Journal timothy's Journal: Glad Tidings! No. 2: making podcasts, movies faster with VLC 5
I'm insomniac and impatient, sometimes at the same time. I find it helps me sleep to play some sort of audiobook or recorded lecture (often from EconTalk.org) in the background, or (similar to an audiobook) sometimes a movie that I know well -- like The Big Lebowski -- so I can hear the soundtrack and mentally picture each scene.
So, the glad tidings? Cross-platform media jackknife VLC has gotten much better than it was a few years ago about changing the playback speed of whatever it's playing, and since VLC plays so very many formats, that means I can (even when not trying to fall asleep) now watch downloaded YouTube videos at 130pct of their original speed, get through more of podcast or book in the same time, etc.
How to use it: Start whatever you'd like to make faster with VLC. Then, under VLC's Playback menu, select the option "Faster (fine)" (There's also plain old "Faster," "Slower," "Slower (fine)," and "Normal Speed.") Each time you select one of the (fine) choices, playback speed is affected by 10pct in the chosen direction.
Fairly obscure as a feature, I realize, but I like it. Listening to classical music (or even classic rock) probably isn't a good time for speeding up playback; listening to speakers with interesting things to say but slow voices seems like a victory. Likewise, a small percentage increase in the speed of movies doesn't seem to change my comprehension or enjoyment, but it does give me a few more minutes in which to do other things. It's amazing to me how watchable / normal Young Frankenstein looks at 150pct, but then, it's a movie I know well; at 130pct, it's not too bad, and at 110pct, I might even *prefer* the quicker version to the original.
With extreme speedup, quick-talking characters can get a bit quicker than you might like, but it's interesting how many dialog scenes seem just fine. Cars on a highway, people walking, and other action scenes become jarring much more quickly; the Bourne movies' fight scenes probably aren't well suited to even a nudge in the direction of faster. (Might be nice to have a per-movie Edit Decision List that does nothing but speed up the bits that can take it, and slow down the most interesting choreography.)
A few small gripes about this excellent feature:
- Not fine grained enough; the "fine" adjustment only goes by 10pct increments; I know it's picayune, but there are some things where I'd rather 13pct (say), because +13pct sounds fine while +20pct is too fast.
- It only works for the current thing playing (that is, the movie, or mp3, etc), rather than for the others in the playlist. I can see why that's the default, but a checkbox for "apply to rest of playlist" would please me.
Final note: I wish my car stereo ran VLC, so I could use this feature there as well.
"Making movies faster"? (Score:2)
That means creating them faster. You mean playing them faster.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't make me regret my choice of words.
timothy
Re: (Score:2)
Plz don't think I'm being a Grammar Nazi.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't think you're a Grammar Nazi -- I just think you're wrong ;) English is so flexible, it occasionally doubles back on itself, and I like that effect. "Make" is a toolkit of a word, sort of like "punk."
Also, oddly, and to get back to the topic of VLC / speed control, it seems that the OS X version of VLC doesn't have the same speed controls. That seems weird, so I need to double check, but I was just using it yesterday (friend's machine), and it had options for "Faster," and "Slower," but not the "fine