Trimming Television to Sell More Ads

gambit3 writes: "Tech TV has an article about a device called a "Digital Time Machine", that does something called "Time Trimming", which is basically a way to cut single frames from different scenes in TV programs, which, over the course of a 30 minute program, can add up to 30 seconds, which is, incidentally, the perfect length to add ANOTHER commercial."

Comments

Pointless device in Canada

[LordOfYourPants]

Here in Canada, we have the CRTC which regulates how many minutes of commercials a Canadian station can show within the period of 30 minutes. On top of that, stations also have requirements for what ratio of Canadian programming to foreign programming can be shown during primetime hours, etc. Stations which violate these licenses enough times likely won't be renewed.

Basically, this device would sell up here about as well as bottled yellow snow.

Re:Yep nothing new

[Spoh]

Not true.

When you see that "This film has been formatted to fit this screen and edited both for content and to run in the time allotted," the editing to run in the time alotted is not done through some mystical automatic process; it is done by humans deciding which pieces of a film will be cut. Although frames can be trimmed, the removal of words, sentences, and even whole scenes is much more common.

The only "inter-frame interpolation" that occurs in the broadcast of a movie takes place in the conversion of a movie from 24fps to 29.75fps (or 25fps) for playback in NTSC or PAL. This process (called 3:2 or 24:1 pulldown) does not affect the running time of the content.

For what it's worth, I'm a broadcast editor.

-Tom

You are the product...And you taste like chicken.

[deacon]

The viewer of TV is the product being delivered.

The harvester and packager of the product is the huge machine which keeps the TV screen saturated with images targeted to specific groups.

The consumer of this product is the advertiser.

As long as you keep that in mind, all of this makes perfect sense.

The TV isn't on for YOU. It's on for them.

Re:Sounds like "Cash" on radio

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

There are several reasons he doesn't like it. First, in order for it to work, the program has to be buffered into the machine, which means it isn't live anymore. Second, listeners complained that it was too hard to listen to because natural pauses are eliminated.

Also, it wasn't his network that was doing it; it was individual radio stations, at least that's my understanding.