what about not filming entire show in darkness. or, i don't know, filming it in a way that it will look ok on modern televisions without having to turn off settings.
Yeah, televisions come full of truly destructive settings. I think part of the genesis of this virus is the need for TV's to stand out at the store. Brands and models are displayed side-by-side. The only way to stand out is to push the limits of over-enhancement along every possible axis (resolution, color, motion, etc.).
Since consumers are not trained to critically discern image and video quality, the "Wow!" often wins the sale. This easily explains the existence of local dimming solutions (now called miniLED or some other thing). In a super bright Best Buy or Walmart viewing environment they can look fantastic (although, if you know what to look for you can see the issues). When you get that same TV home and watch a movie in the dark...oh man, the halos jump off the screen. Now they are starting to push "RGB miniLED" as if that is going to fix basic optics/physics issues.
And don't get me started on horrible implementations of HDR.
This is clearly a case of the average consumer not knowing enough (they should not have to be experts, BTW) and effectively getting duped by marketing.
Totally agreed. I read somewhere that the only place these features help is sports. They should not be defaults. They make shows and films look like total crap.
Without even clicking I know he’s talking about motion smoothing.
Went to the in-laws over the holidays and the motion smoothing on the otherwise very nice LG tv was absolutely atrocious.
My sister had her Nintendo Switch connected to it and the worst thing was not the low resolution game on the 4k display - it was the motion smoothing. Absolutely unbearable. Sister was complaining about input lag and it was most definitey caused by the motion smoothing.
I keep my own TV on game mode regardless of the content because otherwise all the extra “features” - which includes more than just motion smoothing - pretty much destroys picture quality universally no matter what I’m watching.
I'm not even convinced anyone really watches Stranger Things, so I don't see the point. Seems like something people put on as background noise while they are distracted by their phones.
Yeah, kiss m'ass. I agree that some of those settings do need to be turned off. When I visit someone and see their TV on soap opera mode, I fight the urge to fix it. Not my house, not my TV, not my problem if they like it that way, and yet, wow, is it ever awful.
But then getting into recommendations like "turn off vivid mode" is pretty freaking pretentious, in my opinion, like a restaurant where the chef freaks out if you ask for salt. Yes, maybe the entree is perfectly salted, but I prefer more, and I'm the one paying the bill, so calm yourself as I season it to my tastes. Yes, vivid modes do look different than the filmmaker intended, but that also presumes that the viewer's eyes are precisely as sensitive as the director's. What if I need higher contrast to make out what's happening on the screen? Is it OK if I calibrate my TV to my own personal viewing conditions? What if it's not perfectly dark in my house, or I want to watch during the day without closing all the blinds?
I tried watching the ending of Game of Thrones without tweaking my TV. I could not physically see what was happening on the screen, other than that a navy blue blob was doing something against a darker grey background, and parts of it seemed to be moving fast if I squinted. I cranked the brightness and contrast for those episodes so that I could actually tell what was going on. It might not have aligned with the director's idea of how I should experience their spectacle, but I can live with that.
Note that I’d also roll my eyes at a musician who told me how to set my equalizer. I’ll set it as I see fit for me, in my living room’s own requirements, thanks.
Thanks for the thought but from what I’ve heard from friends I’ll be keeping the final season unwatched just like I did with the last 2 episodes of GoT.
Yes I also let my girlfriend skip the last two episodes. Tyrion Lannister did say "if you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention".
But that would mean that everybody is experiencing a quality level based on the least common denominator.
I think TV filters (vivid, dynamic brightness, speech lifting, etc) are actually a pretty decent solution to less-than-ideal (bright and noisy environment, subpar screen and audio) viewing conditions.
This article seems to imply that the default settings are the manufacturer recommended ones for streaming movies - is that bad ux? Should Netflix be able to push recommended settings to your tv?
I hope AI tools allow for better fan edits. There's enough of a foundation and source footage to redo the later episodes of Stranger Things ... The Matrix ... etc.
My TV is from around 2017 and some of those settings definitely suck on it. I'm curious if they have improved any of them on newer TVs.
Here's how bad it was in 2017. One of the earliest things I watched on that TV was "Guardians of the Galaxy" on some expanded basic cable channel. The fight between Peter and Gamora over the orb looked very jerky, like it was only at about 6 fps. I found some reviews of the movie on YouTube that included clips of that fight and it looked great on them, so I know that this wasn't some artistic choice of the director that I just didn't like. Some Googling told me about the motion enhancement settings of the TV, and how they often suck. I had DVRed the movie, and with those settings off the scene looked great when I watched it again.
The soap opera effect is only a problem because no one is used to it. Higher FPS is objectively better. These motion interpolation settings are now ubiquitous and pretty much nobody cares about said effect anymore, which is great, because maybe now we can start having movies above 24FPS.
To preempt replies: ask yourself why 24 frames per second is optimal for cinema instead of just being an ancient spec that everyone got used to.
I thought there is such a thing (although probably some TV sets do not have) as "film maker mode" to do it according to the film maker's intention (although I don't know all of the details, so I do even know how well it would work). "Dolby Vision Movie Dark" is something that I had not heard of.
(However, modern TV sets are often filled with enough other junk that maybe you will not want all of these things anyways)
Incidentally, that's the reason why I love photography in Nolan's movies: he seems to love scenes with bright light in which you can actually see what's going on.
Most other movies/series instead are so dark that make my mid-range TV look like crap. And no, it's not an HW fault, as 500 nits should be enough to watch a movie.
When people say “creator’s intent”, it sounds like a flavor. Like how food comes out of the kitchen before you put toppings on it to make it your own.
But vivid mode (et al) literally loses information. When the TV tries to make everything look vibrant, it’s effectively squishing all of the colors into a smaller color space. You may not be able to even tell two distinct objects apart because everything is similarly bright and vibrant.
Same with audio. The famous “smile” EQ can cause some instruments to disappear, such as woodwinds.
At the end of the day, media is for enjoyment and much of it is subjective, so fine do what you need to do to be happy. But few people would deliberately choose lower resolution (except maybe for nostalgia), which is what a lot of the fancy settings end up doing.
Get a calibration if you can, or use Filmmaker Mode. The latter will make the TV relatively dark, but there’s usually a way to adjust it or copy its settings and then boost the brightness in a Custom mode, which is still a big improvement over default settings from the default mode.
The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.
The problem is multi-faceted. There was a YouTube video from a few years ago that explains this[1]. But, I kind of empathise with you; I and some friends also have this issue sometimes when watching things.
Apple TV (the box) has an Enhance Dialogue option built-in. Even that plus a pair of Apple-native HomePods on full volume didn’t help me hear wtf was going on in parts of Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) on Disney. If two of the biggest companies on the planet can’t get this right, I don’t know who can.
I think it isn't a mixing issue, it's an acting issue.
It's the obsession with accents, mixed with the native speakers' conviction that vowels are the most important part.
Older movies tended to use some kind of unplaceable ("mid atlantic") accent, that could be easily understood.
But modern actors try to imitate accents and almost always focus on the vowels. Most native speakers seem to be convinced that vowels are the most important part of English, but I think it isn't true. Sure, English has a huge number of vowels, but they are almost completely redundant. It's hard to find cases where vowels really matter for comprehension, which is why they may vary so much across accents without impeding communication. So what the actors do is that they focus on the vowels, but slur the consonants, and you are pretty much completely lost without the consonants.
I don't understand how your inability to understand dialog negates a producer giving appropriate instructions on visual settings? The post was good advice, and your train of thought feels like some sort of fallacy.
To be a bit more helpful, what are you using to listen to the show? There are dozens of ways to hear the audio. Are you listening through the TV speakers, a properly set up center channel speaker, a Kindle Fire tablet, or something else? Providing those details would assist us in actually helping you.
Americans also seem to believe that their accent, which generally sounds awful to other speakers, is somehow natural and easy to understand for everyone.
I turn on closed captions for most American films, but I find that I rarely need them for British ones.
I suspect downmixes to stereo and poor builtin speakers might be heavily contributing to the issue you describe. Anecdotally, I have not encountered this issue after I added a center channel.
Nor do I have any issues with the loudness being inconsistent between scenes. I suspect that might be an another thing introduced by downmixing. All the surround channels are "squished" into stereo, making the result louder than it would have otherwise been.
I can't find the article now but supposedly it's because "new" (within the last 10ish years) productions are created for multiple devices and audio engineers target the lowest-common denominator, which are smartphones.
If on a PC, there are numerous websites with various VLC "movie" settings to combat this issue. I've tried several with mixed results, I always end up reverting to default at some point because for some movies, they work, but other movies not so well, and it's horribly annoying to constantly tweak VLC advanced settings (too many clicks IMO). The idea being that with VLC, you can change frequency volumes to raise typical frequencies for voices and an in-turn lower other frequencies typical in actions scenes e.g. for explosions.
Dynamic Contrast = Low is needed on LG TVs to actually enable HDR scene metadata or something weird like that. 60->120hz motion smoothing is also useful on OLEDs to prevent visual judder; you want either that or black frame insertion. I have no idea what Super Resolution actually does, it never seems to do anything.
Also, as a digital video expert I will allow you to leave motion smoothing on.
147 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 99.4 ms ] threadSince consumers are not trained to critically discern image and video quality, the "Wow!" often wins the sale. This easily explains the existence of local dimming solutions (now called miniLED or some other thing). In a super bright Best Buy or Walmart viewing environment they can look fantastic (although, if you know what to look for you can see the issues). When you get that same TV home and watch a movie in the dark...oh man, the halos jump off the screen. Now they are starting to push "RGB miniLED" as if that is going to fix basic optics/physics issues.
And don't get me started on horrible implementations of HDR.
This is clearly a case of the average consumer not knowing enough (they should not have to be experts, BTW) and effectively getting duped by marketing.
Went to the in-laws over the holidays and the motion smoothing on the otherwise very nice LG tv was absolutely atrocious.
My sister had her Nintendo Switch connected to it and the worst thing was not the low resolution game on the 4k display - it was the motion smoothing. Absolutely unbearable. Sister was complaining about input lag and it was most definitey caused by the motion smoothing.
I keep my own TV on game mode regardless of the content because otherwise all the extra “features” - which includes more than just motion smoothing - pretty much destroys picture quality universally no matter what I’m watching.
But then getting into recommendations like "turn off vivid mode" is pretty freaking pretentious, in my opinion, like a restaurant where the chef freaks out if you ask for salt. Yes, maybe the entree is perfectly salted, but I prefer more, and I'm the one paying the bill, so calm yourself as I season it to my tastes. Yes, vivid modes do look different than the filmmaker intended, but that also presumes that the viewer's eyes are precisely as sensitive as the director's. What if I need higher contrast to make out what's happening on the screen? Is it OK if I calibrate my TV to my own personal viewing conditions? What if it's not perfectly dark in my house, or I want to watch during the day without closing all the blinds?
I tried watching the ending of Game of Thrones without tweaking my TV. I could not physically see what was happening on the screen, other than that a navy blue blob was doing something against a darker grey background, and parts of it seemed to be moving fast if I squinted. I cranked the brightness and contrast for those episodes so that I could actually tell what was going on. It might not have aligned with the director's idea of how I should experience their spectacle, but I can live with that.
Note that I’d also roll my eyes at a musician who told me how to set my equalizer. I’ll set it as I see fit for me, in my living room’s own requirements, thanks.
You'd think television production would be calibrated for the median watcher's TV settings by now.
I think TV filters (vivid, dynamic brightness, speech lifting, etc) are actually a pretty decent solution to less-than-ideal (bright and noisy environment, subpar screen and audio) viewing conditions.
Here's how bad it was in 2017. One of the earliest things I watched on that TV was "Guardians of the Galaxy" on some expanded basic cable channel. The fight between Peter and Gamora over the orb looked very jerky, like it was only at about 6 fps. I found some reviews of the movie on YouTube that included clips of that fight and it looked great on them, so I know that this wasn't some artistic choice of the director that I just didn't like. Some Googling told me about the motion enhancement settings of the TV, and how they often suck. I had DVRed the movie, and with those settings off the scene looked great when I watched it again.
To preempt replies: ask yourself why 24 frames per second is optimal for cinema instead of just being an ancient spec that everyone got used to.
(However, modern TV sets are often filled with enough other junk that maybe you will not want all of these things anyways)
Most other movies/series instead are so dark that make my mid-range TV look like crap. And no, it's not an HW fault, as 500 nits should be enough to watch a movie.
1: https://i.redd.it/nyrs8vsil6m41.jpg
But vivid mode (et al) literally loses information. When the TV tries to make everything look vibrant, it’s effectively squishing all of the colors into a smaller color space. You may not be able to even tell two distinct objects apart because everything is similarly bright and vibrant.
Same with audio. The famous “smile” EQ can cause some instruments to disappear, such as woodwinds.
At the end of the day, media is for enjoyment and much of it is subjective, so fine do what you need to do to be happy. But few people would deliberately choose lower resolution (except maybe for nostalgia), which is what a lot of the fancy settings end up doing.
Get a calibration if you can, or use Filmmaker Mode. The latter will make the TV relatively dark, but there’s usually a way to adjust it or copy its settings and then boost the brightness in a Custom mode, which is still a big improvement over default settings from the default mode.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
It's the obsession with accents, mixed with the native speakers' conviction that vowels are the most important part.
Older movies tended to use some kind of unplaceable ("mid atlantic") accent, that could be easily understood.
But modern actors try to imitate accents and almost always focus on the vowels. Most native speakers seem to be convinced that vowels are the most important part of English, but I think it isn't true. Sure, English has a huge number of vowels, but they are almost completely redundant. It's hard to find cases where vowels really matter for comprehension, which is why they may vary so much across accents without impeding communication. So what the actors do is that they focus on the vowels, but slur the consonants, and you are pretty much completely lost without the consonants.
Second, I'm 55. There ARE programs I turn on the captioning for, but it's not universal at all. Generally, it's things with accents.
We absolutely do not need the captions at our house for STRANGER THINGS.
To be a bit more helpful, what are you using to listen to the show? There are dozens of ways to hear the audio. Are you listening through the TV speakers, a properly set up center channel speaker, a Kindle Fire tablet, or something else? Providing those details would assist us in actually helping you.
I turn on closed captions for most American films, but I find that I rarely need them for British ones.
I suspect downmixes to stereo and poor builtin speakers might be heavily contributing to the issue you describe. Anecdotally, I have not encountered this issue after I added a center channel.
Nor do I have any issues with the loudness being inconsistent between scenes. I suspect that might be an another thing introduced by downmixing. All the surround channels are "squished" into stereo, making the result louder than it would have otherwise been.
If on a PC, there are numerous websites with various VLC "movie" settings to combat this issue. I've tried several with mixed results, I always end up reverting to default at some point because for some movies, they work, but other movies not so well, and it's horribly annoying to constantly tweak VLC advanced settings (too many clicks IMO). The idea being that with VLC, you can change frequency volumes to raise typical frequencies for voices and an in-turn lower other frequencies typical in actions scenes e.g. for explosions.
Also, as a digital video expert I will allow you to leave motion smoothing on.