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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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sound mixing does seem to have gotten much worse over time. But also, people in old movies often enunciated very clearly as a stylistic choice. The Transatlantic accent—sounds a bit unnatural but you can follow the plot.

In older movies and TV shows the actors would also speak loudly. There’s a lot of mumbling and whispering in shows today.

Lots of the early actors were highly experienced at live stage acting (without microphones) and radio (with only microphone) before they got into video.

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

#382
My main computer monitor, ancient now (a Dell U2711), was a calibrated SRGB display when new and still gives very good colour rendition.

Are movies produced in this colour space? No idea. But they all look great in SRGB.

A work colleague got himself a 40" HD TV as a big computer monitor. This is a few years ago. I was shocked at the overamped colour and contrast. Went through all the settings and with everything turned to minimum - every colour saturation slider, everything that could be found - it was almost realistic but still garish compared to SRGB.

But that's what people want, right? Overamped everything is how those demo loops at Costco are set up, that's what sells, that's what people want in their living rooms, right?

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

#383

It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It seems they want to make these settings usable without specialist knowledge, but the end result of their opaque naming and vague descriptions is that anybody who actually cares about what they see and thinks they might benefit from some of the features has to either systematically try every p…

> It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that.

It would also help if there was a common, universal, perfect "reference TV" to aim for (or multiple such references for different use cases), with the job of the TV being to approximate this reference as closely as possible.

Alas, much like documenting the features, this would turn TVs into commodities, which is what consumers want, but TV vendors very much don't.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Films are more like dreams than like real life. Yes! The other happy accident of movies that contribute to the dream-like quality, besides the lower frame rate, is the edit. As Walter Murch says in "In the Blink of an Eye", we don't object to jumps in time or location when we watch a film. As humans we understand what has happened, despite such a thing being impossible in reality. The only time we ever experience j…

I would say that cuts are something we get used to rather than something that is intrinsically “natural” to us. I remember when I was very little that it was actually somewhat “confusing”, or at least quite taxing mentally, and I’m pretty sure I see this in my own very little children. As we grow and “practice” watching plays, TV, movies, read books, our brains adapts and we become completely used to it.

True. Maybe we experience jumps in time and location in our dreams because we've been conditioned to it by films.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happens to me in cinemas at 24 fps, it’s not the display technology that is giving me headaches.

Not sure if it's the same thing, but nearly all cinemas are digital nowadays, and panning artifacts are absolutely still there

It’s happened to me since before any cinemas were digital. I only figured out why by trying to play games below 30 fps. At least for me, it’s definitely the frame rate.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out? It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them. It…

That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in. If John dumped Jane at the beginning of the episode, they had to get back together at the end, otherwise the viewer who had to go to her son's wedding that week wouldn't know what was going on. There was no streaming, recaps were few and far between, and not everybody had access to timeshifting, so you couldn't jus…

> That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in.

This doesn't make sense; no show I know from that time followed that principle - and for good reason, because they'd get boring the moment the viewer realizes that nothing ever happens on them, because everything gets immediately undone or rendered meaningless. Major structural changes get restored at the end (with exceptions), but characters and the world are gradually changing.

> If John dumped Jane at the beginning of the episode, they had to get back together at the end, otherwise the viewer who had to go to her son's wedding that week wouldn't know what was going on.

This got solved with "Last time on ${series name}" recaps at the beginning of the episode.

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

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If films shot at a decent enough frame rate, people wouldn’t feel the need to try to fix it. And snobs can have a setting that skips every other frame. Similar is the case for sound and (to a much lesser extent) contrast. Viewers need to be able to see and hear in comfort.

If you think this is about snobbery, then I'm afraid you've completely misunderstood the problem. This is more comparable to color being turned off. Sure, if you're completely colorblind, then it's not an issue. But non-colorblind people are not "snobs". Or if dialog is completely unintelligible. That's not a problem for people who don't speak the language anyway, and would need subtitles either way. But people who s…

There is no such thing as the soap opera effect. Good quality sets and makeup and cameras look good at 24 or 48 or 120 fps.

People like you insisting on 24 fps causes people like me to unnecessarily have to choose between not seeing films, seeing them with headaches or seeing them with some interpolation.

I will generally choose the latter until everything is at a decent frame rate.

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

#388
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm listening to a majority of video content in my stereo headphones on PC. They are good and quality of every source is good. Everything sounds fine except for some movie and some TV shows specifically. And those are atrocious in clarity. Regarding internal speakers, I have listened to several cheap to medium TVs on internal speakers, and yes on some models the sound was bad. But it doesn't matter, because the most…

I'm not a speaker sales person, believe whatever you want.

Do you realize that phones, tablets, laptops, most PCs don't have an option of "just add speakers"? You are technically correct, yes full Dolby Duper Atmo 9.2.4.8.100500 system is better. But people without them are not using their setups incorrectly, they have valid setups they have valid use case and they don't get basic level of quality which IS possible and WAS possible just a few years ago with proper channel mixing.

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

#389

If your TV supports a "gaming" mode, I always recommend enabling that, because it usually turns off all the "enhancements". TV's should not try to be anything more than a large monitor.

Filmmaker Mode is the one you want. It's specifically set up to disable all "enhancements".

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

#390
post #280
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In principle, I agree with you. I would vastly prefer original material at high frame rates instead of interpolation. But I remember the backslash against “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” because it was filmed at 48 Hz, and that makes me think that people dislike high frame rate content no matter the source, so my comment also covers these cases. Also, because of that public response, we don't have more content ac…

I wanted to like The Hobbit in 48, but it really didn't work for me. It made everything look fake, from the effects to the acting. I lost suspension of disbelief. If we want high frame rate to be a thing, then filmmakers need to figure out a way to direct that looks plausible at a more realistic speed, and that probably means less theatrics.
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