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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?

#191

Post by philwelch »

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…

Your tone is a little smug here. If I’m paying attention to something I’m watching on TV, I can hear the dialogue. I want to be able to actually watch the performances of the actors, or whatever else is on the screen, instead of reading captions.

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

#192

Post by mattnewton »

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.

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

#193

Post by camoufleur »

pedalpete wrote: post #68
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…

I agree, but also find it surprising that younger generations are more focused on what they are watching. I'm a background watcher for sure, and this trend with CC suggests to me that the whole "2nd screen" thing isn't playing with the younger generation. Any insights as to why that may be? To give more context, I was always a "background media" person. Even as a kid I'd draw while in front of the TV, I was never a f…

With television you turn it on and there are a few mediocre choices you can tune out. On streaming platforms you have to specifically select a program to watch. When Gen Z watches/listens to something in the background it's much more likely to be a long YouTube video or a podcast.

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

#194

Post by egypturnash »

One reason neither the article nor the comments here are mentioning: lots of videos are now designed to be Content in an Endless Feed, and are made with the intent of capturing your interest even if you're sitting there with your phone muted. Text floating on the screen increases the chance of making you stop scrolling and rack up that precious view count.

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

#196

Post by Dreami »

pvarangot wrote: post #149
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 have the same issue but instead of using subtitles I've embraced not knowing what's going on with the show. If it was important that I know for my enjoyment then I'm probably not watching the show anymore. Like if what the actor said was unintelligible I'm going to go with that's part of the plot, a puzzle for me to figure out on the show subreddit or something, but I'm not going to deal with the shitty blinding su…

Just for reference: if you need Subtitles on an OLED, e.g. on Netflix you can set the subtitles to grey (only in the Web app, but is used on all other apps). Had that same problem with the OLED

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

#197

Post by boltzmann-brain »

Seanambers wrote: post #151
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 totally agree. The sound mixes today are so far off a pleasant experience that the people who do make them should feel ashamed - How do many actually have a home cinema room with soundproofing and 20 speakers ? Most people watch movies with a headset / a TV / 2.1 / 5.1 surround system and they may even be limited by other factors like neighbours and you know real life.. And the the voice levels is obnoxiously low a…

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's not your hearing, it's the mix. Source: I'm a mastering engineer with a monitoring setup worth six figures and I use closed captions too.

Speakers in TVs used to be tailored to making speech intelligible. Nowadays it's... well whatever it is, it's not really meant to do anything. Not even the more high-end popular speaker systems are meant to do anything at all, really. They all just kinda sorta make whatever is coming out of them sound flashy and whooshy. That's another reason why movies are even more difficult to understand.

And let's be honest - a lot of it nowadays is just not _worth_ hearing... Staple tv shows form the 70s that fell into obscurity for being extremely pedestrian had better writing than nearly all big-budget movies nowadays. I remember when Pig came out recently, it was the only good movie during a span of maybe 3 months. That's how dire it is nowadays.

Edit: oh, and I forgot about the ubiquitous 5.1-to-stereo downmixing bug: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32883588

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

#198

Post by jamesbfb »

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.

I would have paid extra for subtitles when I saw Tenet at IMAX. The audio mix made it extremely difficult to follow.

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

#199

Post by boltzmann-brain »

cronix wrote: post #160
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…

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 sometimes dialogue is only in the center channel - not all of it, but there are some lines every now and then that just only ever come out of the center channel. Those are lost.

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

#200

Post by donclark »

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…

Why do our devices not have an option to normalize audio (or something along those lines)?
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