Confessions of a Variable Playback Speed Enthusiast

Recently, Netflix has been getting some flack for announcing that they're testing the ability to use variable playback speeds with their service. This would allow the user to play shows and movies slower or faster. Services like Youtube and most media players have had this function for ages. However, variable playback speed is also closely associated with the unfortunate practice of some media outlets speeding up content to make room for more commercials, often with hilarious or annoying results. I sympathize with creators like Judd Apatow who don't want Netflix and others messing with the presentation of their output. However, I've been a happy abuser of variable playback speeds for years.

It started with silent films. During my early days of watching all the important old foundational cinema I could get my hands on, I found silent films were a real challenge to stay engaged with. They were often very slow paced melodramas, and only notable for certain technical advances or historical value. The acting was crude and often involved a lot of dithering around onscreen between the intertitles. I started watching silents on my computer and slowly started experimenting with the playback speed. To be clear, I had a DVD player at the time that had a variable playback speed function, and I used it, but it was when I started using a purely digital media player with certain keyboard shortcuts that I really started taking full advantage of the feature.

I found that most silent films playing at 2x normal speeds are still quite watchable. I got up to 4x speeds on some titles, usually the experimental ones. I didn't watch every silent film like this, but I always liked having it as an option, especially when faced with having to suffer through something like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." Frankly, I'm never going to feel bad about fast-forwarding through racist blackface antics. Slowly, I started experimenting with playing sound features in variable speeds. There's a lot less wiggle room here before dialogue becomes unintelligible and performances are impacted, but I found that 1.25x and sometimes 1.5x speeds work fine for me. Often, the change isn't even all that noticeable. Voices are higher pitched and movements become jerkier, but sometimes I forget I even made the adjustment. For a while, once I found my comfort zone, I was watching practically everything at 1.25x speed just as a time saver, but this phase didn't last long. After all, why would I want to speed through I movie that I'm enjoying?

These days I really only speed up a film as a last resort, often to enable my own completionist tendencies. Occasionally I'll come across a movie or show that I watch and dislike. I'm ready to give up on it, but I've sunk too much time into it already, and I don't want to abandon it. But there's still an hour or two hours left to go. That's when I'll start toggling to higher speeds, sometimes to get through a slow patch, or sometimes to just hustle through to the end. As I've been watching a lot of super-sized epics from the '60s lately, this situation has been coming up more often. Also, I admit I've resorted to this with certain television shows that have gone off the rails in their final seasons.

Ironically, I've been consuming other media at either sped up or slowed down rates completely by accident. I listen to most of my podcasts with an older model Ipod, and like to plug it into my car's sound system to listen when I'm driving. However, the podcasts often get sped up or slowed down due to screwy interface issues, and I don't know how to fix it. This has lead to me listening to many episodes of Filmspotting and Blank Check as performed by Alvin and the Chipmunks, or where everyone has a chest cold.

Honestly, it's not bad.
---