Speed up playback
I have heard of some other apps that play voice such as audio books and podcasts are able to speed up the playback but not distort the words too much, not sure if it is simply speeding up everything and it plays back faster or if it is a more complex algorithm that reduces space between words and modifies the pitch as it speeds up voices.
Either way it would be awesome to be able to listen to my podcasts faster, I don't have enough time to get through them all.
-Jeff
That's a good idea, I have seen this feature in some players on win mobile. I'd love to be able to get through twice as many podcasts in the same amount of time.
I did some digging and the media player that comes with android doesn't support setting the playback rate. Someone posted a feature request for it though in the google groups. There is another android class for handling audio that does support setting the playback rate but it's not suitable for the way DC plays audio. It's designed for gaming audio. I would imagine that either android will be extended to support this type of thing though.
I'll create a mantis issue for this and keep looking for updates related to playback speed.
The ability to speed up playback speed is the only thing that is stopping me from buying Doggcatcher and telling all my friends about it, everything else looks amazing!
I have been using TCPMP/Core Player (Core Player is not available for Android 2) for the past three years on Windows Mobile, listening to podcasts at 160% speed. This allows me to get through a lot of podcasts during my daily commute. Verizon has finally stepped into the big time with the Droid, which I jumped at as soon as I could get it (by the way the Droid is awesome!). The only lacking thing an mp3 player that I can speed up during playback.
Doggcatcher, which is the natural choice to use for podcasts, so I would like to request that you add in the ability to speed up playback. Here are the specs...
- give the user the ability to adjust the playback speed from 100% to 200% in intervals of 5% in the settings (some podcasters talk very fast already)
- could use the current play/pause button, but I would recommend a additional button that looks like +>
- don't worry about pitch shifting, chipmunks are fine
Best regards,
Ken
Yep, I also used core on winmo. It's a useful feature to have.
We'll have to hope that we soon see added support for this in the android media player. Until that's completed, devs don't have the capability of adding that feature, but I'll surely take a look once the capability is there.
Thanks for the feedback.
Eric, thanks for your response. I went ahead and bought DoggCatcher anyaway, nice product! If the method below is available in Android 2.0 and you can make it work, I will be your new marketing department. =)
I'm not a coder, but found the following on
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/AudioTrack.html#set...
Best regards,
Ken
public int setPlaybackRate (int sampleRateInHz)
Since: API Level 3
Sets the playback sample rate for this track. This sets the sampling rate at which the audio data will be consumed and played back, not the original sampling rate of the content. Setting it to half the sample rate of the content will cause the playback to last twice as long, but will also result in a negative pitch shift. The valid sample rate range if from 1Hz to twice the value returned by getNativeOutputSampleRate(int).
I have to admit I was pretty hopeful when I saw your post.
That api become available in 1.5, however it doesn't seem that it can be used with the android media player which is what DC uses for media playback. It looks like more of a low level api specifically addressing raw media in PCM format. One could probably use it to build a mediaplayer from the ground up, but that might be a daunting task.
What I had expected to see in the market but haven't is an advanced audio player. I used to use windows mobile, where I used a podcatcher and a separate media player with lots of advanced features.
If that api becomes available to the media player I would definitely be interested in taking advantage of it.
Thanks for the feedback.
I'll continue to search and keep hope alive. =)
Just tossing this in - FWIW
I have been using Astro Player to plow through some long podcasts. But it is a pain to download with doggcatcher, search for the file, then play it with astro player.
Maybe you could hire the astro people to show you how they do 2x. It works great, just wish it was in doggcatcher.
DC is a great program. I really love it. Just wishing for the 2x.
I would also really like this feature to be added. Either 1.5 or 2 times speed options. Thanks.
Hi,
I'm deciding on a podcasting program and was hoping to wait for
someone to have this functionality. Any development on this? You know
Astro Player (I think) does double-speed...is that helpful?
Thanks!