With the proliferation of online multimedia content and thepopularity of multimedia streaming systems, it is increasinglyuseful to be able to skim and browse multimedia quickly. A keytechnique that enables quick browsing of multimedia istime-compression. Prior research has described how speech can betime-compressed (shortened in duration) while preserving the pitchof the audio. However, client-server systems providing thisfunctionality have not been available.In this paper, we first describe the key tradeoffs faced bydesigners of streaming multimedia systems deployingtime-compression. The implementation tradeoffs primarily impact thegranularity of time-compression supported (discrete vs. continuous)and the latency (wait-time) experienced by users after adjustingdegree of time-compression. We report results of user studiesshowing impact of these factors on the average- compression-rateachieved. We also present data on the usage patterns and benefitsof time compression. Overall, we show significant time-savings forusers and that considerable flexibility is available to thedesigners of client-server streaming systems with timecompression.