--- In fugitive@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Dahl" <rjd0309@...> wrote:
>
> Apparently, the TV broadcasts that Kevin recorded for his set were transmitted as time-compressed broadcasts, in order to squeeze in more commercials. I have some full-featured audio software that is capable of rate resampling, which may be able to restore the audio tracks to their original length, in order to match the video from the official CBS DVDs.
>
> I'd like to try out this procedure on one of Kevin's episodes. I asked Kevin to sell me a set, but he said that he's no longer selling them. If someone could help out by briefly loaning me one of Kevin's discs, it would be a big help.
>
Hello everyone,

I'm new to this list, though I've lurked on and off for years, and I have a point or two I'd like to clear up. 

While it may be a worthwhile pursuit for some to grab video from one source and try to match it with audio from another, the results could be iffy at best, depending on one's technical prowess, due to certain mismatches.

One needs to understand a bit about "time-compressing" and its artifacts.  Television syndicators of old programs were essentially driven by the marketplace to provide 46:30 episodes for broadcast on cable and local stations.  The stations allocate that much time for commercials, even if they only throw in those 800-number commercials.  It's the way the market has developed over the years.

So in order to accomodate the station's desires (since the stations are the customers of the syndicator), some kind of editing became necessary if they wanted to sell these old shows.  Early attempts at chopping out material from episodes were met with disdain from viewers, who missed segments of the shows that they remembered.  So once the technology became available to digitally speed up the prints, that avenue was taken.

One of the artifacts of time-speeding is that the pitch of things will be raised.  You'll hear voices speaking in slightly higher pitches than would be normal - and this is one of those things that some people are very sensitive to, and others are equally oblivious.  It depends on the person.  As it turns out, I'm VERY sensitive to that particular artifact and can spot it in an instant.

Another artifact of time speeding is the warbling of the musical background.  A sustained note on a musical instrument will have little "bumps" every other second or so.  That's because in addition to the speeding up, the digital technique used is also dropping frames - skipping over a frame every now and then to move things along and so that they don't have to speed up the film even further to where MORE people might notice the higher pitch.

One result of the frame-skip is that motion might appear jumpy in spots.  A normally smooth car chase might appear choppy as the cars move across the screen.

I don't own any of the so-called "Kevin's" episodes, but I live in an area in Pennsylvania where I was aware of, and with difficulty could get a rather snowy picture on that Allentown station, so I did manage to see an episode or two, and could tell that they were time-compressed.  Some of the professional "NuVentures" videotapes were also sourced from some time-sped syndication prints, though many were also sourced from 16mm broadcast prints, complete with ABC-TV logos still in them.  Those episodes run at the proper speed, but tend to have faded color and scratchy sound.

Since the CBS DVD's are at the correct speed, trying to grab the sound from a time-sped episode would be a difficult task.  I suppose if one had some kind of speed-altering software, one could sort-of match it up.  But the choppiness of the music would still be there.

Anyway - sorry for the long post, but I hope it's at least informative.

Harry