# Super Bowl Halftime looks pre-recorded



## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

Why does it look that way?

Not technically why, by why do they 

make it look pre-recorded instead of

looking like live TV? Why do they do that?

It makes it look stupid(er).


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

It's a different framerate.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Lights out!


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

That could apply to my guys now. .... Dang. A long long road to get back in the game.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Looking better for you ...


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Yes, an intense Q 4..... I hope.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Sure got my wish! Outcome not so great but what a game


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

Gotta like Ferguson's power failure comedy bit. (At least they didn't change the framerate for that!)


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

Not to mention a better glimpse of the SF Cheerleaders.


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## renbutler (Oct 17, 2008)

I wish the blackout had occurred during the halftime show. That was brutal.

If I want to see that much in-your-face sexuality, I hear there are web sites where I can find it after the football game is over. 

It's not really a morality issue for me. I just think that sexiness is better with some amount of subtlety.


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## TMan (Oct 31, 2007)

Well, if they gave out Grammys for hip thrusting abilities...


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

Ray Lewis killed the lights.


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## Virginian (Jun 14, 2006)

I don't care of performance, it just doesn't deserve my time to comment.

But sound quality was horrible! I would fire the entire sound engineering team, what a flop!


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> Why does it look that way?
> 
> Not technically why, by why do they
> 
> ...


The comercials were a snore, seemed tamed.


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## the_batman (Sep 20, 2007)

Backup singing was recorded. No one was on stage singing backups, just dancing. You would thing New Orleans have their own favorite sons and daughters that could put on a local flavor show.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

Hoosier205 said:


> It's a different framerate.


Vanity filters? I heard GMA and the Today Show employ them.


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

machavez00;3175351 said:


> Vanity filters? I heard GMA and the Today Show employ them.


No. Just a different frame rate for the halftime show. They did the same thing last year.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Hoosier205 said:


> No. Just a different frame rate for the halftime show. They did the same thing last year.


I don't recall last year's show having such a "film look" effect in terms of screwy color saturation and color balance.

Using 24fps transcoded video with LASER light shows and fireworks seems wrong on many levels.

I watched the DIRECTV LIL version from KOIN and it was not stellar PQ; lots of blotchy patching in the darker areas (especially the purple wainscot). AFAIK, KOIN has no subchannels. I was not able to compare the OTA, DISH or Comcast feeds so maybe it was just the TV calibration.


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

harsh;3175406 said:


> I don't recall last year's show having such a "film look" effect in terms of screwy color saturation and color balance.


Color saturation and/or balance are not tied to the frame rate...so I'm not sure what your "in terms of" comment is getting at. There weren't any issues with saturation or balance anyway, so it must be an issue with whatever you were watching it on. I'm assuming you weren't at home.


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## Maruuk (Dec 5, 2007)

Re: Canned--there more and more canned elements in these shows: backup singers, musical tracks, pre-recorded graphical effects, etc. such that it's becoming a moot point almost whether or not a singer is singing in realtime. Besides, they have realtime autocorrect now so even in concert you're not REALLY hearing that singer's live voice. It's all getting highly processed/pitch-corrected/doubled/EQ'd etc before the voice even comes out of the PA speakers.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Hoosier205 said:


> Color saturation and/or balance are not tied to the frame rate...so I'm not sure what your "in terms of" comment is getting at.


You insisted that the reason that the Beyonce show looked like a pre-recorded package was because they shifted the frame rate.


> There weren't any issues with saturation or balance anyway, so it must be an issue with whatever you were watching it on. I'm assuming you weren't at home.


The remarkable difference in contrast and color saturation is what made me (and others) suspect that it wasn't "live" or was otherwise noticeably filtered. It looked like it had been shot on film.

The rest of the coverage (pre, in and post-game) and commercials looked like a little too much compressed HD (although the TV brightness was too high) so I doubt the viewing setup was the direct cause of the film look halftime show.


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

harsh;3176348 said:


> You insisted that the reason that the Beyonce show looked like a pre-recorded package was because they shifted the frame rate.The remarkable difference in contrast and color saturation is what made me (and others) suspect that it wasn't "live" or was otherwise noticeably filtered. It looked like it had been shot on film.
> 
> The rest of the coverage (pre, in and post-game) and commercials looked like a little too much compressed HD (although the TV brightness was too high) so I doubt the viewing setup was the direct cause of the film look halftime show.


It was not shot on film. The frame rate is different. That is the only reason it appeared to have a film-like appearance. There were no issues with color saturation or balance.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

What were the frame rates used for the game, the commercials and the halftime show (respectively)?


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## 456521 (Jul 6, 2007)

James Long said:


> What were the frame rates used for the game, the commercials and the halftime show (respectively)?


I guess it's one thing for someone to state something as fact, but when asked to provide data......radio silence.


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

James Long;3176633 said:


> What were the frame rates used for the game, the commercials and the halftime show (respectively)?


23.976 fps for the halftime show. 29.97 fps for everything else. They do this for the Victoria's Secret show each year as well.


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## 456521 (Jul 6, 2007)

Hoosier205 said:


> 23.976 fps for the halftime show. 29.97 fps for everything else. They do this for the Victoria's Secret show each year as well.


Thanks!


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## Maruuk (Dec 5, 2007)

What's the point of it, just to create a classic film-look?


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

Maruuk said:


> What's the point of it, just to create a classic film-look?


That's precisely my original question. Like I said, it's a stupid look for live television. If it's _supposed _to look like a filmed concert, maybe one can get used to it given enough time.

I could also try to guess that there might be other reasons than artistic choice. I do remember the first HD broadcast of VSFS and the picture was pretty badly blocked up by the overuse of strobe lights.

It could also be to save bandwidth for people to download to phones.

IMO the only advantage of "film-look" to the average user is when saving to DVD and playing back on an old 480 progressive TV, the picture looks a bit sharper.


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## Maruuk (Dec 5, 2007)

Film-look is very psychological. Folks associate film with iconic, classic images that rise above cheap, live, hi-def video. It's the problem with the new Hobbit film at 48 fps, folks are saying it looks like a cheap afternoon soap opera because it's so over-crisp, video-looking and live-appearing. It cheapens the perception of the image. Video = cheap and disposable. Film = Metavalues and quality.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Hoosier205 said:


> It was not shot on film. The frame rate is different. That is the only reason it appeared to have a film-like appearance. There were no issues with color saturation or balance.


There were huge issues with the color saturation and balance. Issues that you insist could not be attributed to frame rate.

Live video, regardless of frame rate, should look like live video, right?

For their part, Canon offers a CINE mode:


Canon HD10 literature said:


> The separate CINE setting on the HG10 adjusts the color and tonal characteristics of the image, giving the look and feel of a movie shown in a theater.


This is separate and apart from the funky sampling done to get a 24fps recording laid on tape at 60fps interlaced.

So while changing the frame rate changes the frame rate, it takes some proc amp wizardry to truly achieve the look and feel of film.


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

harsh;3177432 said:


> There were huge issues with the color saturation and balance. Issues that you insist could not be attributed to frame rate.


What (display) did you view these supposed "issues" on?



harsh;3177432 said:


> This is separate and apart from the funky sampling done to get a 24fps recording laid on tape at 60fps interlaced.


60 fps? Want to try that again? That's HFR territory.


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## Maruuk (Dec 5, 2007)

Still, the quickest path to film-look is 24fps.


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

Thought I'd bump this thread. I still have the same gripe and don't understand why change the framerate look? Could you imagine how crappy the game would look if it were juddered like that?

I'm sure that there's way more than framerate to complain about (not much left to degrade in this particular case - unless you're a KP fan - ) but this issue just irks me. NBC does this for their "live broadcast" holiday performances, too (_SOM, PP_). Not only you get jerky picture, but any movement of the camera causes very bad blurring in this mode.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Perhaps it's your TV. My Sammy plasma had no ill artifacts.


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

Laxguy said:


> Perhaps it's your TV. My Sammy plasma had no ill artifacts.


Looked pretty smooth on my Samsung DLP too.


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

There's nothing wrong with my display. This was crappy and juddered. The rest of the game looked fantastic, PQ-wise. Judder just completely destroys the feel of live TV. 

There were maybe a couple of overhead shots featuring slower movement that didn't seem to suffer as much. But the rest of the show... Yuck!


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> There's nothing wrong with my display. This was crappy and juddered. The rest of the game looked fantastic, PQ-wise. Judder just completely destroys the feel of live TV.


Does the fact that others don't experience judder on the same show might mean that the problem lies in your setup, most likely the display?
What is your setup?


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

FWIW, i did not notice anything either on my set up. It looked smooth


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> There's nothing wrong with my display. This was crappy and juddered. The rest of the game looked fantastic, PQ-wise. Judder just completely destroys the feel of live TV.
> 
> There were maybe a couple of overhead shots featuring slower movement that didn't seem to suffer as much. But the rest of the show... Yuck!


Lowest common denominator..... No one else has the issue, only you.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Laxguy said:


> Perhaps it's your TV. My Sammy plasma had no ill artifacts.


I was watching a poorly tuned Samsung plasma on Comcast and there were a couple of kinds of artifacts. It was not a good experience.


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## jimmie57 (Jun 26, 2010)

I recorded the game and I watched the halftime show again last night and I did not have a problem at all with it.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

harsh said:


> I was watching a poorly tuned Samsung plasma on Comcast and there were a couple of kinds of artifacts. It was not a good experience.


Key words being Comcast and poorly tuned, no?

What got into you to put up with such nonsense??


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

jimmie57 said:


> I recorded the game and I watched the halftime show again last night and I did not have a problem at all with it.


... other than the sharks doing the macarana ...


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

I guess either no one else is all that much bothered by falsely-introduced judder (and enjoy the fake film-look) or you all have displays with interpolating frame rate software that works like it's supposed to. (Some lower-end displays with this ability don't do it all that well, and the picture can tear and suffer.) My set has no such software. What's broadcast is what I get. If I had it I would enable it and perhaps I wouldn't be complaining here. As I've said, the rest of the broadcast wasn't a problem for me at all.


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> I guess either no one else is all that much bothered by falsely-introduced judder (and enjoy the fake film-look)


I would be bothered if it was actually there.


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Like the others have said none of us had the issue. Could you tell us who your provider is, and what equipment you were watching it on, that might help us figure out why you saw the issue.

I did have some problems with macroblocking during some of the scenes where there were a lot of different colors moving around rapidly, but that is not frame rate issues. That is most likely my local channel bitstarving the broadcast.


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

Ok. One last rant on this topic and I think I'll be ready to "put this baby to bed." If you you've not read this thread from the beginning then you might not be understanding of my major gripe here (with apologies to Hoosier205 - who "gets" it, BTW - because I _am_ whining. And to Harsh: I do believe that this year the saturation _may _have been messed with, as well.)

All I can say is that if you're not bothered by "judder" than most likely you have no problems with the way these halftime shows look (yes, I *know* I'm in the minority, here). Either that, or your set is correcting this intentional "artifact" - restoring the original motion - or your vision simply doesn't detect the difference between 60 field-per-second (or frames, in the case of 720p) and 30 or 24fps, or (probably like most folks) you simply don't care (nor should you, necessarily).

Since I was very young I understood the apparent differences between live (and/or videotaped) 60 field-per-second TV signals and programming that consisted of filmed content by the way they looked on television, even though I had little knowledge of the technical processes involved ("how nice for me" right?).

I guess I'm just an old stick-in-the-mud and I believe that "live" TV ought to _*look*_ live, and not juddered whether or not trying to "look" like film. I'm also aware of the reverse being true when folks don't like the effect that "smooth-motion"-type processing creates when watching films on TV, sometimes called "the soap opera-effect."

While pondering this topic today, I decided to go a few years back into my "archives" and view a few halftime shows past. These are my observations-based on appearance (and playing around with FBF):

2011 [FOX] Super Bowl XLV (2011) Fergie & the Peas: No Judder [left intact at 60fps]

2012 [NBC] Super Bowl XLVI (2012) Madonna: Juddered to 30fps

2013 [CBS] Super Bowl XLVII (2013) Beyonce: Juddered to 30fps

2014 [FOX] Super Bowl XLVIII (2014) Bruno Mars: No Judder

2015 [NBC] Super Bowl XLVIIII (2015) Katy Perry: Juddered to 30fps - except for one direct overhead shot when the "retro" swimwear ladies were lying down.

The only "legitimate" reason I can possibly come up with for why this might be being done may have something to do with making a 60 field-per-second video more easily transmitted for streaming to other devices. Heck, even I know that my older smart phone can't handle 60fps - it barely deals with 30. I just wish that if this is the case they would do it "downstream" of the broadcast rather than "upstream." I want the full 60fps "live" TV experience on my TV!

(I also went back into "Grandma's DVR" to re-asses her original recording of NBC's "First broadcast of its kind in over 50 years" - which looked anything _but_ live - of the _The Sound Of Music Live!_ [2013] It, too, was "juddered" down to 30 [probably for the same "streaming" reasons]. It looked awful, and IIRC I've most likely got a rant in that associated thread for the same reason.)

I'm going to relent now and live with these from here on out. I believe there may be ways to "fix" these after the fact, maybe even with downloadable software (or a different display that has it built-in).

It's nice to have a place to vent about these "silly" things where many of us take our TV viewing a bit too seriously, and many, *many* thanks go to those trying to help and that have helped us in the past to deal with our frustrations. 

P.S. For those still interested, when I started this thread my two main HDTVs were direct-view CRTs, and my current set is a lower-cost LG 60" 1080p plasma, mfd in late 2013 and deployed last spring. It's connected by HDMI to DirecTV HD service. I'm well aware that although it says 600Hz "sub field driving" on the box, this is just a "gimmick" that keeps the plasma going or something, and has little to do with actual refresh rate of the picture. It's 60Hz. However, I'll restate here that PQ of the game itself looked spectacular (as well as almost any other HD programming viewed on this set).

Look, I'm _not_ disagreeing that the PQ of the halftimes isn't "bad," I just don't like judder in my live TV broadcasts. It's a personal thing. Thanks, again.

P.P.S. I've got three sources of NBC HD (all through D*sat): E/W (NY/LA) and KARE (TC, MN). All pretty much the same PQ (but I was tuned mostly to WC [LA] so we could see the "over-hyped-about" Carl's "no hormones" commercial).


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> All I can say is that if you're not bothered by "judder" than most likely you have no problems with the way these halftime shows look


It's impossible to be bothered by something that doesn't exist.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

RunnerFL said:


> It's impossible to be bothered by something that doesn't exist.


Then logically, the problem must have existed.

That some video processors dealt with it doesn't mean it didn't exist. The 2013 Samsung TV I was watching was set to "sear" and the distraction was considerable.


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## tsmacro (Apr 28, 2005)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> 2011 [FOX] Super Bowl XLV (2011) Fergie & the Peas: No Judder [left intact at 60fps]
> 
> 2012 [NBC] Super Bowl XLVI (2012) Madonna: Juddered to 30fps
> 
> ...


So it doesn't happen the years that Fox has the Superbowl according to your above info. Sounds like you need to let NBC and CBS know how you feel about "judder".


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

harsh said:


> Then logically, the problem must have existed.
> 
> That some video processors dealt with it doesn't mean it didn't exist. The 2013 Samsung TV I was watching was set to "sear" and the distraction was considerable.


It's more likely that it wasn't there and the processor in his tv created it.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Delroy E Walleye said:


> 2011 [FOX] Super Bowl XLV (2011) Fergie & the Peas: No Judder [left intact at 60fps]
> 
> 2012 [NBC] Super Bowl XLVI (2012) Madonna: Juddered to 30fps
> 
> ...





tsmacro said:


> So it doesn't happen the years that Fox has the Superbowl according to your above info. Sounds like you need to let NBC and CBS know how you feel about "judder".


Isn't Fox 720p (60 frames per second) with NBC and CBS being 1080i (30 full frames per second)?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

RunnerFL said:


> It's more likely that it wasn't there and the processor in his tv created it.


The rest of the game looked as good as one might expect from NBC and Comcast.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

harsh said:


> The rest of the game looked as good as one might expect from NBC and Comcast.


but that is not a fair comparison as those folks did not have the tv in question.

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

peds48 said:


> but that is not a fair comparison as those folks did not have the tv in question.


Limiting the comparison to a single variable is the best I (or, I daresay, anyone else) can do. That variable is whether the halftime show is playing or not. All other parameters were more or less invariant.


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## Delroy E Walleye (Jun 9, 2012)

I've given a little more thought as to why this "judder" process might be bothering me. Maybe it's simply a process of being "psychologically-used-to" decades of TV pictures being only the equivalents of either 60fps (live or taped video) *or* 24fps (film). It could very well be that my psyche simply doesn't do a very good job of accepting this relatively new phenomonen of an "apparent" 30fps, causing a feeling of discomfort.

Perhaps if they went all the way to a complete "film-look" at 24fps - with properly-added motion-blur - I would find it more acceptable. Who knows?... (Even George Lucas understood the importance of motion-blur to create a more "natural" viewing experience when using his motion control systems in filmmaking.) But for me, blur can also be part of the "problem" if it doesn't "look" (or "feel") right.

It also occurs to me (as mentioned before) that many folks these days (particularly fans of HD) likely have sets with refresh rates of 120 (or even 240) Hz, but now I've reasoned maybe the better of these sets could actually be _improving_ the Halftime Show to the point that it looks even better than the game itself (to them)! I'm sure that by starting with a "cleaned-up" and "de-interlaced" image these sets have a "better" source to start with to make this "motion-smoothing" process look even better! (I'll find out - if and when I upgrade to a "faster" set.)

Delroy E. "the over-user of punctuation and finally ready to give it a rest (but I said that last time)" Walleye


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