Hi Søren and others,
To help use your tip about taking advantage of the way Quick Look will
pause playing a podcast, audiobook or other sound file if you switch
applications with Command-Tab and resume when you switch back, you can
easily switch between a track selection in the iTunes Songs Table and
its location in Finder with the Command-R shortcut for "Show in
Finder" (or navigate to the File menu on the iTunes Menu Bar and
select "Show in Finder"). This brings up a Finder window with focus
on the track you selected in iTunes. You can press space bar to play
the file with Quick Look. You can also use the usual Finder shortcuts
to navigate from this point -- for example, Command-Up Arrow to go to
the parent folder for a podcast and then move to another track by
navigating to it in Finder and starting play with Quick Look by
pressing space bar. The Command-R "Show in Finder" tip can also be
useful to people who want to use another player (e.g. VLC or Real
Audio) to play their music, but use iTunes for the convenience of
subscribing to podcasts.
Søren Jensen wrote:
One thing which I find very useful when listening to a podcast,
audiobook or other sound files with any kind of speech is if you
press command tab to switch over to another window, quicklook will
pause the file until you switch back to the quicklook window again.
This is pretty useful if you have to read a message on MSN or if
someone calls you on Skype.
Using Quick Look to play your sound files this way does have other
limitations: it won't work for audiobooks purchased from Audible.com
because the contents are protected by DRM. You can't jump to a
specific time, fast-forward, rewind, or otherwise control the time at
the playhead for sound files that you Quick Look. It won't bookmark
your location in audiobooks or podcasts if you stop in the middle and
end your Quick Look, or transfer that bookmark automatically if you
want to resume listening on an iPod. And you can't speed up the play
rate. (Well, you can't do that directly in iTunes either, but you can
use an AppleScript that will speed up playing your selection in Quick
Time player. Try Googling on "speed up podcasts Mac QuickTime" to
find the Tunecast Faster Podcast series and their Podfast
AppleScript. I used some of the AppleScripts these are based on, but
this script puts up separate windows that contain the podcast
description and the QuickTime A/V controls -- use VO-F2 to check and
select between these windows and the QuickTime player.)
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
