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It’s not you — the dialogue in TV and movies has gotten harder to hear. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don’t miss …
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One interesting fact that didn’t make it into the piece is that movie theaters didn’t always have consistently great sound — it only became consistent thanks to Star Wars.
The story goes like this: George Lucas was trying to find a theater to premiere ‘Return of the Jedi.’ and every theater he went to had terribly set up sound systems. He was like, “This is unacceptable! Why am I asking all of my sound designers, editors, and mixers to put in all this work if I can't guarantee it’s going to be heard properly on playback?”
So he enlisted Tomlinson Holmman to create, THX — yes, that THX — the one with the way-too-loud booming sound at the beginning of all those old movies you used to watch as a kid. THX was a sound quality certification made to ensure that ‘Return of the Jedi’ was presented in the purest form possible. But it did so much more than that by standardizing good sound playback in movie theaters across the board.
Sound has progressed a ton since then, but Star Wars set the precedent for good sound quality in theaters.
For more awesome content about sound in your favorite movies and TV shows, check out Austin on TikTik: https://www.tiktok.com/@aok.wav
Thanks for watching!
—Ed
Sooo… Could this be part of the reason why foreign language learners have trouble understanding television and movies without captions sometimes?
And yet: we can understand youtubers without subtitles (though we sometimes use the Klingon) while we don't understand actors understand multi million productions.
Últimamente utilizo subtítulos, ya que me empecé a percatar de que al ver series y peliculas de un momento a otro cambiaba el nivel de volumen, justo los diálogos que escuchan poco y la musica o sonido ambientales se escuchaban demasiado demasiado por lo que tenia que estar moviendo el volumen manualmente. no era un cambio equilibrado. Este video me hizo entender un poco lo que esta pasando.
I'll say, better sound of bass than before so the low notes get not enough frequences for be able to ear it in the open
0:55 I had to go back TWICE! here because I thought you said “ do you have to wash it sometimes?”😡😂
6:26 funny mic
It's great to have Austin giving insight on this, but I feel she (and teh industry as a whole) is wrong about something. She said dialogue can't be turned up as it would make explosions feel less "full", yet I'm CONSTANTLY seeing people complain that gunshots and explosions are way too (uncomfortably) loud. If audiences are saying they don't want this and it's ruining the experience, it's a sign that the industry needs to change their approach.
With Subtitles you wont miss single dialogue And subtitles problem is you will miss alot of the gestures because you are reading the subtitles.😂😂
As a consumer who pays to watch these movies your 3 options do NOT work for me lol. So you mean to tell me that they make money based on our views or purchases and cannot find a middle ground? Yea… Ill stick to watching movies from 60's- early 2000's.
I dont use subtitles. I can't watch watch stuff with subtitles
Unless I’m watching a foreign language film I shouldn’t be expected to need subtitles! 😡
Good Video! But if I cant understand the dialog and I dont want to read captions (as then you miss the visuals) then I abort the viewing !
Also if the production has been too stingy to spend money on good lighting sets camera operators and locations and the resulting visuals are too dark or the whites are clipped then I abort the viewing.
From reading the comments and the ones from the professionals. I would 1. mono the sound 2. cut all the bass a treble then 3. Push the audio thru a brickwall limiter that cuts in a about -20 or -25 db 4. Listen thru a single mid range speaker and avoid rooms with lots of reflective surfaces like tiles etc
I worked in TV station many years ago and the problem viewers would write or phone to the station about was the audio level loudness difference between program and commercials (I we fixed it with some 6db pads on the commercials VTR audio feed) the same thing now happens in movies youtube and even my cable channel Foxtel! So we have not progressed have we!
In the past, very little content had subtitles. And, if it did, there was often a lag from the audio. If you are a fast reader and have functional hearing…the lag was a distracting deal-breaker.
Now, almost everything has the option to show subtitles. They often keeps up with the audio…and are often quite accurate. It's also rare to have a decent speaker that can accurately reproduce the way human speech sounds on small modern devices.
In short, people use subtitles these days because they can. It's not rocket surgery.
As a non native speaker, I get all words in podcast or normal video but movies without subtitles always confuse me
My mom never puts subtitles because she thinks I’m developing deafness with it. And she does that to fight the deafness
I need subtitles at restaurants when waiters mumble and whisper.
The video's host is not very clear, too much bass.
I quit going to the cinema years ago because cinemas sound awful . Too noisy and no subtitles to help me understand the dialogue
Another thing that makes speech hard to understand is "background music"! 😮
Actors in the early days came from the theater, where they were taught to pronounce and articulate.
Add tons of tech, computer power, higher spec microphones, better recording equipment, only to produce unintelligible sound that is worse than it was 80 years ago.
When asked why, we get excuses instead of fixing the problem.
And what is the problem? The one we made.
Bit like why we can't build the Pyramids. We lost an ability because we are more advanced than the ancients.
This is all so ridiculously convoluted, serving no other purpose than to ensure that, at the end of the day, you can't hear what the actors are saying. But when there's an explosion, you—and half the continent—can hear it loud and clear.
Okay. I've always had hearing problems and i actually never noticed much change.
This dynamic range thing reminds me of strobe lights. People making shows want to use them to make it more flashy, but end up making the show less accessible.
(Strobe lights cause issues for about 15% of people varying from a headache to a full-on seizure. Don't remember the exact statistic.)
I dont understand most people in real life.
I hated night scene in movies that one one cannot see what was going on because of darkness and not sure if the actors are acting at all.
Oddly enough, I have never had an issue with hearing or understanding dialog in Christopher Nolan's movies. I guess I just have good hearing.
Why don't the actors just learn how to enunciate their words like they used to? Ugh
IDC THEN MAKE IT MORE ACCESIBLE TO NORMAL TVS ITS ANNOYING TO TURN ON AND OFF THE VOLUME EVERY 3 MINUTES
9:04 I can’t believe how people use their TV speakers for movies. Everybody should at least own a decent AVR with at least 5.1 speakers 😅
This answers a lot of my questions