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Time compression (1 Viewer)

JasonLa

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The idea occurred to me today, is it possible that TV shows on DVD are time compressed. I had heard about time compression years ago but never researched details about it. So I had thought it was only a very short reduction in time without removing content. But today I decided to do a little research using google search and found a link to an excerpt from journal of marketing research Vol. 17 No. 1 from Feb 1980. It describes that it is possible to time compress a 30 second commercial to 24 seconds. This is a 20% reduction in duration. I then Ran the math and the same time compression rate on a about 25 minute program would reduce the duration to about 20 minutes without loss of content. Seeing as I have been recently watching shows on DVD and IW from the 70s and 80s that appear to be edited based on each episodes run time it would appear they may have time compression. However from more research using google search I found mentions that there is no reason to use time compression in a DVD release. So it has me wondering why would they be time compressed?, assuming that is the reason for the shorter run time. Which I'm still inclined to think they may be edited (missing content) vs the original airing. If the episodes run times matched closely with their original airing run time then I would have little reason to suspect what I'm watching isn't what was originally aired. I figured I'd post my thoughts and see what everyone else thought.
 

The Obsolete Man

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JasonLa said:
The idea occurred to me today, is it possible that TV shows on DVD are time compressed. I had heard about time compression years ago but never researched details about it. So I had thought it was only a very short reduction in time without removing content. But today I decided to do a little research using google search and found a link to an excerpt from journal of marketing research Vol. 17 No. 1 from Feb 1980. It describes that it is possible to time compress a 30 second commercial to 24 seconds. This is a 20% reduction in duration. I then Ran the math and the same time compression rate on a about 25 minute program would reduce the duration to about 20 minutes without loss of content. Seeing as I have been recently watching shows on DVD and IW from the 70s and 80s that appear to be edited based on each episodes run time it would appear they may have time compression. However from more research using google search I found mentions that there is no reason to use time compression in a DVD release. So it has me wondering why would they be time compressed?, assuming that is the reason for the shorter run time. Which I'm still inclined to think they may be edited (missing content) vs the original airing. If the episodes run times matched closely with their original airing run time then I would have little reason to suspect what I'm watching isn't what was originally aired. I figured I'd post my thoughts and see what everyone else thought.
Time compressed shows on DVD, or any type of editing, would happen for mostly the same reason... old syndicated prints are used for the DVD masters because the studios either don't want to put out the money to transfer the original uncut version for DVD, Or because the material is licensed out to a smaller company, and they have to use what they get (there's also the third reason of original elements being lost and Syndie versions being all they can use, but that's much rarer than the laziness excuse.) And time compression is very noticeable if you know what you're looking for. Just listen to the theme music of a show. Compression usually noticeably speeds the music up and maybe changes the pitch a little bit.
 

Mark-P

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It's rare on DVD releases, but does happen occasionally for the reasons Shane just gave. Little House on the Prairie DVD sets were an example of time-compressed masters being used. I don't know if the later releases ever fixed it.
 

JasonLa

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As far as I understand, at least in the past for sure, there are/were two kinds of ways to air older shows in syndication. The first was the way USA network was notorious for doing in the 90s with older shows. That was to air them with segments of the show deleted. For example several lines of dialog would be missing in one or more spots depending on how old the show was due to the increasing difference in run time vs commercial time. And the other was to use time compression since you wouldn't lose any content of the episode just dropped frames so that playback at the correct FPS meant a complete episode ran in less time. A 20% compression would be 6 or less FPS dropped. Visually this probably is not noticed by most and even slight pitch variance the same. Their adjusting pitch for the compression probably is not perfect. But anyways that is a lead in to my next question then. Were there syndication prints of shows that used both methods, time compression and removed segments to shorten the run times? If not then being able to identify if time compression is present in the DVD prints would be of great benefit because one could conclude that content isn't missing. I'm not so anal as to be ticked off over time compression as long as none of the pages are missing, so to speak, using my reading a book example I like use when talking editing out segments of shows.
 

Harry-N

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It's an unfortunate reality, but it IS a reality - sometimes. DVDs are generally immune to such practices, particularly if they are remastered for release. The ones that have either compression problems or editing done to them are generally the unremastered variety, where the studio or releasing company uses syndication masters for their DVD release. As stated, it DOES happen, and is unfortunate.


I can think of a few examples of both in my collection. In the edited segments camp, there's THE GUNS OF WILL SONNETT. These shows are just flat-out chopped up for syndication, occasionally making the stories nearly incomprehensible. There's an episode or two of LOST IN SPACE where some dialog lines are missing.


In the time-compression category, I noticed that the first episode of THE INVADERS runs too fast. That one's not an egregious situation, since the longer version of the pilot episode is also present - and uncompressed. I'm recording episodes off-air of the MeTV showing of 12 O'CLOCK HIGH and these are all time-compressed to fit a 51-minute show into 46 minutes - but they're all there, not chopped up. The scripts for 12 O'CLOCK HIGH were often chock-full of dialog, so occasionally things whip by at an unnatural pace. I remember the episodes of THE FUGITIVE that I taped from TV in the '90s were all time-sped, giving a warbling effect on the backscore, and a jerkiness to the movement.


I certainly prefer everything to run at the correct speed and that everything be there. I suppose if I had to choose among the two evils, I'd pick time-compression as the least offensive of the two.


Harry
 

Neil Brock

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The worst example of a compressed DVD release was the first four seasons of Combat. They used the old Worldvision 1-inch masters from the early 80s. The times were all over the map with some coming in at 46:00 and others at around 49 minutes with everything in between. Finally, for the vastly inferior fifth season, Image went back to the 35mm prints. So we got the last season, the worst of the bunch at the right speed and the other 4 timesped. As to the question of speeding and cutting, yes, that has been done with shows in the past, although I don't know if any were put out on DVD in that form.
 

JasonLa

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I seen a show on DVD too that was all over the place with run time per episode though I can't remember which show it was since that was years ago now and was a set from a friend of mine. At the time I was clueless as to why and suspected the shorter than expected ones were edited. That was also before I knew about time compression. So my guess is it may have been a combination of both. I only wish I had original airings of everything I wanted to see again when released on DVD so that I could have compared. For those sets I've already bought it would do no good though since asking for your money back because the set isn't really "compete" would get me nowhere. I'm not sure if I'll continue to buy any sets in the future because the shows I wanted were releasing so fast that they would go out of print almost as fast and I began to end up not being able to get sets because it was crazy to even think of buying that many sets a week. Since I have netflix can pretty much watch them all which is the next best thing I guess. Though the idea of owning 100% as originally aired seasons of all the shows I enjoyed quite a bit over my life is quite appealing. Unfortunately though at least several if not many of them are of the greater of two evils and have segments removed because they didn't care to take the time and money needed to do the fans right and get uncut prints. Unfortunately it is hard to find info about what shows haven't been altered. TVshowsonDVD had a list a long time ago but the ability to add etc was turned off due to some people reporting erroneous info. I haven't been able to find a centralized source since that maintains a list of alterations. After all there has to be some people out there for every show that has original airings or other recordings or old commercial releases on VHS to compare the DVD sets to. I have syndication recordings (and some episodes original airings) of a number of older shows that I have used to compare to DVD sets to wind up disappointed to find that the set or a number of episodes in a set had segments missing from some or all episodes. And then the companies wonder why the sales are poor on the sets and then don't continue putting the rest of the show on DVD because they mistakenly think there is no demand for the show instead of that real reason it isn't selling well.
 

vnisanian2001

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Um, syndicated episodes or no have nothing to do with whether or not the show does well on DVD, as the majority of DVD consumers are morons who wouldn't know the difference between cut and uncut, if it came up and slapped them across the head so hard until their head swelled up. The masses are asses!
 

Neil Brock

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vnisanian2001 said:
Um, syndicated episodes or no have nothing to do with whether or not the show does well on DVD, as the majority of DVD consumers are morons who wouldn't know the difference between cut and uncut, if it came up and slapped them across the head so hard until their head swelled up. The masses are asses!
:tu:
 

JoeDoakes

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vnisanian2001 said:
Um, syndicated episodes or no have nothing to do with whether or not the show does well on DVD, as the majority of DVD consumers are morons who wouldn't know the difference between cut and uncut, if it came up and slapped them across the head so hard until their head swelled up. The masses are asses!
There are a number of shows that have been signicantly hurt in sales by cuts or changes: WKRP (original music removed); Father Knows Best Season 1 (cut syndicated prints used); The Fugitive Season 2 (music replaced)
 

JasonLa

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JoeDoakes said:
There are a number of shows that have been signicantly hurt in sales by cuts or changes: WKRP (original music removed); Father Knows Best Season 1 (cut syndicated prints used); The Fugitive Season 2 (music replaced)
I'm pretty sure this is true of Quantum Leap too. In fact the company got so much negative response because of the music alternations from season 2 and 3 they didn't alter any music in season 4 and 5. So I'm inclined to believe that alterations that significantly alter the original airing are not wanted by enough people to have an impact on sales. I believe there was a couple 80s or 90s disney series' effected by some alteration that reduced the demand enough that disney didn't finish putting them out on DVD. I remember hearing about one of them a few years ago if I recall the time frame correctly. But I don't remember which show. Considering those shows are extremely popular in syndication over the last 10 years or so there obviously was enough demand for the shows on DVD which left me to come to the same conclusion others had as to why the DVDs didn't. The only way to know for sure is to survey a large enough portion of the population to reasonable conclude that X% of the population doesn't want shows missing segments or altered music or other similar significant alterations. But then I wonder if results of a quality survey would make a difference with the companies in caring to put the shows out as originally aired. My impression has been that far too many have been altered in the negative ways we have mentioned so far.
 

vnisanian2001

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JasonLa and JoeDoakes But the thing is, sometimes you could have a perfectly done DVD set (no syndication cuts, or any other cuts in particular whatsoever), and it still wouldn't be a big seller. I'm not saying that TV shows on DVD have to have syndication edits, or any other edits, in order to be big sellers, I'm just saying that most of the time, the average consumer isn't aware of the difference between syndication and non-syndication.
 

JasonLa

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That is true there are probably some shows that weren't really popular on TV and so their DVD sets don't sell well for that reason for example. But I was talking about shows that are edited by removing segments and/or replacing music typically that is the main if not sole reason those DVD sets didn't sell well. Which is why I sited the example of disney cartoons. I wish I could remember which ones. I know one way to compensate for low sales is to start out the DVD set prices high and then lower them. How fast the price is lowered would depend on trend in reduction in demand. If there is a huge spike in sales the first month but dwindles to a small percent the next would be a good sign to reduce the price by 25%. Reduce it too much and you tick off all the people who bought it the first month. I was always willing to spend $40-60 a season for 100% intact original airings (restoring video and audio to clean up artifacts and static etc is fine). The problem though is that they discontinue them too quickly to be able to do so when you want to buy too many shows. So between that and finding far too many have butchered I've all but given up on buying shows. Now I'm looking for ways to determine before hand that the episodes aren't butchered before buying. I wish I had a keen sense to notice the time compression and be able to determine how much time was compressed. I'm assuming it would be the 20% from that one thing I read but I don't know if they are capable of more now since that source is rather old.
 

Brent Riley

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As far as I understand, at least in the past for sure, there are/were two kinds of ways to air older shows in syndication. The first was the way USA network was notorious for doing in the 90s with older shows. That was to air them with segments of the show deleted. For example several lines of dialog would be missing in one or more spots depending on how old the show was due to the increasing difference in run time vs commercial time. And the other was to use time compression since you wouldn't lose any content of the episode just dropped frames so that playback at the correct FPS meant a complete episode ran in less time. A 20% compression would be 6 or less FPS dropped. Visually this probably is not noticed by most and even slight pitch variance the same. Their adjusting pitch for the compression probably is not perfect. But anyways that is a lead in to my next question then. Were there syndication prints of shows that used both methods, time compression and removed segments to shorten the run times? If not then being able to identify if time compression is present in the DVD prints would be of great benefit because one could conclude that content isn't missing. I'm not so anal as to be ticked off over time compression as long as none of the pages are missing, so to speak, using my reading a book example I like use when talking editing out segments of shows.

Nick @ Nite time compressed and edited episodes of Murphy Brown, the show ran 22 minutes on Nick and was time compressed shaving off about a minute, depending on the episodes around 30 - 60 seconds were also cut, episodes from later seasons were not edited at all but just time compressed as the shows run time had reduced through its run. So then it wouldn't surprise me if this happened often.

Three occurrences of a first run broadcast being both time compressed and edited was The Simpsons. In the US and Canada the episodes Bart the Daredevil, Bart's Dog Gets an F and Saturdays of Thunder were all time compressed and edited to make room for music videos, the first was 'Do the Bartman' the second 'Deep Deep Trouble' and the third was Michael Jackson's 'Black or White'. The full uncompressed episodes first aired on FOX during reruns of those episodes. So the DVD release of these episodes actually run longer than their original broadcasts did.

Another odd occurrence and slightly off topic was Friends. In the original broadcast episodes minor sequences were sped up for time. There was one episode where Monica's mother had hired her to cater a party, when Monica messed up the food her mother reaches in the freezer for food, in the original airing her mother's movements speed up, on the blu ray they have been normalised, if that makes sense. I notice Friends did this quite often, probably to shave off literal milliseconds from the show, but I guess it worked for them.

The other big issue with trying to figure out runtimes on DVD is the fact some shows had episodes that ran short, so it may seem as if something was edited or time compressed but was not. Moonlighting is a great example of this. I saw an original broadcast of a Christmas episode that ran several minutes shorter than what was normal at that time. If I hadn't seen that episode in its original broadcast I would have assumed it had been edited down. In fact it seems Moonlighting rarely had a consistent runtime.
 
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Scott511

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NBC did it to at least one original broadcast episode of Riptide. I watched and recorded the series and I remember one episode (maybe Be True To Your School) that right off the bat in the 30 teaser everyone sounded sped up like chipmunks. The theme was horrible going at a faster rate, it was bad. Flash forward to later in the season, and TV Guide had a interview with one of the series actors Joe Penny. In the article it mentions the actor getting ticked off and smashing his TV when turning on a Riptide episode and hearing himself speaking in a high pitched voice. It went on the say NBC had started speeding up their broadcast to fit in more commercials.
 

ClassicTVMan1981X

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This happened with numerous Hanna-Barbera cartoons when re-ran on Cartoon Network.

Even on USA Cartoon Express (from 1990-94), the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! was the worst offender. The opening and closing titles were both a minute long before being time compressed. But after the series moved to the Turner networks (TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network) in the fall of 1994, besides this original 1969-70 run, numerous episodes of The Scooby-Doo Show (except for the 1978 episodes, which made up what was sometimes known as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! II, or the "third" season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!) were also time-compressed.

~Ben
 
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Lecagr

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Time compression is an interesting subject to discuss. Some years ago the Rhino studio released My Favorite Martian on DVD, and the 2nd season DVD set has four episodes that are uncut but time compressed.

Since 2017 the Antenna TV channel has been running edited/syndicated versions of The Joey Bishop Show episodes, but now along with being edited, the episodes are now time compressed as well. When Antenna first started airing the Joey Bishop's, there was about 7 minutes of commercial time per episode, now the episodes have about 8 minutes of commercial time. No additional edits were made to the episodes so they have been time sped in order to fit in another minute of commercial time. Wonderful. LOL. :laugh:

The complete series DVD of Cannon is interesting, the episodes appear to be uncut but the run times vary, some episodes are about 49 minutes while some others run as long as 52-53 minutes. I don't know if the shorter ones have been speeded up or if the longer ones have been slowed down, but as I said the episodes appear to be uncut/complete.
 

Lecagr

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Lou Grant got hit by some time compressed episodes on DVD.

Better than edited, though. I believe LG exemplifies the then-rare third type I mentioned 7 years ago.

And poor season 5 of the show...

Yes, the Lou Grant DVD's have a few time sped episodes, mostly in seasons 4 and 5. I bought seasons 1-4 but didn't buy season 5 because of too many time sped/edited episodes and also because I don't think it's a great season anyway. Seasons 1-4 are enough for me.
 

ClassicTVMan1981X

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The same thing befalls the DVD set of 1979's Plastic Man. It is arranged by the 30-minute episode and then the 15-minute one, but all are sped up, I believe, due to how much the DVDs could hold at the time of this set's release on DVD in 2009.

~Ben
 
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