ed-alicious's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why is everyone watching TV with the subtitles on? in ~tv

    ed-alicious
    Link Parent
    The actorly whispering bugs the hell out of me. It makes my job VERY difficult at times.

    The actorly whispering bugs the hell out of me. It makes my job VERY difficult at times.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Why is everyone watching TV with the subtitles on? in ~tv

    ed-alicious
    Link Parent
    Yes. But seriously, people keep paying him lots of money to make the films the way he wants to. Why would he stop?

    Yes.

    But seriously, people keep paying him lots of money to make the films the way he wants to. Why would he stop?

    3 votes

  3. Comment on Why is everyone watching TV with the subtitles on? in ~tv

    ed-alicious
    Link Parent
    Hey, this is my first post here and it's a topic I know a lot about - I mix sound for TV and Film. There's two things going on here. The first, which I believe causes a lot of the unintelligible...
    • Exemplary

    Hey, this is my first post here and it's a topic I know a lot about - I mix sound for TV and Film.

    There's two things going on here. The first, which I believe causes a lot of the unintelligible dialog complaints that people have, is that most people listen to TV in stereo but a lot of directors/execs insist on mixing in 5.1.

    5.1 has a center speaker, which most of the dialog goes through and separate left and right speakers which most of the music and some of the FX go through. This means the dialog is clearer on 5.1 allowing us to push music and FX louder relative to dialog. But then when the show is downmixed to stereo that center channel clarity is gone but the louder music and FX remain, obscuring the dialog.

    The second issue is that TV used to be mixed to much stricter/less nuanced loudness limitations. Initially, like radio, it was all about the peak level. Everything was dynamically very flat and was all probably squashed even more by the broadcaster too. Good for late night TV.

    Then it was a loudness level averaged over the length of the whole show. A great improvement in how things sounded and allowed more creative flexibility but here's where the trouble starts when you want to watch TV quietly.

    Now the streamers have been moving on to a system where the average level of the dialog only is measured across the duration of the show. Dialog will be consistent from show to show but we have complete freedom to absolutely wake the shit out of your children when you're trying to watch TV late at night.

    48 votes