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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.
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.
They could use this to cut out frames from other commercials! Also, isn't there black space between commercials as it it? They could just cross fade everything into everything else, Just like on the more annoying radio stations. No wonder I don't own a TV! ::alan
If only I had a patent.
Each year, I prepare for the Super Bowl. Not that I like the Super Bowl, but apart from knowing the score at each quarter, the only knowledge you need to prove that you watched the game is what commercials were shown.
After programming my VCR to record the game, I watch the amusing commercials and fast forward through the game itself. This new-fangled "Time Machine" just gives you the illusion of actually watching the show between ads.
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
Don't look at this as being "another commercial" - look at it as "overclocking your TV" - just think, that's thirty seconds less time per show you have to watch, just by skipping over it with your Tivo.
Heck, I've often wanted the ability to do just this - compress a TV show I want to see so as to be better able to fit it into my time.
Now, if we could just compress the time wasted by laugh tracks....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Did you read the article?
The article clearly says that it does not pop or chirp, and that over 170 stations are already using it. I mean, if it was poping and chirping first of all everyone would know, and second of all the stations wouldn't use it.
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.
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
What pisses me off is that Fox went to all the trouble to pay for Futurama and The Simpsons, and then they keep running the "NFL Postgame" over the Groening time slots. Sometimes they "join the program already in progress," i.e., roll the last scene and credits for the show that "Howie" has blathered over for 25 minutes. Retarded. Shut up, Howie. We all saw the game already.
The one hour of TV I want to see during the week, and they fill it with redundant lip-flapping that contains no new information. Fucking football.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
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!