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It’s an audio issue. That never happened in thr early 2000s such as in Lord of the Rings which is weird when you think about the things that have regressed.
Drives me INSANE. Oh and my favorite the auto-generated (read: completely wrong) subtitles in the middle of the screen for some fucking reason.
It’s a slippery slope. Listening to a bunch of podcasts while driving will fix that.
the only good subtitles were the ones on one of the Ghost in the Shell releases - these were fucking closed captions and they featured every single sound and they cycled at breakneck speed and it was a lot of fun to randomly catch some “loud screech” caption
some of the streaming sites have changed how the subs are delivered and their own existing formatting features don’t work at all anymore because they were designed for a different file type or something. roku via browser is the latest one i’ve noticed that on. i can’t have my 200% size anymore.
Background Music: destroys your eardrums
Brit Lowtalker Villain: we gunna mumbly the wumbky aintwe guvnah
I spent 2K on a capable surround to be able to hear my damned tv.
The downmix to stereo is 90% of the problem. They don’t normalize the channels, Front channel is always low, rear channels are always WAY too high. mumble mumble mumble, mumble mumble SCREEEECH CRASH BANG BANG mumble mumble
I think the TV vendors do it so you’ll buy their soundbar.
Center Channel / Voices + 5, rear channels -2 and you can actually hear your damned movie.
I’m re-watching Memento and I’m like “damn, I can hear what everybody is saying clearly.” Clearly Nolan wasn’t born deaf.
Also, I’m straight, but why didn’t Guy Pearce become the hottest male actor in history?
I was watching a Chernobyl documentary. When there were Russian speakers with subtitles already provided, the cc settings added “SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE” over the useful text. I know a bit of Russian and was able to follow. Still duh
Another perspective.
Once upon a time, it was pretty normal to watch something and not be able to pause or rewind. It was perfectly expected that you might not get every single word and you didn’t really think twice about it, just like you don’t think about how you miss some words in real life.
But now, we can pause, we can rewind. We can get exactly what was said and we get preoccupied with making sure we understand every single word. So captioning becomes even more critical.
Also people watched TV. They didn’t have the TV on while they scrolled on their phones and didn’t pay much attention. I’m sure that not concentrating on what’s happening is part of the issue for a lot of people.
If you’re not paying attention to the screen, you’re certainly not paying attention to subtitles.
A lot of people glance up at the screen, read the subtitles, then go back to scrolling.
More power to them if they’re actually able to follow what’s going on! I can’t divide my attention like that.
(Neither can they, they just think they can.)
Once upon a time, people in TV spoke at audible volumes. We don’t live in that world anymore.
I give talks and training in the accessibility space, and have literally this image when I make a point about audio processing and cognitive issues. Another example “I need to park, hold on let me turn the music down I can’t see the parking spots”
Even with headphones, man. The sound departments really need an overhaul or something.
they have people who pick music, not people who mix or balance sounds.
that would cost money.
And I can’t see the movie at all if there’s subtitles. Brain won’t stop reading words to watch pretty pictures move.
Which now makes it nearly impossible for me to watch anything with anyone, since everyone leaves the distraction bars on by default any more.
But happy for all of y’all who are fine reading your movies. Someday maybe we can watch a book together!
What sucks is getting older and having a hard time hearing dialog. I can hear everything else fine but dialog is becoming harder to discern every year.
I saw Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (I think maybe I got that right) in the theater and had to sit in the front row because those were the only seats available. Everybody said what a beautiful movie that was but I wouldn’t know. I spent the whole time reading the subtitles and seeing only the bottom 10% of the screen.
Those of us who prefer subtitles read fast enough that we only need to flick our eyes down briefly to read them. We don’t miss what’s going on.
I promise you the statistical likelihood is that i read a page of text much, much faster than you do. The problem is that my neurodivergent brain will not allow me pay attention to anything else if there’s text on the screen, even after I’ve read it.
Those of you who prefer subtitles just don’t have that problem, which is fine, but acting like that problem isn’t real or isn’t as important as your audio processing issues is absolutely not.
So you can just never watch something in another language with subtitles and be able to see what’s going on? That sucks!
Classic .ml user. Still somehow better than everyone 🙄
Good for you, they’re still as in the way as a tall man with a large hat in front of you at the cinema.
I can see the movie / TV show, but the shots are ruined.
Cinematographers spend so much effort coming up with the perfect shot. They have amazing lighting, the perfect angles, the subject framed exactly right, the focus is perfect, with the background being blurred exactly the right amount.
And then some jerk ruins all that work by slapping text all over their perfect shot.
It’s like trying to listen to a good song while a DJ talks over it. Or, like trying to taste a delicious meal while someone is smoking next to you.
i don’t read them the entire movie, just during parts that the sound balance is all fucky. so just during movies made since 2005
Tell them to fix their sound. Whispering dialogue and screaming explosions can work if you balance it right. Also probably fix tv sound systems they’re ridiculous sometimes
I have noticed those who use subtitles all the time speak less clearly themselves and have trouble with understanding accents.
As someone learning Norwegian, I am often in this picture
