Enounce MySpeed

[dnevets]

I try to watch an episode of a Chinese TV show every day. So far that has included 非诚勿扰， 蜗居， 媳妇的美好时代 and now I'm onto 落地请开手机. Since leaving China and coming back to the UK I've noticed that my listening skills (and speaking skills, and reading skills, and... ) have 退步ed a little, which means I don't catch as much of the TV show as I really should - either the speech is just slightly to fast, or the subtitles disappear off screen before I read to the end of the line. In some scenes this is fine asI still know what is going on. But in some scenes... I just get totally lost.

I googled ways to change the playback speed of online video and found this thing called Enounce MySpeed (http://www.enounce.com/myspeed). I've downloaded the 7-day free trial and can confirm that it works great when watching shows on Tudou. I find that if I set the speed to 80% I can understand (listening and reading) *much* more, so today I'll probably try it on 90%. It's amazing how much difference it makes... my comprehension of what was going on onscreen went up significantly, which means I actually get to enjoy the show, instead of spending periods of 1-2 minutes wondering what the devil is going on and hoping that the next scene will be easier to understand.

Now perhaps the real answer is simply to study harder, watch more TV, and get myself back up to speed. But... in the meantime my enjoyment of the TV shows drops to zero, which doesn't do much for motivation. So my current plan is to watch another episode at 80%, then maybe put it up to 90% for a while. Hopefully I'll be back up to 100% in the not-too-distant future. If you like a challenge you could always speed it up to faster than normal speed ^_^.

Unless anyone knows of another, similar service available free, I'll be forking out the $30 for the full version of this, I think it's great.

I should add that when you change the speed, the pitch is automatically altered (ie. they don't talk like slow-motion robots, or chipmunks), so it still sounds natural. And visually, slowing down to 90% or even 80% doesn't really seem to produce a massive difference.

I would imagine this tool would be great when starting a new show - watch the first few episodes at 80/90%, to make sure you're picking up all the background/setting info that is needed to enjoy the following episodes, then put it back to 100% once you're confident that you know what's going on.

[Shelley]

Hello,

I understand how much it helps. there is a site called Slow Chinese. It is very good for this sort of thing. This is a link, http://www.slow-chinese.com/ It is very good. Shelley

[BertR]

VLC ( http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ ) allows you to slow-down videos. You can download the videos from sites such as Tudou, Youku, ... with the Firefox Add-on DownloadHelper ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/ ).

[dnevets]

VLC... can it slow down the video without lowering the pitch of the voices? (Or speed them up without turning them into chipmunks?)

[BertR]

It sounds pretty naturally to me. You can try it, the software is all free...

[luozhen]

I just watch it again and I think that's the best method.

[jbradfor]

the Firefox Add-on DownloadHelper ( https://addons.mozil...downloadhelper/ ).

AWESOME. This is what I've been wanting for a while, but was too lazy to search for it.

Adobe, in their infinite stupidity, does not seem to use HW video acceleration much. And my laptop is too old to run video full screen without hardware acceleration. So using flash to watch Chinese TV programs, my choices are either big-and-jerky, or small-and-can't-read-subtitles.

With this plug-in I can just download it, and then view it in vlc, which will do full-screen flawlessly.

Happy camper, happy camper.

[dnevets]

Tried VLC today, and running things at 90% does not interfere with the pitch, or at least not noticeably so.

Interestingly, I was using Enounce MySpeed to watch something on Tudou last night. I thought I was doing quite well, so decided to push the speed back up to 100%. And then realised I had been watching it at normal speed anyway... I thought I had it set on 90%, but obviously not. So problem solved then - I don't need this tool as much as I thought I did!

[jbradfor]

Not so awesome.

I didn't realize at the time, but the video files downloaded via DownloadHelper are not the complete episodes (I should have guessed by how quickly they downloaded....).

Anyone have suggestions on how to download the entire episodes of, say, these: http://tv.sohu.com/s2010/mhsj/ . I'd really like to be able to have full screen non jerky viewing.....

[jbradfor]

I found the answer to my own question. Once I realized the English name of the site was sohu (and not sougou, in spite of the 搜狗 in the upper left...... oh, that's not 狗, that's 狐. Well, that's explains it!), a quick search on google and I found the following: http://www.windows7d...-/cyavgdnn.html

It is unfortunately Internet Explorer only, but it does work with windows XP.

It seems to d/l those files just fine (as flv files), and vlc plays them fine.

[BertR]

I also have incomplete videos from time to time with DownloadHelper. This is typically because the connection with the server where the video is hosted is unreliable (which is often the case for Chinese websites when you are outside China). When the connection is interrupted the downloading stops (the software doesn't retry).

When I try again some time later, it most of the time works.

[jbradfor]

For sohu, it seems more than just that. First, it seems that each episode is actually stored as four separate files on their servers. DownloadHelper seems to only recognize the one that is currently playing. Also, the amount of the episode I get using DownloadHelper is too consistent to be a download hiccup.

[imron]

Yep, sites like youku and sohu split their clips into multiple chunks, which presumably helps manage their bandwidth (I've noticed that at most one chunk will load at a time if for example you leave the video paused and go away for a while/browse other sites etc).

[AlexBlackman]

flvcd.com is another way to download videos

Since youku.com blocks viewers from outside of China, it is very useful.

As far as I know, the videos on tudou.com are all in one file.