"Upper-right is a live feed from my tuner card from tonight's Seinfeld rerun. Lower-right is a digital recording from Fox Chicago about 10 years ago on the same hardware. TBS's broadcast gained 15 seconds in 3:22. This amounts to almost 2 full minutes for the entire episode."Discussed at Reddit where there are comments that the image is cropped to make it "wide screen" and that the content is sometimes edited as well, and a notation that this is sometimes done with broadcast music. The purpose apparently is to create more time for commercials.
Although the result is described as a "speeding up" of the program, I would think that even a 7.5% increase in speed would alter voice pitch, so I wonder if the process is instead some sort of computerized microediting - removing seconds of stares, views of a door about to open, shortening nonrolling credits, and such. The process would be similar to time-compressed speech.
Confession: I've never seen even a single episode of Seinfeld. Apparently I'm the only living person with that distinction.
Addendum: This video and the Reddit discussion generated a more-extended discussion of the technology at Digital Trends:
One provider is called Prime Image, which advertises a product called the Time Tailor. According to the site, the service “optimizes video runtime to seamlessly insert new ad spots, shrink content runtime without cutting scenes” and allow for several other solutions which alter programming to fit the network’s specifications. The service is automated, essentially allowing networks to program the time warping necessary, sit back, and collect that extra cash...
