Many years ago I started using Windows Media Center as my DVR.
When you hit fast-forward the playback speed is increased to about 1.25x.
Increasingly, I began watching all my recorded TV that way.
Now that I watch digital downloads almost exclusively, I use VLC media player to watch all my films/TV series in fast-forward, and at speeds up to 1.60x. I watched Gravity last night in less than an hour.
There is no obvious “chipmunk” effect, and my mind adjusts to the increased speed to the extent that I usually don’t notice–except for the clipped trajectory of footballs.
So, does anyone else watch TV/Movies in fast-forward?
Not routinely, but there was this one special case. An old friend of mine was in a movie in the 80’s, and I’d never seen it. I found a VHS copy about 10 years ago, and fast forwarded through it until I got to her part. The movie was boring at FF speeds! It must have been unbearable at normal speed. No wonder it never went anywhere.
For whatever reason a year or so ago I watched a decent number of Spongebob Squarepants episodes (Quiet you! They were still better than most 1990s sit-coms) on YouTube, posted in double speed. To tell the truth, those shows were pretty easy to follow, much of the time you didn’t even notice the speed-up, and you could watch episodes in half the time as normal speed - complete ADHD compliance!
There were a few episode posted IIRC in quad-time, but those were pretty unwatchable.
I’ve watched huge chunks of lots and lots of movies in fast forward, and I think a great many people have. What’s being discovered here is that it works for things other than porn.
I haven’t thought about doing it for video but some long, boring movies like 2001 Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia could certainly benefit. There’s a scene in Lawrence where some dude is riding out of the desert and he starts as a barely visible spec (invisible on the small screen) and it takes about five minutes! That could be sped up about 1000% without losing anything.
Not sure it works for all films though. I saw Gravity on the big screen in 3D. Wouldn’t speeding it up make the physics look weird?
Maybe it’s time for James Gleick to update Faster.
I haven’t had a hardware video player that did FF with sound for some time. Once had a Beta VCR that did 2x with sound. Problem: didn’t have the original remote and couldn’t find a universal remote that had the code for it. So, not really practical.
I have DVRs that can do FF, of course, but no sound.
I routinely watch movies in somewhat FF mode. (E.g., I like to try out really cheesy movies from time to time.) Get to something interesting (if it has anything interesting at all), drop down, watch a bit at standard speed. Sometimes I find something that I have to go back back and watch from the beginning because there’s a lot of interesting stuff. E.g., Zero Effect.
Some movies with subtitles I can watch in single FF mode. I could read subtitles at double FF speed, but the time-bar doesn’t go away (!?!), covering the subtitles. The DVRs also don’t show closed captioning in FF mode (again !?!).
Don’t usually watch regular TV shows in FF. Mainly reruns that I’m familiar with to skip the boring part. But I do watch baseball using the FF button a lot.
I really hate the slow pace of podcasts. Might try some at FF on the 'puter.
Ruin or make more awesome? Double playback speed combined with closed captioning and viola! You’ve just transformed the latest Coen film into an old timey silent film!
I do too, and love how many extra podcasts I can squeeze into the same amount of time; but my otherwise podcast-loving wife says this drives her nuts and she can’t understand why I do it.
This thread is reminding me of the Douglas Coupland novel Microserfs, in which the intensely busy Silicon Valley workers described in the title fast-forward through foreign, subtitled movies to save time.
Yeah, I do it, and what’s more, I’ve discovered that you can run ALL of youtube on fast forward too. Just opt in to their html5 player, and in the settings you can choose to speed up playback. You’re welcome
