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.

Answer 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.

Answer 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

Answer 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.

Answer 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).

Answer 5

Another solution could be this hint from macworld.com

Listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed

I subscribe to far-too-many podcasts now, and I've found that most of the podcasters can actually be cleanly understood even if you speed up their speech by 50%. So, when my iTunes shows that I have 45 minutes left on a podcast, and I'd rather hear that in 30 minutes, I pull down my script menu to reveal and execute the following AppleScript (saved in my user's Library -> Scripts -> Applications -> iTunes folder as Play this song at 1.5x):

tell application "iTunes"
  pause
  set my_track to location of current track
  set my_seconds to player position
end tell

tell application "QuickTime Player"
  open my_track
  set my_movie to first movie
  set ts to time scale of my_movie
  set current time of my_movie to my_seconds * ts
  set rate of my_movie to 1.5 -- starts playing
end tell

Tried on Leopard 10.5.8.

Answer 6

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/

Answer 7

As in one of the comments, when in iTunes I selected "Get Info" on all tracks for a book, went to the "Options" tab, and changed "Media Kind" to "Audiobook", I got the 2x speedup option. No need to convert to ACC etc file (mp3 worked fine).