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It’s an audio issue. That never happened in thr early 2000s such as in Lord of the Rings which is weird when you think about the things that have regressed.
Drives me INSANE. Oh and my favorite the auto-generated (read: completely wrong) subtitles in the middle of the screen for some fucking reason.
It’s a slippery slope. Listening to a bunch of podcasts while driving will fix that.
the only good subtitles were the ones on one of the Ghost in the Shell releases - these were fucking closed captions and they featured every single sound and they cycled at breakneck speed and it was a lot of fun to randomly catch some “loud screech” caption
Background Music: destroys your eardrums
Brit Lowtalker Villain: we gunna mumbly the wumbky aintwe guvnah
I spent 2K on a capable surround to be able to hear my damned tv.
The downmix to stereo is 90% of the problem. They don’t normalize the channels, Front channel is always low, rear channels are always WAY too high. mumble mumble mumble, mumble mumble SCREEEECH CRASH BANG BANG mumble mumble
I think the TV vendors do it so you’ll buy their soundbar.
Center Channel / Voices + 5, rear channels -2 and you can actually hear your damned movie.
some of the streaming sites have changed how the subs are delivered and their own existing formatting features don’t work at all anymore because they were designed for a different file type or something. roku via browser is the latest one i’ve noticed that on. i can’t have my 200% size anymore.
I’m re-watching Memento and I’m like “damn, I can hear what everybody is saying clearly.” Clearly Nolan wasn’t born deaf.
Also, I’m straight, but why didn’t Guy Pearce become the hottest male actor in history?
His casting in subsequent Nolan films has been blocked by some Hollywood dickhead apparently. Who knows.
I was watching a Chernobyl documentary. When there were Russian speakers with subtitles already provided, the cc settings added “SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE” over the useful text. I know a bit of Russian and was able to follow. Still duh
Watching ‘The Mummy’ on streaming the other day… Unless subtitles were switched on, the translation when anyone spoke Egyptian wasn’t used. It also weirdly removed location title cards, like when there’s an establishing shot and text ‘Cairo, 3 months later’ or something.
I give talks and training in the accessibility space, and have literally this image when I make a point about audio processing and cognitive issues. Another example “I need to park, hold on let me turn the music down I can’t see the parking spots”
Another perspective.
Once upon a time, it was pretty normal to watch something and not be able to pause or rewind. It was perfectly expected that you might not get every single word and you didn’t really think twice about it, just like you don’t think about how you miss some words in real life.
But now, we can pause, we can rewind. We can get exactly what was said and we get preoccupied with making sure we understand every single word. So captioning becomes even more critical.
Once upon a time, people in TV spoke at audible volumes. We don’t live in that world anymore.
Also people watched TV. They didn’t have the TV on while they scrolled on their phones and didn’t pay much attention. I’m sure that not concentrating on what’s happening is part of the issue for a lot of people.
Well not exactly … I’m a child of the 70s and when everyone was around the TV on Sunday night we would all have our own things going. I was playing with toys and mom might be reading or knitting. Dad always had his beers to keep him occupied.
If you’re not paying attention to the screen, you’re certainly not paying attention to subtitles.
A lot of people glance up at the screen, read the subtitles, then go back to scrolling.
More power to them if they’re actually able to follow what’s going on! I can’t divide my attention like that.
(Neither can they, they just think they can.)
And if they’re just passively sitting next to you while you’re watching, that’s fine.
But, it’s different if they interrupt to ask questions, or rewind, or if they need the subtitles on even though they’re not actually really paying attention.
Even with headphones, man. The sound departments really need an overhaul or something.
they have people who pick music, not people who mix or balance sounds.
that would cost money.
And I can’t see the movie at all if there’s subtitles. Brain won’t stop reading words to watch pretty pictures move.
Which now makes it nearly impossible for me to watch anything with anyone, since everyone leaves the distraction bars on by default any more.
But happy for all of y’all who are fine reading your movies. Someday maybe we can watch a book together!
What sucks is getting older and having a hard time hearing dialog. I can hear everything else fine but dialog is becoming harder to discern every year.
I saw Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (I think maybe I got that right) in the theater and had to sit in the front row because those were the only seats available. Everybody said what a beautiful movie that was but I wouldn’t know. I spent the whole time reading the subtitles and seeing only the bottom 10% of the screen.
I can see the movie / TV show, but the shots are ruined.
Cinematographers spend so much effort coming up with the perfect shot. They have amazing lighting, the perfect angles, the subject framed exactly right, the focus is perfect, with the background being blurred exactly the right amount.
And then some jerk ruins all that work by slapping text all over their perfect shot.
It’s like trying to listen to a good song while a DJ talks over it. Or, like trying to taste a delicious meal while someone is smoking next to you.
i don’t read them the entire movie, just during parts that the sound balance is all fucky. so just during movies made since 2005
Those of us who prefer subtitles read fast enough that we only need to flick our eyes down briefly to read them. We don’t miss what’s going on.
I promise you the statistical likelihood is that i read a page of text much, much faster than you do. The problem is that my neurodivergent brain will not allow me pay attention to anything else if there’s text on the screen, even after I’ve read it.
Those of you who prefer subtitles just don’t have that problem, which is fine, but acting like that problem isn’t real or isn’t as important as your audio processing issues is absolutely not.
So you can just never watch something in another language with subtitles and be able to see what’s going on? That sucks!
I usually have to watch it three or four times, so I don’t bother unless someone whose opinion I trust tells me it’s too much of a banger to miss.
Classic .ml user. Still somehow better than everyone 🙄
Good for you, they’re still as in the way as a tall man with a large hat in front of you at the cinema.
Tell them to fix their sound. Whispering dialogue and screaming explosions can work if you balance it right. Also probably fix tv sound systems they’re ridiculous sometimes
It’s not even like I can’t hear or anything. It’s just sound mixing is terrible.
It really is amazing to me how subtitles have become the norm. Everyone I know uses them. And it’s all cause the audio is just trash. No matter the audio setup. Expensive atmos surround sound, entry level sound bar, Sonos whatever, tv speakers. They all sound like shit and everyone uses subtitles.
I think it’s also worth acknowledging that subtitles have gotten a lot better. The old school white on black subtitles that I grew up with in the 90s and 00s were very in the way and often added as an afterthought without much care. You had to be hard of hearing or deaf to put up with them. Hell, my hearing father got annoyed with the rest of us for using them. Honestly I’m annoyed they never made a separate screen to put under the TV that would just display the line 21 captions. Hell, I’d love a subtitle standard that would allow me to move them to a dedicated screen under my monitor today, but that’s a lot less realistic.
These days they’re often unobtrusive and don’t feel like they’re taking away from what’s going on. Though I do wish more content creators were like Technology Connections and made a point to keep important visuals out of the caption zone.
I’d love a subtitle standard that would allow me to move them to a dedicated screen under my monitor today
AFAIK in movie theatres they have a closed captions system that’s basically like an individual teleprompter device for anybody who needs the captions.
I actually feel the opposite. I know the old ones you were talking about and those do suck, but on streaming apps the subtitles are often in the way of things in the show. Even worse, I’ve seen subtitles go over the top of baked in subtitles in the show, sometimes obscuring text with worse text. The most extreme example being a character speaking another language in the show, the show has baked in subtitles for it, and the streaming app subtitles cover it up and say “speaking Chinese”… Yes I’ve really seen that happen more than once. 🤦♂️
Oh all those things you’re talking about are absolutely still problems, but I feel like they’ve been problems for as long as we’ve had subtitles. And that’s why I want the second screen subtitles that could go below what I’m watching.
Good subtitling is amazing, and it was better in the closed caption days, but it was super rare and there’s no reason modern subtitles can’t do it. It could get out of the way, differentiate speakers, even do tone.
Fell down a bit of a rabbit hole there actually, it looks like YouTube doesn’t allow positioning even in formats that have it except WebVTT (Bad google). And the most common format .srt doesn’t allow formatting at all. Positioning is a vital accessibility feature, and the rest of formatting is just nice to have. Color differentiating speakers etc can be awesome and really just subtitles can add to content beyond just being an accessibility feature.
Relevant technology connections
And yeah, use .vtt captions where possible I guess, especially if you’re the one making them. It looks really good at only adding complexity where you choose it.
100% agree on positioning. I think a big issue with that is also that most captions are generated now as far as I can tell, and sometime don’t even get the words or spelling right. Positioning being added in a world where they won’t even have a human check it seems unlikely 😑
Yeah I agree. But also, generate, correct, position where needed. Yes it adds to editing time, but it also drastically adds to video quality.
If a motherfucker could properly mix audio I wouldn’t need them.
If I wouldn’t have to turn the volume ALL THE WAY UP followed by ALL THE WAY DOWN because your show/movie can’t decide if we’re whispering or blowing the planet up every ten seconds, I wouldn’t need them.
That’s cause you probably are listening to a 5.1 or 7.1 audio on your 2.0 speakers. You got no center channel and that’s where the dialog happens.
This is the issue with TVs most of the time. You can either downmix 5.1 to 2.0 somehow, be lucky and have a setting on your TV that can downmix for you, or buy 5.1 sound system.
“Yeah well, it sounds perfect in my soundproof bunker on my $10,000 cans, I don’t know why you think Inwould test the sound out in a cluttered living room setting on a $300 TV with no surround sound.”
– Average Present Day Audio Engineer
i’ve got one of those systems. It’s tuned damn well. I still have those problems. It’s like asking why someone would not like something shot in shaky cam. Some people just get nauseated when it takes up the whole screen. I do, and I do fine on roller coasters. And was stoned. It was weird. Not every film is for every person, but if you can add subs it makes it more accessible.
At least some of those audio engineers go home everyday to listen on their $300 Roku TV so it really makes no sense. I know some.
Audio Engineering is not some lofty high-paying profession.
I keep hearing things are mixed for the theater, but I went to the theater to see the odyssey the other day for the first time in a while, and it had the same problem! Sound mixing is trash these days…
the first film i really noticed it in was Corpse Bride. been a problem for 21 years.
Yeah “these days” is getting to be a pretty wide range you’re not wrong 😅
it was just one scene in Corpse Bride, too. a single song, I finally watched it with the subtitles on and understood it this year. I understood some delightful jokes and lyrics for the first time! I want to cast so many aspersions at our dear friend Alan Smythee at the sound department on that film, but like half the sound department went uncredited so i get it.
They often claim you need a proper audio setup.
I have an expensive (be it old) surround sound setup. Marvel and many other modern movies suck absolute arse. Having to pause and fiddle with volume going from a barely audible conversation to deafening noise in a single scene.
Fuck that noise, audio seems optimized for smartphone speakers nowadays.
What if, hear me out, they changed the format a bit to supply 2 separate audio tracks. One for voice, one for effects. Then we could adjust it ourselves.
I’d vote for you
They kinda do that with surround. Dialogue is mostly isolated to the center speaker.
Which is why it sounds bad, because 99% of the audience is watching on a stereo TV they got at Wal-mart.
Even with decent amps and good speakers and all leveled some movies suck, a lot of shows suck and it’s a random crapshoot what works. Older movies work well.
Fuck that noise, audio seems optimized for smartphone speakers nowadays.
No, it’s optimized for 42-speaker, billion-watt Imax screens. Where I have to wear earplugs.
We went to the re-airing of interstellar on imax. The sound when the ship was getting hammered with hail was so loud my ears were ringing and we left. Making movies painful should not be the point.
Same. I never saw it when I had an original run in the theater and was so excited for the re-release. Couldn’t get to one of the true film IMAX showings of it, but went to an IMAX theater and oh my God did they just have the damn sound cranked… So muddy, so loud. Makes me appreciate my home theater that much more…
But it really makes you feel like
SpidermanYou have tinnitus
Boost your center channel and/or enable dialogue enhancer.
Won’t help with Marvel movies (their mixing sucks ass) but most others.
Let me find the center channel setting on my two speaker stereo real quick.
Movies from the 90s and prior sound perfectly fine even with loud explosions and whispers and a large dynamic range. Today’s mixes are just straight up dog shit.
that would be the occasion to find the [enable dialogue enhancer] setting (or a reasonable facsimile, mine is called the same) in the tv. if you have a center channel, leave it off.
Kodi power.
