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."

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.

KDKA + Steelers + Time Cutting == bad

[SirStanley]

KDKA did this / does this with the steelers. If you're a god fearing 'stillers' fan you watch the game on TV but listen to Meyran and boys on the radio. A few months back, while doing this I realized that there was about a 20 second gap between what Meyran was screaming about and what was on tv. Needless to say the radio was ahead... So I kept the head phones on and was calling the plays left and right for my friends who were just watching the tv . (Sacrelig) They thought I was psychic. But anyhoo. Others noticed it too and I believe the station got in alot of trouble for that.

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

Some more linkage

[headkase]

The device itself [primeimageinc.com] and another story [go.com] for the article.

Doesn't it affect the experience?

[Radical Rad]

I saw a segment on TV about this months ago. The machine looks for consecutive frames where not much has changed and removes them.

If they only used it on half hour crap sit-coms and talk shows it wouldn't be so bad. But It seems like it would ruin scenes from classic movies where a director has purposely inserted a pregnant pause or an uncomfortable silence in the dialogue or an actors face frozen in horror.

But hey! If it makes someone a few more bucks then what the hell. Maybe they could frame the Mona Lisa with LCD panels and sell advertising on them.

Restoring Homer

[Dan Crash]

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.

Of course, they'll probably do it anyway just to add *more* commercials, and save the deleted scenes for the DVDs, damn their moneygrubbing souls. Mr. Burns would be proud.

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.

Don't just tell us, tell TiVo

[Tim Macinta]

This is only vaguely on topic, but what I don't understand is why no PVR maker offers this feature

Yes! This would be an excellent feature. Please request this from TiVo [tivo.com] - they are asking for feature suggestions. I requested this very feature a few months ago, and if enough people chime in with the same request it might just catch their attention.

To answer your question, my guess is that no PVRs offer this feature simply because PVRs have only been around for a relatively short amount of time and they just haven't had enough time to add all the features that somebody would want yet.

Re:Sounds like "Cash" on radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Cashbox [rense.com], actually.

Re:Restoring Homer

[cheesyfru]

Slightly off-topic, but for a point of reference, a complete list of what got cut from The Simpsons on the trip from first-run to syndication is available here [snpp.com]. I for one agree that this would be a great technology to integrate into Tivo -- I already watch 30-minute shows in 20 minutes, and a lot of shows could be shaved down by a couple more minutes without significant loss.

Re:Where's my time-compressing pitch-shifting tivo

[Anonymous Coward]

The software that comes with the ATI All-in-Wonders supports this, and it even manages to speed up the sound without making everyone sound chipmunky.

It only supports three speeds, though, so it's not as variable as you're hoping.

Re:Sounds like "Cash" on radio

[martyn s]

Actually, he's had cochlear implants installed, and he's hearing just fine.

Saw it during Star Trek

[Tablizer]

on a cable channel. It made the motion slightly odd, like the characters were slightly androids or something (besides Data, of course). It was unpleasent. The lack of smoothness was not blatant, but once I noticed it, I tended to hone in on the affect for some reason, like a scratch on a new car. Maybe others won't be as sensative to it, but it bothered me.

They also did a cheap version on the LA copy of the Howard Stern show (sound compression) in order to make room for traffic reports. It is annoying there too.

Toss that crap.

Re:Another technique used....

[idiotnot]

"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."

There are other reasons for speeding up songs. Say you're running an oh-so-hip top 40 station, and Coldplay (Radiohead wannabes they are) manages to break into the top 40 with one of thier whiny slow disasters......and you're trying to keep the station sounding "up." You speed the song up a bit so that you don't put the audience to sleep when you have to play that piece o' crap. It used to be alot easier to do with a turntable; it can be done with a professional CD player, and it's beyond easy with a computer.

"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,"

Depends on your interpretation, I suppose, but what a station sells is a block of time, usually :30 or :60. Locally-produced spots are routinely compressed/expanded to fit into those confines (done it many times, myself), and it wouldn't suprise me if the same thing was done to national spots. ProTools has a nifty utility that does this amazingly well. I've gotten spoiled doing it lately (only takes 4-5 sec on a G4, where it took like 5 minutes on an old PPC).

Re:Television Subscription service? or Spam servic

[AntiNorm]

I understand commercials are a necessary evil that we have become acoustomed to, but why can't I have the option to pay a little bit extra for no commercials. Here's how I think the ideal situation would work...

Because, as nice as it would be, it would be a huge pain in the ass for the cable companies, TV networks, etc. to coordinate among each other. Remember, the commercials aren't paying your cable company's expenses -- they're paying the stations' and networks' expenses. And in most cases, cable companies and networks are not run by the same company (except for FTC antitrust screwups like AOLTW*). Sure, it *could* be done, but the operating costs would be outrageously high. And guess who would end up paying those costs? That's right. You.

* Going a little bit OT here, but does anybody else think that AOL being able to run free ads on such high-profile stations as CNN is a huuuuuuuuuge anti-trust problem? Remember, they own the network. They can run whatever they want on it and not have to be charged a cent. And anybody who watches CNN at all will know that they run lots and lots of AOL ads.

VERY Old News..

[rongage]

This is funny! Someone thinking this is "news".

Television Stations have had this capability for over 15 years now. I remember back in college (1986) when I worked for the local PBS affiliate, we had just started to get in new 1" VTR's (Video Tape Recorders) - Hitachi's. These 1" units were to replace our aging 2" Quad machines. One of the neater features of the Hitachi's were their ability to time-compress or time-expand a show.

For example, if we had a time slot of 58:20 and the show on the tape reel was 59:05, we could program the Hitachi to play 59:05 worth of tape in 58:20 with full frame lock. There was even an option available (we didn't buy it) that allowed us to connect the audio output to an Eventide Harmonizer to "pitch correct" the audio when you did this time correction to a program. This was in 1986.

This is old news, about old technology. Move along - nothing to see here....

This isn't new...

[LocalH]

...I've noticed it in effect on several cable networks (Game Show Network is a serious offender here). They say it's supposed to be unnoticeable, but it jumps out at me.

However, as a master control operator, I believe that one of these things would be nice to gain back a few seconds if you're over. Not 30 seconds, but more like 3 or 4.

I found out on my own the basic gist of how it works - it basically chops off part of a frame and then adds what remains to the next frame. It's really noticeable when there is supposed to be a smooth pan and this box jerks it up.

Re:Sounds like "Cash" on radio

[Will_Malverson]

About a year ago, I was listening to his program, and he was talking about it. As mentioned, local stations were using it on his program. One station, in particular, was using it and had one of the dials set incorrectly or something, because Rush sounded drunk -- like him or not, you must admit that he has a nice speaking voice. He played a clip from that radio station, and he sounded like someone who'd been at the bar for far too long -- his speech was slurred, and randomly speeding up and slowing down. He said that the day it happened, he immediately began getting calls from that part of the country asking what was wrong. It was amusing, and it was also amusing to imagine the talking-to that the station management got.

Re:Sounds like "Cash" on radio

[poiuyt23]

The people were sold out by the Telecommunications act of 1996 - check out section 202 of this [fcc.gov]

Basically what it does is takes away the old rule that a person can't own more than one media outlet of any certain type in a certain area. Although it allows for competition by regulating the number of radio stations in a city it seems like a big buisness friendly move to me...

Re:I think if I was a director

[Reziac]

This is why some films and TV shows have rebroadcast riders that state they CANNOT be further cut. This was originally in response to the common syndicated-cable practice of chopping the beginning and end of each TV segment to allow more commercial time. This is also why you won't see certain shows on syndicated-cable -- they don't allow enough commercials to make the standard profit margin for channels that practice this "trimming".

Back in the 1960s-70s, the film itself was physically chopped, so once a scene was gone, it was GONE. That's one reason the old ST:TOS were reissued -- not just wear and tear on the old film reels that made 'em look like crap, but also many copies in syndicated circulation had become remarkably truncated.

Re:Another technique used....

[Jammer@CMH]

Shortening the sample (song, TV show) doesn't have to change the pitch. You don't have to just speed it up. If you move the domain to phase space (recording of the harmonic spectrum over time) and compress there, you retain pitch information and compress the time so notes/words are shorter. Of course, if you're not careful you get errors (ringing from improperly chosen envelopes, etc), but with reasonable assumptions these are minor.

Reverse Tivo and Point of Diminishing Returns

[BigBlockMopar]

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

You know the instant replay feature on Tivo? This is just the reverse of that.

More interestingly... TV has a kinda standard 22 minutes of program per 1/2 hour show. This number evolved not because broadcasters didn't want to run more advertisements, but because it's the point at which balance is achieved between the numbers of spots run and the number of viewers you have to see them.

The revenue plot can be likened to a negative quadratic equation. Too many commercials and people stop tuning in, hence lost ratings and lost $$. The other side of the scale is not enough commercials, therefore not enough advertising dollars.

The vertex, if you will, is around 8 minutes of programming in a 30 minute program, and it's a number which has remained pretty constant since the mass-acceptance of television in the 1950s.

This technique will therefore really only be of value in attempting to adjust a TV show to appeal to the same sorts of people who watch infomercials. (Who the hell watches those, anyway?)