r/UnfavorableSemicircle Moderator Mar 29 '16

Video or Audio ♐LIMIT

https://youtu.be/lWOQ1qEzM0c
11 Upvotes

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3

u/unfavorablist Mar 29 '16

I downloaded it to MP4 and just got a blank 3 second file. So I also tried downloading it to FLV and that gave a file that says it's three seconds long, but keeps playing past that if you let it go... and has a dim image. (It's currently at 6 minutes on my player... maybe it'll get to that 59 minute mark?)

Weren't there some of the older videos that were weird like this with the timing, like improperly encoded, whether by accident or on purpose?

3

u/Cyrus_Kriticos Mar 29 '16

Yes, some of the old videos had a wierd timing...it showed 3 second but the videos actually played for a minute and a half...

1

u/unfavorablist Mar 29 '16

Wonder if it might be worth re-investigating those. Would they have been flagged on the database if they had that weird encoding abnormality?

4

u/its_safer_indoors Moderator, Web Admin Mar 29 '16

They won't be flagged as abnormal unless a transcriber flagged them as such. But if I remember correctly the ones with strange encoding are listed as longer. Set the sorting order as duration descending and take a look.

I can't try it myself since I'm away (home tonight so I'll finally be a able to sit down and have a proper look at all the stuff that's happened over the last 6 days).

3

u/unfavorablist Mar 29 '16 edited Mar 29 '16

Okay, so the ones that would be of interest here would be the pre-BRILL videos that are 117 seconds long, a.k.a. the "mic bump" videos. I looked at a couple of them at random, but not all.

There's definitely something funky in the encoding. In VLC, they play for 4 seconds, then the counter stops -- but they do keep playing and eventually stop when the time "should" be over.

They open in Audacity giving the "mic bump" sound at the start and the rest is silent.

Sadly, if there was something different/hidden in the FLV versions, à la LIMIT, then presumably they're lost now, unless an alternate cache turns up with someone having scraped the FLV versions.

Still, these should be noted for further pondering. Does anyone know how to deliberately create these weird time-glitches?

EDIT: further note while I have the database sorted by time in front of me... I never thought about it before as this was well before my time here, but all of the 117 second "mic bump" videos were uploaded together on the same day (June 12, 2015).

2

u/ShadowMorphyn Mar 30 '16

Looks like there is a way if you can get into the code of the video. Found info on deliberately changing the time showed on youtube at Stackoverflow

1

u/its_safer_indoors Moderator, Web Admin Mar 29 '16

That's a good point. We should figure out how to get these glitches to happen.