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

Re:More...

[Andrewkov]

Even though it's called a "Time Machine", it won't work on live telivision.

This has been going on for decades...

[Argyle]

Time compression of spots is nothing new. Broadcasters have been doing this for several decades. Clipping out the frames of video isn't the method that had been used in the past.

The professional grade videotape decks (VTRs) have the ability to play back tapes and variable speed without affecting the video adversely. One VTR plays the tape at a slightly increased speed while the other VTR records it. Viola, a time compressed tape.

There is the issue of the change in audio pitch due to the playback speed. In some cases where the compression is limited, they simply leave the audio slightly off pitch. In the case where they really crunch the video, they need to use a pitch coverter (traditionally the Lexicon model) to fix the audio.

Broadcasters are high tech guys that have been hacked television while most computer geeks were still playing Lode Runner on their Apple ][s and Atari 800s...