Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cutting one frame from each second of film.

This is topic Cutting one frame from each second of film. in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 11-18-2003, 11:54 AM:

Recently while watching a movie on TV, I noticed a strange abnormality. At first I thought it was my imagination, but as I kept watching it became more obvious. It seemed that every second the picture would "jump" ahead a frame or two, with the sound staying in sync. It became painfully apparent during any pan sequences or fast-motion. Sort of like trying to watch streaming video on a slow machine, except the picture never froze, it just jumped ahead.

Is this some sort of plot by the TV stations to further "cut" movies to squeeze them into the time alloted? Cutting one frame from each second of a 2 hour movie would only save you 5 minutes, but in TV terms, that's almost two commercial breaks.

Anyway, it became annoying to watch so I changed the channel. Has anyone ever seen this kind of "editing" before?

=TMP=

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 11-18-2003, 02:58 PM:

I seem to recall someone from the West Wing speaking on this issue, that some affiliates were doing this.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 11-18-2003, 04:28 PM:

i find this all too easy to believe. they'll pan & scan, they'll play the whole thing faster, they'll run the credits at warp speed, squished into half the screen with a voiceover replacing the soundtrack, they'll edit for content, they'll insert commercials, etc. etc. boycott the b@st@rds.

one thing i'd like to see, that would allow for a vast increase in commercial time _and_ greatly improve the uninterrupted presentation of the movie is...

to play the movie letterboxed, in the top 1/2 or 2/3 of the screen, and run ads, network logos, what have you, silently in the bottom part of the screen. all the viewer has to do is cover up that portion of the screen and it's like watching a dvd. everybody's happy.

carl

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 11-18-2003, 04:40 PM:

The film was run at a slightly faster speed than normal, to put in more commercials. Depending on the amount of the increase in speed, every so often a frame must be droped. The audio is feed through a device that does somewhat the same thing, drops chuncks of audio every so often, and then streaches the rest out to fill the holes, so that the pitch is still correct, but you can sometimes hear this going on in music or a high pitched voice. I find this very anoying as well, and will turn off anything done this way. Greed is the root of all evil.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-18-2003, 06:30 PM:

Sounds like a screwed up TBC to me.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 11-18-2003, 07:08 PM:

Wasn't there an underwater action movie about 10 years ago that was shot at a strange speed to make it seem more exciting? Can't remember the title...

(Late Recollection: Does DEEPSTAR SIX ring a bell with anyone?)

[ 11-19-2003, 01:43 PM: Message edited by: Mark Lensenmayer ]

Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 11-18-2003, 07:26 PM:

It's kind of a stretch, but maybe the video transfer of the movie originated overseas in the PAL standard, converted to NTSC for North America. I've seen NTSC video converted from PAL exhibiting a kind of jumpiness in any fast horizontal movement, including horizontal credit crawls (which I've seen more than a few times in programs imported from England).

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 11-18-2003, 10:31 PM:

I always attributed this to the whole 24fps vs. 29.997fps thing.

See it all the time.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-19-2003, 12:21 AM:

TV broadcasters have all kinds of tricks they pull for trimming down a movie to fit in more and more commercials. I'm not sure about the dropping frames bit, but I have often suspected movies being sped up slightly. Of course you have all the other obvious things like the way they hack up the beginnings and ends of scenes to leave or enter a commercial break.

In all, it reminds me of lame-ass radio stations who cut out items like guitar solos and trim down choruses to turn a four minute song into something that plays in less than three. Again, that's all to make space for more commercials.

So, I don't watch movies on TV stations that have commercial breaks in the show, period. And I hardly listen to broadcast radio anymore either. I pretty much stick to satellite music; at least they seem to play a song for its entire duration there.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 11-19-2003, 09:34 AM:

quote:
to play the movie letterboxed, in the top 1/2 or 2/3 of the screen, and run ads, network logos, what have you, silently in the bottom part of the screen. all the viewer has to do is cover up that portion of the screen and it's like watching a dvd. everybody's happy.

The movie would need to be centered rather than at the top. Most TVs overscan and have their worst convergence and focus at the edges. Centering the movie would allow use of "zoom mode" on 16x9 sets to crop the dead space for flat movies, at least.

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 11-19-2003, 01:34 PM:

quote:
to play the movie letterboxed, in the top 1/2 or 2/3 of the screen, and run ads, network logos, what have you, silently in the bottom part of the screen.

no, No, NO!! They already have all this garbage dancing all over the picture for up to a minute before or a minute after coming back from commercials. I was watching "City of Angels" about a week ago on TBS, and when they came back from commercial, this giant animated banner thing went WOOSH across the entire picture (blocking the whole frame at one point) and danced around at the bottom, telling me I am watching City of Angels... oh wait... and Sleepless in Seattle is up next... oh wait... and WWF Smackdown is on Monday night... [Roll Eyes]

By the time they're done overlaying commercials, you've been distracted away from a good portion of the movie, only to be distracted again when it's time to go to commercial.

What Carl suggested has already been done by "The NEW TNN" (now Spike TV) where they would squeeze the picture to fit a black bar at the bottom with the network logo and a "ticker" that would change color and font every few minutes to tell you about various other nonsense the network is planning to show. Every time it changed, your eyes would be distracted to it, missing your show. [fu]

that.

=TMP=

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-19-2003, 03:59 PM:

I believe what you're noticing is referred to as judder (scroll down the page about halfway). I too notice it to varying degrees on TV. Sometimes it's terrible, other times I don't notice it at all.

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 11-19-2003, 04:39 PM:

TBS (as well as other stations) will sometimes tell you that the movie was "time compressed" to fit the time slot. This is what you are seeing. This has also been done with tape for many years now. The tape speed can be increased, and every so often a frame must be droped. This produces a jump in motion. I had to do some of this when I worked for a post production house (and hated it).

Posted by Joe Schmidt (Member # 822) on 11-20-2003, 06:16 AM:

It's necessary to keep in mind here that all of these tv stations are businesses engaged in the continuous broadcasting of commercials, interrupted periodically by "entertainment."

Bobby Henderson has summarized the problem quite well but the problem remains: what do we do if the movie on the commercial-broadcasting channel is something good, such as the Spielberg mega-miniseries "TAKEN" on the Sci-Fi channel.

The manner of presentation on SciFi is singularly abysmal, including a huge bug on the lower right-hand corner and all the stuff Bobby mentioned. I have found that the only remedy is to employ a satellite PVR [mine is from Dish Network] and forget about trying to watch the movie at all the first time around. To enjoy the movie you must first do a little work.

Push the record button on the PVR a minute or so before the movie is scheduled to start, then go and do something else for about 35-40 minutes. Anything will do, commune with the cat, cremate something in the microwave to eat, read a magazine or an entertaining technical manual, you get the idea.

After this you pop a new blank film into the VCR, back up the PVR to the start of its recording, and begin taping the movie. I don't try to watch the movie at this point, have the sound down at a whisper level and continue doing something else. You'll know when the commersh hits because the sound will get much louder. Then you hit stop on the VCR, back up the tape and recue in record mode precisely at 2-3 frames into the commersh garbage break. [Why? Because the VCR will back up the tape just a smidge.]

With the VCR cued, you then zap past the garbage in the PVR and pause [cue] it right at a frame or two before the movie starts again. Final step is start the VCR recording again, and 0.5 seconds later press PLAY on the PVR. This sequence is necessary because the VCR needs about 0.5 seconds to start going again.

Then its back to reading your book until the next garbage break, when the process repeats.

In my case, having had years of practice at this, the zapping of each garbage break and restarting the tape is achieved in about one minute. A FF on the PVR of 15x speed is about right. If you have done your work well, you are rewarded with a clean garbage-free tape of the movie, or at least as much of it as they didn't cut out... this remedy cannot restore missing parts of the movie. And the whole job is done in about 95 minutes for a mess that was 2 hours in real time. Plus you have improved your mind by reading a book or doing other useful things in between the garbage breaks!

As a retired projectionist used to pushing buttons on cue this well-perfected routine is quite easy, and I pride myself on having a completed tape where you can barely tell where the commersh was. I then am able to enjoy the movie at a later time free of all the impossible distractions.

Parts 1-8 of TAKEN are in the can and it's just about time to enjoy the show starting with Part One.

The only incomprehensible aspect of all this is how can ANYBODY follow or enjoy a movie with all the stoppages. I have never been able to do it, and I hate commercials because they are all constantly beating on me to buy a new car. Why should I? My car is 40 years old and runs perfectly.

[Memo to all you kiddies out there: if you don't smoke, and you don't drink, and you don't watch commercials, and you drive a car that's 40 years old as I do, you'll be AMAZED at what you can afford just out of the savings in petty cash!]