2 things I do that aren't mentioned in the article: 1. Set the subtitles to play only when you rewind, then rewind when you miss something. 2. Use the Roku app to connect headphones. It's much easier to make out the words when they are muttered directly into your ear.
But I do also resort to subtitles. I don't like them because they are truly distracting. They change the quality of the visual overall and you also focus on them. You have to, to read. Then you don't see as much of the expression on the actor's face and you don't take in the details of what's within the frame. It's a real sacrifice. Reading is genuinely different from listening while gazing into the face of the speaker. If you're going to need to read to watch television, why not turn off the television and just read? Let the words fill your visual field and your mind create the pictures.
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Here Althouse inadvertently admits that she's not passionate about foreign language films. No Italian, no Korean, no French, no Japanese. They have all produced many spectacular films, many of which were never dubbed to English...or were dubbed by the same set of five cheap voice actors and still best watched in the original language...
But yes, watching a subtitled film is different, not so immersive, and often very fatiguing.
Have you found that the subtitling/closed captioning may sometimes produce inaccurate translations? There are lots and lots of internet video clips with closed captioning. And the biggest distraction for me is not so much reading them (although I agree it is a bit of a distraction), but rather the times when the translation is so wrong based on phonetic homonyms, etc.
We use subtitles 90% of the time. Often we don't need them when the dialogue is pretty much understandable from context -- what's happening on-screen -- but they can be very helpful at other times.
i use subtitles for MOST of the shows i watch on Netflix.
Of course, MOST of the shows i watch on Netflix are in Spanish, or Korean.
But yeah, i've noticed the modern American movies don't speak English very well either
We have a Sonos sound system, which I would not recommend. Mumbly voices are the bane of our viewing experience.
Mostly I blame Hollywood's shift to digital. Without needing to meet the chemical developing requirements of film stock, lighting can now go dark and murky. And without needing to meet a theater's more complex sound system, designers can mix voices and fx in a way unsuited for home delivery equipment. We're just generally screwed on this issue. What incentive do streamers have to fix it?
Or we could go back to the notion of hiring actors for their acting skills including the ability to enunciate instead of their DEI score. Bonus for also hiring sound engineers with ability to mix at proper sound levels multiple tracks, such that background noise isn’t equally as loud as the conversation we were meant to focus.
Still +1 to using headphones with the Roku app. When I can enjoy entertainment alone and I still care about the story, that’s what I do.
sound editing must be a mere afterthought these days.
I do the same. Other people hate that I do it.
Get a set of "TV Ears" (on Amazon), like I did. 80 bucks and your dialog-hearing problems are over.
We really enjoy a lot of British dramas, but besides accents, a big negative to hearing/understanding speech is the British TV industry tendency of a very wide range of sound level. In particular, when the background music swells during a dramatic scene, it becomes unbearably loud in a lot of cases. But you can't just adjust the volume lower, because it will inevitably be followed by some dialog at the mutter/whisper level that you will miss and have have to go back and re-listen to.
We always use the closed captions, too, but mostly now because my mother can't hear very well. We watch a lot of non-US English productions, and, when we first started, I did have trouble sometimes understanding the words spoken because of the accents, but my ear for them improved pretty rapidly.
We saw Orfeo at the Santa Fe opera. Having the libretto in English playing on the back of the seat in front of us was a huge help to understanding the music.
We make it even easier for ourselves. I don't watch cable or netflix TV anymore, and my wife only watches her Asian Dramas/Soaps. She doesnt need subtitles.
My main complaint is our new 50 inch TV which doesn't have a volume control on the cheapo remote that comes with it. In fact, you have to fiddle around with the TV settings, to lower and raise the volume. Not to mention the headphone jack is hard to get to, and occassionaly doesn't work. Its insane that they charge 500 dollars for the TV set, and all these things worked better on my $75 BW TV I had in 1990.
Its like so much of American business. They are ALWAYS nickle and diming you. Gotta squeeze every penny out of the product, Bro.
I've been a subtitles guy for 50 years.
In local theatres all English language films are subtitled in Spanish and always have been.
Even before I became really fluent in Spanish I could still puzzle through them.
I seldom watch TV and have never liked the closed captioning. But I watch a lot of movies and series on Netflix/Prime/Paramount and always leave subtitles.
Since I got my hearing aids (insert joke about listening to assholes here) from the Va earlier this year I can hear the TV much better and much more clearly. I still prefer subtitles and leave them on as a matter of course.
My son in law got me a high end soundbar for christmas a couple years ago. We tried it, nice audio, but way to complicated for my wife to use with its separate control and way too much of a pain in the ass for me.
He wound up returning it and getting his money back.
I had not thought about casting to my phone and using bluetooh earbuds. I'll have to try that, it might be an option.
I do cast from phone to TV sometimes but never tried the other direction.
John Henry
Yes, this is a common problem with sound mixing and bizarre dialogue. My complaint is with movies that with jack up the background music and then have the characters whisper.
That said, The Witcher has bigger problems than oddball dialogue. The show is based off a video game that has a sophisticated and deep lore. Henry Cavill, who is a huge Witcher fan, was lured to play the starring role. However, NetFlix hired showrunners that not only publicly announced they don't care about the lore but they are actively hostile against it, trying to undermine it in favor of their own vision for the show and actively trying to undermine their own star who was resisting this. This has convinced Henry to quit. The showrunners were rewarded for this behavior by getting their own prequel series, which is pretty much the standard "woke", "diversity is all the plot we need" garbage.
He's correct that the speakers built into the tv are awful, at one time I would have said that there wasn't enough room but considering the advances in speaker technology in the last few years I think it is to keep the price of the tv low.
I have my tv hooked up to a receiver that is connected to a Dolby 5.1 surround sound system. The sound from it is excellent, but we still have to use CC because if we turn up the sound loud enough to actually hear what the actors are saying then the other noises (music, explosions, etc) will be way to loud.
I will sometimes replay a line or turn on the subtitles to understand some line. But I mostly stopped because it's almost never worth the effort. It's just some dumb line I didn't need to understand.
I didn't know there was a setting for adding subtitles on rewind. I'm not sure I want to use it, but if my TV has it, it may be worth trying out.
"Why not turn off the television and just read?"
That's what I usually do. I have all the difficulties you list in watching shows and movies, and my wife's hearing loss means we both struggle with intelligibility.
Could use some better speakers for music, though.
I tried to watch Naked Lunch because the guy playing Burroughs was supposed to be so great, but he was another mumbler. See, Cool Guys mumble, because they can't be arsed to speak up you know. This has been a power flex for a long time.
Yet an educated man of Burroughs' cohort certainly spoke audibly. Even if high on junk.
How do soundbars handle coded racist dog whistles?
I like subtitles - For me, it clarifies what is being said. I feel like I can relax more instead of trying to hear everything. I don't do this for sports though (I usually watch those on mute - there is very little that the play-by-play person or the color commentator actually add).
As for why I don't just read instead? Well, it's been a very long time since I've read anything as good as say "Better Call Saul" or "Succession".
When I was streaming Netflix several years ago, the music on every show was so much louder than the dialogue, I was constantly changing the volume.
I just realized I haven't turned on my TV since the Masters. This is what cutting the cable can lead to. Some people like it.
Mt spouse couldn’t understand a word on Broadchurch and we trued the subtitles them gave up…
I have a Sonos soundbar and sub- super easy to set up and far superior to the audio from the TV but dar inferior to customizing the sound for the room with receiver, surround speakers and a mic on a stand…
Years ago husband and I noticed that movies had very unbalanced sound mixing. Overnight it seemed that background music and "exciting" noises such as vroom-vroom vehicles, gunfire, explosions, etc. were deliberately amplified such that dialogue is drowned out.
In addition to contending with the current fad of unbalanced sound-mixing, I have some hearing loss now, not enough to get hearing aides (although that is coming for sure) but enough so that closed-cap is a god-send. As far as eschewing video in favor of reading books if I need closed-captioning, I read for hours every day as it is. It's also a bit like saying, why go to a play when you can just read it.
My wife and I started using closed captioning when watching TV after the birth of our first child 26 years ago.
It allows you to "hear" all of the dialog while still permitting "dad ears" or "mom ears" to keep tabs on kids!
Child #4 graduates from high school next spring, but I suspect the CC will stay on after the nest is completely empty.
The characters are not the problem. They can't choose to speak clearly or darkly, it's the writers. Or maybe it's the directors. Directors routinely ignore the script as written and substitute their own silliness. Or maybe it's the shrowrunners, those recently coined apparachiks whose authority is at once absolute and nebulous. It's hard to pin down who is responsible for what these days. Everybody gets to crow over success, and nobody gets canned over abject failure.
Television is the cloaca of American culture. Best avoid it.
Part of the problem is that most new tvs don’t have front firing speakers. I’ve put my phone under the tv and used my air pods with live listen to great effect, as being in the line of fire for the speakers lets the air pods work as a better than average hearing aid.
"1. Set the subtitles to play only when you rewind, then rewind when you miss something."
That's a great idea! I just got a Roku yesterday and didn't know you could do that. Thanks!
It's also useful to know it's not my aging ears that's the problem. I just watched the first episode of the Dick Van Dyke show, shot in 1961. Dialogue is clear as a bell. Why can't/won't producers do that today?
I’ve had subtitles on for a decade. Have a Bose soundbar, mainly because the new TV has tiny speakers with no bass.
To watch the latest Netflix streaming show I need to spend another $900 for more equipment just for the audio? That's hardly a selling point in this economy but not surprising coming from NYT.
I have subtitles on by default because I watch a lot of non-English shows and movies. Sometimes I have to rewind to see the actors or, if I was watching the actors, to read the subtitles, but I'm a fast reader, so I don't have to do that very often. I think I've gotten better over the years at being able to look quickly between the text and the actors.
We have been using captions on for years now first shown when grandkids(sleepover most weekends) would come over and watch their TV shows.YOUTUBE,NETFLIX PRIME HULU etc.We have 4 active TV'S with our main 65 inch SAMSUNG powered by an inexpensive surround sound system(ONKYO $650.00 YEARS BACK) that I use for music programs (IDOL,YOUTUBE etc) and that gives us Movie experience in our living room.DVR and streaming also offer tons of other stuff.It took us awhile to get used to captions but now we hardly notice it now.OLED tvs are very nice with improved contrast ratio uniformity and viewing angle.Weloved our Plasma tv before it finally went after many years and I couldnt replace it (discontinued)Great for sports (no trailing) .8 track to cassette to cd and so on.progress?
I do have a great sound system I think, I mean there's THX all over it and I remember THX from the theaters when they would say "tee eych ex" and this loud "whhhhooooom" would fill the room, was very impressive. But I also have tinnitus and such. Subtitles are a last resort. I will rewind and rewind and adjust the volume until I can understand Jared Harris just fine and then I will move on. Subtitles when I should understand the language annoy and distract me, much more so than re-watching a scene. I don't particularly enjoy subtitles on foreign films, but it's not distracting because I'm only concentrating on one communication method at once. If I have to pay attention to the spoken language and the subtitles, that's too much. One or the other.
You can get a very good soundbar with a subwoofer for less than $200. No need for the $600 dollar unit this guy is promoting. Dialog aside, it's a real improvement on even a good TV speaker.
Did I mention that my 82" Samsung 4K makes watching TV a completely different experience from what you guys get with that 21" Trinitron :)
I don't intend to buy a $900 sound bar for my $300 tv.
I also will continue watching primarily Korean TV and Indian movies for the foreseable future. It's incredibly rare that English comes out of my tv's speakers anyway.
Subtitles are on 100% of the time regardless.
The ability to speak clearly was once a must for an actor. Advances in amplification mitigated that somewhat. Then, along came sountracks that competed with the spoken word and rejected even an instant of silence.
Both words and understanding have suffered.
Jim said...
We saw Orfeo at the Santa Fe opera. Having the libretto in English playing on the back of the seat in front of us was a huge help to understanding the music.
I agree.
It was through opera that I first heard the term "Surtitles." (The captioning ran at the top of the proscenium arch.)
There are some shows that I just can’t watch because the actors think it’s really cool to whisper all of their lines. Star Trek Voyager was one such show. Kathryn Janeway drove me nuts.
There are lots and lots of internet video clips with closed captioning.
I think closed captioning is very different from subtitles. I generally agree with your comments about CC. CC seems more likely to be real time which means less time to get it right and no time to edit or correct mistakes. The only time I find CC useful is on TikTok videos which often have mumbled and muddy audio
I have not found many problems with subtitles either Spanish subtitles of English language films in theater or subtitles in English of English in various streaming media. In the 70s and 80s movies here used to lag the upper 50s release by 3-6 months and the excuse was that this was how long it took to do subtitles in Spanish.
In the 90s when satellite and cable started getting really big, it was sometimes possible to see movies on TV before they came to local theaters. That got the studios to speed up the subtitling process.
John Henry
I use subtitles in yellow Arial. Easy to recognize font and yellow usually does not blend into the scene. TV speakers are of poor quality for economic reasons. Retailers can sell a 36" or 40" TV for under $100 now. People complain when TV prices are high but nobody complains about a $900 sound bar.
Narr asked, "How do soundbars handle coded racist dog whistles?" So clear that dogs actually come running.
@Fredrick
And it's likely that the audio equipment will cost way more than the tv. I've seen 50" TVs going for $300, sometimes even less. Of course, these days a 50" tv is considered small.
I don't blame actors. The studios have decided that sound design just doesn't matter anymore: They'll blast music or special effects at a higher volume than the dialog and artistically, much is lost. It's not just that it becomes hard to follow, there was an intimacy which could come from a closeup on an actor and a quiet background for a key emotional moment.
There are many aspects to the decline of Hollywood and this is emblematic of them all: Give a damn about your audience, blast music and FX all you want, but take it down a notch when there is dialogue.
On a practical note, we attached a 30-some year old boom box to our television and the quality of the sound was noticeably better, by a lot.
If there's Bluetooth anywhere in your sound circuit, don't be surprised if the sound lags the video. Especially if any components are more than a few years old.
There are (apparently) many reasons, including acting styles, sound mixing, the variety of speaker systems, etc. Basic summary (I've read several articles on this). I was watching a Peter Dinklage movie a year or so ago (I Think We're Alone Now) and never made it through because I couldn't hear half the dialog. Sometimes I can hook up headphones, but for some weird reason, some networks/shows don't go through my amplifier and the TV doesn't have a headphone jack.
We have subtitles on most of the time because we watch Kdramas most of the time, because western content is mostly garbage
We haven't exactly learned Korean yet but we do know an oppa from an ahjussi
It is interesting that at least the blurb doesn't even mention a common setup, which is going through a stereo receiver, which is way better than a sound bar. I think millennials and younger are skipping it because it is too hard for them or something
And without needing to meet a theater's more complex sound system, designers can mix voices and fx in a way unsuited for home delivery equipment.
This is the source of the problem. Soundtracks are designed for Atmos and surround but if you don’t have the equipment everything’s a bad compromise. That’s why Rob and Laura and Lucy and Charlie don’t mumble- they’re made of single channel audio…
It's not the dialogue, it is the actors who aren't trained to enunciate, the sound recording artists who value things other than clarity and the use of too loud background music.
It is industry choice so why reward such people.
We just got the $99 Visio sound board. It works amazingly well, but i haven't "needed" a lotta bass since I was a teen.
But it interferes with OTA signals so sits unused most of the time.
Or you could save the $900 and simply tell your TV to connect to your stereo via Bluetooth.
I use subtitles because I don't know French or German and my wife is addicted to French and German crime dramas.
The pictures are too dark, the sound is muddy, and bass (sound not the fish) is cranked up to 11.
Why I don't care what is on Netflix tonight.
Subtitles don’t work for us. I try to read them to my parter, and can’t keep up.
We have a >80” LG, and bought the corresponding sound bar. Slaved it to the TV volume. Waste of money.
She has sensitive ears, and the thing that drives her crazy is that in so many TV shows these days, they crank up the volume for the commercials. When I can, I mute for commercials. But then forget to unmute.
The only problem with the giant TV is the talking heads on the seldom watched news programs. They're annoyingly gigantic. You can count Rachel Maddow's nose hairs. If you so choose.
Also, the main point of watching Star Trek Voyager was not the dialog. 7 of 9 was a 10. Best SF second banana since Colonel Wilma Deering. And in these cases the ginormatity is a major plus if you can find a good quality picture on the older stuff.
Also, I recently discovered that my Samsung has a free live TV feature called Samsung Plus. There are military, history, and science channels in amazing clarity, 1080p and some 4k. Here, you can count Hitler's nose hairs on the military channel. Up to you.
There is also a 24 hour Baywatch remastered channel. Who knew? But it's live, meaning no pause or slow mo or rewind. It like the old days. If you miss something to go pee, then you fucking missed it.
I'm just trying to get into the "whistling past the graveyard" vibe as we continue to ignore the takeover of our nation by traitorous leftist lawyers. Hope I'm doing OK.
Jim,
Gluck? Or Monteverdi? That's a question I'd ask long before inquiring into sur/supertitling.
We have a 65" Sony Bravia XR. Clear as a bell, and I spent years alongside Marshall Super Lead 100s.
Now, our Toshiba, different channels have remarkably different levels.
I never watch the news on tv… or stuff with commercials.
My favorite show is How to with John Wilson. And I’m rewatching Succession.
Overlapping, often incomprehensible dialog was a hallmark of many Altman multi-charactered movies (like Nashville), which were often criticized and praised by critics of the era. The speech was more "realistic" they said.
Film and TV conventions have been waived in favor of more realistic shows, from Bane's incomprehensible behind-the-mask dialogue in the recent Batman movie, to using only realistic illumination for night scenes, such that most of the screen is black and I don't know what I'm seeing, or not seeing. Those conventions such as masked characters being perfectly comprehensible and night scenes fully visible, existed to help the storytelling.
This is a case of tearing down the gate without knowing why the gate was built.
You can set Prime to enhance speech. the problem is endemic in film now
I have a good 5.1 sound system, but my investment in it is mid-four figures. If you're looking for decent soundbars or sound systems that won't break the bank, check out Monoprice.com Search for soundbars or their very low cost systems.
A big part of this is that most streaming services assume a sound bar or surround speakers and will stream with Dolby 5.1 as the default. Dolby 5.1 includes a central speaker. Dialogue and vocals are usually predominantly placed in the center channel.
Changing the default audio set up, or using your TV's "Voice mode" can increase the audibility of the voice without spending $1000 on speakers.
That said, you can get a pretty awesome sound out of a $250 sound bar with a separate subwoofer.
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