Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>2x is a fashion statement

The top 2 voted comments including yours made me understand for the first time that some people hearing others talk about "2x benefits" perceive it as silly superhuman braggadocio. (Maybe the "2x" does sound like Patrick Bateman's American Psycho morning routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjKNbfA64EE)

Yep, I understand what your humor is trying to do.

As counterpoint, the blind have been using screen readers TTS (text-to-speech) at 2x to 3x (~300 wpm) for a long time but the masses didn't notice. (E.g. A blind programmer using TTS at 450 wpm which is about ~4x normal speaking speed: https://www.vincit.fi/en/software-development-450-words-per-...)

However, when popular websites like Youtube added "2x" speedup function to videos, the general public suddenly noticed how it made many lethargic and dull videos more bearable to watch. (Or it turns 20-minute videos that are too long and stay unwatched into more manageable 10-minute videos that are easier to digest.)

It doesn't take superhuman ability to comprehend many videos at 2x. A lot of us can just do what the blind have been doing with playback technology.

(As for those productivity maximizers who looking beyond 2x and are interested in superhuman 4x+ abilities, there may be evidence from blind people that the brain can be trained to understand extremely fast speech: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blin...)

I'm doing a certification right now and watching the videos at 1.2x. I flagged a little at 1.5x. I'm thinking I'll try 2.x0 again but in 20 minute stints and take more breaks, which could help my overall stamina given I still have hours of video to watch.

The videos themselves aren't really the problem, it's the constant repetition. "Here's what we're going to present, here were are presenting, here's a summary of what we just presented."

If we could convince curriculum developers to put out an express version of their material -- nixing the pleasantries, intros, summaries, and outros -- we'd have plenty of time to consume the entirety of it in a casual 1.0-1.2x speed-up.

I'm watching almost anything between 1.21 and 1.77 (these are the default speed-up steps in mpv - 1.1^x), depending on speaker. I just cannot keep attention to most things when played at 1x. When I miss something, I seek back a few seconds (mpv seeking is not limited to keyframes) and maybe slow down. If it's an important lecture, I watch the most critical parts later once more (maybe a week or a month later). This works better for me than watching at the original speed once. As a bonus, you get video that does not tear your eyes, as most things are still produced at only 25 or 30 FPS nowadays.

I cannot keep at 2x with almost any speakers though, neither in English nor in my native language.

What really matters is the audio resampling algorithm. I consider the default in browsers and YouTube really bad (apart from that, YT offers only 1.5 and 2x, which is too coarse). I actually prefer no "smart" resampling - just play the samples faster (and I guess low-pass them to avoid aliasing?) -- audio-pitch-correction=no in mpv is what I use. I think some adaptive algorithm that compresses spaces between syllables more than the "payload" might be great, but I have not seen any yet (suggestions?). I also have a tiny bit of hearing problems, and maybe this shifts the frequencies to a region where my "brain receiver" works better?

I also downmix all audio to mono (af=lavfi=[pan=1c|c0=0.5c0+0.5c1]), as I have problems (kind of nausea, or trying to follow the sound with my head) when listening to stereo with headphones. (I have tried to use remap-sink PulseAudio module, but it added terrible latency)

Because of this, watching anything in the browser is a terrible pain. I really wish browsers allowed you to specify an external player and pipe the stream to it. (I use youtube-dl, but of course it does not work for everything)

> However, when popular websites like Youtube added "2x" speedup function to videos, the general public suddenly noticed how it made many lethargic and dull videos more bearable to watch.

Perhaps it just means that some (many?) are watching too many videos and/or videos of a particular kind. So many people are imitating 'news voice' or waste energy and our time with production value. Most videos shouldn't even be videos at all.

It's a non problem to me. I just don't watch so many shitty videos.

>Perhaps it just means that some (many?) are watching too many videos and/or videos of a particular kind. It's a non problem to me.

A lot of videos have good visual content (how-to, etc) but the pacing and speech is too slow.

Also because of COVID, a lot of students were forced to watch video lectures and it increased awareness of using 2x as a legitimate tool to quickly process slow professors or selectively slow down to 1x only the sections that were difficult to understand.

There's modern technology now for listeners to bend the media to suit their brain rather than being forced to suffer the slow pacing of the content creator. This is why many people embrace 2x as a tool to enhance learning.

In my last couple years in college they started doing more recorded lectures. Most felt pretty good at 1.5x speed. But there was one professor that I was so glad that 3x was an option.

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