Time-saving Trick for Faster Podcast Listening

Whether you want to learn spanish, follow NPR, or hear the positions of Barack Obama, podcasts are a great way to learn about a subject quickly. As an information junkie, I employ a little ninja trick when I fall behind on listening to my podcast subscriptions. This post will cover how to create an Applescript so that you can playback podcasts faster.

The first time I saw the Tivo, I was transfixed. Tivo was a game changer. Bloated one hour episodes were magically reduced to 45 minutes of commercial-free programming. Tivo changed the way people watched television.  Television addicts rejoiced. It also became a valuable tool for Tivo’s time-deprived customers to skip the fluff.  Advertisers were no longer guaranteed eyeballs and as a consequence, traditional ad revenue models began to deteriorate.

The Tivo proved that technology could bring control to our content and allow for its use in more flexible and efficient ways. Alas, this Applescript accomplishes the same thing for podcasts by increasing the speed and reducing the time it takes to digest audio content.

Will I still be able to understand the recording?

Conventional thinking would suggest that speeding up the playback would make the recording sound like this.  Surprisingly, that isn’t the case and the quality of the audio is understandable. If you can adapt to the faster pace, this hack is guaranteed to save time.

What are the limitations?

While it may be obvious, Applescripts are only applicable to the Mac OS. Second, if you have iTunes streaming to your stereo, this Applescript utilizes Quicktime and playback will occur over the computer’s default speakers. Finally, this isn’t a solution for the iPod or iPhone. There are extension tweaks for those devices that will allow you to increase playback speed of AAC files, but that’s for another day.

Ok, what’s the hack?

• Goto Finder and open the application “Script Editor” and select New from the File menu.

• Paste the following code into the Script Editor. {Playback speed is controlled in second line from bottom.}

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 document
    set ts to time scale of my_movie
    set current time of my_movie to my_seconds * ts
    set rate of my_movie to 1.4 — starts playing
end tell

• Create a folder called iTunes in your ‘User/Library/Scripts’ folder

• Save the script to the newly created folder

• Launch iTunes, select a podcast, launch the script from your menu bar

• Listen

One more thing to remember. You need to go into the Applescript Utility and make sure “Show Scripts Menu in Menu Bar” is checked. Otherwise, you won’t see the icon in your menu bar. So there you have it. A tech trick from a relative newbie in the world of Applescripts. Enjoy.

P.S. If you have found or written any other good scripts for iTunes or have a better (simpler) way to speed up podcasts, leave a comment!