I’m learning a foreign language; Chinese, in my case, although I guess this is
immaterial for my question. As part of learning homework, I have to visualize
some videos recorded in that language. Whether I use Windows Media Player, VLC,
or any other of the many available programs, some of the conversations are too
fast for me. The PC does not allow me (or maybe it’s just I don’t know how to
do it) to slow it down.
The question: I would not care about losing video image quality at all; but
would still like to slow down the reproduction of sounds and voices, so as to
be able to listen to them at a slower rate. How can I slow down reproduction
rate?
In this excerpt from
Answercast #14, I take a look at the playback menu in VLC player and find
the setting to slow down a video recording.
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Slow down a video
Actually, one of the tools that you mentioned should be able to solve this
problem.
I just fired up VLC Media Player and on the Playback menu, there is an item
called “Speed.” Speed has five different settings: faster, faster fine
(whatever that means), normal speed, slower and slower fine.
So, I would suggest that you try playing this in VLC media player. At some
point, go ahead and pause the video; hit the Playback menu and look for this
speed option there under. I’m hoping, I’m guessing that’s going to do exactly
what you’re looking for.
Video quality may suffer
As you say, it may affect the video quality, but it should slow down the
audio in a way that should make it easier for you to listen to.
I learned Sanskrit, the Indian language this way. I took some texts and two tape recorders from Sony. This was about 1980,and you will have to check, but then it was possible to get a tape recorder with finely adjustable speed–it was just a dial,which increased and decreased at will. I would listen to the text I wanted to learn,on one tape recorder, and if it was too hard,I would record it on the other tape recorder going much faster than normal. When replayed at normal speed, the sound came out very much slower. I could in this way listen,pause, return to a hard passage,listen, etc.
To adjust the speed of playback in VLC media player, try hitting “[” to slow down, “]” to speed up, 10% at a time.