adjust playback speed

[jpgob]

Accelerated playback with the scaletempo filter (no 'chipmunk' sound) is very useful, but to control speed you have 2 methods :
- either by right clicking on the speed control (in the lower right part of the window) and adjusting it, which enables fine speed control, but is not practical if you have to do it frequently
- or by asking for slower / faster playback, using the 2 buttons on the left / right of the progress bar, or the keyboard shortcuts (- and + by default) ; but then the speed increment is much too large : x1 --> x 1.5 --> x 2 --> x 3, ... ; i need finer control : 1, 1.1, 1.2, ...
So my question : is there a way to configure the speed increments that you get with the 2nd method ?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Nope.

[jpgob]

would it be possible with another skin ?
i quickly browsed the documentation about skin development, i found the faster() and slower() actions, but unfortunately without parameter ...
but, as the default interface has a slider which does what i want (set playback speed at an arbitrary value), i presume that somehow there is a method to do it, is it 'public', i mean accessible via skin developement ?

[sugardaddy]

I too would be interested in being able to change the increment by which the plus (+) shortcut speeds up the playback.

I listen to podcasts, and love that I can change the speed to shorten how long it takes to listen. But I find that the jump to 1.5x is a little too fast sometimes.

(it would be great to lower the pitch (have the tone not get chipmunky) proportionately when the speed was increased -- perhaps a special speech-speed-up mode -- but that may be too much to hope for)

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

@sugar: use scaletempo filter to correct pitch and use the speed slider to adjust the speed.

[sugardaddy]

Holy cow! That is awesome!

And for someone reading this who needs to know how to enable that filter:

1. Tolls Menu -> Preferences
2. Switch to "Advanced" view
3. Under the "Audio" section (expand it if you need to), click on "Filters" node
4. Click the checkbox by "Scale audio tempo in sync with playback rate" so it is checked.
5. Restart VLC.
6. Now when you speed it up, the pitch doesn't change!
7. Rejoice

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

It is default-enabled in 1.0

[mcmusic]

Hi,

I want to support the original request from jpgob. I am using VLC for CD music playback - for rehearsing the features speed down and up WITH pitch correction are just GREAT, really. Many thanks for that.

As the playback speed (PS) CAN be adjusted finer than the now standard PS = 1.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 with method one mentioned above, a finer resolution could be done for method two (hotkeys + and - or click right/left of the progress bar) with just one more user defineable parameter:
call this (integer) parameter say "Speed Change Resolution" SCR. It would represent the number of times you have to hit the + key until you have playback speed 2. The basic speed factor SF can be calculated by SF = 2 ** (1/SCR).

The default value could be, say, SCR = 4. Then SF = 1.189207. Each time the + key ist hit, the present PS is multiplied by the SF:

Code: Select all

hit +key PS (playback speed) not 1 1st 1.189 2nd 1.414 3rd 1.682 *4th 2.0 * 5th 2.378 etc.

People who want finer resolution just increase the user-defineable SCR value. With SCR=5 you would get
PS = 1.0 | 1.1486 | 1.319 | 1.516 | 1,741 | 2.0 etc.

Of course the same principle applies to hitting the minus key: Each time the minus key ist hit, the present PS is divided by the SF:
PS = 1.0 | 0.87 | 0.758 | 0.66 | 0.574 | 0.5 etc.

Nice sideeffect: Of course, selection of SCR=12 would increase/decrease the pitch by exactly a half tone per step if the checkbox "Scale audio tempo in sync with playback rate" is off - something what all musicians would welcome DEEPLY.

Thanks for considering this approach.

Greetings,
mcmusic

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Sorry, but this is way too complex. You can adjust the speed with the slider, with a very specific speed, why don't you like that?

What is likely to happen is that: you will have access to +/-0.1x in speed with keys and the normal 1|1.5|2... with other keys.
And you can access to the speed slider for much finer control.

[mcmusic]

Hi j-b,
thank you for your speedy reply. Amazing.

The reason for wanting keys instead of the slider is speed of operation. But of course I am glad that the functionality itself is here.

In my opinion it would be not really complicated to implement it like I proposed - to read the long post is sort of complicated, admitted.

If I understand right, you plan to make it with +10% increment steps, which is an improvement. Would it be 5,9463%, this would be exactly a semitone and preferred by me and eventually other musicians. But of course 10% steps look "nicer" for non-musicians. Please do not loose the slider in the process!

Anyway, thanks for considering the implementation of key shortcuts. I do not want to insist futher on my thoughts. Maybe others feel like commenting on it.

Greetings,
mcmusic

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

While I understand the need of 5,9463% for musician, majority of users would get insane with that...
I fail to see a good way to achieve this 5,9463%, in a not dreadful way... Because I am not sure the slider can achieve it...

[sugardaddy]

I agree with MCMusic in the sense that I would like to control it from the keyboard.

If I'm listening to a podcast, I'd rather be able to easily speed up the recording or slow it down (when I really want to focus on what's said) via keyboard, rather than mouse dragging on a tiny slider.

For instance, let's say that I were able to set it to increase the speed by 10% per click, and perhaps my typical speed to listen to podcasts is 30%. So it's three hits of my hotkey (like the plus sign) to get to where I want to be instead of trying to drag the slider to just the right spot everytime I start to listen to a podcast.

~

But I also understand coding priorities and code bloat, so I just want to say thanks for a great player, even if you never change anything else!

[Treven]

One highly used playback rate is 1.25x.

So I really recommend adding that option into the list. That would be incredibly simple and solve most peoples issues.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Use the slider for adjustement.

[Myron999]

Just wanted to add my vote in favor of an adjustable step size, for the keyboard hotkey and the speed control buttons.

I use high speed playback constantly and mostly use an IR Remote Control to control VLC, so using the speed control slider is not convenient.

Regardless, thanks for VLC.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

There _already_ are hotkeys for small adjustements.

[starkhund]

Hi, I am just wondering, if I would like to speed it up by 1.1x / 1.2x, how would I go about doing this? I went into the preferences pane and changed the audio thing there but now I can only speed it up to 1.5x. mcmusic mentioned being able to increase it by any number of increments but how does one go about doing that?

Cheers

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

no, you can speed up by 0.05x too.

[starkhund]

But how exactly do you do that?

Cheers

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Using the menus, or the hotkeys for small increase in speed.

[starkhund]

The only menu or hotkey I can find for a speed increase takes it directly from 1x straight up to 1.5x. There does not seem to be (or at least, I cannot find) any smaller increase. How can you find or alter this?

Thanks

[starkhund]

I have just had a look at the windows version and there is a slider at the bottom of the movie window that you can adjust for the playback speed. Does mac have a similar slider? How do you make it appear?

Cheers

[vlcusereerds]

Hi,

This thread was started 2.5 years ago, and I see that many people have raised the same request as the original poster, but this feature does not seems to have made it back in the product. I would like to add my voice to the many others who have asked for this feature to be considered, please. The previous posts don't necessarily articulate why this feature would be very very useful, so let me try to sum it up:

Feature request: The ability to configure the playback speed increment associated to a shortcut.

Description: At the moment, there is a slider that allows us to increment the playback speed from 1.0x to 1.1x, 1.2x, etc. However, it seems the keyboard shortcuts (+ and -) only allow to go from 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0. The request is to either change the + and - assignation to increase by .1 each time, or even better, to allow the user to CONFIGURE the increment amount (for example: .1x, or .5x).

Justification: For some people watching a movie, going from 1x to 1.5x and 2x to speed things up is acceptable. For someone like me (and probably many others) who watch way too much TV, but likes to do it quickly, I continually watch shows at 1.1, 1.2, 1.33, up to 1.5x. And, in fact, I continuously switch between those speeds depending on that is happening (dialogs vs just action), and also depending on who is speaking, etc. At the moment, the slider allow me to do this, but is VERY inconvenient because:

1- I am using a MCE Remote to control my HTPC, and I need to take out my dinovo keyboard whenever (very often) I want to change playback speed;
2- Even with my mouse, I need to first double click on the screen to EXIT full screen mode for the slider to appear, then I can change the speed, then double click again to go back to full screen mode. As you can imagine, this drives my g-f NUTS!
3- clicking and dragging a slider is not very precise, I need to do it a few times to be the exact speed I want (for some shows, 1.18x is fine, others 1.33x is ok, but when I need to click the slider and drag to select the speed, this is not easy and distracting).
4- Very often, I'll click by mistake ABOVE the playback speed slider, which means that I actually bring the playback slider almost to the end of the movie (the playback speed is all the way at the LEFT of the screen), so basically I sometimes ruin the punch of a movie because momentarily I "seeked" the playback slider to the end
5- I can't imagine this would be so complex to implement as a feature..?

So, there you have it. This feature would be very very appreciated, and I'm sure others feel the same way.

Thanks

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Do not double post.

[vlcusereerds]

Well, actually, I posted HERE first, since it was a follow-up to a thread already existing. However, I LATER realised that there was a "feature request" section of the forum, and then posted THERE, as it should have been.

In any case, for others stumbling on this post and wondering, this has been solved at : viewtopic.php?f=7&t=93001