Designing a Movie for Sound (1999) | Hacker News Reader

Designing a Movie for Sound (1999)

filmsound.org

15 pointskeiferski4 comments

It's wild how so many hearing-capable people these days are saying they are turning on captions just to hear dialog, like on on Netflix or whatever. This article was written nearly 25 years ago, and we still haven't figured out how to mix films for watching on TV. Even with a pricey soundbar + sub combo, you still have to sort through convoluted settings to adjust the middle channel. There needs to be 2 separate mixes created for movies: one for theatrical release, and one for streaming to a modern TV.

Some shows seem spectacularly bad for this as well: eg we have tried watching The Expanse after many recommendations but simply cannot get past the fact that the sound balancing is notoriously awful, even with a soundbar, which is especially hard with the sci-fi accents and language.

In the past I’ve had some video files designed for eg 5.1 that worked poorly on headphones (potentially addressable with media player settings) but it seems this is becoming an unavoidable problem on some streams. The closest we get now is installing plugins that allow us to boost the volume beyond the normal laptop max (why is this not standard in the laptop?) and do some basic equalisation.

I’m unsure why there isn’t a standard for this with OS/TV layers ensuring consistent listenable sound levels, preventing uncomfortably/dangerously loud levels to your preference, avoiding the super loud ads/explosions and whisper quiet dialogue problem etc.

Especially when increasingly viewing platforms are a laptop in bed or even phones.

Maybe it's for the same reason so many shows made in the last decade - including pretty much all sci-fi shows and movies - are lighted so dark you can barely see a thing.

Turns out, it's because you're expected to participate in the larger market by buying the newest expensive smart TVs with their ultra HDR whatever that make those shows look okay(ish). Watching on a computer or a phone? Well, sucks to be you.

As much as I loved Hannibal, the sound mix for it was atrocious. It was a meme in the fandom while the show aired, and nothing was done to correct it.

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