# Does anyone else play movies at non-standard speed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 12, 2013, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143 "2013-12-12T05:29:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/21 "2013-12-16T16:06:43Z")
I’ll speed-up (using FF on a DVR) long boring chase sequences. Older films and TV shows (Mission Impossible!) were bad for this - get in the car, start the car, drive, park the car, get out of the car, walk up to the house, walk into the house - FF that stuff. I’ll also speed-up subtitled films. _I Was Curious (Yellow)_ wasn’t quite so bad at twice the speed, although there were certain sequences that I played back at normal speed. And yeah, porn is often much better at 2x or 3x the speed (I’ve been told) (by myself). ---
**Author:** ![JKilez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e5b9ba/32.png) [@JKilez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKilez)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2013, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/22 "2013-12-16T16:43:05Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > I never do this and look down at people who do > > you are destroying the director’s vision The vision of some directors could benefit from corrective lenses. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2013, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/23 "2013-12-16T17:39:41Z")
I am under the impression that most films on DVD in countries with a 25 frames per second TV system simply speed the 24fps film up to 25, with the corresponding increase in audio pitch. (In countries like the USA with 30fps TV, they pretty much just duplicate every fourth movie frame while keeping the original audio.) This feature can be used to get the film back to its normal speed and sound. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/24 "2013-12-17T00:51:38Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > . . . And yeah, porn is often much better at 2x or 3x the speed (I’ve been told) (by myself). Porn is sometimes improved by playing it backward. ---
**Author:** ![congodwarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@congodwarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/congodwarf)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/25 "2013-12-17T15:10:34Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Over the weekend I showed some friends **The Star Wars Holiday Special** , about which they had heard, but never seen. Even I, Bad Film Aficianado that I am, have never been able to watch this amazing oddity in its entirety in one sitting. It’s like trying to read _The Eye of Argon_ out loud in a group without laughing. > > Anyway, we started watching it at 2X speed, which actually made parts of it watchable (there’s no dialogue in big chunks of the thing, especially at the beginning). > > Eventually, though, even at twice the normal speed, we were forced to turn it off for the sake of our respective sanities. You should have showed the RiffTrax version. 😃 Then again, even RiffTrax couldn’t make Boy in the Plastic Bubble watchable so maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2013, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/26 "2013-12-18T03:33:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ve heard some TV shows are broadcast at a higher speed so their run time is reduced by a minute or so and the station can sell extra commercial time. I don’t know about shows, but they certainly have been known to do this with TV edits of movies. How do you think they get 90% of movies, with their theatrical running times all over the place, to fit into exactly 2hrs w/commercials? Some stations will even tell you this at the beginning when they say stuff like EDITED FOR CONTENT with a TIME COMPRESSED or something like that. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143/27 "2014-05-05T14:26:49Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > KMPlayer on my laptop will let you play a DVD (or any movie file) at speeds other than 100% (nominal), in 5% increments. I’ve seldom used the feature, but it does seem to be useful – I may start using it more. > > […] > > Surprisingly, from 85% to 115% _I hardly notice the speed is incorrect!_ :smack: (Changed voice pitches may be the most obvious difference.) KMPlayer is just a front end to MPlayer, a command-line media player. Not only does MPlayer allow you to alter the playback speed, but you can also keep the pitch constant if you want, using the “scaletempo” audio filter. For example, ```auto mplayer -speed 1.25 -af scaletempo my_movie.ogv ``` tells it to play the movie my\_movie.ogv at 125% speed while keeping the pitch constant. Most likely there’s some way of telling KMPlayer to do this as well. If you’re interested, poke around in the configuration settings and see. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-play-movies-at-non-standard-speed/676143.md?page=1)