In October last year, Netflix announced that they were testing a most peculiar feature: watching series and movies at slower speeds of up to 0.5x or higher speeds of up to 1.5x. A somewhat controversial decision that for some filmmakers involved destroying their work. But the tests seem to have been successful, Netflix has decided to start implementing the functionality for all users.
As announced by the company, it will allow any user to select the speed at which they want to play the series or movies. This option is or will be available along with the rest of the player controls such as the selection of subtitles. At the moment they are going to start to deploy it in the Android app and it will soon also come to iOS and the web player. The option can be used both in streaming and in downloaded titles for offline viewing. It is a gradual deployment that arrives from this Monday, August 3.
Essentially what Netflix allows is to choose between five different speeds: 0.5x, 0.75x, 1x (normal speed), 1.25x, and 1.5x. Once the speed is chosen, that video that we are watching will play at that speed, although when changing to another it will return to 1x as the default speed to prevent someone from accidentally seeing all the titles at a different speed.
Given the concerns of creators
This is what Netflix affirms, which has taken into account the different opinions reflected by professionals in the audiovisual sector. These opinions have not been few and in general terms express that a distributor such as Netflix should not modify the works by offering them to the consumer. Netflix states that:
- They don’t include it on big screens like TVs.
- They correct the pitch of the voices that is changed by changing the speed.
- It always returns to the default speed when changing titles.
They argue that certain organizations for people with accessibility difficulties have welcomed this functionality by allowing certain users to be able to read the subtitles more easily or have the option of hearing the sound faster. In any case, they indicate that:
“Most important of all, our tests show that consumers value the flexibility it provides, whether it’s looking back at their favorite scene or slowing things down because they are watching captions or are hard of hearing.”