Author Topic: (More) Easily adjustable playback speed  (Read 11409 times)

Joanna

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It's great that the possibility to change the playback speed has been implemented in MusicBee.

However, it is still quite unhandy. In order to change the speed, one has to click on the equalizer, scroll down DSP Plugins (at least with my laptop's resolution), click on Tempo Control and manually set the speed.

For those of us who use the function a lot with different settings for different stuff, it's not an optimal solution. Plus, if you see that you've set it  too slow/too fast, you have to go back and do the whole thing all over again, hoping for better results.

When is the playback speed important?
- audiobooks
- podcasts
- language learning materials
- in some cases even for music (e.g. practicing playing a song)

In my case, I learn a couple of languages and tend to slow down the audiobooks/podcasts in the languages I don't know well yet. On the other hand, there are always some audiobooks or podcasts that are just way too slow (you literally feel the time you're wasting if listening at the regular speed, or you just get bored).

What could be done to improve the user experience?

Here just a couple of ideas:

- adding an optional button that takes you directly to the speed regulation slider
- defining 'custom speeds' (e.g. 5 different settings) to be easily accessed directly from the player
- setting the speed per medium type (so that if you've set e.g. slower/faster speed for podcasts, your music is not affected)
- setting custom speed per podcast/audiobook (that's what's done e.g. in the Android app 'Podcast Addict') - very convenient, as in most cases the speed of a given podcasts/audiobook does not change a lot
- changing the speed dynamically while modifyng the slider position (for easier adjustments)

Basically, any kind of (semi-)automatization/customization/easier access to the speed control feature would be very much appreciated.

Maroli

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+10
This is the only thing keeping me from using Musicbee to listen to audiobooks and podcasts.
Only being able to set 3 hotkeys to incrementally speed up 5%, speed down 5%, and one to normalize speed would help a lot.

loop09

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I fully agree. Having hotkeys would be soooo nice. I'm willing to throw in 10 € via paypal...

Steven

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There already are hotkeys for Player: Tempo Increase (10%) and Decrease (10%)

Bonghi

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Hello Steven,

I'm an enthusiastic recent user of MusicBee.

I've not found a way to control tempo from a plugin, via the API.
If it wasn't too difficult I'd ask to extend the API for:

Ideally:
- Getting current tempo speed.
- Setting a specific tempo.

Otherwise (if easier, since you already have key shortcuts for increasing and decreasing 10%):
- Reset to normal speed
- Increase tempo (with optional percentage)
- Decrease tempo (with optional percentage)

I would be using this in a plugin I've started to develop for playing back presentations with images synced to speech for educational purposes, and I'd like to give users an option to set speed arbitrarily, and view the current setting.

As a side effect I should also be able to produce an open source plugin that does what Joanna asks here. I'd give it a good try.

Thanks!

Claudio
Last Edit: April 04, 2020, 10:40:13 AM by Bonghi

xbliss

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There already are hotkeys for Player: Tempo Increase (10%) and Decrease (10%)

Can you please point to where this is documented for easy access? I seem to had to click many many times to get to this::

https://www.reddit.com/r/musicbee/comments/4oildd/is_there_a_way_to_change_playback_speed_in/
The equalizer has a native tempo plugin
Preferences -> Player -> Equaliser & DSP... -> [Lower Half]

Its too cumbersome and not easy to go up and down in tempo for any track.

Zak

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Edit > Preferences > Hotkeys >
You can assign shortcut keys to Player: Tempo Increase/Decrease
Bee excellent to each other...

Steven

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for the next v3.4 update I have added 2 hotkeys:
Code
Player: Tempo Preset: Set
Player: Tempo Preset: Use

Player: Tempo Preset: Set - sets the tempo preset to the current tempo
Player: Tempo Preset: Use - sets the tempo to the last saved tempo preset value