Hi Cheryl, You're welcome >In fact, once they are downloaded, I can actually open them with any >audio application I wish.
One advantage to using iTunes over other players for your downloaded podcasts is that iTunes remembers the playback position when you stop in the middle. To get the speeded up playback on mp3 podcasts I use an AppleScript I found on MacOSX Hints that shifts the currently playing file over to QuickTime and speeds it up. Then I shift back to iTunes with another AppleScript when I want to go back to normal speed and/or stop listening. When I resume the podcast in iTunes it starts where I left off. Save AppleScripts for iTunes in your <user name>/Library/iTunes/Scripts folder. (You may need to create the Scripts folder.) The next time you start up iTunes you'll have an additional drop-down menu item for AppleScripts that gets added after Advanced and Window just before the Help menu. I saved the two scripts as "Play this song at 1.5x" and "Play this song at 1.0x in iTunes again". You can adjust the speedup amount -- I changed this to 1.33 in my version of the script. Here's the AppleScript to speed up mp3 podcasts in QuickTime: (* Play this song at 1.5x Source: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060103000452805 Jan 6, '06 Mac OS X Hints by merlyn *) tell application "iTunes" pause set my_track to location of current track set my_seconds to player position end tell tell application "QuickTime Player" open my_track set my_movie to first movie set ts to time scale of my_movie set current time of my_movie to my_seconds * ts set rate of my_movie to 1.33 -- starts playing end tell And here's the AppleScript to resume at normal speed in iTunes: (* Resume normal speed in iTunes after using Play this song at 1.5x *) tell application "iTunes" set my_track to location of current track end tell tell application "QuickTime Player" set my_movie to first movie set ts to time scale of my_movie set my_seconds to (current time of my_movie) / ts close my_movie end tell tell application "iTunes" set player position to my_seconds play end tell Start up the Script Editor under Applications, paste the AppleScript code in, compile, then save the file under the Library/iTunes/Scripts for your user account -- e.g., as Play this song at 1.5x The source MacOSX Hints article for these AppleScripts is listed in the comment line for the 1.5x script: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060103000452805 >Actually the popup menu in the podcast tab of iTunes preferences does have >a choice to download all episodes; I didn't see it at first because it's >the top selection and the default appears to be the middle menu item. This is useful to know. I haven't upgraded to iTunes 7 so I have the older options and menu layout. Cheers, Esther
