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Matrix trailer dynamically uses current time

thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com

11–20 of 198 posts

Re: Matrix trailer dynamically uses current time

#12
post #9
post #6

Huh, I wonder how they did that.

Just shooting from the hip, but streaming videos are all done as short 1-5 second chunks that are all listed in a playlist. They could have specific versions of the hour:minute with a specific playlist that includes the correct segment. When you click, the time is checked and the correct playlist is sent down the wire. Edit: I opened up the dev tools, and did not see the typical HLS style segments. I saw several MP4…

Not that many chunks, looks like the entire video is re-generated.

My browser fetched

https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/generated/v7/hi...

which is for 1:54.

Re: Matrix trailer dynamically uses current time

#14
post #9
post #6

Huh, I wonder how they did that.

Just shooting from the hip, but streaming videos are all done as short 1-5 second chunks that are all listed in a playlist. They could have specific versions of the hour:minute with a specific playlist that includes the correct segment. When you click, the time is checked and the correct playlist is sent down the wire. Edit: I opened up the dev tools, and did not see the typical HLS style segments. I saw several MP4…

Here's mine from 12:57 to confirm your hypothesis.

https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/generated/v7/hi...

Re: Matrix trailer dynamically uses current time

#16
For folks who are having problems or are in a scenario where you can't see this (issue on mobile, text only browser, always reads the comments first, don't want to click on a thing that says "trailer"), here's what the link portrays:

Overall, the page is an ad for the new Matrix movies, a teaser for some upcoming trailer. It's a white screen showing a red pill on the left and a blue pill on the right. You click on one of the pills and a video starts streaming with a voice over, a-la one of Morpheus' speeches from the original. As you see the green "matrix digital rain" falling, you'll hear the same voice over per-pill each time, with both indicating something along the lines of "are you sure about what you know?" and right after that opening voice line the video will show the current time (very seamlessly, so it seems like it's always been a part of the video) and the actor doing the voice-over says the time right then.

In my case it was 10:59am when I played the video, so the overall effect was like this:

    "Are you sure you know what you know?" ( 
No matter which you click on you get effectively the same thing, but with a different script and voice per pill color.

Re: Matrix trailer dynamically uses current time

#20

It's 07:45 PM? Oh, that's 19:45, cool. Kind of breaks the effect a bit for those of used to a 24 hour clock.

Yeah I had the same reaction. A computer would never make that kind of mistake! Somebody yell at the Squid sysadmin to kick the locale again.
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