Filed under: Podcasts, iPhone, iPod touch
Inside iPhone 3.0: Enhanced controls for podcast & audiobook playback
It's on the master list of 3.0 features, but we've been sent enough tips and suggestions about it to conclude that the advanced podcast/audiobook controls came as a pleasant surprise for lots of iPhone and iPod touch owners who upgraded.
In the 3.0 version, from the playback display for a podcast, tapping the screen brings up a set of expert controls: a button to email a link to the podcast's page on iTunes; a 30-second "What's that, now?" instant rewind button; and a playback speed control to give you 1/2 speed, normal or 2x "FedEx mode" playback.
The scrubber bar itself has been given a charge, even though it doesn't look any different until you tap it; it displays the relative playback position within the episode being played. Dragging horizontally gives you high-speed scrubbing (previously known as "just plain old scrubbing"), but if you keep your finger on the screen and drag down, your scrub rate lowers step by step through half-speed, quarter-speed and 'fine scrubbing.' This detail control makes it a lot easier to cue up a particular spot in a long show or book chapter.
I've started to enjoy listening to some of my longer subscriptions in 2x mode, especially when I have a fixed amount of time to listen to the podcast but I still want to cover as much of it as I can. Even shorter news-centric podcasts can sometimes benefit from a speed boost. If any of you try out the 2x mode on an audiobook, do let us know how it works for you.
Surprisingly, I find myself using the 'email this' button quite a lot, especially to let friends and family know about some of my favorite shows. I imagine they'll be getting tired of that pretty soon.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
chrisacoyne said 8:58AM on 6-21-2009
Also, if you press and hold your finger between the pause and skip button you will scrub fast forward or on left fast reverse.
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bibi-pov said 8:48AM on 6-21-2009
Damn, I didn't spot that one, but this is exactly the way I describe how the scrub bar should behave more than a year ago in a post on their forums. Damn you Apple, where are my royalties!
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koschate said 8:58AM on 6-21-2009
The double-speed option for audiobooks has always been there, but it was buried in the settings app. This made it a little inconvenient, but one could still use it. I've always used it for audiobooks, and I welcome the ability to use it for podcasts. I've been using double-speed for all my podcasts and it's been great to be able to zip through them in half the time. Of course, it doesn't work to well for theme music and sound effects, but you can't have everything!
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jbrown510 said 4:39PM on 6-21-2009
I was going to say the same thing... it's always been there for Audio Books, just buried.
I however have always wished there was a step or two between 1x and 2x. I find 2x a little too fast most of the time. Trying it out now though 2x on 3.0 doesn't seem quite as fast as 2x was on 2.2.1. Maybe they changed it and it's now really 1.5x, but labeled 2x. Might just be me and what I'm testing it on though.
daneel said 9:44AM on 6-21-2009
All these features are fine and dandy but the iPhone is still missing one of the basic features any podcast playing device should have - episode descriptions/podcast notes. A lot of podcasts use this space to give a bunch of useful info relating to the podcast and I find it essential. And while it can be accessed from any ol' iPod (except the shuffle of course), the iPhone has no provision for it.
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Nathan said 10:17AM on 6-21-2009
hmm, I know the maccast has notes in the podcast that are viewable on the iphone (i read them a lot)... maybe the iphone only supports AAC based notes? no clue.
daneel said 11:13AM on 6-21-2009
The only possible explanation is that Mac-cast add their show notes to the lyrics part of the metadata which displays fine on iPhones. That's what really irritates me. If it can show lyrics, which is essentially the same thing (plain text), then why not show notes ?
Bob said 10:06AM on 6-21-2009
The 2x podcast setting is too compressed for reasonable comprehension, especially in noisy environments. I wish they'd add a 1.5x option.
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Jordan Schooler said 12:56PM on 6-21-2009
Actually, it is 1.5x, but they just labeled it 2x. If you play a segment while timing it you'll see.
JD said 12:59PM on 6-21-2009
Agreed. The speed-up algorithm that Apple uses, in particular, is bad above about 1.8 speed -- I can hear various echoey artifacts appearing which make it even harder to understand than the speed alone would do. I'd very much like a 1.5 and 1.75 rate, and if possible, a better algorithm, like the ones in Amazing Slow Downer (it can also speed up). Does anyone know any terminal tricks for the jailbroken set that could change the sped-up speed? Quicktime can do it on a continuous scale, so the player in there can probably do it, if we can figure out how to tell it to.
JD said 1:03PM on 6-21-2009
@Jordan Schooler
Ah, that's nice to know. I generally make things 1.7 or so, but 1.5 should be usable. Do you know if there is a way to do this for generic MP3s (as my ripped audiobooks are formatted), or do I have to go through some rigamarole to convert the format first? (In which case, I'd just as well use Amazing Slow Downer's nicer speed-up algorithm to begin with.)
Nathan said 10:15AM on 6-21-2009
I sold my 30GB iPod Video (5.5gen) when I got my 16GB iPhone 3g. Besides the the space being cut in half, the biggest thing I missed was 2x on audiobooks!
I love 2x because it forces you to process faster and really focus on what is being said. At my previous job I was on the road a lot, so listening to audiobooks on my ipod was amazing.
Actually, it was listening to Getting Things Done and the 4 Hour Work Week that got me out of that job and and pushed me to be an Apple Specialist for a local small business and enterprise level Apple-centric consulting firm.
Glad the feature has been added to the iPhone, it seems to be working well so far.
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Martin said 10:20AM on 6-21-2009
It should be noted that not all podcasts will have an email link, as they have to have the URL somewhere in the feed (but most do).
I think that the scrubbing speed adjustments is brilliant.
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thezonie said 10:43AM on 6-21-2009
The new scrubbing feature is also in the iPod video player, but I do wish they would have added the 30-second repeat as well.
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the old man said 10:54AM on 6-21-2009
I already knew about this, but it was still extremely fun to read, Mr. Rose.
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DanE said 1:00PM on 6-21-2009
2x actually (at least for my podcasts) is more like 1.5x. i use it a LOT - as someone mentioned it saves a ton of time.
however i think this option eats batterie power comparable to video display.
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Richard Flynn said 11:10AM on 6-21-2009
I discovered this afternoon that the variable-speed scrubbing is also available when you are playing video through a TV (via the Dock connector). It’s not available when watching video on the phone itself, though.
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thezonie said 12:57PM on 6-21-2009
Sure it is. It works on both YouTube and iPod videos.
Samuel Minter said 1:00PM on 6-21-2009
I am loving the double time feature as well, but this feature does have a bug if you have unchecked the "Skip When Shuffling" option on a podcast, and then try to shuffle a playlist including podcasts. You can actually crash the iPod app, and definitely don't get the expected results (listening to your podcasts in a shuffled order). I posted details on how to reproduce this here:
http://www.abulsme.com/comments.php?id=2483_0_1_0_C
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carride said 7:36PM on 7-13-2009
I had the same problem with the IPhone Music application crashing while using playlists containing podcasts. Use a MP3 ID3 tag editor that can edit the Extended Tags. If you remove the ITUNESPODCAST tags the problem will be resolved when playing these podcasts on the IPhone.