Why Are So Many People Watching TV With Subtitles? (indiewire.com) 283
"In a 2022 survey of 1,200 people, language learning company Preply determined that 50% of Americans used subtitles and closed captions the vast majority of the time they watch content," writes IndieWire.
They delve into the reasons why so many people want to read dialogue: The first is that, for a lot of people, it's become a lot harder to understand dialogue on the TV. That's the top reason cited in the Preply survey, with nearly 72% of respondents who use closed captions marking that as one of the main reasons why.
The causes behind muddled dialogue are many, multifaceted, and might vary between person to person. For some, the problem is the design of modern televisions; the majority of which place internal speakers at the bottom of the set instead of facing towards the audience, causing significantly worse audio quality. Other issues are caused by sound designs optimized for theatrical experiences, which can result in compressed audio when translated to home. Whatever the reason, a lot of people struggle to hear dialogue now, so turning on closed captioning to decipher what people are saying has become a no brainer move...
Gen Z is, overwhelmingly, the generation most likely to be turning on subtitles according to Preply's numbers, with 70% of respondents in the generation saying they use closed captions "most of the time" compared to 53% of Millennials, 38% of Gen X, and 35% of Baby Boomers. As to why Gen Z likes to turn on text while watching their shows, part of it is that people in the generation grew up watching videos on social media, where subtitles are the algorithmically encouraged default.
Another reason is that Gen Z displays starkly different viewing habits than Baby Boomers in terms of where they're watching their movies and shows. According to Preply, 57% of all Americans watch shows or movies or videos in public on their mobile devices, but a very significant 74% of Gen Z do the same. Even if you're (hopefully) using headphones while in public, it's likely you're getting poor audio quality and hearing background noise if you're watching "The Irishman" on public transit.
The article also cites a three-month study in 2020 by Parrot Analytics (which studies trends in entertainment) which discovered non-U.S. shows accounted for nearly 30% of the demand from U.S. audiences. (And even English-language shows may still have characters speaking with difficult-to-understand accents...)
They delve into the reasons why so many people want to read dialogue: The first is that, for a lot of people, it's become a lot harder to understand dialogue on the TV. That's the top reason cited in the Preply survey, with nearly 72% of respondents who use closed captions marking that as one of the main reasons why.
The causes behind muddled dialogue are many, multifaceted, and might vary between person to person. For some, the problem is the design of modern televisions; the majority of which place internal speakers at the bottom of the set instead of facing towards the audience, causing significantly worse audio quality. Other issues are caused by sound designs optimized for theatrical experiences, which can result in compressed audio when translated to home. Whatever the reason, a lot of people struggle to hear dialogue now, so turning on closed captioning to decipher what people are saying has become a no brainer move...
Gen Z is, overwhelmingly, the generation most likely to be turning on subtitles according to Preply's numbers, with 70% of respondents in the generation saying they use closed captions "most of the time" compared to 53% of Millennials, 38% of Gen X, and 35% of Baby Boomers. As to why Gen Z likes to turn on text while watching their shows, part of it is that people in the generation grew up watching videos on social media, where subtitles are the algorithmically encouraged default.
Another reason is that Gen Z displays starkly different viewing habits than Baby Boomers in terms of where they're watching their movies and shows. According to Preply, 57% of all Americans watch shows or movies or videos in public on their mobile devices, but a very significant 74% of Gen Z do the same. Even if you're (hopefully) using headphones while in public, it's likely you're getting poor audio quality and hearing background noise if you're watching "The Irishman" on public transit.
The article also cites a three-month study in 2020 by Parrot Analytics (which studies trends in entertainment) which discovered non-U.S. shows accounted for nearly 30% of the demand from U.S. audiences. (And even English-language shows may still have characters speaking with difficult-to-understand accents...)
one big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Music in the background while people talk makes it harder to hear what they are talking about on TV and Movies
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Re: one big problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: one big problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: one big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
1. My GF, or other people with be complain the noise is too loud when the gun shots fire and the helicopter falls down behind-scene, which my 9.1 Dolby Atmos renders beautifully, when I turn the system up to make out what they are saying. This is after I have dialed up the center channel to +5. I still cant hear them compared to the volume of sound effects. This gets worse every year. She wants it quieter when there is music or action, I cant hear what they are saying when there isn't any.
2. I get more information from subtitles than I would if I was wearing headphones. Subtitles have cues that are not always well done by the sound effects people. you hear a rustle, and the subtitle says (animal footsteps approaching). I didnt get that from the rustle.
Re: one big problem (Score:2)
Re: one big problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Itâ(TM)s worse than just that - music in the *foreground*. The sound mixing often makes dialogue quieter than all the other stuff going on.
Re: one big problem (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worse than just that - music in the *foreground*. The sound mixing often makes dialogue quieter than all the other stuff going on.
And it doesn't help that they seem to have forgotten the art of the loud whisper. If the acting talent does it right, you can tell that someone is speaking quietly even if you boost it. You don't have to bring the volume down to right above the noise floor.
Also, mumble acting doesn't help. A lot of actors and actresses don't enunciate, in an effort to sound more natural, but the result is that nobody can understand them as soon as the music starts.
And choosing overly bright music that interferes with the ability to hear sibilance can also be a problem.
And poor microphone choices that aren't a good fit for the specific person's voice can hinder intelligibility as well, though it's hard to know whether that's a factor without knowing how at least one member of the cast sounds in real life. :-)
There's plenty of blame to go around.
Re:one big problem (Score:4, Informative)
I saw the latest Indy Jones movie over the weekend. Despite it being EAR DEFENIBG LOUD, in an almost empty theater, there were times I couldn't make out the dialog due to the horrible sound mixing.
Re: one big problem (Score:3)
It's because writers can't write for s*** these days.
Rather than engaging stories and moving dialogue we have audio tropes at full volume to tell us how we should feel about what we're seeing.
Many reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
First, editors are shit. It's simply no longer a given that you can actually hear the dialogue between the rest of the noise going on, because everyone thinks that their great work must be heard instead, from the composer of some crappy music to the sound engineer creating various noises for added "realism".
And second, actors aren't trained anymore to speak properly. Again, for the sake of "realism", they slur and mumble because that's apparently how people talk today. This is particularly true with so called "reality" shows, but there it's kinda understandable since the goofballs in those shows don't even pretend to be actors.
Re:Many reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, Dialogue is on... volume up....
Now an action scene... volume down...
Oh, Dialogue is on... volume up....
Now an action scene... volume down...
Oh, Dialogue is on... volume up....
Now an action scene... volume down...
Oh, Dialogue is on... volume up....
Now an action scene... volume down...
It gets annoying.
Re: Many reasons (Score:2)
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Why would I want 5.1 mixed down to stereo? I didn't go to all that trouble to wire up the back channel speakers just to have it mixed down to stereo.
The center channel wasn't much trouble, the receivers are right beside the TVs.
Re: Many reasons (Score:4, Informative)
The center speaker is critical. If you have limited budget, spend your money there because that's the speaker you're hearing most of the dialog from. There are reasons for this about frequency range of human voice, how the sound channels are created on most shows etc but the details of why aren't important.
The rear, side, 3d speakers and sub woofers are all nice for those big cinematic shows but not strictly necessary.
The first time a dragon "flew over my couch from behind" was breath taking. The giant ass space ship that rumbled across my viewing room from left to right was heart stopping. But those moments a rare.
I turn on closed captioning because I want to know word the actor just said and they all fucking mumble.
Re: Many reasons (Score:2)
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Why would I want 5.1 mixed down to stereo? I didn't go to all that trouble to wire up the back channel speakers just to have it mixed down to stereo.
It's not for you. It's for everyone else listening through the speakers in their TV set or with a pair of headphones. Heck, I frequently watch TV through a small stereo Bluetooth speaker that I place near me so I don't have to blast the volume on the TV.
The only fix I've found for dialogue being too faint is to pirate the damn show and then watch it through Kodi, where there actually is an option to raise the center channel level on the stereo downmix.
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I have two channels and they run through a studio compressor. No volume is louder than I allow. If only music had the same dynamic range as shitty movies.
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It gets annoying.
I too get annoyed when I don't read the manual and don't enable audio compression or "night mode" or whatever your TV that definitely has this feature calls it.
I'm glad the industry mixes for proper high dynamics rather than catering to people who can't even be bothered helping themselves.
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Audio compression is one of those technological marvels that makes dialog harder to understand.
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I too get annoyed when I don't read the manual and don't enable audio compression or "night mode" or whatever your TV that definitely has this feature calls it.
My sound bar has a "night mode"; it just turns down the bass a bit.
The dynamic range compression should really be implemented in the streaming client software, or better yet, expose some user options to adjust the center channel level like the way Kodi does it.
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Why did no one ever complain about loud music and explosions in the vhs era? Maybe huge dynamic range isn’t a good thing for movies. If everyone has to enable special settings to make something work then it is fundamentally broken.
Re: Many reasons (Score:3)
Add to it that with DVD we got 5.1 and the producers wanted the audience to feel that they were in the movie, not watching it.
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Another issue is that I find myself perpetually turning subtitles off. They're on by default pretty much everywhere, and it's just a pain to dig through a new system to turn them off on someone's account. And then they switch back on after a system update. My guess is that a bunch of people cannot be bothered.
Re: Many reasons (Score:2)
It'd be nice if they put a compressor in your home theater amp.
One you could switch off, of course. And don't call it SuperHD Matrix Hickey-Vision, so you can find it and use it.
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the sound engineer creating various noises for added "realism".
So we're watching a movie about people wearing capes flying through the air shooting laser beams from their eyes while fighting someone with giant robot arms strapped to him smashing people into concrete where it's the concrete that breaks, but it's really, really critical that the sound be realistic.
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I do not need subtitles with older television shows and movies.
I think you are onto something with the thought that the root of the issue might have something to do with how contemporary entertainmen
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But you're expected to experience it in a movie theater, you penny pincher.
Or save up for a 7.1 home theater set with perfect sound proofing by not going to the movies about 10 times...
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Strangely, whispering DID exist in the past too. But back then actors were actors and learned how to deliver even softly spoken lines in a way that you could understand them.
Simplest reason? (Score:5, Funny)
Why Are So Many People Watching TV With Subtitles?
It somehow got turned on and people can't figure out how to turn it off.
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Especially if they are not using the original remote that came with the TV
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Sigh... harmony are now deprecated. Best remote I ever had. Ditched 4 other remotes once I got that thing.
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I have a Sofabaton, which does a pretty good job. Programs using Bluetooth pairing with your phone.
Re: Simplest reason? (Score:3)
OP is modded as funny but quite insightful too: many video platforms have it turned it on as default & it's not always obvious how to turn it off, especially on those anything "smart device" interfaces where it is a pain to do anything
Because fuck you, that's why (Score:3)
Or rather more precisely, because sound editors and directors say "because fuck you" instead of "because we think our dialog is important enough to be audible."
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More accurately, it's audio engineers who are gatekeeping assholes that feel you're not entitled to enjoy the fruits of their craft unless you've bought at least a mortgage payment's worth of audio equipment for your living room, and are willing to leave the volume level permanently set at the "piss off your neighbors" position.
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More accurately, it's audio engineers who are gatekeeping assholes
You'll probably find a lot of them are just obeying orders in order to keep their jobs.
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Not that they're gatekeeping assholes, it's just that they personally have top-end expensive sound systems, and they just assume that everybody does, or at least, that's what they mix for.
Why captions? (Score:5, Funny)
A few reasons: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. TV shows are more "cinematic" which means they have a more artistic sound mix
2. People have shit audio setups that don't sound good with those mixes
3. Flat panel TVs and even some sound bars use these shitty little speakers that somehow sound worse than the old paper cone ones in CRTs.
Re: A few reasons: (Score:2)
1 is a euphemism for treating 2 and 3 as peripheral to the task of mixing sound for distribution on tv as opposed to essential.
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yea cause that's what I want to do while trying to watch a movie, be a fuckin sound engineer
Re: A few reasons: (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s not just people with TV speakers though. I have a lovely surround setup, and have the centre channel set 5dB louder than my receiver says it should be with audyssey. Why? Because even the mixes for good surround systems *still* have the dialog too quiet.
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People watch TV in shared spaces with the sound turned down or mixed with ambient noise.
On the bus, in a boring class/meeting, shared house, studio apartment etc.
A lot of TikTok videos have subtitles baked in for mobile use. The habit carries over to other apps like Netflix.
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3. Flat panel TVs and even some sound bars use these shitty little speakers that somehow sound worse than the old paper cone ones in CRTs.
No, they don't. I have a "shitty" Black Friday soundbar and it will actually produce levels of bass you can feel. No old-school paper cone junk they put in CRTs back in the day came anywhere close to doing that. The problem is that for the majority of the time, I don't actually want wall-rattling levels of sound output from my sound bar, and once I turn it down to a comfortable level in regard to the background music and SFX, I can barely hear the dialogue.
Re: A few reasons: (Score:3)
Actually, I had the opposite thought: that single shitty paper-cone speaker in old TVs was not full-range by any sensible definition, but reproduced really well in the voice bands.
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That they'll do really, really stupid things with the story "because that's what needed to move things forward" but won't lighten a scene or make the dialogue clearer really clarifies that it IS pretentiousness and not just us having crappy TVs and speakers.
I'm not asking for midnight scenes to be lit like daylight, but I am also asking specifically for the lighting to NOT be realistic. Similarly, don't have characters talking, when I'm obviously supposed to be following the conversation, and drown them ou
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I'm not asking for midnight scenes to be lit like daylight, but I am also asking specifically for the lighting to NOT be realistic.
Yep. Film is ultimately about light. That's what you see: light. Trying to film darkness just doesn't work.
Re: A few reasons: (Score:2)
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Artistic meaning worse. They pull the same crap with the lighting under the pretentious banner of artistic decisions.
Also excessive use of shaky cam. I can't stand that shit when it's a 15 second TikTok clip filmed by a teenager with ADHD, being forced to sit through a feature length film where the frame is constantly bouncing all over the place is obnoxious.
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Absolutely true and a great way to destroy what little dialog you can still understand.
Stop pushing DRC on an article about shitty dialog audio. It makes it worse.
Just. Stop. It.
After building out a nice system and struggling with dialog, I spent a lot of time reading docs and researching online. Only after turning off DRC was dialog somewhat bareable.
Stop it. DRC is the wrong answer to improving dialog.
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my theory (Score:2, Insightful)
I feel that people are getting worse at social interaction and are falling out of practice in reading subtle cues in human-to-human communication. The cues resolve ambiguity and can make it easier for a person to understand so-called "muddled dialog" through context. Sadly, reading text is a poor substitute of the multifaceted nature of verbal and live communication. I don't think people realize what they give up when they have their eyes glued to the bottom edge of the display. Even sign language users rea
Re:my theory (Score:5, Interesting)
While it's true that screens and smartphones have damaged whole swathes of young people in the way you describe, that does not explain the audio thing.
The reality is the current crop of producers, directors, and actors all encourage unclear dialog as a matter of artistic principle. Actors mumble, mutter, or whisper. It's quite striking to watch older TV shows compared to modern ones. The dialog is always very clear and understandable. The actors never mumble even while acting in distress, and whispers are always stage whispers. Sure it might not be realistic dialog for the situation necessarily, but it is sure a lot more watch-able! Can you imagine a play where actors are mumbling and whispering? They used to treat TV as a form of theatre and it actually worked well. Now with an artistic vision and realism being prized, all that goes out the window.
I've been going through old Perry Mason shows from the 50s and 60s. For the most part the stories are very entertaining and watchable by modern standards. I can always understand the dialog! Sound design is adequate for the story telling. No silly artistic vision getting in the way of entertainment. Plus there's something about well-done black and white cinematography that's compelling.
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That's what I was thinking as well. Classically trained actors are trained to project their voice to the audience - no amplification required, at least in small theaters.
I think that has been broken for a bit, not as many trained actors in voice projection, they expect it to be fixed by the audio engineers, but even they can't fix everything.
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"Watchable by modern standards"
So everybody is dressed in leotards and are punching each other in high definition and 7.1 audio while tankers explode?
I hope we can do better than modern standards. :)
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Then came to USA and watched the Perry Manson TV episodes. Such a horrible let down.
Re:my theory (Score:5, Informative)
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> I feel that people are getting worse at social interaction and are falling out of practice in reading subtle cues in human-to-human communication
Luckily, this is a skill that's mostly genetic so it doesn't matter and certainly doesn't explain why media has gotten worse at relying on it.
Not sure how this thought
which is obviously wrong
got a +mod. Slashdot.
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I don't think people realize what they give up when they have their eyes glued to the bottom edge of the display.
I'm not really sure I feel one way or the other about the rest of what you wrote, but this specifically is why I could never get into foreign anime. I've always found subtitles to just be incredibly distracting.
TBH, if a show's dialogue was completely unintelligible to the point there was nothing I could do to fix it by boosting the center channel level, I'd rather not watch it than turn subtitles on. I hate them that much.
Retarded audio editors (Score:2)
If I adjust the volume so that the explosions are not deafening, the dialogue is barely audible.
If I set the dialogue to a reasonable volume, the next explosion wakes up my neighbor through 3 brick walls, a row of trees and a closed window.
Another thing that pisses me off are the stupid censors.
I have seen programs where they censor either the audio or the subtitles, but never both.
Ax Men, on the History channel was extremely guilty of this. They could
Re:Retarded audio editors (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently watched the HBO miniseries The Pacific.
If I adjust the volume so that the explosions are not deafening, the dialogue is barely audible.
If I set the dialogue to a reasonable volume, the next explosion wakes up my neighbor through 3 brick walls, a row of trees and a closed window.
That sounds like they got some "cheaper" person to do it and hence did it cheaper than possible. Classical case of "save a penny, lose a million". The way MBAs usually ruin a business.
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Honestly, it sounds to me more like they're trying to make the action immersive and exciting, just like being there. Except, of course, if it were really just like being there, the explosion would kill you. So they settle for just bursting your eardrums.
Re:Retarded audio editors (Score:4, Funny)
Honestly, it sounds to me more like they're trying to make the action immersive and exciting,
If they want to make it immersive and exiting, they should just send someone to shove a grenade up my butt.
It will be less annoying.
Accents? (Score:5, Informative)
US viewer here, we tend to watch a lot of shows (in English) with international casts -- my wife has a hard time with Scottish and some English accents, we also like some Asian / Middle Eastern programs that are in English, but the accents can sometimes be a bit tricky to pick up, especially when as others said, you pile of muddy sound to begin with and obnoxiously loud sound tracks or effects.
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The wife and I enjoyed Peaky Blinders. Great sound design with good dynamic range. (This of course causes the "action too loud" and "dialog too soft" issues, often solved by over-compressing the feed...but I don't mind dealing with it when there is a quality feed.)
The dialog was well-written and delivered. But, yes, we had to turn on CC because the accents were "too" authentic. A lot of Irish and other slang, along with strong accents for the vernacular, often made it hard to understand. Again, not a proble
Descriptive CCs (Score:2)
accents (Score:3, Insightful)
I've noticed on american shows with any european speaker, they inline a subtitle while they're talking now.
in fact ive noticed even british english being spoken quite clearly but with a slight cockney accent is not only interpreted like friggn japanese by Americans, but also met with frustration and anger.
ive seen Americans get pissed off watching red dwarf. like when kryton is talking its no problem (he was meant to sound canadian) but when lister or rimmer is talking they go cross eyed and then angry
or throw a russel brand or ricky gervais comedy special at them. im laughing like hell and they aren't, and i realize its not the off brand humor, they actually have no idea whats being said at all
makes me feel bad for american immigrants
no matter how many english lessons they take, or how eloquently they speak, they will be looked at as unintelligible. they say "hello nice to meet you" and average joe American just hears durka durka gobbldegook
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Too funny. And accurate.
I've watched Red Dwarf for years and I've never actually noticed that Kryton's accent is not British. I've always of course been aware of Lister's accent being different from Rimmer's. Funny how I never noticed Kryton's accent before. Guess I'm just used to all the fun accents in British shows. "You're not from Earth?" "No." "Then how come you sound like you're from the north?" "Lot's of places have a north."
Chris Berrie is a master of accents. If you've ever heard him, he's a
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in fact ive noticed even british english being spoken quite clearly but with a slight cockney accent is not only interpreted like friggn japanese by Americans, but also met with frustration and anger.
Try The Prisoner. There were several times throughout the series where I had go back, turn the volume up, and cup my hands behind my ears to understand McGoohan. His short, clipped style of speaking combined with his low voice made him sound like he was mumbling at times.
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makes me feel bad for american immigrants
I am an American immigrant and I have no problem communicating in English. In fact, all those British English speakers are easier for me to understand.
Or did you mean all those living in America whose first language is not English? That group includes natural-born Americans.
Gen X here (Score:3)
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Breaking Bed sounds good. I'll have to look that one up.
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BAD EDITING (Score:5, Informative)
I can't tell you how many times I have turned subtitles on temporarily because I can't understand a word. It's either muddily said or its said right at the time some other loud thing is happening in the background.
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Actors do mumble these days. Listen to old stage and screen actors like Christopher Lee or Vincent Price. The difference is night and day.
Dialoge IS hard to hear (Score:2)
As a foreigner... (Score:3)
... i'd very much like if the western world got over their fear of subtitles.
I stil remember the dvd for sci fi channel's Dune that had no subtitles whatsoever. Afraid they'll exercise the viewer's brains too much?
Also, there are the stupid Netflix movies that have english subtitles because they're in a non english language, but the second someone speaks english the subtitles magically disappear.
For one, accents vary and crap like that. For two, I don't watch movies with the volume up like i'm at a rock concert. And for three, I don't care about mistranslated subtitles in my native language - at least for languages I do understand. Please do full subtitles in english.
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It's not about a "fear" of subtitles. It's that I don't want my attention to be limited to the bottom of the screen reading subtitles while there's stuff going on on-screen unless it's absolutely necessary. If I wanted to read, I'd read. When I'm watching a movie or TV, I don't particularly want to read.
Picard season 3 (Score:3)
I watched the whole thing with subtitles - didn't start out that way, but I couldn't make out half of what they were saying if I had the overall volume at a comfortable level. It didn't matter whether if was Patrick Stewart or one of the Americans - the level of dialog was just too low compared to the background music and effects.
I don't have that issue when I rewatch a Next Generation episode, which was largely the same actors - so it seems pretty obvious it's the sound editing.
Same thing with movies - the dialog from old movies is crystal clear, while with new movies I have to either keep adjusting the volume or else leave captions on.
Side note - it's been a couple years, but we've talked about this before [slashdot.org].
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Apropos of nothing... DS9 is my favorite Trek.
Digital (Score:3)
Here's one big reason (Score:2)
Actors are shit.
Actors of the past often came for the theater and were trained to deliver loud, clear and yet somehow natural-sounding speech to a large audience unamplified. When they transitioned to TV, they had to do the same thing to compensate for the often limited recording equipment of the time. Even actors that didn't come from the theater had to do the same, else they just wouldn't have stayed professional actors for very long.
Nowadays, actors talk in any random voice and expect the sound engineers
Education (Score:2)
About 10-15 years ago (Score:3)
Cause: editors using exotic highend equipment (Score:2)
Little if anything to do with speaker placement (Score:4, Insightful)
Hearing damage is up enormously, even from the 1990s - and even back then it was well understood that even teenagers in modern societies tended to have inferior hearing to people from primitive societies.
At the same time, the entertainment industry has adopted a norm of having loud background sounds and/or music during conversation. This wasn't the case in the 'old days' - it's changed quite a bit, and not in a good way. The advertising industry also makes a habit of raising average volume for their material.
I remember visiting a older relative who had to turn the TV up to levels I found painful to make out what was being said on the TV - and didn't realize that the TV was loud. He didn't have a clue.
This issue has a significant impact on using sub-titles - and almost certainly dominates the use of sub-titles. People that know how dangerous sound can be to themselves or to their children make an effort to protect themselves through the use of sub-titles - and setting the volume lower than they otherwise would. Certainly everybody that I know that uses sub-titles does it for this reason.
Unfortunately, the human body is not well equipped to measure sound loudness - especially as people lose more and more hearing. That's why we need to use a technology known as a 'sound level meter' to measure the loudness. People who are using sub-titles to protect themselves might not be putting the sound down far enough. One time I showed up at a dance with my sound level meter in my bag, and measured a level well over 100 dB, well over seventy feet from the band, and through closed doors. The dancers were a lot closer! The 'safe' exposure at that level - if we can trust government standards, which we can't, it's well known that they have serious problems - was someone around 15 minutes. Not many dances only last 15 minutes ...
The band had no idea how loud they were - not a clue!
From a legal perspective, the current practices of the entertainment industry and - especially - the advertising industry should be considered a clear case of doing harm through negligence. They know or should know that people have to turn up the sound - not so much to hear things, but to correctly perceive them - and that people can't tell when the sound is at damaging levels.
Worse, the increased sound levels lead to increasing levels of hearing damage, in a viscous loop. Different people will have different amounts of susceptibility to hearing damage here: it's important that the people who are genetically better able to handle loud noise aren't able to prevent the law from protecting everybody else.
There's a clear double standard going on here in law: it's ok to sue ordinary members of the public for negligence with respect to their property (people tripping over things and getting hurt or kids having access to a swimming pool). But somehow it's not OK to sue the entertainment industry for causing enormous and widespread hearing damage - maybe too many lawyers have large investments in that business. Perhaps we're dealing with a legal ethics problem on a massive scale. This would hardly be any surprise in the USA, where the legal profession has enormous difficulty getting it's ethical act together (see any decent business school textbook on 'risk management and insurance' for citations to studies).
Another potential problem is that politicians often view the entertainment industry as one of the 'bright spots' in the American economy - and are hesitant to do anything to interfere with it.
As usual, some people are getting extremely rich off doing harm to others. Those people won't want change, and will do all sort of really bad things to resist change.
Damaging people's hearing through negligence is clearly a violation of fundamental rights - and for the people doing this to attempt to claim that they are acting within the standards set by federal law is an infringement of fundamental rights 'under the colour of law', and hence should be grounds for both
I'm confused (Score:2)
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Oh, you're young, that's nice. There will come a time, for many males in late 30s or early 40s, beyond which loss of higher frequencies means certain consonants in speech are less intelligible. Add to that wider diversity of accents since our country and the English speaking world isn't just white people speaking "General American" and subtitles help with that too.
Two words:
"Scorcht Earf". -- Butcher, The Boys
8D
Ummm... (Score:2)
Because it's sometimes really hard to make out what they are saying? I've started doing this a lot more, especially if I don't want the entire video to be overly loud, which they tend to be.
Movies use to be really guilty of this. The voices would be at one volume and then any explosion or bang noise had to be full blast. Never made sense to me. It can all be at one decibel level and I'll enjoy the product MORE. I don't actually want to be IN the silly movie.
In my case (Score:2)
Too many years in the heavy rock band (Score:3)
My hearing sucks.
Add to that the way modern audio for video is mixed. The music and sound effects are too loud and the dialog is too soft or whispered.
I suspect that I have a bit of insight into how the problem happens. Years ago, I owned a studio and did a lot of mixing. After working on a project for a while, it's impossible to ever hear it for the first time. I can imagine that after working on a mix for a while, the mixer knows every word, as does the director. They have no idea how it will sound to the listener the first time they hear it. Understanding buried voices is simple if you already know every word and they probably think it makes it more dramatic to have the music or effects prominent
High variability in volume (Score:3)
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I'm also one who dislikes laugh tracks, but I have to point out that they do put them in for a reason. They've actually done blind studies with and without laugh tracks for test audiences, and the test audiences rate the laugh tracked films as funnier and more entertaining. Might not be good, but fact of life.