Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on? • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by acron0 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

jschveibinz wrote: post #11

Two reasons from my perspective, other than my ears are getting older: 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the neighbors. 2. Dialects and accents seem to be more prevalent in content, and CC helps to cut down the cognitive load of “translation” while being enter…

> 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the neighbors.

I was once told, by a salesperson in a TV store that this was essentially "by design" and that the solution they're taught to present is to "buy a soundbar". From his understanding, in the quest to get thinner TV manufacturers sacrificed built-in speaker size and quality, which results in the effect you describe. I am not sure how much is sales patter and how much is truth...but I bought a sound bar!

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

#32

Post by knaik94 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

Another reason that I can think of is that many people are watching content at a increased playback rate. I personally limit that to education content because for things like comedy it can mess with pacing. But I have friends that have used it while watching really long shows. It doesn't have to be much faster but if you think about a 10 hour series, that is approximately an hour saved. I recognize that this seems odd, but I have tried it on some shows and it honestly makes them more enjoyable. It's not universal to every show or to every person.

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

#33

Post by procinct » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

I’m also a big fan of watching with CC (sometimes it can be genuinely hard to pick up what someone says and it can be key dialogue). However anything in the comedy genre is the exception since CC ruin the timing of the jokes.

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

#34

Post by Zircom » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #25

Not in that age group but I can't imagine not having cc on. I was hooked when watching anime and foreign movies but even with english movies they only have an upside. You don't have to guess what word they said or how someone's name is spelled. Loud scenes where you can barely hear them is one but also when you have characters that have accents or switch to a different language it helps (you don't get distracted by t…

One downside of having captions on all the time is that forced subtitles when characters are speaking a foreign language in an otherwise native language show are usually burned into the actual video stream instead of being in the same text file that the normal subtitles pull from, so a lot of lazy captions providers will put something like "" in the captions, which will then be displayed over the same space the burned in subtitles are for the entirety of the time they are speaking, meaning I have to rewind, turn off subtitles, rewatch the scene, then re enable the subtitles if I want to actual know what is going on.

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

#35

Post by d1sxeyes » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

extragood wrote: post #17

> Captions can also facilitate multitasking I have a hard time believing this. Captions demand more attention if anything. I can passively "watch" a video by only listening to the audio, but I can't passively read. I think that the phenomenon described in the article may actually be a symptom of a much deeper social change. Listening and auditory comprehension were critical skills for communication and preservation o…

I think you're right in absolute terms, that captions require more attention than audio generally, that's only true if you're choosing one or the other, when most people are doing both.

With audio, if you missed a word, because you were focussing on something else for a moment, you have to rewind. If you have captions on, you can glance quickly at the screen, read the word or two that you missed, allowing you to 'recover'.

That allows you to pay even less active attention to the audio, because you know you can always 'error-correct' later.

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

#36

Post by duped » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

acron0 wrote: post #31

jschveibinz wrote: post #11

Two reasons from my perspective, other than my ears are getting older: 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the neighbors. 2. Dialects and accents seem to be more prevalent in content, and CC helps to cut down the cognitive load of “translation” while being enter…

> 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the neighbors. I was once told, by a salesperson in a TV store that this was essentially "by design" and that the solution they're taught to present is to "buy a soundbar". From his understanding, in the quest to get thinner…

Built in TV audio has always been bad. That said some TVs are starting to use the screen as a diaphragm now, which is interesting.

It's not "by design" so much as bad audio setups are going to sound bad, and a lot of people don't know how to shop for or care about it.

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

#37

Post by diziet » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

Closed Captions are more available now through settings, great audio text models, exposure of people to foreign language films and shows, etc. The 20-somethings are exposed to it more and adopt to using them. Youtube's closed captions are both a noticeable button and a "c" keyboard shortcut.

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

#38

Post by russellbeattie » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

adwi wrote: post #26

Tangential: I’ve found subtitles to be a very useful tool for learning a language. In order of challenge, I’ll at least watch everything in English with Spanish subtitles, then Spanish SAP with English subtitles, then Spanish SAP with Spanish subtitles, then just in Spanish.

I discovered something amusing about this. When I was living in Spain 20 years ago, my Spanish (ex-) wife and I bought a DVD collection of Friends. At first we'd watch it in English with Spanish captions so my ex could get the subtleties, then as her English improved, we'd watch it with English captions which helped with words she was unfamiliar with. Then we started doing the reverse, Spanish overdub with English captions so I could practice.

But when it came time for me to try Spanish overdub with Spanish captions, it turned out that the scripts had obviously been translated by two different companies, and what was said could be wildly different from what was written. Hysterically bad differences - to the point of completely changing the sentiment of something that was said. Mostly it was with insults or expressions, which could have various ways of translating, but sometimes they changed entire plot points, especially when a character's relationship with another was ambiguous. An aunt could be just a friend, or a sister-in-law could be a co-worker. It was so confusing, after a little while I just turned off the captions completely. Since I had seen all the shows at least once, it wasn't a problem.

A fun thing to do on Disney Plus is change between the various Spanish regions to see how they overdub characters. I did this for Guardians of the Galaxy and it's fantastic how Rocket would go from being a Mexicano gangster to a Spanish thug.

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

#39

Post by simooooo » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

jschveibinz wrote: post #11

Two reasons from my perspective, other than my ears are getting older: 1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the neighbors. 2. Dialects and accents seem to be more prevalent in content, and CC helps to cut down the cognitive load of “translation” while being enter…

If you don’t have a Center channel speaker, the vocals are regularly inaudible

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

#40

Post by fnordpiglet » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

extragood wrote: post #17

> Captions can also facilitate multitasking I have a hard time believing this. Captions demand more attention if anything. I can passively "watch" a video by only listening to the audio, but I can't passively read. I think that the phenomenon described in the article may actually be a symptom of a much deeper social change. Listening and auditory comprehension were critical skills for communication and preservation o…

I can read considerably faster than people speak. I can keep up with a scene by glancing at the image and reading the text while focused on something else primarily. I can’t do that with audio.