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.
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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 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/sound editing work is, eg when someone throwing a punch and missing still goes WHOOSH at the same volume they use for gunshots. There’s YA shows now where even the camera panning gets a sound effect ffs
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.
I’d love to see the evidence, it depends on your player and how you’re downmixing. There are some that do it better than others but this is definitely a thing.
The evidence is that even on good equipment the dialogue is hard to hear.
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Because your tv black level or gamma are set wrong?
Home theater enthusiast here, had my brand new screen calibrated professionally. Still can’t see shit.
TV shows are definitely not being lit well and graded poorly. It’s the visual pairing with all the actors mumbling for “realism”. The most famous example is the final battle in Game of Thrones but it’s not stopped there.
Set the gamma to 2.2 and make sure the eco mode is turned off.
You should also select the 2.0 audio track when available, or try the dynamic compression/volume normalisation setting.
Sure you can tweak it some but it’s panel dependent what you should use and it only helps to a point when the entire scene just isn’t lit and then compressed. It also depends on whether you’ve got a dark room or some ambient light. Anyone recommending a single number is off track and missing the base issue.
Also, why would I use 2.0 audio track? I’ve got a 7.2.4 surround sound system flat from 15-20k hz. I’m not going to split a 2.0 signal. And yes, I’ve boosted the center hot compared to the surrounds. Again, it’s pretty clear that most of the time it’s just not recorded well.
This stuff is documented everywhere why it’s happening and people aren’t happy with it. Others have linked examples. It’s not my setup, it’s also a problem in theaters and elsewhere.
My 2.0 signal advice is for those using the built-in TV speakers or a soundbar who wonder why dialouge is so quiet.
Also, most TV’s don’t have an arbitrary slider for gamma. 2.2 is a target that many of the same model of TV should be within about 0.5 of when selected.
That advice is for those using LCD TVs with a 300 nit max brightness, not a 1000 nit OLED where BT.1886 may be more appropriate.
Picard season 3 is very much a standout for this trend.
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.
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.
Light is expensive in the 24th century.
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.
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.
