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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."
It compresses the audio, taking out blank space, to fit in between 30 sec - 2 min an hour. Rush Limbaugh among others have blasted it for ruining the listener's experience.
sulli
RTFJ.
Think about it - it's commonplace now to re-edit shows for syndication. Lots of times they cut out a whole gag on The Simpsons to get more commercial time. If they can garner the same amount just by removing the occasional barely-perceptible frame of deadwood, I say go for it. On the other hand, if this is implemented as making every transition between scenes sudden and jolting, it will be much less preferable.
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This is only vaguely on topic, but what I don't understand is why no PVR maker offers this feature - let me adjust the playing speed from -100% to +100% (possibly faster), pitch shifting the sound back to normal (just like most voice-mail systems let you do now).
I'd be more keen to watch some things if they'd take a lot less time - I think I might not even skip ads if I was watching at 200% normal speed.
Am I wrong, and Tivo or RePlay offers this feature already?
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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The time modifed means they may have cut out entire scenes.
Many years ago you would offten find M*A*S*H running at one of the time slots between the 5:00 and 6:30 news. The reason is that it had so many sub plots they could cut out huge amounts of it. It started out as a 30 minute show and I've seen it run in 1/2 that. I was told that a TV station would get the show from the distributers, it would be sorted by run lenght and so if they ran the news over by 7.5 minutes, they could go pull out a shortend show and then they would be back in time for the all importaint 7:00 primetime network slots. This became very clear when they showed the same epposide two days in a row and they were different cuts.
Imagine working for a movie studio taking older films and time compressing them to make them more palatable to today's market. Punch up slow scenes with digital effects such as camera jitter, zoom and cut, or any of a dozen very accepted post-modern camera techniques to increase the cut pace.
I can't take credit for the idea but when I read this in a science fiction novel years ago, it really made me wonder what the average attention span will be in twenty or thirty years.
I'd prefer it to drop a few frames here and there than drop whole scenes.
... some scenes had been removed - it was quite noticeable (and irritating).
:-)
I noticed this scene-dropping one day on a re-run of "the simpsons"
But still, yet another ad can be squeezed in. I can't wait.
A few more years, and broadcast TV everywhere will be all shot to hell. The only channels left worth watching in Australia are the ABC (which doesn't have ads, being gov't funded),and SBS (who at least lumps their ads together at the end of each show). The other 3 networks are crap, with over-sensationalised news (how many more "shocking","horrific" news stories can there be?) and it seems more ads than content.
Who's up for making the next slashdot on the internet2 with video comments instead? Count me in
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
- adam
I would imagine the difference would be virtually unnoticeable if they cut out the first and/or last frames of each scene. Thing is, the number of scene changes varies significantly depending on the show, and the process could be difficult to automate (fast action could be mistaken for a scene change, and that's the last place you want to pull frames). Also, now that I think about it, this method probably won't get 30 seconds of extra time per 30 minute show.
To get 30 seconds out of a 30 minute show (which is really only 22 minutes long plus commercials), you have to remove one out of every 44 frames. By timing them right, it shouldn't be noticeable in most shows. The audio is analog, so it should squash without a noticeable loss in quality. As much as I hate the principle of this thing, I don't think we can complain on grounds of it decreasing the audio/video quality of our shows.
The Slash summary is just misleading as usual.
These devices are used in order to compress a program into the right amount of time so you CAN put the required amount of commericals in.
It's not at *all* a way to 'scam' the consumer into watching more commercials.. just a way to 'shorten' a show so it fits your schedule.
Canadian stations use this too, you can bet on it.
The cinemas in Hong Kong would run the western movies at about 22-24 frames/second to speed up the movies. They would also cut out scenes where there was a lot of "dialog". God forbid anyone would really want to listen to the movie. :)
The audio or video quality, no. The dramatic quality (such as it is) is another thing entirely. I don't know if losing one frame out of 44 can really alter our perception of a dramatic pause -- are there any editor/director types who claim that sort of precision? But that's not the issue.
It's another 30 seconds out of 30 minutes that you're not watching the program. It stretches out the commercial breaks by padding them even more. This in turn adds to the break in dramatic continuity and of course makes it even more tempting to just walk away and do something else during the commercial break -- perhaps indeed during the rest of the show.
I mean, I already notice how excruciatingly long commercial breaks are now. It's getting to where you can forget what you're watching, for the love of Pete. This is just another way for broadcast TV to commit suicide in slow motion.
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Yeah, like you won't notice if coca-cola starts putting 1/60 more water in their coke. Ask yourself why they don't do it.
:) You've proved my point quite well.
I am positive I wouldn't notice if they started putting more water in thier Coke. I'm not going to ask myself why they don't do it, though, because if I don't notice, how do I know they aren't?
Yeah, when I'm 85 and dying in some smelly nursing home someplace, I really want to remember the good times I had watching 18.5 minutes of Sienfeld and 11.5 minutes of commercials every day after work.
Pardon my cynicism tonight, but anybody who watches tv deserves just what they get.
It's funny to hear some people's reactions as if this is the first time anyone has disturbed the pristine timing of their television shows.
Consider all theatrical releases and most high-budget television drama that's shot on 24fps film: when shown at 30fps NTSC, it goes through 3:2 pulldown, which out of necessity assigns a varying number of video fields to each frame. Oddly enough, the resulting effect gives the material a "film look" that is usually considered a good thing. In fact, some processes exist that attempt to give a similar look to shows that are shot on video.
And when the same 24fps film is broadcast in a PAL country at 25fps, all the broadcaster usually does is just speed up the film! That's much more drastic than removing selected frames, yet does playing the film 4% faster destroy it's dramatic value? Probably not, although it seems like musicals would suffer.
Another techniques used by radio broadcasters is to speed up music by 3-4%. This over time gives a lot more room for more commercials or even more songs (since many stations promote X number of songs per hour).
One poster mentioned that this could be used on commercials, thus giving space for more commercials, but this technique would not be allowed. The contracts (at least those that I have seen) stipulate that such measures cannot be taken during their commercials, but that is not usually the case for music.
I worked in the IT department of a local radio network that owned several local stations (I left when Clear Channel bought them out) for a couple of years.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Every episode of "The Simpsons" broadcast in syndication has a few scenes cut for insertion of extra commercials. I wouldn't mind if they ran this process on each episode if it meant they were able to give us back those scenes.
...And Fox wonders why so many people are trying to download copies of the original episodes online...
Good luck, but you will most likely never see those scenes in syndication.
Not only do they cut out several (of the arguably funniest) scenes per episode, but they also fade out to commercials ridiculously early; I mean they don't even allow the scene to properly end. They will literally fade the audio out in mid-sentence of the last line of the scene, so that they can start the commercials earlier.
If that wasn't enough, they then split-screen the ending credits so that they can show ads on half of the screen! This is especially frustrating since the Simpsons often puts gags in the credits, such as voiceovers, songs, etc., which get completely talked over.
Then, as the coup de grâce, in each of the 3 scenes, they randomly flash a barely translucent "THE SIMPSONS ON FOX" banner over the top 1/4" of the screen, and they randomly put in promos for other shows over the bottom 1/4" of the screen!