So I’ve been reading up on / talking to people about speeding up the playback of podcasts.  You can play them through mplayer (CLI version) and press ] to increase the speed, but the people end up sounding like chipmunks.  Whilst this may be an improvement for Dann, other people sound terrible this way.

SoX is a cool command that will sort this out for you.  You can increase the ‘tempo’ without adjusting the pitch.  I want to have a script to amend this that can be called after bashpodder so it’s a one-stop-shop to fix everything.

To install SoX (and let it handle MP3 files):

sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-mp3

So far I have:

#!/bin/bash
##################################################
#
#                       LICENSE
#
##################################################
#
# Xoke's Speed Increase script for Podcasts
# Copyright (C) 2009 Xoke
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

# I added a bit of a version control section here to mark any changes to the code
##################################################
#
#                       Versions
#
##################################################
#
# Ver    Date            Author        Description
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 0.1        Sep 2009    Xoke        Initial Version

# Increase tempo of podcasts for today
#    Issues:
#        Assumes bashpodder is running
#        Probably has issues being run twice in one day
#        Doesn't tidy up after itself
#        mp3s become *.mp3.ogg

# Make script crontab friendly:
cd $(dirname $0)

# Speed Increase - change this to change
# the speed.
incspeedby=1.5

# datadir is the directory you want podcasts saved to:
datadir=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)

# Move into directory
cd $datadir

# Find all the MP3s
list=`ls *.mp3`
for currfile in $list
do
 echo $currfile
 # Process them
 sox $currfile z$currfile.ogg tempo $incspeedby
done

# Find all the OGGs
list=`ls *.ogg`
for currfile in $list
do
 echo $currfile
 # Process them
 sox $currfile z$currfile tempo $incspeedby
done

This will go into the current date directory, as per bashpodder.  This means if you run it twice in one day it will have problems as it will try to increase the tempo of the files already increased… which will be a problem.  It will convert mp3 files to ogg as the Jaunty version of SoX does not come with MP3 export capabilities.  This means HPR069.mp3 becomes zHPR069.mp3.ogg which is a little annoying, but not a huge problem.  The files all get a ‘z’ appended to the front, as I didn’t want to delete the old files without testing this on a lot of different files!  The next version (after lots of testing) will remove the old files and tidy things up!  Also this takes a while to run to convert files.

If you think 1.5x speed is too fast (or too slow if you’re Kajarii!) then you can change the incspeedby variable to change both mp3 and ogg.

Apart from that, I posted it here and not under ‘tips’ so everyone on the planet can look and let me know if I’m missing something, or if there is a better way of doing it.  I did google however most people are converting the MP3s to WAV files to increase the tempo and then recompress them!

I think we need to try to reach a compromise with them, to increase the amount of public domain works.  If we turn around and say everything must be Creative Commons, they will block us.  We need to give them a reason to give up some work.  Which would be an improvement.

To that end, I have put some thought into this.  I discussed some of this on a Cranks episode a while back, but wanted to put out a post and start some discussion on it.  I’m not claiming this is perfect.  I’m not saying I’m right on these ideas.  This is just currently what I think would be at least mildly interesting to all parties.  Also I’m interested in your feedback.  Just don’t say ‘its crap’ and leave it at that, please explain what you think needs improvement.  The idea being we want something better then what we have, not something perfect.  Then once we have something better, we can try to improve on that again and so on.

The number of years I list here I just picked a number for, basically.  These can be changed based on the return.  I know that most things that are released get most of their sales in the first few years, so the idea would be that this number of years would be where 99% of the return is.

1. If you release a new work, unless otherwise stated (e.g. releasing it under a CC license), you get an immediate copyright for ten years.
2. If you re-release something, unless it contains 51% or more new content, copyright is not extended.  If it is something new, copyright is extended for another ten years.  It must be in an equivalent form however.
3. Fair use should be clarified for everyone.  If you mash-up a song or use a song (e.g. in a YouTube video) you have to give attribution to the original creator, however if the income you make from that work is under a thousand dollars, it is fair use.  All existing ‘fair use’ stuff stays!
4. If another type of media creates a work based off of your copyrighted work (e.g. a movie is made from your book) then that extends your copyright on the book for ten years as long as the book is still under copyright.

The reasons for these, I mention below.

1. This way things fall out of copyright faster, meaning more work in the public domain that people can use to create new works, just like everyone has done for ever.  I’ll take this song someone made and put new lyrics on, or mash the music up etc.  This is my ‘use it or lose it’ clause.
2. This I dub the ‘Disney’ clause.  This way, as long as Disney makes a new Mickey Mouse movie every decade (not just a rehash, hence the 51%) they get to keep copyright on it.  Yes, this is probably a bad idea as they can have copyright forever on Mickey Mouse, however this way they should be on our side for this.  Otherwise they will continue to press for longer and longer copyright so Mickey Mouse does not fall out of copyright.  They can’t however just release a one minute Mickey cartoon to extend the copyright.  It must be a series of 30 minutes cartoons, or a movie, like they have done in the past.
3. I pick a thousand as I think some people will argue that it’s on YouTube or your website or whatever and you are getting ad revenue in therefore it is commercial.  Picking a small amount of profit should avoid this, as long as it’s a small site and for ‘personal use’.  If you have a huge site, you can’t just put other peoples stuff on there and make money off the ads!
4. This one was after I heard about Forest Gump.  The book didn’t do too well, but when the movie came out the book sold a ton more.  Actually I have no idea if it was in the ‘ten years’ my ideas would make the copyright, but I feel we should allow this to try to increase ‘buy in’ as it were.

I’m sure I’m missing things in here.  Would movie studios wait for ten years after a book is made to try to snap it up for free?  Perhaps, but a rival studio could pick it up beforehand too.

I’m not sure how CDs would work.  What if a band releases a ‘best of’ album.  Should that extend the copyright on the work or not?  I think it should, somehow.  But we can’t just say a re-release extends copyright else you simply release a ‘new’ best of CD every 10 years and have perma-copyright.  Anyone got a better idea?

I also like this ‘use it or lose it’ idea for patents.  There are too many patent trolls around.  If you are not using the patent actively then it should become public domain.

Email me, catch me in IRC, or phone me or whatever to let me know what you think.  Again, just to repeat myself, constructive critisism please.  I know this is not a perfect solution!  But if you have ideas on how to improve these ideas, let me know.  It has to be something that the RIAA / MPAA etc would go for, though and not just a ‘release everything under a CC’ license.  Whilst I think that would be cool, Disney etc would not go for it.