Quick Question

[LarDutes]

I was watching Knight of the Drones on Sci- fi today and I have a quick question. Do they Speed up the tapes sometimes, at times KITT sounded like he sucked on a party balloon. Just wondering. Thanks

[hot knight]

Hey I don't notice things like that. Ijust enjoy watching the show

[Michael Pajaro]

Some TV stations do use time-compression as a way to speed up shows and make more room commercials, rather than editing scenes out. Typically it isn't simply a matter of speeding up the tape however; the image and sound gets processed to keep the pitch the same. (I've seen equipment to do this at our television engineering convention every year.) I'd have to check, but it's something like 8% speed-up isn't supposed to be detectable by the average viewer, but beyond that people will start to notice.

All that being said, I don't know if Sci-Fi did anything to Knight Rider. If you have a specific line of dialog, maybe we can take a look at it and compare it to an earlier tape.

[LarDutes]

After KITT is blown up and michael goes back to semi and says he is going to see margo anyway , the talk between him and devon sounded fast .

[Michael Pajaro]

Interesting.. I see, or rather, HEAR what you mean.

http://www.knightridermovie.com/mpegs/drones1.mov

The clip matches the exact length of a clip from a syndicated episode I have from 10 years ago or so, but I guess it's possible (but unlikely) it was sped up back then.

http://www.knightridermovie.com/mpegs/drones2.mov


Another explanation is that the voices we're hearing aren't the ones from that scene; it's fairly common for actors to return to sound stages and re-record their dialog. That could explain why Bonnie's voice does sound faster when she isn't on screen.

Not sure about this one, but it's an excellent observation.

[Lost Knight]

I should also add that some of the more obvious cases where the tape is sped up are in scenes where K.I.T.T. is supposed to be traveling fast. The problem the producers always had with this was that it threw off the speed of the scanner and made it appear that it moved faster than it really does. It is far less noticeable when KITT is in Super Pursuit Mode however, because the scanner is less visible. The most common cases you can notice the tape is sped up are in the closing credit sequence to season 2 and 3 episodes with KITT in the desert.

[neps]

While I agree with you that they speed up the tape when KITT was driving fast, I always thought the scanner itself was supposed to speed up when he was going fast. Kinda like someone breathing hard when they're running. The more noticable effect is the items around KITT also speeding up when the tape goes fast.

In regards to the original question, couldn't it be possibly blamed on the editing systems back then? They really didn't have time codes, and without a mouth as a frame of reference it might have been sped up unintentially.

[Lost Knight]

I always kind of thought of it that way myself, neps. To back that up more, K.I.T.T.'s scanner does move faster purposely (without the tape being sped up) when he goes into Surveillance Mode.

[LarDutes]

Well I'm glad to know I was not hearing things. Thanks for giving it a look