Wow! Esther and others,
I am going to make every effort to follow these amazing directions.
This is going to push my Mac skills to the limit. I'm looking forward to
adding this capability to iTunes.
I'm very grateful, and slightly intimidated by this undertaking. I'm glad the
list support is out there!
ERic Caron
On Feb 23, 2012, at 10:34 PM, Esther wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> You wrote:
>
>> So am I right that this is not a option on the Mac in iTunes?
>> Thanks again! I'm off to power through some podcast listening.
>
>
> iTunes can't change the speed of playback, but VLC and QuickTime Player can.
> The version of QuickTime Player that was used by default before Snow Leopard,
> and which is now called QuickTime Player 7, has an A/V (audio/visual) control
> window. You show or hide it with the shortcut Command-K, and there are
> sliders that let you adjust playback speed, along with volume, balance,
> treble, bass, pitch, along with video brightness, color, and tint. This is
> AppleScriptable, so what I do is use a pair of AppleScripts to switch between
> playing a track in iTunes and Quick Time Player 7.
>
> The first AppleScript pauses iTunes, notes the time into the track where
> playing was paused, then starts QuickTime Player 7 playing at that time at a
> faster rate of my choosing. Here it is coded for 2 times speed, pasted in
> below:
>
> (*
> Play selected track in QuickTime at 2x speed
> Source: Mac OS X hints Jan 6, 2006 Play this podcast at 1.5x
> http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060103000452805
> *)
> tell application "iTunes"
> try
> pause
> set my_track to location of current track
> set my_seconds to player position
> on error
> set my_track to location of item 1 of selection
> set my_seconds to 0
> end try
> end tell
>
> tell application "QuickTime Player 7"
> open my_track
> set my_movie to first document
> set sound volume of my_movie to 256 --set volume to 100%
> set ts to time scale of my_movie
> set current time of my_movie to my_seconds * ts
> set rate of my_movie to 2.0 -- starts playing
> activate
> end tell
>
> The second AppleScript handles passing control back to iTunes, and notes the
> current playing position from QuickTime Player 7, so that when you go back to
> the track in iTunes its bookmarked position will resume from where you left
> off in QuickTime Player 7. If you play to the end of a podcast in QuickTime
> Player 7, the time will be set to the beginning of the podcast when you
> switch back to iTunes, just as though you had played through the podcast in
> iTunes. One warning is that you have to keep the track that is playing in
> iTunes as the current track, in order to correctly pass back the time with
> the second AppleScript. I don't imagine people will try navigating to
> different podcasts, radio streams, etc. in iTunes while listening to the
> speeded up podcast or audiobook in QuickTime Player 7, but in principle, they
> could. Here's the pasted in version of the AppleScript to return control to
> iTunes at normal playback speed:
>
> tell application "iTunes"
> set my_track to location of current track
> end tell
>
> tell application "QuickTime Player 7"
> set my_movie to first document
> 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
>
> The same AppleScripts can be used in Leopard and Tiger, with the name of the
> application in the script set to "QuickTime Player" instead of "QuickTime
> Player 7". If you have Lion, you'll have to download QuickTime Player 7 to
> use these AppleScripts. Snow Leopard users will find it on their install
> DVDs. Here's the Knowledge Base Article on "Installing QuickTime Player 7 on
> Mac OS X v.10.6 or Later" that describes the process and has a download link
> for Lion:
> http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3678
>
> To set up your speed-up solution in Lion:
> 1. Get QuickTime Player 7 and install it from:
> http://support.apple.com/kb/DL923
> 2. Open AppleScript editor from your Utilities folder (in Finder
> Command-Shift-U, then type "a p" and Command-Down arrow to launch the
> AppleScript editor).
> 3. Set your AppleScripts to display in the status menu bar in preferences by
> pressing Command-Comma, then navigating to "Show Script menu in menu bar" and
> checking this option (VO-Space). You can check this works by using VO-M-M or
> Control-F8 to navigate to the status menu bar. VoiceOver should say,
> "AppleScript", and if you arrow down the menu you'll find "Open Scripts
> Folder" and "Open AppleScript Editor", followed by category folders of
> AppleScripts in the "/Library/Scripts" folder on your Mac. This is the
> "Computer Scripts Folder" that is one of the submenu options to open under
> "Open Scripts Folder", and is also where the VoiceOver scripts for "Time of
> Day" are stored (under the VoiceOver category folder at the bottom of the
> list). Press escape to leave navigating the menu options and return to your
> AppleScript preferences and continue navigating through the options of the
> General tab. By default, the "Show Computer scripts" box is checked, which is
> what gives you
ac
> cess to the list of folders from the status menu bar. You may optionally
> select the radio button to show application scripts at "top". This can
> slightly speed up navigation to scripts you add to the menu, by placing them
> before the category folders. Command-W to close the preferences window.
>
> 4. Copy and paste in the scripts into the AppleScript editor window. I use
> comment lines that start with a left parenthesis followed by a star, and that
> end with a star followed by a right parenthesis, to remind me that the
> current speed is set to 2x and give source of this AppleScript's MacOSX hints
> article, but you can skip over these in the first script and use VO-down
> arrow in mail to navigate to the "tell application "iTunes"" line, then make
> sure you're at start of the line with Command-left arrow. Hold down the
> Shift key for selection, then start arrowing down until you get to the end of
> the script. You can keep arrowing down until you reach my text description,
> just to be sure you've gotten everything, and then up arrow again so that the
> last highlighted line is the "end tell" command. As long as you continue to
> hold down the Shift key while pressing Up or Down arrow, you can continue to
> move forwards and backwards to refine your selection. When you've selecte
d
> the whole script, release the Shift key and press Command-C to copy. Then
> Command-Tab to switch back to the AppleScript editor, and paste the script in
> with Command-V. If you want to break this up into steps, you can always copy
> and paste your AppleScript selection in to a TextEdit file to review, then
> undertake using the AppleScript Editor at a later time. (I frequently just
> save parts of tasks I want to work on in TextEdit files.)
>
> 5. To check things are working before I save the AppleScript, I'll first
> start a podcast playing in iTunes. Then I'll switch back to the AppleScript
> Editor window with Command-tab and use Command-R to run the script (rather
> than just compiling it with Command-K). If this works as it should, QuickTime
> Player 7 will be launched, and you'll start hearing the same podcast playing
> at faster speed in QuickTime Player 7. I'll actually paste the first script
> to speed up playing into the AppleScript Editor, then open a second window
> with Command-N, and paste the second AppleScript to resume iTunes playback
> before starting my playback checks. So after using Command-R to run the
> first script, and hearing the podcast play at speed, I'll use Command-accent
> (where accent is the leftmost key in the row of number on an English language
> input keyboard) to switch to the second AppleScript Editor window, and press
> Command-R to run it, and check whether playback transfers back to iTunes at
n
> ormal speed.
>
> 6. Save your AppleScripts using Command-S under names you select, e.g. "Play
> Faster" and "Normal Speed". I use Command-Shift-G in Finder to navigate to
> my account's Library folder by typing:
> ~/Library/
> into the dialog window and pressing return. Then I create a folder named
> "Scripts". (This may not be case sensitive, but I use a capital "S"). I
> save these scripts to my "User Scripts File" -- the location pointed to under
> the AppleScript menu. You can also save these to the general /Library/Scripts
> folder of your hard drive, if you have permission to write in that folder.
> 6a. Incidentally, I found a really quick way to make the Library folder under
> my account visible under Lion that does not involve typing a command in
> Terminal or getting TinkerTool to configure this. Go to Doug's AppleScripts
> for iTunes web page that describes "Installing AppleScripts under OS X Lion":
> http://dougscripts.com/itunes/2011/07/installing-applescripts-under-os-x-lion/
> 6b. Navigate to the link for "download this AppleScript applet" and download
> the file (Option-Return).
> 6c. Open the "Show Downloads" window in Safari with Command-Option-L and
> navigate to the group, interact twice to get to the "Make Users Library
> Folder Visible" downloaded item group items, and navigate (VO-Right arrow) to
> the "Show in Finder" button then press (VO-Space).
> 6d. Command-Down arrow to launch the applet in Finder. Your Library folder is
> now visible. (This took a few seconds to do, and much longer to type out
> instructions.)
>
> 7. You can now use these AppleScripts to speed up and slow down your
> listening of podcasts and audiobooks. Start a podcast, audiobook, or movie
> track playing in iTunes, then navigate to the AppleScripts menu and select
> your "Play Faster" AppleScript to shift playback to QuickTime Player 7. Then
> select the "Normal Speed" AppleScript to shift back to iTunes and record
> your current position before pausing/stopping.
>
> There are some limitations on this: QuickTime Player can only be used on
> tracks without DRM, so Audible audiobooks or books purchased from the iTunes
> Store cannot be sped up this way. Neither can you use this to speed up
> commercial movies or TV shows that you purchase, but video clips without DRM
> will work. Also, I assume you use the "Get Info" (Command-I) shortcut to
> change the "Media Kind" pop up menu setting of your tracks to "Podcast" or
> "Audiobook" on the Option tab, and to check the boxes for "Remember playback
> position" and "Skip when shuffling". If I download Eric's podcast about list
> recorder from its Dropbox location and add it to my iTunes library, it will
> go into my Music library, and will start playing from the beginning of the
> track, because iTunes has no way of distinguishing this as a podcast unless
> you make the changes.
>
> The AppleScripts menu on the status menu bar can be accessed from any app, so
> you can navigate to other applications and work while listening to the
> podcast. You can do more complicated setups that involved assigning keyboard
> shortcuts or making these AppleScripts into Services with Automator instead.
> This is just a very basic way to solve the problem.
>
> If you want to read more about this basis these AppleScripts, check out the
> Mac OS X Hints web page from 2006 on "Listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed":
> http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060103000452805
>
> HTH. Cheers,
>
> Esther
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