4 ms·

Lecture overclocking

26 points by herdrick 17y ago

gojomo 17y ago
At <http://bloggingheads.tv> http://bloggingheads.tv>, their in-page flash video viewer offers 1.4X pitch-corrected playback -- but they may be accomplishing that by toggling to a second pre-accelerated video server-side. It's crazy that more sites, and especially sites with lots of lectures like Google Video, don't offer this option.
- sketerpot 17y ago
  I always use the 1.4x feature at BloggingHeads.tv, and it's amazing. The talk usually gets more engaging and easier to understand because you're paying more attention. It's not at all hard to understand people. This definitely needs to become standard. In fact, one of the major reasons I'm rooting for HTML5 video replacing flash video is so that a browser can add this functionality.
niels_olson 17y ago
I started the podcasting program at Tulane med school after Katrina. The informal consensus then (late 2005, early 2006, until the present) was that 1.5x was about right.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
It would be nice to do this with Mixergy, but I don't see a way to download the videos. I guess I could do it with the audio...
- there 17y ago
  on a page like http://mixergy.com/daniel-brusilovsky/ http://mixergy.com/daniel-brusilovsky/, there is an "original video" link under the "embed this video" link.
idlewords 17y ago
If only there were a way to convey information in some kind of compact symbolic visual format that everyone could parse at their own desired speed.
- Periodic 17y ago
  I'm doing this for a Database Systems course I'm currently taking. Sadly, the lecture notes are terrible. They're basically just visualizations for him to talk to and convey little to no information on their own. As such they're not only hard to read ahead with, but hard to use to review. As such, it's back to the textbook for me!
mey 17y ago
You could also use VLC (on windows) to play back the video at more then 1.0x speed.
- Periodic 17y ago
  Quicktime and VLC and MPlayer, and just about any reasonably well-featured video player will have the feature to adjust the playback speed.
nose 17y ago
You can increase the playback speed in VLC player. If you're using a mac, press ⌥ ⌘ →
Periodic 17y ago
Does anyone have any good tricks for downloading WMV videos at faster than real-time? The Stanford Videos come as WMV or Silverlight, and it seems I can't get them to download any faster than real time. VLC has an option to write out to a file as it plays, but even without locally showing the video it doesn't speed up.
jackfoxy 17y ago
I got turned on to overclocking lectures from Peteris Krumins’ blog, http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-videos-at-higher-playback-speeds/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-vi... Then I wrote a .NET Windows forms wrapper program around his method that controls the speed and pitch. Overclocking lectures is the only way to go.
ews 17y ago
You can do the same on mplayer on linux, pressing [ and ] to speed up / down the lecture. Being a non native English speaker, my current comfort zone is between 1.40 - 1.60 x.
- vixate 17y ago
  And to change the speed without changing the pitch, the "scaletempo" audio filter works pretty well: $ mplayer -af scaletempo filename
pkrumins 17y ago
I wrote about it a while ago as well. My solution is to use AviSynth. And I created examples of how a lecture sounds like from 1x to 3x. "How to Save Time by Watching Videos at Higher Playback Speeds" http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-videos-at-higher-playback-speeds/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-vi...
chaosmachine 17y ago
I used to joke about playing all my music back at 105% speed. Over an average life span, you'd hear 21 CDs for every 20 normal people heard.
pkeane 17y ago
When I was in college, taking a Shakespeare course, it was standard practice to go up to the music library (where they had LPs of nice productions of the plays) and listen at 45 rpms while reading along in the Riverside Shakespeare. Worked quite well.
huffer 17y ago
Wow, I'm astonished how this seems such a good and unchallenged idea to you, guys! And you guys were so fond of the 'Teach yourself programming in 10 years' the other day... There is an inverse linear dependency between the speed of swallowing information and how deep it penetrates your skull... I mean, the (good) lecture already contains a great concentration of information and knowledge that you need to thoroughly review (ideally from different angles while throwing in additional info and reason of your own). Playing Defense Towers etc. while you're listening to a lecture? I understand that this technique is the cure for that but really, if you started by viewing the lectures while playing, my assessment is that you were not taking things seriously. And the whole idea that creeps out is that you're on a lecture-viewing marathon, trying to beat some sort of record... You know, sometimes less is more...
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  It's often claimed by speed-readers that the faster you take in the info the more you understand, because you get to a point where you have a cohesive overview faster. I've never heard anyone claim that slower intake was necessarily better and if it was then you'd be able to use the same technique to slow down a lecture to take twice as long.
  - huffer 17y ago
    A fast overview of the information laid out before you can mean indeed that you can grasp some high-level concepts before you loose your focus within the details. But it can mean no more than a summary, and maybe it can give you the intuition of where to focus more for the details (depending on the context and your personal approach); but this is usually limited to a very small segment of the presented info. On the other hand, when I meant 'slow' I was not referring to the mechanics of the video, I was referring to the pace of acquiring the information, the meaning behind the spoken words/images succession. I think the fast-paced reception of the information can lead only to an illusion of understanding; pausing the video from time to time in order to look up for more information elsewhere, rewinding some sections, etc. were closer to what I had in mind, not the slowing down of the video, as you apparently understood. I'm sorry I was not clear enough the first time, I hope now I mended my argument a little...
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
This should be a standard feature of HTML5 audio and video support. I believe the Webkit-GTK guys are already working on it with their gstreamer backend.

26 points by herdrick 17y ago

At <http://bloggingheads.tv> http://bloggingheads.tv>, their in-page flash video viewer offers 1.4X pitch-corrected playback -- but they may be accomplishing that by toggling to a second pre-accelerated video server-side. It's crazy that more sites, and especially sites with lots of lectures like Google Video, don't offer this option.

sketerpot 17y ago
I always use the 1.4x feature at BloggingHeads.tv, and it's amazing. The talk usually gets more engaging and easier to understand because you're paying more attention. It's not at all hard to understand people. This definitely needs to become standard. In fact, one of the major reasons I'm rooting for HTML5 video replacing flash video is so that a browser can add this functionality.

niels_olson 17y ago

I started the podcasting program at Tulane med school after Katrina. The informal consensus then (late 2005, early 2006, until the present) was that 1.5x was about right.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

It would be nice to do this with Mixergy, but I don't see a way to download the videos. I guess I could do it with the audio...

there 17y ago
on a page like http://mixergy.com/daniel-brusilovsky/ http://mixergy.com/daniel-brusilovsky/, there is an "original video" link under the "embed this video" link.

idlewords 17y ago

If only there were a way to convey information in some kind of compact symbolic visual format that everyone could parse at their own desired speed.

Periodic 17y ago
I'm doing this for a Database Systems course I'm currently taking. Sadly, the lecture notes are terrible. They're basically just visualizations for him to talk to and convey little to no information on their own. As such they're not only hard to read ahead with, but hard to use to review. As such, it's back to the textbook for me!

mey 17y ago

You could also use VLC (on windows) to play back the video at more then 1.0x speed.

Periodic 17y ago
Quicktime and VLC and MPlayer, and just about any reasonably well-featured video player will have the feature to adjust the playback speed.

nose 17y ago

You can increase the playback speed in VLC player. If you're using a mac, press ⌥ ⌘ →

Periodic 17y ago

Does anyone have any good tricks for downloading WMV videos at faster than real-time? The Stanford Videos come as WMV or Silverlight, and it seems I can't get them to download any faster than real time. VLC has an option to write out to a file as it plays, but even without locally showing the video it doesn't speed up.

jackfoxy 17y ago

I got turned on to overclocking lectures from Peteris Krumins’ blog, http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-videos-at-higher-playback-speeds/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-vi... Then I wrote a .NET Windows forms wrapper program around his method that controls the speed and pitch. Overclocking lectures is the only way to go.

ews 17y ago

You can do the same on mplayer on linux, pressing [ and ] to speed up / down the lecture. Being a non native English speaker, my current comfort zone is between 1.40 - 1.60 x.

vixate 17y ago
And to change the speed without changing the pitch, the "scaletempo" audio filter works pretty well: $ mplayer -af scaletempo filename

pkrumins 17y ago

I wrote about it a while ago as well. My solution is to use AviSynth. And I created examples of how a lecture sounds like from 1x to 3x. "How to Save Time by Watching Videos at Higher Playback Speeds" http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-videos-at-higher-playback-speeds/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-vi...

chaosmachine 17y ago

I used to joke about playing all my music back at 105% speed. Over an average life span, you'd hear 21 CDs for every 20 normal people heard.

pkeane 17y ago

When I was in college, taking a Shakespeare course, it was standard practice to go up to the music library (where they had LPs of nice productions of the plays) and listen at 45 rpms while reading along in the Riverside Shakespeare. Worked quite well.

huffer 17y ago

Wow, I'm astonished how this seems such a good and unchallenged idea to you, guys! And you guys were so fond of the 'Teach yourself programming in 10 years' the other day... There is an inverse linear dependency between the speed of swallowing information and how deep it penetrates your skull... I mean, the (good) lecture already contains a great concentration of information and knowledge that you need to thoroughly review (ideally from different angles while throwing in additional info and reason of your own). Playing Defense Towers etc. while you're listening to a lecture? I understand that this technique is the cure for that but really, if you started by viewing the lectures while playing, my assessment is that you were not taking things seriously. And the whole idea that creeps out is that you're on a lecture-viewing marathon, trying to beat some sort of record... You know, sometimes less is more...

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
It's often claimed by speed-readers that the faster you take in the info the more you understand, because you get to a point where you have a cohesive overview faster. I've never heard anyone claim that slower intake was necessarily better and if it was then you'd be able to use the same technique to slow down a lecture to take twice as long.
- huffer 17y ago
  A fast overview of the information laid out before you can mean indeed that you can grasp some high-level concepts before you loose your focus within the details. But it can mean no more than a summary, and maybe it can give you the intuition of where to focus more for the details (depending on the context and your personal approach); but this is usually limited to a very small segment of the presented info. On the other hand, when I meant 'slow' I was not referring to the mechanics of the video, I was referring to the pace of acquiring the information, the meaning behind the spoken words/images succession. I think the fast-paced reception of the information can lead only to an illusion of understanding; pausing the video from time to time in order to look up for more information elsewhere, rewinding some sections, etc. were closer to what I had in mind, not the slowing down of the video, as you apparently understood. I'm sorry I was not clear enough the first time, I hope now I mended my argument a little...

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

This should be a standard feature of HTML5 audio and video support. I believe the Webkit-GTK guys are already working on it with their gstreamer backend.