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For a very long time, life was limited by the rate at which we spoke. Although we have had writing systems for millennia, early texts were designed to be read aloud, meaning that literature unfolded at the pace of human speech. For years now, podcast and audiobook players have provided speedup options, and research shows that most people prefer listening to accelerated speech. Now Jeff Guo writes at The Washington Post that a new kind of storytelling is emerging as software has made it much easier to watch videos at 1.5x to 2x.
You can play DVDs and iTunes purchases at whatever tempo you like and a Google engineer has written a popular Chrome extension that accelerates most other Web videos, including on Netflix, Vimeo and Amazon Prime. Over 100,000 people have downloaded that plug-in, and the reviews are ecstatic. “Oh my God! I regret all the wasted time I've lived before finding this gem!!” one user wrote. According to Guo speeding up video is more than an efficiency hack. "I quickly discovered that acceleration makes viewing more pleasurable. "Modern Family" played at twice the speed is far funnier — the jokes come faster and they seem to hit harder. I get less frustrated at shows that want to waste my time with filler plots or gratuitous violence. The faster pace makes it easier to appreciate the flow of the plot and the structure of the scenes."
"So here we are," concludes Guo, "spending three hours a day on average, scrambling to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. "Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on “Meat Chad” and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:59PM
My friend does this and it annoys the hell out of me.
It's analogous to a good dinner, or any similar pleasant experience. The extra time available allows one to savor and contemplate each bite of the experience, increasing the likelihood that they will take the most from it after the experience is over.
Even pitch-corrected speedups introduce artifacts. Those of you who are into digital audio, try this - speed up or slow down a voice recording drastically. Apply pitch correction. The result will be a voice that sounds like it's been sucking on donkey dick all day.
In other words, get a fucking attention span, for fuck's sake. This is what happens when kids are raised with X-boxes all goddamn day long - everything else sounds like Ben Stein.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:26PM
The extra time available allows one to savor and contemplate each bite of the experience, increasing the likelihood that they will take the most from it after the experience is over.
Did someone hijack your account?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 26 2016, @06:01PM
I tend to use higher speed for documentaries, but not for movies. Documentaries I watch for the information; usually the information is delivered too slowly by the documentation, so a speed-up is perfect. If the speedup doesn't help, the documentation is not worth watching.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday June 26 2016, @06:12PM
I also do this for information. Usually on presentations and tutorials. There aren't any subtle parts to miss, lol.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @10:14PM
A lot of shows have 'filler' in their episodes to pad out to the timeslot. It is actually one thing I like about Steven Universe and a lot of the other 15 minute TV shows. They have such a small time budget that they have to fill it with so much activity you don't get bored and want to speed it up. A lot of other shows and many forms of anime don't. There is often no background exposition to miss because of a few less frames, the dialogue is all up front and often related to the present only, etc. I have in fact been running subtitled works at up to 2x speed because there is not a lot to miss and it allows me to fix in 2x as many shows into the same amount of free time.
The real trick nowadays isn't in fast forwarding shows, it is in optimizing the show pacing to make full use of the available time, or shortening the show length for the same purpose. Timeslots only mattered for broadcast purposes. The advent of on-demand means episodes can be of irregular lengths and as long as they are providing an ongoing and satisfying story, nobody will care.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Sunday June 26 2016, @06:49PM
In the university I would listen to lectures up to 4x. For new material, I would speed along at roughly the rate you could read at (1.3 or 1.5x). But for a lecture that I already watched, speeding through refreshers was a great review mechanism. When you hit material that you are shaky on, skip back a minute and play slower.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday June 27 2016, @01:16AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @08:23PM
> In other words, get a fucking attention span, for fuck's sake.
Blah. Most tv is produced for people who aren't 100% dedicated to watching - they might be talking with others in the room, cooking, cleaning, maybe pop out to take a piss, going through the mail, doing their bills, or maybe browsing the web on their phone. If you aren't doing any of that and can give 100% focus then all that extra spacing to accommodate everyone else is just wasted time.
> The result will be a voice that sounds like it's been sucking on donkey dick all day.
That sure is specific. Sounds like you are intimately familiar with that.