Help save me time in Garageband

August 31, 2009 7:01 AM

Is it possible to have GarageBand ('09) play faster when editing without impacting the output?

I use Garageband to create enhanced versions of my podcasts, which is a feature my listeners have told me they love, but boy is it time consuming!

When editing my podcasts in Audacity I usually listen at about 1.6x saving me a lot of time.

In Garageband all I have to do is listen to the shows for certain things to be said and then insert an image or chapter point. I was wondering if there was a feature in Garageband that would let me listen to the track on "fast forward" like 1.5x etc. but only for the "preview", when I export the track I don't want to sound like hyper chipmunks. And speeding up the track then slowing it back down won't work because I'd then lose all the time markers for chapters I'd worked so hard to make.

Can this be done? Browsing through the documentation, etc. has not netted me any gains, but it's perhaps the least useful documentation I've ever seen.

Thanks Mefites!

posted by arniec to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Listen in audacity and write down the times of each image or point?
posted by katrielalex at 7:20 AM on August 31

Not an ideal solution. Unfortunately not every change is right at a second marker or even a quarter second. So while I could do this and then jump to a "close point" I'd then have to play in Garageband to sync the exact location. This idea may save me some time, but not as much as a Garageband-native solution.
posted by arniec at 8:33 AM on August 31

I haven't done podcasts, but with regular recordings you can just change the tempo from, say, 120 to maybe 220. This will speed up all of the existing tracks. Set your points, then set the tempo back to 120.

Would that work?
posted by crapples at 8:49 AM on August 31

I tried it, and changing the tempo did not change the speed of playback for some reason. As I changed the tempo, the zoom in the work window changed, but when I hit play the playback speed was the same.
posted by arniec at 8:39 AM on September 2