Double-speed playback for iTunes?

Question

The iPod app on the iPhone (and presumably the iPod Touch) supports playback at 2x the recorded speed. This is great for listening to talk-radio podcasts when I'm driving, as I can get about twice the information in the same amount of time.

Does iTunes itself support this kind of playback? I can't seem to find the option. I'd rather play in iTunes rather than on my iPhone when I'm at my desk.

Solution 1

Here is what Apple suggests (see "Get caught speeding"):

1. Open the selected song file with Quicktime.
2. Choose “Show A/V Controls.”
3. Move the “Playback Speed” slider at the bottom of the window to your preferred speed.

In Snow Leopard's Quicktime Player, option-click on the fast-forward button to increase speed in 10% increments.

Solution 2

Most podcasts are MP3 files. In iTunes convert the file to an AAC file (with an extension of m4a.) Change the extension to m4b and the file becomes an audiobook which can be played faster.

Source: http://forums.ilounge.com/archive/index.php/t-143990.html

Solution 3

Not quite the answer you asked for, but quite closely related and I hit this site when I was still looking for the following, so I thought a post here might do someone else a favor.

After spending a while trying to get my mp3 lectures to play at double speed on my iPhone, I finally figured out the thing that iTunes uses to tell whether the file is a podcast or audiobook is a setting in:

"File-> Get Info-> Options tab-> Media Kind"

Set that to podcast or audiobook and voila, your iPhone will give you the option of 2x speed. This is great, because you can select a bunch of tracks and change the whole lot with a few clicks.

Solution 4

I know you specifically asked about iTunes, but the free VLC media player provides playback speed control, and can play many audio formats (but not everything iTunes can).

Solution 5

If you also want to speed up video playback on your iPhone or iPad you could try Swift Player. It lets you change speeds even directly from any website, including YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jatEBbVPK7w

http://tapparatus.com/swift

If you want to change speed on the computer then the easiest way is with VLC.

http://www.videolan.org/

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Comments

[Alexander Kellett]

Can't comment on the earlier answer alas, maybe someone can move this reply in there? Rather than renaming or converting files and the like, just do a "multiple item information" change on all such files and modify Media Kind to Audiobook, after doing this the iPod Touch / iPhone / iPad all provide the speed selector (make sure you modify settings so you're actually syncing the newly placed files! that got me the first time). An app for this just came out (found it just 2 seconds ago), I've only used it once, so can't vouch for it's perfection, but it appears to work! (doesn't seem to le

[kevininspace]

Do you have the name of this app?

[jtimberman]

This is the closest to functional as it'll get.

[Casebash]

@John: -1: Answering the wrong question. You should have searched for the correct question to answer or started your own and self-answered

[jtimberman]

I'll have to give this a try :)

[Marcus]

This won't actually allow you to speed the file up in iTunes, only on an iPod or iPhone.

[Marcus]

In Quicktime Player X you can hold down option and click fast forward (or rewind) and play audio faster or slower, similar to the old Show A/V Controls. Unfortunately if you pause and play again it forgets your playback speed. Yay Apple.