Questions & Answers

Fast-forward playback

+8 votes
318 views
asked Oct 12, 2021 in Hardware Integration / Remote Control by moshegoldstein (1,730 points)
edited Oct 12, 2021 by moshegoldstein

So many times I've been in situations in which I wanted to playback at faster (or slower) speed than 1x.

A program that comes to mind with this feature is Adobe Premiere using the J and L hotkeys to speed up or slow down your playback (works even into reverse).

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TL;DR 

Examples where I wanted it:

  • Working on spoken projects, like podcasts, I often want to "scrub" through at 2x 4x.
  • I have an hour long track of piano playing and I want to scrub through the entire hour to decide which part should be selected to be used for a project, I want to hear the music at 2x or 4x and then slow down when I think I hear something that deserves my attention.
  • Often I try finding something specific in a track. For example, let's say the vocalist sang for 3 minutes straight but I wanted to redo just one part where their voice cracked and I don't remember where it was. If I tap-tap-tap on the Numpad+ button to "skip-ahead, listen, skip-ahead, listen" I might actually skip over the moment I was looking for! I want to hear the entire take, just faster.
  • If a vocalist wants to quickly review the structure of the song, amount of repetitions, interlude placement etc. to confirm I got the music set up the in the correct structure, they just want to quickly hum through the song at 2x.
  • Sometimes you'd want to playback at a slower speed than 1x to diagnose an issue.
  • Just ask anyone who uses Adobe Premiere proficiently and they'll tell you how often they use the J and L hotkeys to scrub faster ahead.

Additional food for thought:

There are two different options in how this feature will function:
Option 1: Speeding everything up on an audio level, the equivalent of changing the tempo of a BOUNCED song. For example, the sound of a MIDI-triggered crash that normally decays in 2 seconds will decay in 1 second.

Option 2: Speeding everything up on a digital/MIDI level, the equivalent of changing the song tempo of your project. For example, the sound of a MIDI-triggered crash that normally decays in 2 seconds will still decay in 2 seconds.

The same difference also applies to VST audio effects: Will a delay plugin set to 500ms produce the delayed sound at 500ms or 250ms? (I think 250ms makes more sense)

Which of these two options do you think is wiser? (I think option 1 makes more sense)

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