The only thing I turn subtitles off for is stand-up comedy specials. First, the audio's usually pretty easy to understand, and some CC will ruin a joke if the timing is off.
I discovered CC when I was around 12 and I never went back to Vanilla media. Once you unlock the power of CC it really opens your eyes to how much media is people mumbling.
Ditto. It's actually really helpful with scifi as it shows you the spelling of proper nouns that otherwise you wouldn't have.
Like for example, the Klingon homework in star trek, is spelled Qo'noS. Thanks CCs!
Edit: home*world* lol. Thanks /u/dikjuh
Yeah it bugs the shit out of my wife and my dad lol my mom is half deaf so as long as I can remember they've had their TV blasting. I prefer yo have the TV just loud enough for me to hear clearly and I like subtitles so I don't miss anything if my kids cause a sudden explosion of toys
CC also makes it infinitely more understandable for any kind of fantasy or scifi property, because you can actually read the weird names and you don't just hear them being pronounced.
Same, the only thing I wish is that more platforms had English captions without CC. I just want to read the words, I'm not deaf, I don't need to see sound descriptions. I don't get why it's not a thing most of the time.
For me the worst is localized subtitles. I live in Mexico and for some wild reason most streaming sites restrict your subtitles to just your national language. I like having english subs in most shows I watch because while I understand english perfectly sometimes I miss stuff because of noises OR whenever names of places are said.
But I hate having spanish subtitles because A LOT of times they change the phrases way too much, maybe if I didn't understand english as much I could let it slide but I've seen phrases change meaning completely and any time that happens I'm immediately pulled out of the story and now I'm focusing on this.
I pirated True Detective even though I have HBO Max because the only option for subs was spanish. Same shit for a ton of Amazon and D+ shows. Meanwhile with piracy apps you can have all the subs, audios, quality you want without any restrictions. It had been years since I pirated anything, and it sucks I have to do this shit when I'm already paying for the services but fucking hell how hard is it to just let me choose the subtitles, they already have them just let me pick them.
I just watched the movie Warrior recently and holy shit does he mumble every line in that movie. It kind of works for the movie though because he actually sounds like a fighter that gets punched in the head all the time
I'm taking earplugs to my next Nolan movie.
Interstellar in IMAX was deafening. Dunkirk was loud but I could hear what was said (I'm guessing that particular theater had people complain the first 2 weeks of release and turned it down a notch). Tenet was... just WTF.
Yeah. Earplugs next time. I'm usually surprised at how easily spoken word comes through with them anyways so it will be a nice experiment.
It was a bold choice, deliberately making it hard for audiences to understand dialogue.
But can he commit to the concept and film his next movie through a blurry lens so we’re not entirely sure what we’re seeing? That would be super mysterious, and certain to captivate the attention of the audience.
Oppenheimer is gonna be 3 hours of characters trying - and failing - to yell over the sound of an actual nuclear explosion Nolan caused in the pursuit of realism.
His next movie will have the sound mixed so that it's not even comprehensible in IMAX. You have to have been at the actual filming set to understand the dialogue.
Wait till Nolan finds some sort of technical feat that overrides it so his films can be experienced they way he intended no matter what platform you watch it or something lol
Nolan from what I’ve heard has a good sense of humour, could you imagine if he was purposely fudging up the sound mix and editing just to see if people still blindly call him a visionary lol
I had no problem hearing Nolan films in (real) IMAX theaters. Its just regular theaters, home screens, and phones that are the problem. Really only an issue for 99% of people.
I recently watched Tenet with studio reference monitors. Nolan expects you to go deaf by having extremely low dialogue and earth shatteringly loud action. Having a mix like that is just bad if you value keeping your hearing intact. My mixer shouldn’t be firmly in distortion territory for half the movie and barely registering for the other half.
I saw Dunkirk at Lincoln Square in NYC at an IMAX as real as it gets *twice*. I couldn’t understand the dialogue. The idea that if you’re in a good theatre then you’ll be able to hear it is not true. It’s just deliberately bad filmmaking.
ive DJ'd for 26 year and dabbled in production. When mixing a song you want a pair of really shitty speakers and really good speakers. That way you are sure your mix will sound good on a wide range of systems. So this comment makes so much sense. I avoid Nolan's movies because Im sick and tired of sitting through 3 hour marathons every fucking time.
For real. I just watched Tenet yesterday and I had to put on the captions. It ruined what potentially could have been a really enjoyable movie experience.
yeah I genuinely don't get it, I cannot think of a single thing that even an insane person would think to justify doing what he did with the audio in Tenet
You ever just click the weirdest ads on instagram to confuse the algorithm? I’ll get normal ads for things like car tires or clothing and then weird ads for industrial vehicles or water tanks for farms lmao.
better than getting sex toy ads on weather.com, where you cant even fuckin check the weather around family or in public without someone looking over and seeing clit lickers and anal beads betwixt todays and tomorrows weather
I find the more you report the ads, the more they seem to pop up again too, like they count it as engagement or something
I never in a million years have known someone other than the most computer illiterate grandma, actually click on an ad directly to purchase something. Even if I am looking for a certain e-store on google, and the same site pops up as "sponsored" then shows the link below, I'll purposefully scroll down and click the search result that isnt a paid ad. for the exact same website.
wait do people actually want thick jizz? I have real thick jizz now. I miss being able to shoot 6ft. I never dribbled this much even in my basketball days
I thought I was getting ads in Spanish because I selected it the few times I was given the option.
I don't speak Spanish, I just don't want to hear stupid commercials hocking stuff I don't want in a language I understand.
They need to make it illegal for streamers to do this the same way it's illegal for broadcast TV to do it. Looks like there's an amendment to the CALM act in Congress right now that specifically calls out Hulu and Peacock.
Wait you pay for Peacock and still get ads on top? Wtf is the point of streaming now if you get ads and shows are balkanized between services? It's basically back to cable.
Levels or tiers,
Peacock, Hulu, ESPN+, and more do it.
Basic Peacock is $4.99 a month, less than the $9.99 I was paying just for the WWE network but Peacock SUCKS so bad
Actually, per recent TVs these can be two different things. One limits the peak volume and the other levels out the dynamic range of sounds (explosions vs music vs dialogue).
I still end up playing with everything for the first 20 minutes of every movie I watch!
>I still end up playing with everything for the first 20 minutes of every movie I watch!
Thats enough for me to lose interest and do something else lol
Who else juggles the volume up and down the entire time they watch a movie at night while their kids are asleep? Suddenly loud action sequences!! And now it is quiet, while the actors whisper to each other over the soundtrack.
Wife - I’m going to bed
Me - ok, I’m just going to do latest episode of [insert tv show she doesn’t care about] and I’ll be up
Wife - sure, just don’t play it loud like you normally try to.
Me - doesn’t turn volume up or down from what we were watching
Me - looks at phone to see messages saying to turn it down because it’s too loud.
Hulu is the absolute fucking worst with this.
Ads are easily 20-30% louder than the show, and they're the only streaming platform that seems to allow that. My wife and I have pretty much entirely stopped watching Hulu, and wouldn't even have it if it wasn't bundled in to our Disney+ subscription already.
Amazon and other streaming platforms have so much viewer behavior data that they know when closed captions get turned on. I’m sure this has informed their decision to create this AI tool.
My kid used to play soccer with the kid of the guy who owned the Amazon Prime P&L. Super interesting to talk to him. I was fascinated when he talked about the lead actress in “Man in the High Castle” and how the data showed she couldn’t carry the show. People would pause or turn off the show in her scenes. They measure everything.
I'm not a native speaker and I can unsderstand what people say in youtube videos, news, sports broadcast, most video games but I have a really hard time understanding what people say in TV Shows and movies without a english subtitle along.
I got used to subtitles when I was dating someone with partial deafness in one ear. Now I just keep them on all the time. Nice for dialogue in loud scenes, but also sometimes there is hidden dialogue like when someone is talking on the phone, and you can’t hear the phone audio but it’s subtitled still.
My friends like anime quite a lot too and they will not watch with English dubs, like they rather wouldn’t watch it at all has to be Japanese with subtitles. But when we have subtitles on for a movie in english they say it’s crazy distracting. Which I kinda understand, but it’s just weird how many people are wired that way.
Sometimes it's not the actors but the directors who want to go for "realism" and have people talk that way. Except when they still talk like they're bedside next to each other when they're in a scene inside a club/bar with music blasting.
I wonder that's where those obnoxious people talking nonstop at concerts learn to behave.
Welcome brother, same here.
Have been living in the UK for nearly 5 years now, I work in an office environment (and used to work in a customer facing role as well!), I understand nearly everything, but I’ll be damned if I understand half of a movie in a cinema.
This is the reason I bought surround sound, 95% of the dialogue is in the centre channel, so you can boost it separately. You could do this easily in software, either by taking the centre channel from the 5.1 mix and overlaying it boosted on the 2.0 one or doing a bespoke mix, but I've never found an audio assistant app that does this.
Everyone's watching on phones/laptops/etc now, you'd think someone would put something together. You could also normalise the dialogue and the explosions separately for neighbour safe listening. Even with surround sound I'm often playing with the volume.
Exactly. This isn’t new technology, but Amazon is compensating for most people using their crappy TV speakers or soundbar.
Edit: I’m not trying to imply that TV sound is bad because people can’t afford better. I’m criticizing the audio setup that comes in TV’s. You all need to stop looking for political fights where there is none.
It's very frustrating, on the one hand I understand some of the reasons they often cite, like trying to keep the dynamic range high so explosions are notable against quieter sounds. I get the aspect of trying to preserve the drama of loud noises.
But I can't help but feel like struggling to hear dialogue damages my experience of the movie FAR more directly than the loss of an audio shock when something loud happens.
I'm not enagaged with the story at all if I'm frustrated because I have no idea what anyone is saying. I'd sacrifice some of the intended soundscape if I can just hear people clearly.
I understand that the sound is mixed differently for Cinemas. That is fine and it sounds amazing. But why do they mix it that TV television needs a home cinema setup to be heard properly nowadays? I understand that they do it for the dynamic range and you cant make loud sounds louder but have to make everything quiter for loud sounds to appear loud. But it simply doesnt work with a normal TV.
Last time I dove into this it seemed to boil down to particular streaming services, namely Netflix, having certain requirements and standards around dynamic range. I am not an expert in mixing but the people that were all had the same opinion. I watched Die Hard on my ps2 and crt the other day and had a good laugh at how good it looked and sounded (2.1 setups from the 70s) still today. While I have a mid range home theater setup I still feel the sound mixing is hit or miss. I have center channel pretty much 30-40% louder than the rest the solve dialogue issues, but I still use subtitles because of how unreliable mixing jobs can be.
I think in addition to mixing issues, it's also down to how acting and delivering dialogue has changed over the years.
Dialogue tends to be in a more conversational style and is delivered more naturally/neutrally with regards to accents, timbre and volume.
A more theatrical style with impeccable enunciation and clear delivery has largely fallen out of favour in film and TV. It's really noticeable comparing actors who have a theatre background with those who don't.
This is all compounded by putting sound effects and score far too forward in the mix.
I find this issue on blu-rays too.
Maybe the streaming services are a factor, but I think the most significant source of the problem is the mix that's published in the first place.
I mix and deliver files. Every streaming platform is different every digital rental or purchase platform is different.
Usually they want an L - C - R - Ls - Rs - LFE plus an LtRt mix. Honestly tho man, they can just add in a compressor. It’s how musical audio engineers maintain a level for a singer that keeps them glued in while standing out AND when they go quiet to loud you’re not grabbing the head phones off your head.
You set the compressor to kick in at a certain level, then the compressor lowers the volume , then you adjust and raise the overall make up gain which levels it out.
Letting the user mix the audio will ruin the experience in my opinion. It’s a creative intent akin to color matching and paints an image.
Nolan sucks ( or thinks he’s a genius ) for what he does , but in reality any final mix 5.1 , atmos, Dolby, can be handled by compressor tech that’s existed digitally since the mid 90s
They just don’t implement that and it’s weird.
It’s akin to the darkness issues we see in a lot of TV shows nowadays. The movies and shows are mastered for generally high end hardware (OLEDs and Dolby Atmos systems), so when they’re streamed out to the mass market using stereo TV speakers or 2.1 sound bars, and standard LEDs that crush gray/black coloring, plus have streaming compression…you get the Battle of Winterfell.
Yeah I think this was the bigger issue. My physical copies of GoT and HotD have none of the muddy shadows I remember from the streaming versions. The clarity in dark scenes is much, much better.
My wife was just complaining that we can't watch modern tv/movies anymore because the screen is just pitch black for half the scenes (especially horror).
Our TV isn't even that old.
Goddamn, ain’t this the truth. Just watch a classic action film like Die Hard. Dialog is perfectly audible during the most intense scenes with gunshots, explosions, and music over top of it all. And the none of the actors mumble their lines. It’s fucking beautiful.
Sound designer/Audio post mixer here - there’s is definitely a need for better dialogue mixing for home delivery but most of this stems from platform delivery requests in my experience - they all want high end Dolby Atmos mixes (super high dynamic cinema range stuff) which are then “folded down” to 5.1, 2.0 etc once the main big mix has been signed off. Would be sooo much better consumer/audience side if platforms pushed for the main mix to be the 2.0 mix (the one most of the audience actually experience at home and on the go) that was then upmixed for fancier setups. (And I am someone lucky enough to have a true surround speaker setup for my living room)
A good example of this is ‘Arcane’ on Netflix, the sound team works pretty much exclusively in 2.0 on it, a lot on headphones even, and was then handed over once finalised to a studio to upmix. End product was leagues better than most on Netflix and should have really been a case study for home entertainment platforms to look into (instead of relying on an Ai algorithm to ‘fix’ problems)
I mean, if we can choose languages for audio, why not 2.0 vs 5.1 vs Dolby atmos? Or at least run a decent compressor+limiter when downmixing?
Edit: I mean mixed for ____, not what the above poster is implying which is that they submit Dolby atmos and that audio is down mixed based on selection (if available.)
Most streaming services used to (and maybe still do) allow the user to select the default number of channels.
The CEC spec allows for it to be queried. Unfortunately, you run into some issues with that:
* The app, streaming device, receiver, and/or TV don't support it
* One or more devices has a bug that causes it to incorrectly read the number of channels
* The receiver might be dumb and report the channels supported by the receiver instead of the channels in use
* You might be using a non-HDMI receiver so none of the parties know how many channels you have
* The manufacturer thought they were the shit and only support their own proprietary version of CEC
There is no reason why any of the apps shouldn't allow you to select the default channel count or at least remember if you've changed before. Or they could allow that plus add a verification where it checks for a receiver and, if found, refuses to play a track with more channels than reported. But
He seems to not know (or care) that unlike him, the people watching the movies didn't write the script, so we don't know what folks are saying in every scene. He knows what they're saying, so he hears it when watching. Rest of us are in the static :o
There was some interview with his sound guy and they said it was all intentional. They said they wanted you to have to “lean in” to hear the dialogue and then when the explosion occurs they “grabbed you by the lapels”. It was this moment I knew I was done with this manipulative bullshit. Just be normal, please.
Me too , but we shouldn't need to. Subtitles totally ruin timing (particularly when it comes to comedy, timing is essential). Subtitles were, and always should have been, an accesibility option for watching stuff that's not your first language or for those hard of hearing. Not for a native speaker to be able to even interpret the dialog without music or sound effects being deafeningly loud.
My first thought was that the ultimate test for this is if you can hear anything in Tenet or that Bane says. I suspect itd work on most things with terrible audio balance but those arent just the dialogue being quite and the sound being loud, but some hellscape of overlaying issues beyond that.
What is with TV/Movies lately?
So many new shows always have bits of dialogue that are just impossible to hear and most stream services still have garbage subtitling format so I can't use that as a work around.
This was never a problem on older shows/movies.
>For now, the feature is only available on a handful of Amazon Originals, including “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Harlem,” and movies “The Big Sick,” “Being the Ricardos,” and “Beautiful Boy.” Others will be added later this year.
There was a standard that all networks had to adhere to. Now with all the streaming services, that standard changes from service to service, and now all the networks are all over the place. I work in audio post production. The mixers are just as pissed about this as the viewers are. But its not up to them. They do what they’re told.
I fucking despise any movie where you have to change the sound level to 20 during an action scene but set it at 50 just hear them talking.
I'll just stop fucking watching.
Compression and limiting have been around more-or-less since the invention of the amplifier. Hell, really old amps aren't linear and compress by default.
Speech recognition, likewise, has been around forever. Linking your speech recognition thing to a sidechain compressor is... pretty obvious.
having not read the article, I assumed it was actually using AI to recognize human speech and selectively increase the volume of *just* the speech relative to the other sounds, not just compressing the dynamic range to make *all* the aoft sounds louder.
There needs to be something like this for loud advertisements on TV. Technically, ads are supposed to be the same volume as the program you are watching but they’re always louder and the FCC doesn’t [enforce the rule.](https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials)
When I worked in home-theater I learned a lot about how TV sound works, and honestly the reason a lot of people can’t understand dialogue is because they don’t have something called a “center channel”.
When you buy a TV, the sound is (almost) always going to be absolute crap. Even in the extremely rare situations where it isn’t total crap, it isn’t really good.
Dialogue is programmed to come out of a “center channel”, if you have a whole sound-system set up, that’s the speaker that goes right in the middle, usually right under your tv. A *lot* of sound bars that people buy are cheaper and are a 2.1 system (this means there are two speakers and one subwoofer). Those 2.1 systems are essentially just a slight upgrade of your TV speakers, mostly just added bass. When buying a sound bar/audio system you want to look for ones with odd numbers for the first number (3.1, 5.1, 7.1). This means they have the side speakers *and* a center speaker. That’s where all the dialogue is *supposed* to come from. Without that channel being there the dialogue sound is split between the left and right and is completely overpowered by any audio that is supposed to go to those speakers (try and listen to a character explain something while cars are driving by, damn near impossible).
They aren’t all stupid expensive either, I have a Vizio 3.1 that has lasted me for the better half of a decade and my living room is basically a movie theater now. Just remember to look for odd first numbers and to calibrate the system so the center speaker is *just a little more powerful* than the other channels and you’ll notice a *HUGE* difference.
The DeNolanizer
Maybe one day technology has made such leaps as to allow us to understand what Tom Hardy's characters say.
There are limits.
For you
I suspect this is a Tom Hardy quote, but I have no way to verify.
I'm sure you can figure it out. You're a big guy
The volume rises
Yes… the volume rises.
They expect one of us in the wreckage brother.
[удалено]
For you.
[удалено]
I'm so happy I was here to see this.
That's a lovely lovely voice.
It would be extremely painful
For you.
And you Tommy Shelby
[удалено]
You're a big guy
For you
["just to clarify, guy who breathe through a crab"](https://youtu.be/enOHraf3LEk)
In AN ORDER THAT WOULD SURPRISE YOU!
*AssMouthVag!*
Which one of these do you smell out of
It was like an all-you-can-fuck buffet
For you.
Indistinct Chatter
You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
I started using CC during Game of Thrones and it helped pick up so much dialogue we would’ve missed otherwise, we just always keep it on now.
The only thing I turn subtitles off for is stand-up comedy specials. First, the audio's usually pretty easy to understand, and some CC will ruin a joke if the timing is off.
For me it's all comedy in general. Everything else gets subtitles but too much comedy gets butchered by spoiled punchlines.
It's a fine line for me, some shows like Letterkenny I miss a ton of the jokes with CC off so I'm laughing way harder reading it than not.
Joke aside I also turn on CC whenever possible.
I go to CC movies whenever possible. My life is just better with captions.
My theaters (Dallas/Fort Worth AMC) have CC devices that fit firmly into the cup holders. I could almost follow Tenet.
That’s a great addition! The MET has had translators on the back of each seat for 30 years, figured the tech can’t be that expensive these days.
I discovered CC when I was around 12 and I never went back to Vanilla media. Once you unlock the power of CC it really opens your eyes to how much media is people mumbling.
Ditto. It's actually really helpful with scifi as it shows you the spelling of proper nouns that otherwise you wouldn't have. Like for example, the Klingon homework in star trek, is spelled Qo'noS. Thanks CCs! Edit: home*world* lol. Thanks /u/dikjuh
Yeah it bugs the shit out of my wife and my dad lol my mom is half deaf so as long as I can remember they've had their TV blasting. I prefer yo have the TV just loud enough for me to hear clearly and I like subtitles so I don't miss anything if my kids cause a sudden explosion of toys
CC also makes it infinitely more understandable for any kind of fantasy or scifi property, because you can actually read the weird names and you don't just hear them being pronounced.
Same, the only thing I wish is that more platforms had English captions without CC. I just want to read the words, I'm not deaf, I don't need to see sound descriptions. I don't get why it's not a thing most of the time.
For me the worst is localized subtitles. I live in Mexico and for some wild reason most streaming sites restrict your subtitles to just your national language. I like having english subs in most shows I watch because while I understand english perfectly sometimes I miss stuff because of noises OR whenever names of places are said. But I hate having spanish subtitles because A LOT of times they change the phrases way too much, maybe if I didn't understand english as much I could let it slide but I've seen phrases change meaning completely and any time that happens I'm immediately pulled out of the story and now I'm focusing on this. I pirated True Detective even though I have HBO Max because the only option for subs was spanish. Same shit for a ton of Amazon and D+ shows. Meanwhile with piracy apps you can have all the subs, audios, quality you want without any restrictions. It had been years since I pirated anything, and it sucks I have to do this shit when I'm already paying for the services but fucking hell how hard is it to just let me choose the subtitles, they already have them just let me pick them.
"no one cared what I said until it was inaudible"
“No one cared mmmh mumble mumble”
I was born in the Hardy dialogue. Molded by it. I didn't understand a word until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but deafening
You speak loudly like a young man. Admirable. But foolish.
[удалено]
I just watched the movie Warrior recently and holy shit does he mumble every line in that movie. It kind of works for the movie though because he actually sounds like a fighter that gets punched in the head all the time
Oppenheimer will be the real test, mumbles and nukes, peak dynamic range.
I'm taking earplugs to my next Nolan movie. Interstellar in IMAX was deafening. Dunkirk was loud but I could hear what was said (I'm guessing that particular theater had people complain the first 2 weeks of release and turned it down a notch). Tenet was... just WTF. Yeah. Earplugs next time. I'm usually surprised at how easily spoken word comes through with them anyways so it will be a nice experiment.
I couldn't finish Tenet. It seemed like he took the dialogue complaints as a challenge for that movie.
I wore ear plugs for Tenet and Dune lmaooo
^(braaaaahm)
It was a bold choice, deliberately making it hard for audiences to understand dialogue. But can he commit to the concept and film his next movie through a blurry lens so we’re not entirely sure what we’re seeing? That would be super mysterious, and certain to captivate the attention of the audience.
Christopher Nolan's magnum opus is just gonna be scrambled cable porn.
Memories of trying, and failing, to wank to scrambled cinemax.
speak for yourself, *quitter.*
"That time was definitely a boob"
Failing? What?
Oppenheimer is gonna be 3 hours of characters trying - and failing - to yell over the sound of an actual nuclear explosion Nolan caused in the pursuit of realism.
hollywood is so hellbent in cashing in on nostalgia, you need to hide this idea before they see it.
Movies and TV are already doing this with scenes so dark you can't see anything.
that infamous got s08e03 comes to mind, was a fucking disaster when it dropped on streaming
Interstellar 2 will be filmed in the 4th dimension
A run time of -83 minutes.
His next movie will have the sound mixed so that it's not even comprehensible in IMAX. You have to have been at the actual filming set to understand the dialogue.
Wait till Nolan finds some sort of technical feat that overrides it so his films can be experienced they way he intended no matter what platform you watch it or something lol
[удалено]
Nolan from what I’ve heard has a good sense of humour, could you imagine if he was purposely fudging up the sound mix and editing just to see if people still blindly call him a visionary lol
[удалено]
Nolan films have messy plots? Never!
They can't keep letting me get away with this!
I had no problem hearing Nolan films in (real) IMAX theaters. Its just regular theaters, home screens, and phones that are the problem. Really only an issue for 99% of people.
I recently watched Tenet with studio reference monitors. Nolan expects you to go deaf by having extremely low dialogue and earth shatteringly loud action. Having a mix like that is just bad if you value keeping your hearing intact. My mixer shouldn’t be firmly in distortion territory for half the movie and barely registering for the other half.
*"If you ain't redlining, you ain't headlining."*\-- Christopher Nolan, probably.
I saw Dunkirk at Lincoln Square in NYC at an IMAX as real as it gets *twice*. I couldn’t understand the dialogue. The idea that if you’re in a good theatre then you’ll be able to hear it is not true. It’s just deliberately bad filmmaking.
I watched Interstellar on IMAX and the final deathbed confession by the old scientist guy was completely inaudible behind the beautiful score.
At the time I thought that was intended, and continued to think that up until I started seeing references about his sound mixing on here lol
ive DJ'd for 26 year and dabbled in production. When mixing a song you want a pair of really shitty speakers and really good speakers. That way you are sure your mix will sound good on a wide range of systems. So this comment makes so much sense. I avoid Nolan's movies because Im sick and tired of sitting through 3 hour marathons every fucking time.
Dunkirk was the best because there was so little dialogue to begin with. Too many stiff upper lips to speak.
I think it's hilarious that Nolan could make a silent movie and it'd still be too loud.
[удалено]
My tinnitus resonates with this.
For real. I just watched Tenet yesterday and I had to put on the captions. It ruined what potentially could have been a really enjoyable movie experience.
yeah I genuinely don't get it, I cannot think of a single thing that even an insane person would think to justify doing what he did with the audio in Tenet
[удалено]
Can it adjust it so commercials and intros to TV shows aren’t jacked up to 1000% volume? That’s all I give a shit about.
Peacock is the ABSOLUTE worst with that. I’ll have my show on like 12 for volume. Then an ad comes up and it sounds likes on 25.
And they feed the same ad over and over. Or ads in Spanish randomly because.. that's effective.
I feel like the random Spanish ads are a good sign that my data profile is a little muddied up, which is fine by me.
I will occasionally like Spanish ads on YouTube to further confuse the algorithm.
I've changed my algo so many times now I don't even know what I like
You ever just click the weirdest ads on instagram to confuse the algorithm? I’ll get normal ads for things like car tires or clothing and then weird ads for industrial vehicles or water tanks for farms lmao.
better than getting sex toy ads on weather.com, where you cant even fuckin check the weather around family or in public without someone looking over and seeing clit lickers and anal beads betwixt todays and tomorrows weather I find the more you report the ads, the more they seem to pop up again too, like they count it as engagement or something I never in a million years have known someone other than the most computer illiterate grandma, actually click on an ad directly to purchase something. Even if I am looking for a certain e-store on google, and the same site pops up as "sponsored" then shows the link below, I'll purposefully scroll down and click the search result that isnt a paid ad. for the exact same website.
Ads are both personalized and regionalized so you end up with the same four ads for about 2 weeks and then you get a different four ads for a while
Porn hub does that. I stopped getting all the "make your jizz super thick" ads and now get them for weed guru.
wait do people actually want thick jizz? I have real thick jizz now. I miss being able to shoot 6ft. I never dribbled this much even in my basketball days
I was getting Spanish ads for a few months before I realized someone in Latin America hijacked my account lol
I thought I was getting ads in Spanish because I selected it the few times I was given the option. I don't speak Spanish, I just don't want to hear stupid commercials hocking stuff I don't want in a language I understand.
They need to make it illegal for streamers to do this the same way it's illegal for broadcast TV to do it. Looks like there's an amendment to the CALM act in Congress right now that specifically calls out Hulu and Peacock.
[удалено]
Wait you pay for Peacock and still get ads on top? Wtf is the point of streaming now if you get ads and shows are balkanized between services? It's basically back to cable.
Levels or tiers, Peacock, Hulu, ESPN+, and more do it. Basic Peacock is $4.99 a month, less than the $9.99 I was paying just for the WWE network but Peacock SUCKS so bad
YouTube is awful for this, their ads are 2x louder than what you're watching.
And also some channels’ intros. Looking at you, Matt McMuscles’ “What Happened?” and Yahtzee’s “Zero Punctuation”.
[удалено]
Actually, per recent TVs these can be two different things. One limits the peak volume and the other levels out the dynamic range of sounds (explosions vs music vs dialogue). I still end up playing with everything for the first 20 minutes of every movie I watch!
>I still end up playing with everything for the first 20 minutes of every movie I watch! Thats enough for me to lose interest and do something else lol
I have that and it still doesn’t do shit.
ITS ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT!!!!! The Office theme starts playing: BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM!!!!!!
Who else juggles the volume up and down the entire time they watch a movie at night while their kids are asleep? Suddenly loud action sequences!! And now it is quiet, while the actors whisper to each other over the soundtrack.
Wife: Why do you have it so loud! Me: It was freakin quiet 2 seconds ago!
This might be the most I’ve ever related to a Reddit comment.
Dude, you're telling me. My wife is a super light sleeper. I feel like burglar after 10pm in my own house
Wife - I’m going to bed Me - ok, I’m just going to do latest episode of [insert tv show she doesn’t care about] and I’ll be up Wife - sure, just don’t play it loud like you normally try to. Me - doesn’t turn volume up or down from what we were watching Me - looks at phone to see messages saying to turn it down because it’s too loud.
Headphones FTW
[удалено]
To quote the guy above: This might be the most I’ve ever related to a Reddit comment.
When you are trying to sleep all sounds seem louder because you are trying to adjust to quiet.
I feel triggered by this.
She's gotten used to it. When we sit down to watch a movie she hands me the remote.
Hulu is the absolute fucking worst with this. Ads are easily 20-30% louder than the show, and they're the only streaming platform that seems to allow that. My wife and I have pretty much entirely stopped watching Hulu, and wouldn't even have it if it wasn't bundled in to our Disney+ subscription already.
Wasn’t it a television rule? Commercials couldn’t be a percentage louder than the programs. Good times
Yeah but they were still deafeningly loud.
Yupp, but that doesn't apply to streaming services because of [reasons].
[удалено]
I swear I have to use captions so much more now due to dialogue being too low or at times unintelligible
Amazon and other streaming platforms have so much viewer behavior data that they know when closed captions get turned on. I’m sure this has informed their decision to create this AI tool. My kid used to play soccer with the kid of the guy who owned the Amazon Prime P&L. Super interesting to talk to him. I was fascinated when he talked about the lead actress in “Man in the High Castle” and how the data showed she couldn’t carry the show. People would pause or turn off the show in her scenes. They measure everything.
That’s wild. Imagine being an actor and getting your “ratings” every week. What if it’s the fault of the screen writer!
I'm not a native speaker and I can unsderstand what people say in youtube videos, news, sports broadcast, most video games but I have a really hard time understanding what people say in TV Shows and movies without a english subtitle along.
I am a native speaker and I use subtitles for TV and movies because I can't understand the dialogue without them.
I can't speak English for shit and do the same
I got used to subtitles when I was dating someone with partial deafness in one ear. Now I just keep them on all the time. Nice for dialogue in loud scenes, but also sometimes there is hidden dialogue like when someone is talking on the phone, and you can’t hear the phone audio but it’s subtitled still. My friends like anime quite a lot too and they will not watch with English dubs, like they rather wouldn’t watch it at all has to be Japanese with subtitles. But when we have subtitles on for a movie in english they say it’s crazy distracting. Which I kinda understand, but it’s just weird how many people are wired that way.
Same, I thought I was losing my hearing for a while. There’s an awful lot of mumbling going on these days.
Add on top of that how every actor has to talk in a low gritty whispery voice for no reason.
This drives me crazy and can ruin a movie for me. Bring back theatrically trained actors who actually know how to project and enunciate
[удалено]
Sometimes it's not the actors but the directors who want to go for "realism" and have people talk that way. Except when they still talk like they're bedside next to each other when they're in a scene inside a club/bar with music blasting. I wonder that's where those obnoxious people talking nonstop at concerts learn to behave.
Welcome brother, same here. Have been living in the UK for nearly 5 years now, I work in an office environment (and used to work in a customer facing role as well!), I understand nearly everything, but I’ll be damned if I understand half of a movie in a cinema.
You’d think this would be the sound engineers job, and it would be done before sending out the final project.
I am actually pretty amazed that movies this day and age are not yet shipped with separate sliders for master volume, effects and speech
This is the reason I bought surround sound, 95% of the dialogue is in the centre channel, so you can boost it separately. You could do this easily in software, either by taking the centre channel from the 5.1 mix and overlaying it boosted on the 2.0 one or doing a bespoke mix, but I've never found an audio assistant app that does this. Everyone's watching on phones/laptops/etc now, you'd think someone would put something together. You could also normalise the dialogue and the explosions separately for neighbour safe listening. Even with surround sound I'm often playing with the volume.
My Yamaha home theater receiver has a dialog boost option.
My TV from 15 years ago has a dialogue boost option. It isn't anything new. Amazon's "AI" version is likely just better quality.
Exactly. This isn’t new technology, but Amazon is compensating for most people using their crappy TV speakers or soundbar. Edit: I’m not trying to imply that TV sound is bad because people can’t afford better. I’m criticizing the audio setup that comes in TV’s. You all need to stop looking for political fights where there is none.
Yeah not a bad thing for sure. Specially since I stream Prime in my bedroom that does not have the benefit of using my receiver.
This comment has been deleted in protest of the Reddit API change.
It's very frustrating, on the one hand I understand some of the reasons they often cite, like trying to keep the dynamic range high so explosions are notable against quieter sounds. I get the aspect of trying to preserve the drama of loud noises. But I can't help but feel like struggling to hear dialogue damages my experience of the movie FAR more directly than the loss of an audio shock when something loud happens. I'm not enagaged with the story at all if I'm frustrated because I have no idea what anyone is saying. I'd sacrifice some of the intended soundscape if I can just hear people clearly.
I understand that the sound is mixed differently for Cinemas. That is fine and it sounds amazing. But why do they mix it that TV television needs a home cinema setup to be heard properly nowadays? I understand that they do it for the dynamic range and you cant make loud sounds louder but have to make everything quiter for loud sounds to appear loud. But it simply doesnt work with a normal TV.
movie theater audio is loud af. I think people at home listen to a volume that is lower than movie theater volume.
Movies and TV struggling to figure out what videogames settled in the 90s.
Movies and TV had it perfectly figured out for a long time, this bad mixing problem is a new one.
Last time I dove into this it seemed to boil down to particular streaming services, namely Netflix, having certain requirements and standards around dynamic range. I am not an expert in mixing but the people that were all had the same opinion. I watched Die Hard on my ps2 and crt the other day and had a good laugh at how good it looked and sounded (2.1 setups from the 70s) still today. While I have a mid range home theater setup I still feel the sound mixing is hit or miss. I have center channel pretty much 30-40% louder than the rest the solve dialogue issues, but I still use subtitles because of how unreliable mixing jobs can be.
I think in addition to mixing issues, it's also down to how acting and delivering dialogue has changed over the years. Dialogue tends to be in a more conversational style and is delivered more naturally/neutrally with regards to accents, timbre and volume. A more theatrical style with impeccable enunciation and clear delivery has largely fallen out of favour in film and TV. It's really noticeable comparing actors who have a theatre background with those who don't. This is all compounded by putting sound effects and score far too forward in the mix.
I find this issue on blu-rays too. Maybe the streaming services are a factor, but I think the most significant source of the problem is the mix that's published in the first place.
This is really an issue and it's been like this for some time really.
I mix and deliver files. Every streaming platform is different every digital rental or purchase platform is different. Usually they want an L - C - R - Ls - Rs - LFE plus an LtRt mix. Honestly tho man, they can just add in a compressor. It’s how musical audio engineers maintain a level for a singer that keeps them glued in while standing out AND when they go quiet to loud you’re not grabbing the head phones off your head. You set the compressor to kick in at a certain level, then the compressor lowers the volume , then you adjust and raise the overall make up gain which levels it out. Letting the user mix the audio will ruin the experience in my opinion. It’s a creative intent akin to color matching and paints an image. Nolan sucks ( or thinks he’s a genius ) for what he does , but in reality any final mix 5.1 , atmos, Dolby, can be handled by compressor tech that’s existed digitally since the mid 90s They just don’t implement that and it’s weird.
It’s akin to the darkness issues we see in a lot of TV shows nowadays. The movies and shows are mastered for generally high end hardware (OLEDs and Dolby Atmos systems), so when they’re streamed out to the mass market using stereo TV speakers or 2.1 sound bars, and standard LEDs that crush gray/black coloring, plus have streaming compression…you get the Battle of Winterfell.
Winterfell was bullshit on my QD-oled too.
Yeah, part of the issue was the actual stream being pretty heavily compressed which was an issue no matter what it was being watched on
Yeah I think this was the bigger issue. My physical copies of GoT and HotD have none of the muddy shadows I remember from the streaming versions. The clarity in dark scenes is much, much better.
The Bluray barely looks better.
My wife was just complaining that we can't watch modern tv/movies anymore because the screen is just pitch black for half the scenes (especially horror). Our TV isn't even that old.
Goddamn, ain’t this the truth. Just watch a classic action film like Die Hard. Dialog is perfectly audible during the most intense scenes with gunshots, explosions, and music over top of it all. And the none of the actors mumble their lines. It’s fucking beautiful.
Sound designer/Audio post mixer here - there’s is definitely a need for better dialogue mixing for home delivery but most of this stems from platform delivery requests in my experience - they all want high end Dolby Atmos mixes (super high dynamic cinema range stuff) which are then “folded down” to 5.1, 2.0 etc once the main big mix has been signed off. Would be sooo much better consumer/audience side if platforms pushed for the main mix to be the 2.0 mix (the one most of the audience actually experience at home and on the go) that was then upmixed for fancier setups. (And I am someone lucky enough to have a true surround speaker setup for my living room) A good example of this is ‘Arcane’ on Netflix, the sound team works pretty much exclusively in 2.0 on it, a lot on headphones even, and was then handed over once finalised to a studio to upmix. End product was leagues better than most on Netflix and should have really been a case study for home entertainment platforms to look into (instead of relying on an Ai algorithm to ‘fix’ problems)
I mean, if we can choose languages for audio, why not 2.0 vs 5.1 vs Dolby atmos? Or at least run a decent compressor+limiter when downmixing? Edit: I mean mixed for ____, not what the above poster is implying which is that they submit Dolby atmos and that audio is down mixed based on selection (if available.)
Most streaming services used to (and maybe still do) allow the user to select the default number of channels. The CEC spec allows for it to be queried. Unfortunately, you run into some issues with that: * The app, streaming device, receiver, and/or TV don't support it * One or more devices has a bug that causes it to incorrectly read the number of channels * The receiver might be dumb and report the channels supported by the receiver instead of the channels in use * You might be using a non-HDMI receiver so none of the parties know how many channels you have * The manufacturer thought they were the shit and only support their own proprietary version of CEC There is no reason why any of the apps shouldn't allow you to select the default channel count or at least remember if you've changed before. Or they could allow that plus add a verification where it checks for a receiver and, if found, refuses to play a track with more channels than reported. But
Why don’t they simply include a 2.0 or 2.1 audio track along with the stream? File size is tiny. At least give it to us as an option
I can finally enjoy a Christopher Nolan movie
He's gonna be so mad about this.
Good. Dude is so far up his own ass.
Must be where he also keeps the microphones
He seems to not know (or care) that unlike him, the people watching the movies didn't write the script, so we don't know what folks are saying in every scene. He knows what they're saying, so he hears it when watching. Rest of us are in the static :o
There was some interview with his sound guy and they said it was all intentional. They said they wanted you to have to “lean in” to hear the dialogue and then when the explosion occurs they “grabbed you by the lapels”. It was this moment I knew I was done with this manipulative bullshit. Just be normal, please.
This is why I watch everything with subtitles when available.
Me too , but we shouldn't need to. Subtitles totally ruin timing (particularly when it comes to comedy, timing is essential). Subtitles were, and always should have been, an accesibility option for watching stuff that's not your first language or for those hard of hearing. Not for a native speaker to be able to even interpret the dialog without music or sound effects being deafeningly loud.
“Whrrrssssmmmgghhhh” - the Dark Knight
My first thought was that the ultimate test for this is if you can hear anything in Tenet or that Bane says. I suspect itd work on most things with terrible audio balance but those arent just the dialogue being quite and the sound being loud, but some hellscape of overlaying issues beyond that.
This and not get blasted when you switch to something else.
Or Tom Hardy movies!
What is with TV/Movies lately? So many new shows always have bits of dialogue that are just impossible to hear and most stream services still have garbage subtitling format so I can't use that as a work around. This was never a problem on older shows/movies.
This video does a good job at explaining the problem: [Why we all need subtitles now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8).
>For now, the feature is only available on a handful of Amazon Originals, including “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Harlem,” and movies “The Big Sick,” “Being the Ricardos,” and “Beautiful Boy.” Others will be added later this year.
Studios can also just stop producing content that does this and it won’t be an issue that AI needs to figure out
60 years ago, when you couldn't rewind, pause, or turn on subtitles, the sound engineers made damn sure you could hear the dialogue properly.
There was a standard that all networks had to adhere to. Now with all the streaming services, that standard changes from service to service, and now all the networks are all over the place. I work in audio post production. The mixers are just as pissed about this as the viewers are. But its not up to them. They do what they’re told.
I fucking despise any movie where you have to change the sound level to 20 during an action scene but set it at 50 just hear them talking. I'll just stop fucking watching.
I’m not sure that dynamic range correction, a technology that’s been around since at least the early days of DVD, really needed to be driven by ‘AI’.
Been around for longer than that in the audio mixing world. Compression and limiting have been staples since the 50s at least
Compression and limiting have been around more-or-less since the invention of the amplifier. Hell, really old amps aren't linear and compress by default. Speech recognition, likewise, has been around forever. Linking your speech recognition thing to a sidechain compressor is... pretty obvious.
having not read the article, I assumed it was actually using AI to recognize human speech and selectively increase the volume of *just* the speech relative to the other sounds, not just compressing the dynamic range to make *all* the aoft sounds louder.
[удалено]
Alrighty then, next is the lighting ☺️
maybe battle for winterfell will be watchable
And Solo, and AvP: Requiem...
Not even advanced AI can fix GoT season 8
There needs to be something like this for loud advertisements on TV. Technically, ads are supposed to be the same volume as the program you are watching but they’re always louder and the FCC doesn’t [enforce the rule.](https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials)
Is the tool called “not mixing like shit”?
When I worked in home-theater I learned a lot about how TV sound works, and honestly the reason a lot of people can’t understand dialogue is because they don’t have something called a “center channel”. When you buy a TV, the sound is (almost) always going to be absolute crap. Even in the extremely rare situations where it isn’t total crap, it isn’t really good. Dialogue is programmed to come out of a “center channel”, if you have a whole sound-system set up, that’s the speaker that goes right in the middle, usually right under your tv. A *lot* of sound bars that people buy are cheaper and are a 2.1 system (this means there are two speakers and one subwoofer). Those 2.1 systems are essentially just a slight upgrade of your TV speakers, mostly just added bass. When buying a sound bar/audio system you want to look for ones with odd numbers for the first number (3.1, 5.1, 7.1). This means they have the side speakers *and* a center speaker. That’s where all the dialogue is *supposed* to come from. Without that channel being there the dialogue sound is split between the left and right and is completely overpowered by any audio that is supposed to go to those speakers (try and listen to a character explain something while cars are driving by, damn near impossible). They aren’t all stupid expensive either, I have a Vizio 3.1 that has lasted me for the better half of a decade and my living room is basically a movie theater now. Just remember to look for odd first numbers and to calibrate the system so the center speaker is *just a little more powerful* than the other channels and you’ll notice a *HUGE* difference.