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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.
Once upon a time, people in TV spoke at audible volumes. We don’t live in that world anymore.
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.)
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!
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
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.
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.
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
It’s not even like I can’t hear or anything. It’s just sound mixing is terrible.
It really is amazing to me how subtitles have become the norm. Everyone I know uses them. And it’s all cause the audio is just trash. No matter the audio setup. Expensive atmos surround sound, entry level sound bar, Sonos whatever, tv speakers. They all sound like shit and everyone uses subtitles.
I think it’s also worth acknowledging that subtitles have gotten a lot better. The old school white on black subtitles that I grew up with in the 90s and 00s were very in the way and often added as an afterthought without much care. You had to be hard of hearing or deaf to put up with them. Hell, my hearing father got annoyed with the rest of us for using them. Honestly I’m annoyed they never made a separate screen to put under the TV that would just display the line 21 captions. Hell, I’d love a subtitle standard that would allow me to move them to a dedicated screen under my monitor today, but that’s a lot less realistic.
These days they’re often unobtrusive and don’t feel like they’re taking away from what’s going on. Though I do wish more content creators were like Technology Connections and made a point to keep important visuals out of the caption zone.
I’d love a subtitle standard that would allow me to move them to a dedicated screen under my monitor today
AFAIK in movie theatres they have a closed captions system that’s basically like an individual teleprompter device for anybody who needs the captions.
I actually feel the opposite. I know the old ones you were talking about and those do suck, but on streaming apps the subtitles are often in the way of things in the show. Even worse, I’ve seen subtitles go over the top of baked in subtitles in the show, sometimes obscuring text with worse text. The most extreme example being a character speaking another language in the show, the show has baked in subtitles for it, and the streaming app subtitles cover it up and say “speaking Chinese”… Yes I’ve really seen that happen more than once. 🤦♂️
Oh all those things you’re talking about are absolutely still problems, but I feel like they’ve been problems for as long as we’ve had subtitles. And that’s why I want the second screen subtitles that could go below what I’m watching.
Good subtitling is amazing, and it was better in the closed caption days, but it was super rare and there’s no reason modern subtitles can’t do it. It could get out of the way, differentiate speakers, even do tone.
Fell down a bit of a rabbit hole there actually, it looks like YouTube doesn’t allow positioning even in formats that have it except WebVTT (Bad google). And the most common format .srt doesn’t allow formatting at all. Positioning is a vital accessibility feature, and the rest of formatting is just nice to have. Color differentiating speakers etc can be awesome and really just subtitles can add to content beyond just being an accessibility feature.
Relevant technology connections
And yeah, use .vtt captions where possible I guess, especially if you’re the one making them. It looks really good at only adding complexity where you choose it.
100% agree on positioning. I think a big issue with that is also that most captions are generated now as far as I can tell, and sometime don’t even get the words or spelling right. Positioning being added in a world where they won’t even have a human check it seems unlikely 😑
Yeah I agree. But also, generate, correct, position where needed. Yes it adds to editing time, but it also drastically adds to video quality.
As someone learning Norwegian, I am often in this picture
If subtitles are so great, why aren’t there any supertitles yet?
Supertitles are in opera or theatre where they show translated text on a screen above the stage.
Wait… Is this a real thing?
^I’m not rich enough to have ever been to the Opera
I don’t go to Opera either because I’m a cheapskate, but these things do exist.
Burn, forced, ASS… subtitles are great, but what about domtitles?
If a motherfucker could properly mix audio I wouldn’t need them.
If I wouldn’t have to turn the volume ALL THE WAY UP followed by ALL THE WAY DOWN because your show/movie can’t decide if we’re whispering or blowing the planet up every ten seconds, I wouldn’t need them.
I keep hearing things are mixed for the theater, but I went to the theater to see the odyssey the other day for the first time in a while, and it had the same problem! Sound mixing is trash these days…
the first film i really noticed it in was Corpse Bride. been a problem for 21 years.
Yeah “these days” is getting to be a pretty wide range you’re not wrong 😅
it was just one scene in Corpse Bride, too. a single song, I finally watched it with the subtitles on and understood it this year. I understood some delightful jokes and lyrics for the first time! I want to cast so many aspersions at our dear friend Alan Smythee at the sound department on that film, but like half the sound department went uncredited so i get it.
“Yeah well, it sounds perfect in my soundproof bunker on my $10,000 cans, I don’t know why you think Inwould test the sound out in a cluttered living room setting on a $300 TV with no surround sound.”
– Average Present Day Audio Engineer
i’ve got one of those systems. It’s tuned damn well. I still have those problems. It’s like asking why someone would not like something shot in shaky cam. Some people just get nauseated when it takes up the whole screen. I do, and I do fine on roller coasters. And was stoned. It was weird. Not every film is for every person, but if you can add subs it makes it more accessible.
At least some of those audio engineers go home everyday to listen on their $300 Roku TV so it really makes no sense. I know some.
Audio Engineering is not some lofty high-paying profession.
They often claim you need a proper audio setup.
I have an expensive (be it old) surround sound setup. Marvel and many other modern movies suck absolute arse. Having to pause and fiddle with volume going from a barely audible conversation to deafening noise in a single scene.
Fuck that noise, audio seems optimized for smartphone speakers nowadays.
Fuck that noise, audio seems optimized for smartphone speakers nowadays.
No, it’s optimized for 42-speaker, billion-watt Imax screens. Where I have to wear earplugs.
We went to the re-airing of interstellar on imax. The sound when the ship was getting hammered with hail was so loud my ears were ringing and we left. Making movies painful should not be the point.
But it really makes you feel like
SpidermanYou have tinnitus
What if, hear me out, they changed the format a bit to supply 2 separate audio tracks. One for voice, one for effects. Then we could adjust it ourselves.
I’d vote for you
They kinda do that with surround. Dialogue is mostly isolated to the center speaker.
Which is why it sounds bad, because 99% of the audience is watching on a stereo TV they got at Wal-mart.
Boost your center channel and/or enable dialogue enhancer.
Won’t help with Marvel movies (their mixing sucks ass) but most others.
Let me find the center channel setting on my two speaker stereo real quick.
Movies from the 90s and prior sound perfectly fine even with loud explosions and whispers and a large dynamic range. Today’s mixes are just straight up dog shit.
that would be the occasion to find the [enable dialogue enhancer] setting (or a reasonable facsimile, mine is called the same) in the tv. if you have a center channel, leave it off.
Kodi power.
This would be amusing in japanese <-> English as the word order is roughly opposite. There are a few implementation strategies that are varying degrees of trash
On the bright side: I don’t spoil the video myself because i read too fast
On the bad side: JESUS CHRIST I WANNA READ, MY BRAIN CAN’T BEAR YOUR SLOWNESS
*rarely the case but if i have subtitles that’s the reason, either that or the speak has a strong Bri’ish🍵 or Freedom 🦅🦅🦅 accent
I read so fast that with long subtitles I have too much time to think about me being useless
Same here. You really are useless aren’t you? ;)
that guy is, ttbomk, mr beast. bring out the guillotine.
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Top tip, if you use VLC or some such software, they often have a compressor plug in (if the software you are using, doesn’t have one, get VLC). Compressor will take care of limiting giant explosions and other loud noises so you can have the volume set to a level where you can hear the speaking parts.
https://www.geekality.net/blog/settings-for-vlc-dynamic-range-compression
Though this is not a magic trick, I still use (English) subtitles, mainly because I’m not a native English speaker and sometimes I mishear words and such.
I use subtitles and I am a native English speaker… sometimes the actors mumble or get washed out in the mix, or just the room we’re watching in is a bit noisy, so being able to read the dialogue helps my brain to pick out what they’re saying a lot easier.
I’ve also found on vlc sometimes the audio mode is the problem. Switch to stereo or headphones mode to see if it helps
Ohhhh, that’s really useful, thank you!
Indeed! Improved my movie watching experiences immensely.
Night mode does the same thing on your TV, or sound bar/system.
Interesting, thanks for the tip. I’ll have to check if my dad’s TV has that. He’s been complaining about the sound levels.
There could also be True Volume setting. My sound system has both.
True Volume I would say takes the top 25% and bottom 25% to meet in the middle. The night mode goes even further - it makes it quite narrow.
I would recommend downloading the manual and crtl+f the pdf. That’s much faster that trying to read the thing (If you still have it)
Good tips, thanks!
Whispers: Fuck. Yes. Thanks.💥 🤯 💣 🧨 💣 🤯 💥
Does this work on the funny android smart TV versions of vlc? The layout is so different to what I am used to on my PC.
I don’t know. If it has the compressor plugin, should work.
While volume leveling helps in a lot of cases, it frequently makes the sound all wonky and weird as a tradeoff for the improved voice clarity. Lots of clipping and other things that also came up in the loudness wars for music.
I havent had any issues. Though I tend to watch stuff with mild volume levels.
It clips at mild levels too, even if you don’t notice it.
Do you have the “peak protection” box checked?
I speak English, I’m from the US, and I use subtitles anytime there’s British people. Australians too. It’s essentially a different language.
I’ve never had trouble understanding non-Standard American English accents other than the really rural ones, whether the US South or another country. Possibly because I lived in Germany and watched Sky Channel as a kid.
I’ve been watching so much UK TV/movies that I can understand their accents quite well. Aussie accents too, but they have their own slang words that I sometimes struggle with, but nothing a little internet search cant fix.
“Lock the nipper in the dunny!”
(nipper = child, dunny = bathroom)
This is torture if the subtitles don’t match.
I have a soft spot for dubbed anime and always have, but in pretty much every case, the subtitles are not a transcript of the dub, they’re a translation of the original Japanese.
As a result, the feeling you get trying to watch that is not unlike going up a set of stairs and miscounting, but for every sentence.
Different but related, it was annoying in Xenoblade 2 when Rex would yell “Homura!” and the subtitles would say “Pyra!” He did it a fair amount.
It’s like following two different stories at once!
If you want the subtitles to match the dub you have to specifically look for dubtitles or CC. But they are rather rare.
It’s also torture if the subtitles don’t (reasonably) match for non-dubbed content.
This bothers me more with captioning for English language movies in English. They abbreviate a lot to make it easier to quickly read what is being said. Sometimes that makes perfect sense and is very useful. A lot of the time, they’re just cutting out details for no good reason.
It’s also very annoying for non-native speakers who want to listen to the original audio and have the subtitles as help when they don’t understand something:
- what was that one word I didn’t get?
- subtitles: completely different sentence (with the same meaning, OK, but different words)
AI generated subtitles are utter garbage. Combine that with idiots who can’t be bothered to check their 60 second long video for mistakes and you basically end up with subtitles that have no reason of being there in the first place
I prefer just listening to it in Japanese, but even knowing just basic Japanese you start seeing inaccurate translations in the subtitles too (especially with cussing).
I’m with you on that. Anime has to have dubtitles if I’m putting them on there. Thankfully you can find those pretty easily these days if you need to.
I wanted to turn them off and learned that you can’t on Chrunchyroll
Sometimes crunchyroll will play the closed captions on the closed captions track. In those cases, you have to turn subtitles off at the TV level for it to turn off, since there’s no option on crunchyroll for it.
Huhu? Like is there a problem with their interface that prevents that? Because most of my anime is CR rips and they never have hardsubs.
You can’t turn them off for the Japanese dub of some series. CR states that this is expected and due to licensing constrains
And occasionlly, the sub and the dub are NOT THE SAME.
Wait, anime has started matching up subtitles on dubs? I’m hard of hearing and like a combination of audio and subtitles, which results in people getting mad when watching anime with me because they’re basically never the same.
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When and why did this become a thing? Half the people I know are like this
It’s a vicious circle, these past twenty years. Before then, movie makers made effort to ensure dialog could be heard and understood. There’s a line in Casino Royal that James mumbles, “He’s a bloody idiot, then”, but you can still understand him, it’s meant to be mumbled, Eva Greene asks “What?”, but he’s understandable when he’s acting like he’s mumbling. They wouldn’t even make him unintelligible for a line that was meant to be unintelligible.
Without subtitles, when I don’t have them for whatever reason, sometimes I need to rewind, and turn up the volume to catch a single word the actor mumbled. Sometimes, I never hear what they said, and I just move on. Was that important? I don’t know.
We started watching with subtitles because we couldn’t hear what the actors are saying.
“Big explosions go boom, everyone likes loud music.”
Actors don’t need to speak clearly, which adds “atmosphere” or whatever, because everyone is watching with subtitles.
It always had been like this. Before subtitles became commonplace, we just straight up didn’t hear half of the words and suffered in solitude.
When media with optional subtitles became a thing? When my parents got a DVD player
I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
So it’s layered and complex.
[Ominous music]
[speaking in a foreign language]
I love it when the show puts the foreign language subtitles in the show, and the [SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] covers up the original subtitles.
Or the original subtitles for some reason are not present when you turn on closed captions.
Like sometimes the "[Speaking in foreign language] is intentional, there is a plot element mystery because the other characters are not meant to understand it, so we, the audience are not meant to.
Also tangential that gets me, when it says like [Soeaking in Tagalog] or something specific, but less common, then later some character is like, “Si senor” in very obviously Spanish and it says [Speaking in foreign language]. Instead of [Speaking in Spanish].
The ones that really annoy me are when the character says something like “!Hola!”, and it says [Speaking in a foreign language].
[Inhuman snarls]
Probably my favorite one that I’ve seen
I love it when the subtitle says the name of the song playing. I’ve learned a few tunes that I enjoy this way!
[music stops]
[🎵Singing🎵]
[Uplifting music]
Sometimes the music adjectives make me laugh
