Playback Speed Control Refinements

[verdigris]

Specifically with regard to using VLC 2.2.4 to play music (MP3) tracks for ballroom dancing (but no doubt applicable in other situations), I would like the following additional features:

1. Make it possible to set the speed control before starting the play. Currently it is locked at 1.00x until the track is playing - why? This make it awkward to alter the music tempo without producing a discontinuity in the performance;
2. Provide direct keyboard input to the speed control. Current input methods are limited to predefined speed multipliers 1.00, 1.04, 1.09, 1.13... or 1.50, 2.00, 3.00... or 1.00, 1.10, 1.20, 1.30..., whereas direct keyboard input could provide any value to 0.01 resolution (or even greater?);
3. Provide a settings option to keep current speed when a track ends or to reset to 1.00x. This would allow all the tracks in a playlist to be played at the selected speed, or only one.

Additionally it would be nice to:

1. Set the playback speed as a property of items in the playlist (which, if set, overrides the current setting when the specific track starts).

The above would remove any need for me to play about with command line options or re-coding tracks with tempo adjustment built in.

Note that, for ballroom dancing, changes in pitch are less objectionable than DSP artefacts of time-stretching. I therefore operate with time-stretch turned off.

There are also applications with regard to music transposition. Shifting pitch by one semitone is approximately 1.06, which is not accessible by the current standard methods (it is available on the command line by launching VLC using the command "vlc --rate 1.06").