Fade in and out of iTunes?

September 18, 2011 4:24 PM

How can I fade in and out in the most recent version of iTunes?

I'm talking about fading in and out of silence, not crossfading between songs. Before I upgraded to Lion and iTunes 10, I had modified this script, and launched it with Quicksilver. It was great — no more sudden pauses, I could instead fade out with a keystroke, then fade back in with the same keystroke.

Unfortunately, with the upgrades, the script no longer seems to work. Instead of fading in or out, it doesn't modify the volume, but just pauses/unpauses after the same 2-sec period.

I don't know if iTunes' scripting capabilities have changed, but that seems the most likely option. I'm just surprised I can't find anything about it online. I'd gladly pay a few bucks for a one-trick-pony app, but not even the thrice-accursed Mac App Store seems to have anything. Any ideas?

posted by electric_counterpoint to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I did a cursory scan of Doug's AppleScripts but didn't turn up any bug reports like what you're mentioning.

I just copied and pasted the applicable lines from the script you linked to into a new script and it fades my copy of iTunes out just fine. Have you tried just a barebones script like this, just to see what happens?

tell application "iTunes"
	set savedVolume to the sound volume	
	repeat with i from savedVolume to 0 by -1
		set the sound volume to i
		delay 0.01
	end repeat
end tell

Does something like that work? Do you get any errors in the Event Log of the script editor?
posted by bcwinters at 5:15 PM on September 18, 2011

Response by poster: @bcwinters — thanks, hadn't tried this basic troubleshooting. It turns out your script, and the one I linked to, still work fine.

From a little bit more troubleshooting, it seems like the problem is actually trying to launch the script (or the Applescript app) with a keyboard shortcut, as an Automator service. Running the script from Script Editor works fine, saving it as an app and launching it from Finder works fine. Even choosing it from the Services menu works fine. The keyboard shortcut seems to be what breaks it...
posted by electric_counterpoint at 7:13 PM on September 18, 2011

Response by poster: Okay, problem solved. It turns out the trouble was with the Mac keyboard shortcut app Spark, which I'd downloaded to replace QuickSilver and promptly forgot about. For whatever reason, disabling and re-enabling the shortcut seems to have worked.

Now that I've remembered it's running , I think I'll leave it. Part of me hates having so many launchers running (LaunchBar for QS-like searches, Spark for hotkeys, BetterTouchTool to fix a weird mouse issue), but I don't notice the performance hit, and I'm not inclined to mess with this rickety system much more tonight.
posted by electric_counterpoint at 10:20 PM on September 18, 2011