisticated when it comes to stuff like art, but I've never been able to appreciate takes like this. If I'm watching something on…

To me it's not about art. It's about this setting making the production quality of a billion dollar movie look like a cardboard SNL set.

When walking past a high end TV I've honestly confused a billion dollar movie for a teen weekend project, due to this. It's only when I see "hang on, how's Famous Actor in this?" that I see that oh this is a Marvel movie?

To me it's as if people who don't see it are saying "oh, I didn't even realise I'd set the TV to black and white".

This is not high art. It's... well... the soap opera effect.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#222

Post by deelowe »

retrac wrote: post #73
pupppet wrote: post #66

The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.

Perhaps a mixing issue on your end? Multi-channel audio has the dialog track separated. So you can increase the volume of the dialog if you want. Unfortunately I think there is variability in hardware (and software players) in how to down-mix, which sometimes results in background music in the surround channels drowning out the dialog in the centre channel.

Sometimes it's because the original mix was for theater surround sound and lower mixes were generated via software.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#223

Post by KeplerBoy »

snakeboy wrote: post #216
joquarky wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that the people mixing the audio already know what is being said: Top-down processing (or more specifically, top-down auditory perception) This refers to perception being driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and context rather than purely by sensory input. When you already know the dialog, your brain projects that knowledge onto the sound and experiences it as “clear.”

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#224

Post by opan »

Shorel wrote: post #109

Anyone who mentions: "the soap opera effect" is someone who used to watch soap operas. The reason they dislike it, is their own bad taste. I like how it looks because it is "high quality videogame effect" for me. 60 hz, 120hz, 144hz, you only get this on a good videogame setup.

Real high framerate is one thing, but the TV setting is faking it with interpolation. There's not really a good reason to do this, it's trickery to deceive you. Recording a video at 60fps is fine, but that's just not what TV and movies do in reality. No one is telling you to watch something at half the intended framerate, just the actual framerate.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#225

Post by BobaFloutist »

saghm wrote: post #207

> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. I know I'm pretty unsophisticated when it comes to stuff like art, but I've never been able to appreciate takes like this. If I'm watching something on…

The tone might be a miss, but I enjoy having access to information on the intended experience, for my own curiosity, to better understand the creative process and intentions of the artist, and to habe the option to tweak my approach if I feel like I'm missing something other people aren't.

I hear you, artists (and fans) are frequently overly dogmatic on how their work should be consumed but, well, that strikes me as part-and-parcel of the instinct that drives them to sink hundreds or thousands of hours into developing a niche skill that lets them express an idea by creating something beautiful for the rest of us to enjoy. If they didn't care so much about getting it right, the work would probably be less polished and less compelling, so I'm happy to let them be a bit irritating since they dedicated their life to making something nice for me and the rest of us, even if it was for themselves.

Up to you whether or not this applies to this or any other particular creator, but it feels appropriate to me for artists to be annoying about how their work should be enjoyed in the same way it's appropriate for programmers to be annoying about how software should be developed and used: everyone's necessarily more passionate and opinionated about their domain and their work, that's why they're better at it than me even if individual opinions aren't universally strictly right!

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#226

Post by EbNar »

freitasm wrote: post #55

If only the directors didn't make everything so dark and hard to see. Also stopped messing with sound, making it impossible to hear dialogues.

Incidentally, that's the reason why I love photography in Nolan's movies: he seems to love scenes with bright light in which you can actually see what's going on.

Most other movies/series instead are so dark that make my mid-range TV look like crap. And no, it's not an HW fault, as 500 nits should be enough to watch a movie.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#227

Post by XorNot »

snakeboy wrote: post #216
joquarky wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that the people mixing the audio already know what is being said: Top-down processing (or more specifically, top-down auditory perception) This refers to perception being driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and context rather than purely by sensory input. When you already know the dialog, your brain projects that knowledge onto the sound and experiences it as “clear.”

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

Honestly what I don't get is how this even happened though: it's been I think 10 years with no progress on getting the volume of things to equal out, even with all the fancy software we have. Like I would've thought that 5.1 should be relatively easy to normalize, since the center speech channel is a big obvious "the audience _really_ needs to hear this" channel that should be easy to amplify up in any downmix....instead watching anything is still just riding the damn volume button.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#228

Post by eterevsky »

eviks wrote: post #148

Are there any creators that evolved and shoot at high frame rates that eliminate the need for motion interpolation and its artifacts or is the grip of the bad old film culture still too strong? (there are at least some 48fps films)

James Cameron is one of the few who do this.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#230

Post by throw-12-16 »

tybulewicz wrote: post #213
throw-12-16 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you are just using internal speakers. They are notorious for bad vocal range audio. I have a decent surround sound and had no issues at all.

Is there any way to connect just a center speaker to the TV? I want to get a 3.0 setup with minimal changes to the equipment.

Soundbars are a good option, but spend some time reading reviews as there is a huge gap between the cheaper ones and good quality that will actually make a difference.

My brother has 2 of the apple speakers in stereo mode and they sound pretty good imo.

Nothing beats true surround sound though.

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