I couldn't read most of the article because paywall but the main reason I watch with subtitles on is unhelpful audio mixes. I am commonly the only person awake in my house and I often cannot have...
I couldn't read most of the article because paywall but the main reason I watch with subtitles on is unhelpful audio mixes. I am commonly the only person awake in my house and I often cannot have the volume high enough to hear the dialogue properly without other SFX or music becoming toddler-wakingly loud. I know my TV probably has a night mode or similar but it's easier/quicker to just put the subtitles on.
I also find I miss less with subtitles if I'm not paying much attention, which is probably half my TV watching.
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.
I would mind less about the audio mix thing if it added more often to the experience. Bryan Fuller's Hannibal, for example, had such good sound design that I actually went and bought a soundbar...
I would mind less about the audio mix thing if it added more often to the experience. Bryan Fuller's Hannibal, for example, had such good sound design that I actually went and bought a soundbar just for that show. But far more often it's just "explosions loud, actors whispering actorly" without really adding anything other than annoyance to the watching experience.
If I am really invested in the thing I'm watching I sometimes run the audio through a compressor. Because fuck all your hard work, eh? :)
I'm disappointed that someone who mixes sound for a living neglected to mention that basically every device in a modern media playback chain has a dynamic range compression setting built in....
I'm disappointed that someone who mixes sound for a living neglected to mention that basically every device in a modern media playback chain has a dynamic range compression setting built in. Everything from the playback device itself down to the TV, and the receiver, too, if you're using external sound. And on streaming services sometimes there's even a setting at the app level.
That lets the user squash the dynamics if they need it, and then they're still there for the people who have the proper setup to fully enjoy them. If you do it the other way around there's no way to get them back.
The real problem isn't the mixes, it's that TVs, game consoles, and set top boxes come with dynamic range compression settings that aren't turned on by default. Anyone who wants them off knows to look for them, but the people who need them don't care enough about audio to go looking for it, they just want it to work out of the box and get annoyed when it doesn't.
Edit: Also, a phantom center should be good enough for intelligibility. The physical speaker is there to lock center panned content to the middle of the screen even for viewers sitting at a weird angle off from it, not to make the dialog easier to understand. Again, I'd expect someone who works in the industry to know this.
I’ve got a 7.1.2 setup, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support, and I still find myself playing volume chicken on a regular basis. I’ve minimized any unnecessary layers or processing, played with all of...
I’ve got a 7.1.2 setup, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support, and I still find myself playing volume chicken on a regular basis. I’ve minimized any unnecessary layers or processing, played with all of the settings. Still, various shows and movies, streamed and ripped,
Then you might want to turn on one of the several dynamic range compression settings you have on a receiver like that. There's a good chance either it or your source has a medium setting that...
Then you might want to turn on one of the several dynamic range compression settings you have on a receiver like that. There's a good chance either it or your source has a medium setting that should leave you with some dynamics while tightening the range.
Personally, I play volume chicken at night sometimes, but if there's nobody I have to worry about disturbing I usually just find a comfortable level and leave it. It's not me the explosions are too loud for when I can comfortably hear the dialogue.
Edit: Also, did you calibrate it? Uncalibrated surround can be even worse for intelligibility than TV speakers. Modern receivers usually come with a microphone so you can let the system do the hard part itself. You may have turned off the calibration while you were turning off processing layers even if you did originally run it. The pure direct mode bypasses it on a lot of modern systems, for example.
Thanks for the tips! I’ve got a young kid with an early bedtime, and I’m living in an apartment, so I’m working with tighter requirements than just the loudest I’m comfortable hearing (though some...
Thanks for the tips!
I’ve got a young kid with an early bedtime, and I’m living in an apartment, so I’m working with tighter requirements than just the loudest I’m comfortable hearing (though some media has certainly have gotten close).
I’ll take a look for some dynamic range compression. Is there a trade off with any negative “side effects” that happen when trying to being the volumes closer?
I haven’t calibrated beyond a simple “sounds about right to my untrained ear”. I’ll see what I can do about that, and to make sure any calibration is actually used.
No problem! The main tradeoff of using dynamic range compression (which might be called something like "midnight" or "loudness" or a handful of other things on your system) is that if it's on,...
No problem!
The main tradeoff of using dynamic range compression (which might be called something like "midnight" or "loudness" or a handful of other things on your system) is that if it's on, it's on. So it reduces the dynamics of everything when it's on. For movies in your situation that's what you want. For music, you'll probably want to turn it off. Music since the mid 90s has had the exact opposite problem and tends to have too little difference between soft and loud, so you don't want to crush that down even more if you can avoid it.
I was watching The Departed this weekend at a friend's house and we kept having to turn the volume up and down. It was really frustrating. He's got a really nice home theatre setup but it didn't...
I was watching The Departed this weekend at a friend's house and we kept having to turn the volume up and down. It was really frustrating. He's got a really nice home theatre setup but it didn't help with this at all. I find that watching shows on my iPad either with headphones or not is the best way for me to reliably hear the dialogue and not have to adjust the volume constantly.
Same reasoning here. Only downside is occasionally subtitles spoil something. Like an unseen/unfamiliar character talking, but the captions attribute it to the character name anyway. Not a huge...
Same reasoning here. Only downside is occasionally subtitles spoil something. Like an unseen/unfamiliar character talking, but the captions attribute it to the character name anyway. Not a huge deal of course, but ever so slightly mildly annoying.
Agreed, I feel like the priorities in audio mixing for visual media have shifted over the last decade. Additionally, there are benefits to subtitles when children watch TV, link to conversation...
Agreed, I feel like the priorities in audio mixing for visual media have shifted over the last decade.
As some have mentioned, when we talk about international distribution of media, subtitling is common. As such, the quality of the subtitling matters, adequate translations are required to insure the nuance of what is stated is translated, not just the literal meaning of words. For example, a Google translation of Beowulf would probably be less enjoyable than the Seamus Heaney translation.
FYI 12ft.io is usually able to get around Atlantic's paywall https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/watching-movies-tv-with-subtitles/674301/
FYI 12ft.io is usually able to get around Atlantic's paywall
I have maybe four or five pairs of headphones. Unfortunately none of them let me hear when the kid wakes up or, until last year, hear the dog scratching at the back door because she wants to go...
I have maybe four or five pairs of headphones. Unfortunately none of them let me hear when the kid wakes up or, until last year, hear the dog scratching at the back door because she wants to go out and not piss on my rug. Sadly the latter is no longer a problem I have, although at least the rug is doing much better.
Also, while I do like headphones for music (hence having so many sets!), I don't enjoy them so much for watching TV/movies/games. I prefer the sound to come from the same physical place as the pictures. Feels weird otherwise.
I've recently been learning more about accessibility and making software that works for people with various disabilities. One thing that becomes clear right away is that adding accessibility makes...
I've recently been learning more about accessibility and making software that works for people with various disabilities. One thing that becomes clear right away is that adding accessibility makes things better for everyone.
So when curb ramps are added for wheelchair access, bicycles also benefit.
When a web page is made less complicated so people with cognitive impairment can use it, we all get a cleaner and easier to understand page.
When subtitles are available, we all benefit with the choice to use them or not.
Anyway I like subtitles, I got used to them, I never miss details that the characters are saying, and they don't distract me much unless they don't match what the people are saying. They are also very useful if you want to watch foreign language shows because it's usually much easier to read than to figure out spoken words that may be too fast or unexpected pronunciations.
Do you constantly read the subtitles or only use them when you don’t quite catch something? I find my eyes are drawn to the subtitles more than anything else on the screen, and I can’t really help...
Do you constantly read the subtitles or only use them when you don’t quite catch something? I find my eyes are drawn to the subtitles more than anything else on the screen, and I can’t really help but read lines faster than the actors.
It is a learning curve, just like if you are old enough to remember the transition from a T9 keypad to a purely digital keyboard to swipe texting. The more you use the tool, the less out of place...
It is a learning curve, just like if you are old enough to remember the transition from a T9 keypad to a purely digital keyboard to swipe texting. The more you use the tool, the less out of place it is to the point where it stops being a disruption and starts just being part of the experience.
Yeah like... look at any hardcore anime fan or foreign film buff. They'll be watching tons of excellent content with subtitles. Heck, in many countries it's common to watch Hollywood films in...
Yeah like... look at any hardcore anime fan or foreign film buff. They'll be watching tons of excellent content with subtitles. Heck, in many countries it's common to watch Hollywood films in English with subtitles in the local language.
I watch a lot of foreign media with subtitles, and have for decades. To this day, even with customization, I still don’t like subtitles on my native language media and view subtitles on foreign...
I watch a lot of foreign media with subtitles, and have for decades. To this day, even with customization, I still don’t like subtitles on my native language media and view subtitles on foreign media as a necessary, but sub-par experience. I find them distracting at best, ruining both pace and delivery at worst.
That's understandable! I merely wanted to point out that there are people who watch a lot of media with subtitles and are thus able to get used to the experience of enjoying the visual elements of...
That's understandable! I merely wanted to point out that there are people who watch a lot of media with subtitles and are thus able to get used to the experience of enjoying the visual elements of what they're watching while also taking in the subtitles.
I personally prefer subtitles even on native language media because it generally helps me to pay attention and can be useful if I miss what someone says due to a loud environment or whatever. I can understand why others might find them grating, but for me they enhance the experience since they help me absorb the content better. This obviously isn't true of everyone, but the good thing about subtitles is that people can turn them on or off based on their preference. The handwringing in the article about people who use subtitles on everything is unnecessary, imo.
Honestly my biggest gripe isn't subtitles, but incorrect subtitles. I've noticed especially with older films the subtitles are almost never correct and often don't even capture the bare minimum of...
Honestly my biggest gripe isn't subtitles, but incorrect subtitles.
I've noticed especially with older films the subtitles are almost never correct and often don't even capture the bare minimum of spoken dialogue.
My partner has an auditory processing disorder and they basically have to have subtitles on, and the older a movie is the more likely it is to screw up the subtitles something fierce. On the other hand, newer shows, especially on more modern media sources have subtitles that enhance the experience. For instance, the subtitles on Dropout's shows are incredible, with comments that really enhance the experience.
Oh, absolutely. This is especially a problem with older TV media where the limitations of what they could fit on a line meant the person setting the captions would paraphrase in order to make it...
Oh, absolutely. This is especially a problem with older TV media where the limitations of what they could fit on a line meant the person setting the captions would paraphrase in order to make it fit better. Those, I find distracting.
Seems like an issue that AI could knock out the tech matures in a year or two. Sort of a mass re-captioning to fix that kind of discrepancy. (Unless some see the captioning itself as a...
Seems like an issue that AI could knock out the tech matures in a year or two.
Sort of a mass re-captioning to fix that kind of discrepancy. (Unless some see the captioning itself as a performance, and protest that digitizing it would be losing something human)
The biggest problem now is that most automatic captions are really really bad. Computers aren’t great at processing voices with strong accents or with speech impediments.
The biggest problem now is that most automatic captions are really really bad. Computers aren’t great at processing voices with strong accents or with speech impediments.
I really wish this were true, but automatic captioning isn't even close to more accurste than even a fairly error-prone human transcriber, especially on voices with thick accents or in...
I really wish this were true, but automatic captioning isn't even close to more accurste than even a fairly error-prone human transcriber, especially on voices with thick accents or in loud/chaotic soundscapes (also the same environments human transcribers are most likely to fail). AI captioning has improved a lot over the years and hopefully will even more in the future, but it definitely won't be good enough to outdo human transcription within the next couple years.
Subtitles also establish what is being said visually so even if there is some obstruction from hearing or understanding the sounds from the source, anyone is able to access the dialogue through...
Subtitles also establish what is being said visually so even if there is some obstruction from hearing or understanding the sounds from the source, anyone is able to access the dialogue through the subtitles. It benefits everyone.
My big issue with subtitles are spoilers. On the top of the screen, you have an actor giving the performance of their lifetime, hanging on certain words, withholding information with an...
My big issue with subtitles are spoilers. On the top of the screen, you have an actor giving the performance of their lifetime, hanging on certain words, withholding information with an intentional rhythm, until just the right time to reveal it.
On the bottom, you have the entire line of dialog plain as day, which you've already read, ruining the impact of the moment. Some of the best lines of cinema history whispered text-to-speech into your brain before you actually get to experience them.
So I prefer the more organic experience, where it's okay to miss stuff sometimes. But I also want to be okay with people who don't need to use subtitles having them on, because I understand the clarity has benefits too (especially for movies like Tenet...). But it's very hard not to read along with them, and I think it hurts the experience more than missing the odd line.
I just wish the industry standard was putting the effort and budget into capturing the rhythm of information within a line of subtitles, instead vomiting all the text out at once. This would especially benefit deaf viewers, giving a more dynamic, accurate experience for each performance. I've noticed some fancy shows/movies doing this with (baked in) foreign subtitles, and putting them next to the character's head. I want that in a dynamic system. Maybe AI could help reduce the workload.
We tell people it's because my fiance's hearing isn't that great (which is true), but the biggest reason is because we snack a lot watching our shows and we can't hear over the crunching lol. I've...
We tell people it's because my fiance's hearing isn't that great (which is true), but the biggest reason is because we snack a lot watching our shows and we can't hear over the crunching lol. I've also found that it helps me actually learn the names of the characters, especially if it's a fantasy or sci-fi show where conventional names aren't common.
I really wanted to title this "Millennials have ruined TV now," but I thought not everyone would enjoy my characterization. And to the author's credit, they do realize that it's not just a...
I really wanted to title this "Millennials have ruined TV now," but I thought not everyone would enjoy my characterization. And to the author's credit, they do realize that it's not just a Millennial thing and goes into more depth for the reasons why. As much as I thought they were basically yelling at clouds at some point, there's an effort to find out the details that certain other Atlantic opinions lack.
Honestly I have a bit of a hard time understanding why people are so upset about subtitles because I watch a bunch of content I wouldn't understand if there weren't subtitles. I get that everyone's brain works differently, but I really don't buy the distraction thing. They're only distracting because you're not used to it, and that's something of a privileged perspective. US 'blockbusters' go around the world, and so subtitled movies are extremely common in parts of the world where English isn't spoken. It's my understanding that because there are so many spoken languages in China but one written language, nearly everything is subtitled.
More than anything I continue to be amazed that people who think that subtitles are distracting think that subtitles are distracting for everyone.
Well that's certainly an assumption. I personally find them distracting all the time and quite a bit more mentally draining. I miss more of the movie - the subtle things that directors put in...
They're only distracting because you're not used to it
Well that's certainly an assumption. I personally find them distracting all the time and quite a bit more mentally draining. I miss more of the movie - the subtle things that directors put in there. I mean, the story of a movie is more than its dialogue and I find the effect of where my eyes drift on the scene to be a part of the unique experience of viewing a film. I wonder if I would have caught Tyler Durden in the early minutes of Fight Club if I was reading the dialogue - or caught the feeling of an actor's expression when it's presented for only a second during a conversation.
My friends watch all movies with the subtitles on, and it's kind of a wrestling match to ignore them. The text is salient on purpose and it doesn't change through darker or lighter scenes. I don't ask them to turn it off, but it definitely changes the viewing experience for me - from something that can be enjoyed a bit more passively to something I have to engage with more.
It depends a lot on the styling of the subtitles. Most services now allow you to customize the subtitles (size, font, color, even opacity) and it makes a huge difference between the subtitles...
My friends watch all movies with the subtitles on, and it's kind of a wrestling match to ignore them. The text is salient on purpose and it doesn't change through darker or lighter scenes.
It depends a lot on the styling of the subtitles. Most services now allow you to customize the subtitles (size, font, color, even opacity) and it makes a huge difference between the subtitles being a more easily ignored supplement vs. huge, bright, and in-your-face.
If they're watching it from a BluRay or something, you probably can't change them, but you should be able to change them for any type of streaming platform, either in the app itself or at the OS level.
Oh that probably explains why older shows with subtitles and captioning tend to make me feel dizzy, but newer ones and, weirdly enough, english subs on amine do not. I can't customize those to my...
Oh that probably explains why older shows with subtitles and captioning tend to make me feel dizzy, but newer ones and, weirdly enough, english subs on amine do not. I can't customize those to my liking, and they're usually extremely big and saturated and sometimes in all caps (???) and sometimes I end up having to get rid of them completely so that I can concentrate while watching. I don't have this problem with english subs mainly because they tend to be small and not as saturated, so I can watch the anime without the need to always look down.
I certainly don't think subtitles are distracting enough to be vocal about it, but I do think they change the viewing experience in a non-negligible way. If that changes allows people who...
I certainly don't think subtitles are distracting enough to be vocal about it, but I do think they change the viewing experience in a non-negligible way. If that changes allows people who otherwise wouldn't understand what is on the screen to take part, then obviously that is a good thing. But in situations where that isn't the case, I still strongly prefer no subtitles. They can ruin the pacing of dialogue, revealing what is said before it is actually said. Using tone markers, they can bias interpretation by framing dialogue in or ambience in one specific way (which, while not necessarily wrong, can make 'objective' things that are supposed to be subjective). Finally, while they are not overwhelmingly distracting, they do modify what is presented on the screen and can change the viewing experience in that way as well. Maybe it's not a big deal that certain shots have text at the bottom, but it certainly wasn't intended. It would be like if those little placards at art museums were instead printed on the glass instead of placed next to it.
None of these things are big deals at the end of the day. And none of them should be seen as more important than providing accesibility to those who need it. But in the absence of that, if everyone is able to understand without subtitles, I think that's a better default than immediately putting them on.
Because everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan and if I have the sound up loud enough that I can hear the dialog accurately it scares my wife, my cats, and me.
Because everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan and if I have the sound up loud enough that I can hear the dialog accurately it scares my wife, my cats, and me.
https://archive.is/rGAWn Summary: Subtitles have become increasingly common as streaming services have become more popular. While subtitles can help those with hearing impairments or non-native...
Summary:
Subtitles have become increasingly common as streaming services have become more popular. While subtitles can help those with hearing impairments or non-native English speakers, many fluent English speakers now leave subtitles on for convenience or habit. However, subtitles can distract from visual elements of TV and film by drawing the viewer's eyes away from the screen. Streaming services have also made audio mixes quieter, making subtitles more necessary to follow plots. While subtitles offer a simple solution, creators worry they are changing how audiences consume media. Subtitle design could be improved to make them less distracting while still accessible for those who need them.
This has kind of already been done. We're a long way away from broadcast TV closed captions. Modern subtitle formats have support for quite a few stylistic choices to be applied which include...
Subtitle design could be improved to make them less distracting while still accessible for those who need them.
This has kind of already been done. We're a long way away from broadcast TV closed captions. Modern subtitle formats have support for quite a few stylistic choices to be applied which include choices for fonts, sizes, and even a degree of animation (many anime subs include subtitles that match the scrolling of the background where the original text is written). Some of these have been available for a long time, too; DVD subtitles, for instance, were just bitmaps that were overlayed on top of the video, so you could do any size or font you wanted (though I'm pretty sure it was fairly limited in terms of resolution and colors, which is why they seem so blocky all the time).
That being said, having subtitles that match the dramatic pauses properly are still fairly uncommon.
I think part of the problem may be the sound signature of modern sound systems. Laptop and TV speakers are bassier and weaker in the mids than the they used to be, which makes picking out voices...
I think part of the problem may be the sound signature of modern sound systems. Laptop and TV speakers are bassier and weaker in the mids than the they used to be, which makes picking out voices harder.
Those have always been terrible, though. I think it's more like sound mixing in TV has become more "cinematic" as budgets have gone up and so people who don't have expensive sound equipment have...
Those have always been terrible, though. I think it's more like sound mixing in TV has become more "cinematic" as budgets have gone up and so people who don't have expensive sound equipment have found most of the stuff they watch are difficult to understand.
I have no data for this, but I think people are also having difficulty because there are more people with accents that are not native-born American on the shows people are watching than they are used to.
Yeah, but I think it's gotten especially bad recently. There used to be a market among consumers for a more balanced or even treble-focused sound, but that seems to have entirely gone away except...
Those have always been terrible, though.
Yeah, but I think it's gotten especially bad recently. There used to be a market among consumers for a more balanced or even treble-focused sound, but that seems to have entirely gone away except for audiophiles. There's also the issue of flat screen TVs having backward instead of front facing speakers, which is a major problem for clarity.
The accent thing is a good point. I remember when I was a kid documentaries and news programs would have burned in subtitles for anyone with too thick of an accent, even if they were speaking...
The accent thing is a good point. I remember when I was a kid documentaries and news programs would have burned in subtitles for anyone with too thick of an accent, even if they were speaking perfectly understandable English. It basically treated their accent like a clip of someone speaking a foreign language. That's not really a thing anymore.
Personally I use them because I find it significantly helps me with paying attention to whatever I'm watching. I even have them on permanently on YouTube.
Personally I use them because I find it significantly helps me with paying attention to whatever I'm watching. I even have them on permanently on YouTube.
Yeah, same. I have ADHD and I find it helps a lot to pay attention when there's subtitles. It's way harder to miss something when it's coming at you in teo different ways at once.
Yeah, same. I have ADHD and I find it helps a lot to pay attention when there's subtitles. It's way harder to miss something when it's coming at you in teo different ways at once.
If I’m watching something while eating I will generally put subtitles on because I don’t want to have to turn up the volume. Especially if it’s crunchy food. Sometimes I just feel like it.
If I’m watching something while eating I will generally put subtitles on because I don’t want to have to turn up the volume. Especially if it’s crunchy food. Sometimes I just feel like it.
I've preferred subtitles/closed captions since I was a kid in the 90s. I find that when I'm tired, sick, stresssed, etc., I'm less able to make sense out of the sound of speech. It kind of just...
I've preferred subtitles/closed captions since I was a kid in the 90s. I find that when I'm tired, sick, stresssed, etc., I'm less able to make sense out of the sound of speech. It kind of just stays as noise instead & takes a conscious effort to mentally process it into actual words. Guessing I have a mild auditory processing disorder -- but it doesn't come up as a barrier too often & thankfully it's easier than ever to access subtitles on most platforms.
English is my second language. I use it daily, I can write and speak it quite fluently, but it's easier for me to put on the subtitles so that I don't miss an important dialogue, just because I...
English is my second language. I use it daily, I can write and speak it quite fluently, but it's easier for me to put on the subtitles so that I don't miss an important dialogue, just because I couldn't understand the person due to an accent or something.
Not so much TV, but games I've gotten used to having subtitles on. I think it's a mix of (a) getting into games when actual voice acting was reserved for either the most special or most repeated...
Not so much TV, but games I've gotten used to having subtitles on. I think it's a mix of (a) getting into games when actual voice acting was reserved for either the most special or most repeated lines, so you had to read anyway, and (b) the audio in games being less planned/balanced, so you never know when some interesting main story line is going to be obscured by poorly timed soundtrack, low health warnings or random npc dialogue competing with it.
I was a big no subtitles person and then I had kids. We initially turned them on as new parents while stealth watching TV on barely audible volume so we didn’t wake anyone but now my kids are a...
I was a big no subtitles person and then I had kids.
We initially turned them on as new parents while stealth watching TV on barely audible volume so we didn’t wake anyone but now my kids are a little bit older and sleep through anything — but the subtitles have remained. I think it’s just no one has bothered to remove them and at this point we’re resigned to our fate of boring old people who watch shows with subtitles on.
Personally I like having subtitles on due to my ADHD and slow auditory processing. Additionally I sometimes find that while I hear what someone has said, if they have an accent (EG some strong USA...
Personally I like having subtitles on due to my ADHD and slow auditory processing. Additionally I sometimes find that while I hear what someone has said, if they have an accent (EG some strong USA ones or strong British accents, I'm Australian ironically) it's nice to have them on to confirm what has been said and I did indeed hear it correctly.
I also tend to watch things while doing other tasks, and a glance over at the subtitles to double check that I heard right is nice.
Plus some of the things other users have mentioned like poor audio mixing (seriously why is some music/SFX so loud) is pretty hit or miss, and I enjoy being able to comprehend what I am watching.
I'll turn subtitles off when audio mixes stop sucking. Every time, the main character whispers their lines and the action scenes need to convince my neighbors to call the police. I'm not about to...
I'll turn subtitles off when audio mixes stop sucking. Every time, the main character whispers their lines and the action scenes need to convince my neighbors to call the police. I'm not about to adjust my volume every 5 minutes, so I leave my volume set to the one that isn't gonna set off my car alarm, turn on subtitles, and then not watch tv anyway cuz I'm too pissed at your mix.
As someone who's partner insisted on subtitles, it is somewhat annoying that I need to make a conscious effort to keep my focus away from the words. I am a quick reader and will catch the text...
As someone who's partner insisted on subtitles, it is somewhat annoying that I need to make a conscious effort to keep my focus away from the words.
I am a quick reader and will catch the text even from my periphery and kind of have a few seconds of knowing what's about to be said/done before the actors say it/do it.
To avoid not missing a word, what I will do when solo is watching Netflix or etc through my Playstation, with headphones connected through the controller/system/TV. Hard to avoid a sound with closed ear headphones directed the noises right to your ear.
However it's not really a big deal at the end of things because if you miss a word or a line here or there, you will 99% of the time be able to piece together what was said and what has happened. We are smart creatures able to fill in the blanks, especially when we understand regular story structure.
I don't personally use subtitles, unless I am on a plane or something where I may not hear as well as I'd like. I am actually excited to turn on subtitles when I end up having kids. There are some...
I don't personally use subtitles, unless I am on a plane or something where I may not hear as well as I'd like. I am actually excited to turn on subtitles when I end up having kids. There are some interesting studies that show kids from households with subtitles on read at a much higher level compared to their peers.
I'm glad the pay wall stopped me at the "snobbery" section. I wouldn't have been asked to finish the sticks anyway. 😪 The truth is, people are different. We have our reasons for keeping subtitles...
I'm glad the pay wall stopped me at the "snobbery" section. I wouldn't have been asked to finish the sticks anyway. 😪
The truth is, people are different. We have our reasons for keeping subtitles on. Look at all the responses here. Then you have people like my children who don't know anything different. If it hurts that much to have them on, then don't. If you're visiting my home, suggest a board game instead of a movie. 🤷♂️
Because I like to watch tv while also listening to music sometimes, and it makes it a bunch easier to understand what is being said. I like reading. Sometimes I like to have the tv quiet while...
Because I like to watch tv while also listening to music sometimes, and it makes it a bunch easier to understand what is being said. I like reading. Sometimes I like to have the tv quiet while watching, and it helps with that as well.
I couldn't read most of the article because paywall but the main reason I watch with subtitles on is unhelpful audio mixes. I am commonly the only person awake in my house and I often cannot have the volume high enough to hear the dialogue properly without other SFX or music becoming toddler-wakingly loud. I know my TV probably has a night mode or similar but it's easier/quicker to just put the subtitles on.
I also find I miss less with subtitles if I'm not paying much attention, which is probably half my TV watching.
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.
You seem in the know.
Does Christopher Nolan just hate all of us, or what?
Yes.
But seriously, people keep paying him lots of money to make the films the way he wants to. Why would he stop?
I only caught maybe half of the dialogue in Tenet but with the type of plot it had it still made for a good theatre going experience.
I would mind less about the audio mix thing if it added more often to the experience. Bryan Fuller's Hannibal, for example, had such good sound design that I actually went and bought a soundbar just for that show. But far more often it's just "explosions loud, actors whispering actorly" without really adding anything other than annoyance to the watching experience.
If I am really invested in the thing I'm watching I sometimes run the audio through a compressor. Because fuck all your hard work, eh? :)
The actorly whispering bugs the hell out of me. It makes my job VERY difficult at times.
I use a soundbar in one room. I use a full 5.1 in another.
I still need captions if I don't want to scare the others in the house.
I'm disappointed that someone who mixes sound for a living neglected to mention that basically every device in a modern media playback chain has a dynamic range compression setting built in. Everything from the playback device itself down to the TV, and the receiver, too, if you're using external sound. And on streaming services sometimes there's even a setting at the app level.
That lets the user squash the dynamics if they need it, and then they're still there for the people who have the proper setup to fully enjoy them. If you do it the other way around there's no way to get them back.
The real problem isn't the mixes, it's that TVs, game consoles, and set top boxes come with dynamic range compression settings that aren't turned on by default. Anyone who wants them off knows to look for them, but the people who need them don't care enough about audio to go looking for it, they just want it to work out of the box and get annoyed when it doesn't.
Edit: Also, a phantom center should be good enough for intelligibility. The physical speaker is there to lock center panned content to the middle of the screen even for viewers sitting at a weird angle off from it, not to make the dialog easier to understand. Again, I'd expect someone who works in the industry to know this.
I’ve got a 7.1.2 setup, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support, and I still find myself playing volume chicken on a regular basis. I’ve minimized any unnecessary layers or processing, played with all of the settings. Still, various shows and movies, streamed and ripped,
Then you might want to turn on one of the several dynamic range compression settings you have on a receiver like that. There's a good chance either it or your source has a medium setting that should leave you with some dynamics while tightening the range.
Personally, I play volume chicken at night sometimes, but if there's nobody I have to worry about disturbing I usually just find a comfortable level and leave it. It's not me the explosions are too loud for when I can comfortably hear the dialogue.
Edit: Also, did you calibrate it? Uncalibrated surround can be even worse for intelligibility than TV speakers. Modern receivers usually come with a microphone so you can let the system do the hard part itself. You may have turned off the calibration while you were turning off processing layers even if you did originally run it. The pure direct mode bypasses it on a lot of modern systems, for example.
Thanks for the tips!
I’ve got a young kid with an early bedtime, and I’m living in an apartment, so I’m working with tighter requirements than just the loudest I’m comfortable hearing (though some media has certainly have gotten close).
I’ll take a look for some dynamic range compression. Is there a trade off with any negative “side effects” that happen when trying to being the volumes closer?
I haven’t calibrated beyond a simple “sounds about right to my untrained ear”. I’ll see what I can do about that, and to make sure any calibration is actually used.
No problem!
The main tradeoff of using dynamic range compression (which might be called something like "midnight" or "loudness" or a handful of other things on your system) is that if it's on, it's on. So it reduces the dynamics of everything when it's on. For movies in your situation that's what you want. For music, you'll probably want to turn it off. Music since the mid 90s has had the exact opposite problem and tends to have too little difference between soft and loud, so you don't want to crush that down even more if you can avoid it.
I was watching The Departed this weekend at a friend's house and we kept having to turn the volume up and down. It was really frustrating. He's got a really nice home theatre setup but it didn't help with this at all. I find that watching shows on my iPad either with headphones or not is the best way for me to reliably hear the dialogue and not have to adjust the volume constantly.
Same reasoning here. Only downside is occasionally subtitles spoil something. Like an unseen/unfamiliar character talking, but the captions attribute it to the character name anyway. Not a huge deal of course, but ever so slightly mildly annoying.
Agreed, I feel like the priorities in audio mixing for visual media have shifted over the last decade.
Additionally, there are benefits to subtitles when children watch TV, link to conversation article.
As some have mentioned, when we talk about international distribution of media, subtitling is common. As such, the quality of the subtitling matters, adequate translations are required to insure the nuance of what is stated is translated, not just the literal meaning of words. For example, a Google translation of Beowulf would probably be less enjoyable than the Seamus Heaney translation.
Here’s a guardian article about subtitling and Squid Game.
FYI 12ft.io is usually able to get around Atlantic's paywall
https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/watching-movies-tv-with-subtitles/674301/
I tried 12ft but it gave me an error, I assumed they'd nerfed it like they do for some sites. Thanks!
I don't know why people just don't buy headphones. This is the exact reason I don't like watching stuff with regular speakers.
I have maybe four or five pairs of headphones. Unfortunately none of them let me hear when the kid wakes up or, until last year, hear the dog scratching at the back door because she wants to go out and not piss on my rug. Sadly the latter is no longer a problem I have, although at least the rug is doing much better.
Also, while I do like headphones for music (hence having so many sets!), I don't enjoy them so much for watching TV/movies/games. I prefer the sound to come from the same physical place as the pictures. Feels weird otherwise.
I've recently been learning more about accessibility and making software that works for people with various disabilities. One thing that becomes clear right away is that adding accessibility makes things better for everyone.
Anyway I like subtitles, I got used to them, I never miss details that the characters are saying, and they don't distract me much unless they don't match what the people are saying. They are also very useful if you want to watch foreign language shows because it's usually much easier to read than to figure out spoken words that may be too fast or unexpected pronunciations.
Do you constantly read the subtitles or only use them when you don’t quite catch something? I find my eyes are drawn to the subtitles more than anything else on the screen, and I can’t really help but read lines faster than the actors.
As I used them more, I tend to only read them when I miss something. It's an accidental skill I picked up from using captions a lot.
It is a learning curve, just like if you are old enough to remember the transition from a T9 keypad to a purely digital keyboard to swipe texting. The more you use the tool, the less out of place it is to the point where it stops being a disruption and starts just being part of the experience.
Yeah like... look at any hardcore anime fan or foreign film buff. They'll be watching tons of excellent content with subtitles. Heck, in many countries it's common to watch Hollywood films in English with subtitles in the local language.
I watch a lot of foreign media with subtitles, and have for decades. To this day, even with customization, I still don’t like subtitles on my native language media and view subtitles on foreign media as a necessary, but sub-par experience. I find them distracting at best, ruining both pace and delivery at worst.
That's understandable! I merely wanted to point out that there are people who watch a lot of media with subtitles and are thus able to get used to the experience of enjoying the visual elements of what they're watching while also taking in the subtitles.
I personally prefer subtitles even on native language media because it generally helps me to pay attention and can be useful if I miss what someone says due to a loud environment or whatever. I can understand why others might find them grating, but for me they enhance the experience since they help me absorb the content better. This obviously isn't true of everyone, but the good thing about subtitles is that people can turn them on or off based on their preference. The handwringing in the article about people who use subtitles on everything is unnecessary, imo.
Honestly my biggest gripe isn't subtitles, but incorrect subtitles.
I've noticed especially with older films the subtitles are almost never correct and often don't even capture the bare minimum of spoken dialogue.
My partner has an auditory processing disorder and they basically have to have subtitles on, and the older a movie is the more likely it is to screw up the subtitles something fierce. On the other hand, newer shows, especially on more modern media sources have subtitles that enhance the experience. For instance, the subtitles on Dropout's shows are incredible, with comments that really enhance the experience.
Oh, absolutely. This is especially a problem with older TV media where the limitations of what they could fit on a line meant the person setting the captions would paraphrase in order to make it fit better. Those, I find distracting.
Seems like an issue that AI could knock out the tech matures in a year or two.
Sort of a mass re-captioning to fix that kind of discrepancy. (Unless some see the captioning itself as a performance, and protest that digitizing it would be losing something human)
The biggest problem now is that most automatic captions are really really bad. Computers aren’t great at processing voices with strong accents or with speech impediments.
I really wish this were true, but automatic captioning isn't even close to more accurste than even a fairly error-prone human transcriber, especially on voices with thick accents or in loud/chaotic soundscapes (also the same environments human transcribers are most likely to fail). AI captioning has improved a lot over the years and hopefully will even more in the future, but it definitely won't be good enough to outdo human transcription within the next couple years.
Subtitles also establish what is being said visually so even if there is some obstruction from hearing or understanding the sounds from the source, anyone is able to access the dialogue through the subtitles. It benefits everyone.
My big issue with subtitles are spoilers. On the top of the screen, you have an actor giving the performance of their lifetime, hanging on certain words, withholding information with an intentional rhythm, until just the right time to reveal it.
On the bottom, you have the entire line of dialog plain as day, which you've already read, ruining the impact of the moment. Some of the best lines of cinema history whispered text-to-speech into your brain before you actually get to experience them.
So I prefer the more organic experience, where it's okay to miss stuff sometimes. But I also want to be okay with people who don't need to use subtitles having them on, because I understand the clarity has benefits too (especially for movies like Tenet...). But it's very hard not to read along with them, and I think it hurts the experience more than missing the odd line.
I just wish the industry standard was putting the effort and budget into capturing the rhythm of information within a line of subtitles, instead vomiting all the text out at once. This would especially benefit deaf viewers, giving a more dynamic, accurate experience for each performance. I've noticed some fancy shows/movies doing this with (baked in) foreign subtitles, and putting them next to the character's head. I want that in a dynamic system. Maybe AI could help reduce the workload.
Sometimes I can't hear when there's a lot going on. English isn't my wife's first language, so sometimes that helps, too.
We tell people it's because my fiance's hearing isn't that great (which is true), but the biggest reason is because we snack a lot watching our shows and we can't hear over the crunching lol. I've also found that it helps me actually learn the names of the characters, especially if it's a fantasy or sci-fi show where conventional names aren't common.
I really wanted to title this "Millennials have ruined TV now," but I thought not everyone would enjoy my characterization. And to the author's credit, they do realize that it's not just a Millennial thing and goes into more depth for the reasons why. As much as I thought they were basically yelling at clouds at some point, there's an effort to find out the details that certain other Atlantic opinions lack.
Honestly I have a bit of a hard time understanding why people are so upset about subtitles because I watch a bunch of content I wouldn't understand if there weren't subtitles. I get that everyone's brain works differently, but I really don't buy the distraction thing. They're only distracting because you're not used to it, and that's something of a privileged perspective. US 'blockbusters' go around the world, and so subtitled movies are extremely common in parts of the world where English isn't spoken. It's my understanding that because there are so many spoken languages in China but one written language, nearly everything is subtitled.
More than anything I continue to be amazed that people who think that subtitles are distracting think that subtitles are distracting for everyone.
Well that's certainly an assumption. I personally find them distracting all the time and quite a bit more mentally draining. I miss more of the movie - the subtle things that directors put in there. I mean, the story of a movie is more than its dialogue and I find the effect of where my eyes drift on the scene to be a part of the unique experience of viewing a film. I wonder if I would have caught Tyler Durden in the early minutes of Fight Club if I was reading the dialogue - or caught the feeling of an actor's expression when it's presented for only a second during a conversation.
My friends watch all movies with the subtitles on, and it's kind of a wrestling match to ignore them. The text is salient on purpose and it doesn't change through darker or lighter scenes. I don't ask them to turn it off, but it definitely changes the viewing experience for me - from something that can be enjoyed a bit more passively to something I have to engage with more.
It depends a lot on the styling of the subtitles. Most services now allow you to customize the subtitles (size, font, color, even opacity) and it makes a huge difference between the subtitles being a more easily ignored supplement vs. huge, bright, and in-your-face.
If they're watching it from a BluRay or something, you probably can't change them, but you should be able to change them for any type of streaming platform, either in the app itself or at the OS level.
Oh that probably explains why older shows with subtitles and captioning tend to make me feel dizzy, but newer ones and, weirdly enough, english subs on amine do not. I can't customize those to my liking, and they're usually extremely big and saturated and sometimes in all caps (???) and sometimes I end up having to get rid of them completely so that I can concentrate while watching. I don't have this problem with english subs mainly because they tend to be small and not as saturated, so I can watch the anime without the need to always look down.
I certainly don't think subtitles are distracting enough to be vocal about it, but I do think they change the viewing experience in a non-negligible way. If that changes allows people who otherwise wouldn't understand what is on the screen to take part, then obviously that is a good thing. But in situations where that isn't the case, I still strongly prefer no subtitles. They can ruin the pacing of dialogue, revealing what is said before it is actually said. Using tone markers, they can bias interpretation by framing dialogue in or ambience in one specific way (which, while not necessarily wrong, can make 'objective' things that are supposed to be subjective). Finally, while they are not overwhelmingly distracting, they do modify what is presented on the screen and can change the viewing experience in that way as well. Maybe it's not a big deal that certain shots have text at the bottom, but it certainly wasn't intended. It would be like if those little placards at art museums were instead printed on the glass instead of placed next to it.
None of these things are big deals at the end of the day. And none of them should be seen as more important than providing accesibility to those who need it. But in the absence of that, if everyone is able to understand without subtitles, I think that's a better default than immediately putting them on.
Because everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan and if I have the sound up loud enough that I can hear the dialog accurately it scares my wife, my cats, and me.
https://archive.is/rGAWn
Summary:
Subtitles have become increasingly common as streaming services have become more popular. While subtitles can help those with hearing impairments or non-native English speakers, many fluent English speakers now leave subtitles on for convenience or habit. However, subtitles can distract from visual elements of TV and film by drawing the viewer's eyes away from the screen. Streaming services have also made audio mixes quieter, making subtitles more necessary to follow plots. While subtitles offer a simple solution, creators worry they are changing how audiences consume media. Subtitle design could be improved to make them less distracting while still accessible for those who need them.
This has kind of already been done. We're a long way away from broadcast TV closed captions. Modern subtitle formats have support for quite a few stylistic choices to be applied which include choices for fonts, sizes, and even a degree of animation (many anime subs include subtitles that match the scrolling of the background where the original text is written). Some of these have been available for a long time, too; DVD subtitles, for instance, were just bitmaps that were overlayed on top of the video, so you could do any size or font you wanted (though I'm pretty sure it was fairly limited in terms of resolution and colors, which is why they seem so blocky all the time).
That being said, having subtitles that match the dramatic pauses properly are still fairly uncommon.
I think part of the problem may be the sound signature of modern sound systems. Laptop and TV speakers are bassier and weaker in the mids than the they used to be, which makes picking out voices harder.
Those have always been terrible, though. I think it's more like sound mixing in TV has become more "cinematic" as budgets have gone up and so people who don't have expensive sound equipment have found most of the stuff they watch are difficult to understand.
I have no data for this, but I think people are also having difficulty because there are more people with accents that are not native-born American on the shows people are watching than they are used to.
Yeah, but I think it's gotten especially bad recently. There used to be a market among consumers for a more balanced or even treble-focused sound, but that seems to have entirely gone away except for audiophiles. There's also the issue of flat screen TVs having backward instead of front facing speakers, which is a major problem for clarity.
The accent thing is a good point. I remember when I was a kid documentaries and news programs would have burned in subtitles for anyone with too thick of an accent, even if they were speaking perfectly understandable English. It basically treated their accent like a clip of someone speaking a foreign language. That's not really a thing anymore.
Oh no, I still see it from time to time. I really hate it.
Personally I use them because I find it significantly helps me with paying attention to whatever I'm watching. I even have them on permanently on YouTube.
Yeah, same. I have ADHD and I find it helps a lot to pay attention when there's subtitles. It's way harder to miss something when it's coming at you in teo different ways at once.
If I’m watching something while eating I will generally put subtitles on because I don’t want to have to turn up the volume. Especially if it’s crunchy food. Sometimes I just feel like it.
I've preferred subtitles/closed captions since I was a kid in the 90s. I find that when I'm tired, sick, stresssed, etc., I'm less able to make sense out of the sound of speech. It kind of just stays as noise instead & takes a conscious effort to mentally process it into actual words. Guessing I have a mild auditory processing disorder -- but it doesn't come up as a barrier too often & thankfully it's easier than ever to access subtitles on most platforms.
English is my second language. I use it daily, I can write and speak it quite fluently, but it's easier for me to put on the subtitles so that I don't miss an important dialogue, just because I couldn't understand the person due to an accent or something.
Not so much TV, but games I've gotten used to having subtitles on. I think it's a mix of (a) getting into games when actual voice acting was reserved for either the most special or most repeated lines, so you had to read anyway, and (b) the audio in games being less planned/balanced, so you never know when some interesting main story line is going to be obscured by poorly timed soundtrack, low health warnings or random npc dialogue competing with it.
I was a big no subtitles person and then I had kids.
We initially turned them on as new parents while stealth watching TV on barely audible volume so we didn’t wake anyone but now my kids are a little bit older and sleep through anything — but the subtitles have remained. I think it’s just no one has bothered to remove them and at this point we’re resigned to our fate of boring old people who watch shows with subtitles on.
Personally I like having subtitles on due to my ADHD and slow auditory processing. Additionally I sometimes find that while I hear what someone has said, if they have an accent (EG some strong USA ones or strong British accents, I'm Australian ironically) it's nice to have them on to confirm what has been said and I did indeed hear it correctly.
I also tend to watch things while doing other tasks, and a glance over at the subtitles to double check that I heard right is nice.
Plus some of the things other users have mentioned like poor audio mixing (seriously why is some music/SFX so loud) is pretty hit or miss, and I enjoy being able to comprehend what I am watching.
I'll turn subtitles off when audio mixes stop sucking. Every time, the main character whispers their lines and the action scenes need to convince my neighbors to call the police. I'm not about to adjust my volume every 5 minutes, so I leave my volume set to the one that isn't gonna set off my car alarm, turn on subtitles, and then not watch tv anyway cuz I'm too pissed at your mix.
As someone who's partner insisted on subtitles, it is somewhat annoying that I need to make a conscious effort to keep my focus away from the words.
I am a quick reader and will catch the text even from my periphery and kind of have a few seconds of knowing what's about to be said/done before the actors say it/do it.
To avoid not missing a word, what I will do when solo is watching Netflix or etc through my Playstation, with headphones connected through the controller/system/TV. Hard to avoid a sound with closed ear headphones directed the noises right to your ear.
However it's not really a big deal at the end of things because if you miss a word or a line here or there, you will 99% of the time be able to piece together what was said and what has happened. We are smart creatures able to fill in the blanks, especially when we understand regular story structure.
I don't personally use subtitles, unless I am on a plane or something where I may not hear as well as I'd like. I am actually excited to turn on subtitles when I end up having kids. There are some interesting studies that show kids from households with subtitles on read at a much higher level compared to their peers.
I'm glad the pay wall stopped me at the "snobbery" section. I wouldn't have been asked to finish the sticks anyway. 😪
The truth is, people are different. We have our reasons for keeping subtitles on. Look at all the responses here. Then you have people like my children who don't know anything different. If it hurts that much to have them on, then don't. If you're visiting my home, suggest a board game instead of a movie. 🤷♂️
To each their own. You do you. 🙏💜
That's true for just about everything. But if we all kept that in mind we wouldn't have such fun conversations, would we?
Because I like to watch tv while also listening to music sometimes, and it makes it a bunch easier to understand what is being said. I like reading. Sometimes I like to have the tv quiet while watching, and it helps with that as well.
because you cant hear dialog when tons of background noise is going off