Increase dialogue decrease background sound?

[DJ_Romeo60]

There are a lot of movies that i see that have a lot of backround sounds and effects that cover the dialogues,and when i don't have subtitles i can't make what they're saying.

So is there i way i can adjust the volume to increase the dialogue volume and decrease the background sounds?

[Andylitt]

Are you listening to the movies via the tv, or is your dvd player connected to a surround sound system? If the audio is just connected to your tv, try changing the audio output of your dvd player to "stereo" or even "mono". I've found this brings up the volume of the dialogue. If you have your dvd player connected to and are listening to surround, you should be able to increase the volume of the centre channel alone, as this is where most of the dialogue comes from, and decrease the surround channels volume (L & R front and rears). Hope this helps.

[DJ_Romeo60]

Actually i'm talking about video files from the pc that i watch in the tv via tv-out.

The sound comes out from my hi-fi.

I'm actually asking if i can edit the sound via software to achieve the results.

Thanx for your answer.

[guns1inger]

Pretty much screwed if you don't have the original audio tracks. The best you can hope for it to use something like Sound Forge and it's built in equalizer and effects to try to boost just the range of the dialogue while doing as little damage as possible to the rest of the audio. You will just have to experiment until you get something you can live with, or decide it's not worth it.

[presto]

I have the same problem but It is definitely due to a hearing loss and or Tinitus. I have a high pitched ringing in my ears all the time. When people talk I can always hear what they say but sometimes I can't make out individual words. It sounds to me like they are running their words togethor too quickly or mumbling. In reality they are speaking normaly but my hearing loss makes it more difficult for me to de-code the sounds into english. The same in movies. It's funny because I think I slowly got used to just not getting all the info so when I do watch a movie with subtitles I'm amazed to see all that I had missed without subtitles.

Any way. I wonder if you have a minor hearing loss too. I'm thinking of looking into hearing aides but I have heard discouraging things about them. (that they make things louder but not clearer).

[guns1inger]

I also find it amazing how much dialogue and subtlety is dropped by subtitlers. I don't know if this is a space constraint, the ability of viewers to read fast enough, or simply laziness. I often use subs when watching late at night so I don't wake the kids or have to keep pumping the volume up and down (dialogue, explosion, dialogue, scream dilague . . . you get the idea). Often, the best subs are the subs for the hearing impaired, rather than the standard english subs.

The funniest subs I have seen were on a copy of Chicago my sister-in-law aquired from friends in Hong Kong. The subs had been done by someone with a very poor grasp of the English language who had obviously been working without a script, but simply by listening to the actors speak. There were new characters and plot lines not seen in the film if you only listened to the dialogue.