XPost: rec.arts.tv

On Tue, 24 Dec 2024 01:36:52 -0800, super70s wrote:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/why-movie-dialogue-is-so-hard-to-understand-these-days-163708191.html

I didn't take the guy's Twitter poll but I would've been included in that 83%.

It is a misleading question. My answer would be sometimes
I use subtitles, not whether I use them or not.

I don't think he mentions anything about a setting that comes with some Blu-Ray or DVD players -- in my old Panasonic Blue-Ray there's a
"Dialog Enhancer" setting that is supposed to pump up the dialogue (in
the center channel of a 4-speaker setup) and I have it turned on but I
still find myself using subtitles often.

"Filmmakers have leaned into the rise of special effects, making explosions, fights, and gunfire significantly louder. This makes
dialogue seem that much quieter."

This is quite dumb, there's nothing "realistic" about the
shots and explosions on screen, engineering is incapable
of recording and reproducing such sounds accurately,
they are always far louder than they possibly can be on screen,
as if anyone would want to hear that in a movie theater.
So the excuse to muffle voices to make it more "realistic"
doesn't wash.

To sum up, the muffled dialog in films is caused by
bad engineering, probably caused by spending too much
money on the project. Over-engineering is caused by
too much money.

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XPost: rec.arts.tv

On 2024-12-28 22:53:31 +0000, Pluted Pup said:

On Tue, 24 Dec 2024 01:36:52 -0800, super70s wrote:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/why-movie-dialogue-is-so-hard-to-understand-these-days-163708191.html


I didn't take the guy's Twitter poll but I would've been included in that 83%.

It is a misleading question. My answer would be sometimes
I use subtitles, not whether I use them or not.

I don't think he mentions anything about a setting that comes with some
Blu-Ray or DVD players -- in my old Panasonic Blue-Ray there's a
"Dialog Enhancer" setting that is supposed to pump up the dialogue (in
the center channel of a 4-speaker setup) and I have it turned on but I
still find myself using subtitles often.

"Filmmakers have leaned into the rise of special effects, making
explosions, fights, and gunfire significantly louder. This makes
dialogue seem that much quieter."

This is quite dumb, there's nothing "realistic" about the
shots and explosions on screen, engineering is incapable
of recording and reproducing such sounds accurately,
they are always far louder than they possibly can be on screen,
as if anyone would want to hear that in a movie theater.
So the excuse to muffle voices to make it more "realistic"
doesn't wash.

To sum up, the muffled dialog in films is caused by
bad engineering, probably caused by spending too much
money on the project. Over-engineering is caused by
too much money.

There's a similar problem with TV adverts usually being much louder
(despite TV networks claiming otherwise) than the TV show they
interrupt. Thanfully these days we record most of our shows and can
simply fast forward through the adverts anyway.

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XPost: rec.arts.tv

On 12/24/2024 4:36 AM, super70s wrote:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/why-movie-dialogue-is-so-hard-to- understand-these-days-163708191.html

I didn't take the guy's Twitter poll but I would've been included in
that 83%.

I don't think he mentions anything about a setting that comes with some Blu-Ray or DVD players -- in my old Panasonic Blue-Ray there's a "Dialog Enhancer" setting that is supposed to pump up the dialogue (in the
center channel of a 4-speaker setup) and I have it turned on but I still
find myself using subtitles often.

Seems never an issue with older shows/movies. The price of "realism"...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: rec.arts.tv

On 24 Dec 2024, super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote in
rec.arts.tv:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/why-movie-dialogue-is-so-hard -to-understand-these-days-163708191.html

I didn't take the guy's Twitter poll but I would've been included
in that 83%.

I don't think he mentions anything about a setting that comes with
some Blu-Ray or DVD players -- in my old Panasonic Blue-Ray
there's a "Dialog Enhancer" setting that is supposed to pump up
the dialogue (in the center channel of a 4-speaker setup) and I
have it turned on but I still find myself using subtitles often.

I don't go to movie theaters very often, but I have noticed this effect
several times there. A few times there weren't many other people in the theater, but the presentation seemed to be automated for a packed
house, and the loud sound effects were dangerously deafening. I have
had to leave the theater in the middle to try to talk to a manager to
have him lower the sound. Sometimes there was nobody there who could or
would do it, so I demanded a refund and left.

At home I often have had to resort to closed captions to understand the indistinct, mumble dialog.

So, yes, this is a real thing.

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XPost: rec.arts.tv

On 2024-12-24 20:01:42 +0000, moviePig said:

On 12/24/2024 4:36 AM, super70s wrote:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/why-movie-dialogue-is-so-hard-to-
understand-these-days-163708191.html

I didn't take the guy's Twitter poll but I would've been included in that 83%.

I don't think he mentions anything about a setting that comes with some
Blu-Ray or DVD players -- in my old Panasonic Blue-Ray there's a
"Dialog Enhancer" setting that is supposed to pump up the dialogue (in
the center channel of a 4-speaker setup) and I have it turned on but I
still find myself using subtitles often.

Seems never an issue with older shows/movies. The price of "realism"...

It's usually more due to the overly loud continual background music
they insist on playing almost all the time these days. :-(

There's a similar issue with many shows these days having scenes that
are too dark to see anything.

Then there's the idiocy of people sending / recieving cellphone text
messsages, where the text is either too small or glimpsed too quickly
to be able to be read by the audience, so why bother showing it at all?

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