Slow-down software

There is video on You Tube of one of the songs I just started working on. Is there some software I can use to slow the playback down while I learn the song, so that I can practice at (very) slow speeds while playing along?

Thanks for any tips!

Yes, The Amazing Slow Downer. Google it. I've been using it for several years. Mark Kailana Nelson turned me on to it. He said he uses it often. It works! Has a lot of really nice features.

does it work on videos, kimosabe?

Garageband. Took me a long time to realize that the follow tempo/pitch button allows you to change the tempo and retain pitch. Audacity also does it.

Try Youtube. Click the little gear in the lower right corner. Now you can select the playback speed. .25, .5, 1, 1.5 and 2x speeds are all available. Pitch doesn't change, just tempo.

Thanks, all!! I will check out each of the options and report back after I do and let you know how it wwwww-eeee-nnnnn-tttttt. ;-)

UncleMoon said:

Try Youtube. Click the little gear in the lower left corner. Now you can select the playback speed. .25, .5, 1, 1.5 and 2x speeds are all available. Pitch doesn't change, just tempo.

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Never saw that. Seems like the obvious solution. I will try it, especially with my Formby style techniques.

PhilUSAFRet said:

Never saw that. Seems like the obvious solution. I will try it, especially with my Formby style techniques.

Click to expand...

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but when I click on the little gear all I see is an option to set the image quality. Here is the video I hoped to slow down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luL6WzF4fGU

Do others see the slow down option?

Kimosabe said:

Yes, The Amazing Slow Downer. Google it. I've been using it for several years. Mark Kailana Nelson turned me on to it. He said he uses it often. It works! Has a lot of really nice features.

Click to expand...

I've downloaded the software, but it does not seem to work with videos. I guess I could record the video using my H2N Zoom and then use the recording. I was hoping I could just put the URL for the video and "voila!" Or am I being daft and there is an easier way to do it?

This would be easier: http://www.youtube-mp3.org/. I don't know of anything that works with videos in the same manner.

Hippie Guy said:

This would be easier: http://www.youtube-mp3.org/. I don't know of anything that works with videos in the same manner.

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Thanks, Brad. I used another similar service to create the MP3 from the video. I then was easily able to open it and slow it down with AmazingSlowDowner (thanks, @Kimosabe).

I also tried with GarageBand, but I could not quite figure out how to get to the follow pitch/tempo check box even after watching a few quick how-to's. I'll have to do complete a tutorial or two before I think I can tackle GarageBand. It definitely looks like it's got some cool features and it will be a cool tool but for what I need right now, AmazingSlowDowner is simple and effective.

Thanks, everyone!

Ukulele Eddie said:

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but when I click on the little gear all I see is an option to set the image quality. Here is the video I hoped to slow down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luL6WzF4fGU

Do others see the slow down option?

Click to expand...

Yup, it's there for me:

For slowing down videos and looping them as one would with audio slow down software, there is a product called Video Surgeon. The audio does not change pitch as you slow down the video. Transcribe will handle video in a sense. At least the version I have will slow down the audio portion, but the video is not playing at the same time. I have been slowing down recordings for years to learn by ear on the guitar. My interest has always been jazz and fingerstyle guitar, and now I am learning to apply that to the ukulele. I have some hardware devices that do it well, as well as both Transcribe! and Amazing Slow Downer. They both do a very good job and have different user interfaces that might appeal to different people.

A hardware device that I would also recommend is Tascam's DR-05 handheld recorder. It is obviously a recorder that does a good job and would be a nice handy practice tool. But it also can slow down MP3s to half speed in increments without changing pitch as well as setting loop points to hear a small section repeatedly. It is easy to use, inexpensive, and uses AA batteries instead of proprietary rechargeable batteries. You will get decent battery life. You can also buy an adapter to plug in to AC. This unit uses microSD cards up to 32GB. It can connect to your computer via USB and will look like a disk drive so you can just copy over your MP3s easily. It does not handle videos though.

Tony

I don't believe it's available for all videos hosted on youtube.com

UncleMoon said:

Yup, it's there for me:

View attachment 67974

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UncleMoon said:

Yup, it's there for me:

View attachment 67974

Click to expand...

Thanks, @UncleMoon. I figured it out. Only video quality shows up in Safari. I tried Chrome and see both options.

I should point out for others that the slow down options using the "gear" are only 0.5x and 0.25x, which are too slow IMHO for what I'm trying to do and I imagine for what most people would want. 0.75x-0.8x seems to the sweet spot for me to start, and then being able to go to 0.9x or 0.95x in AmazingSlowDowner is pretty helpful.

Always Audacity, too.

The free Windows program Movie Maker allows you to control the video speed.

Import the video, click on "edit' under the Video Tools tab, then simply type in what speed you want. .8, .9, whatever.

It doesn't maintain the pitch, but for slowing down the video to see where to place your fingers, it works fine.

Movie Maker used to be one of the pre-loaded programs included in Windows but now you have to download it from Microsoft. It's pretty robust for being a freebie.

I learned something from you, Eddie. I had no idea that the slow-down feature in the cogwheel was only Chrome, and not Safari. Youtube owner, Google, wants us to use Chrome, I guess. lol. Thanks.

Ukulele Eddie said:

Thanks, @UncleMoon. I figured it out. Only video quality shows up in Safari. I tried Chrome and see both options.

I should point out for others that the slow down options using the "gear" are only 0.5x and 0.25x, which are too slow IMHO for what I'm trying to do and I imagine for what most people would want. 0.75x-0.8x seems to the sweet spot for me to start, and then being able to go to 0.9x or 0.95x in AmazingSlowDowner is pretty helpful.

Click to expand...

I use Explorer and it works there. However, you have to go to some other part first and click on that option. Just do a search and it should lead you there.

Ideally, you need to download the video of the performance, then import it into either a video editing package, or playback software that allows you to move forward and backwards by single frames (ie. just about every piece of software out there, paid or free).

Then you need to buy one of these:



http://www.amazon.com/Contour-Shutt...bs_misc_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Y4EV1QQ55T1YYB5QVS2

This will let you scroll backwards and forwards through the video more easily, to see how the piece is being played, or more easily tab it out.