Submitted 3 weeks ago by Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
I know this has been an infuriating topic for a while now, but gosh it’s getting on my nerves. I’m trying to watch Secret Level, finally, and I can’t see half of what’s happening because so many scenes across many of the shorts are pretty much pitch black.
Why?? Why not, y’know, just give us a little bit of fucking contrast? Instead, I have to choose whether to have a light on or to not see the scenes.
I’ve noticed this problem with a lot of media made in the past decade. I think Netflix’s ‘Ozark’ is one of the worst examples. In almost every indoor scene the lights are off or very dim.
However, I got an oled screen this year, and it’s helped a lot with dim scenes. I’m guessing hollywood is calibrating for expensive high contrast screens like oled and mini-led?
I think this is the real answer. HDR is a thing and the baseline for expected dynamic range is higher than both what older displays can produce and older eyes can consume.
I can tolerate that, the one I can’t stand is Netflix shows where the ~dialogue is a mumbled quiet~ and random bits of foley try to blow my speakers out.
It makes it especially noticeable just how dodgy a lot of foley work is, eg when someone throwing a punch and missing still goes WHOOSH at the same volume they use for gunshots
This cause could be downmixing from something like 5.1 or 7.1 to stereo. Because dialogue is mostly on the center channel while music and SFX are much more spread out in the soundstage, you might have a sound appear on speakers center, front left and back left while dialogue only happens on center.
This would mean that depending on the mix, you might have a sound that’s 2-3 times louder than the dialogue when mixed to stereo since all those sounds have to get played on fewer speakers.
This is why a 5.1 compatible soundbar will be more balanced than stereo speakers, even if it doesn’t have full surround sound. They have a physical speaker for each of the channels so at least the mix sounds better.
Not saying this is always the issue but its certainly one of the possible causes.
This myth gets brought up so often despite numerous evidence to the contrary. The sound sucks for people with good equipment as well. The sound sucks in theaters.
They just seem to have a hard-on for mumbling. Because of realism or something.
Dialogue is not really important, what you really need to hear is the exaggerated wet sucking noises of characters kissing each other.
(/s)
Soumd engineers are.big dicks these days. I am thinking of building a limiter and hooking my tv to a sound bar.
They are giving you contrast, lots more contrast.
That’s actually the problem, most people don’t have very good displays and additionally watch dark content in lit rooms - but showrunners are pushing for HDR, when you’ve got a $20k Sony OLED PVM in bt2020 or ‘color space off’ (native gamma), everything looks good. (There is a BT709/sRGB emulation mode, but I don’t think they care enough to use it)
Try to watch the same on an IPS LCD with possibly not even 100% SRGB coverage and you’re going to have a bad time. Even a VA will have a bad time if viewed off-axis.
In audio, you would test with multiple reference monitors and rooms. Cellphone, car, shitty tv speakers, mono, etc. The idea being you record/edit/mix it on normal monitors, but then check it out in ways that normal people will, to see if it translates well or will sound like shit.
Can confirm. The most important test for my mixes is the car test. Get your buddies together, and hopefully they have a variety of cars. Play it in a nice car with great speakers, play it in a shitty beater with a blown out cone in the passenger door, and as many in between as you can get. The more homogenous the listening experience is across those cars, the better your mix will sound on a variety of systems.
For most people, their car is the best sound system they own. It’s also where people do a lot of listening, because very few people drive in complete silence. So if it sounds like ass in the car, people will stop listening.
I get where you’re coming from but movie audio also fails here. The same darkness discussion arises about dialogue-to-explosion volume regularly :)
That doesn’t take away from what you said they “proper” audio work is done that way …
You can usually fix it by turning off power saving/eco mode and setting the gamma to 2.2 on your TV. You should also turn off motion smoothing (Trumotion/Auto Motion Plus/Motionflow/Clear Motion) so motion doesn’t look overly smooth and fake.
I hate that motion smoothing is turned on by default these days. I know it’s because sports fans want it enabled, but it makes literally everything else look like a garbage low budget soap opera.
Did you take your sunglasses off?
Thanks that was it
Of course not! It’s nighttime!
What kind of nerd do you take me for?
Your display likely has some sort of brightness/contrast setting.
If you’re playing this movie on a computing device, the video player software likely also has adjustment settings at the software level. I use mpv on Linux to watch most video, and there, by default, 1 and 2 are contrast, 3 and 4 brightness, and 5 and 6 gamma.
yeah, MPV is the goat
What’s your exact watching setup? Like TV, room, player, source?
There are likely ways to mitigate this, but it all depends on your setup.
What video player doesn’t have a gamma slider?
HDR
Lighting is expensive!
This is definitely a thing. See comment with screeshots from Picard. But I don’t let it infuriate me even mildly - just adjust the screen or crank up the gamma or, if you want the cinematic experience, switch off surrounding lights.
I have to choose whether to have a light on or to not see the scenes.
have you ever adjusted your TV? sounds to me like it might just need some calibrating.
I guess I’ve gotta figure this out. It’s pretty new and I thought it was supposed to just be able to help with the darkness. But I dunno
It’s pretty new
Almost all TVs come with a power saving or eco mode enabled by default which ruins visibility. Find that in the settings and turn it off. You should also turn off motion interpolation (e.g Trumotion, Clear Motion Plus, Motionflow) so motion doesn’t become a smeary and artificial mess.
well no, they usually need some calibration to start. every display panel is a little tiny bit different, and the rooms they go into are very different, not to mention the types of media played on them vary. what looks good in one room with one kind of media will look poor in another room with a different kind of media. you just gotta adjust it to find what works for you in your room.
of course I also found it helps to invest in some blackout curtains for when you want to watch a movie. we’ve got a projector and a dropdown screen that covers a wall, so we use the curtains to make sure it’s dark enough in the room for that. but they also help with seeing a screen.
Probably need to tweak the settings on whatever display you're using, or potentially consider investing in a more-modern type of panel depending on what you have now.
they assume people have better TVs now than a decade or more ago
so those of us watching on older hardware suffer
Gotham was bad for this
They’re taking advantage of the ability to do so with modern cameras and TVs because a dark look communicates something - a dark mood for example. It contrasts with other shows or scenes.
It stands out to me when a scene is supposed to be at night but obviously has a 100ft light tower just off camera. Toning it down looks good.
That’s your motivation to buy a new TV with OLED, high contrast and a smarthome with nice automatic blinds for the windows.
But seriously, I thought that was mainly over by now? I had a lot of those shows 5-10 years ago. But seems they still do it.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Picard season 3 is very much a standout for this trend.
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someguy3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Light is expensive in the 24th century.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not so much in the 23rd century Kelvin-verse:
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snooggums@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe they are actually in the dark dimension!
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
It actually took me several seconds to notice the man in the first picture
jballs@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Lol I didn’t notice till I read your comment.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
That is odd. It looks fine for me. Are you running a really old display?
arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Wow, that is egregiously bad. Almost impossible to tell what’s going on in the first shot. Like, even in a dark shot you still need to be able to see their silhouettes or something. This just looks like a bunch of blobs.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think he’s playing a very small piano.
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Wow, is the Enterprise lose their engineer so no bulb is being replaced?
ummthatguy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s the Titan-A, but seems like everyone is photosensitive for some reason.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Well yeah, there are only 4 lights.
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I don’t see the problem? I can see the character’s expressions, their stances, their clothes and clothing decorations, the objects they’re holding… I don’t necessarily agree that this should be the way a federation starship would be lit, but I don’t see why people would say they couldn’t see anything.
Damage@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
That series should be erased from history
1984@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Just watch Star Trek Enterprise instead… :)