Feature Request - reduce power consumption by speeding up media files on download

Feature request
1

2.6.2 9e87cf611 F-Droid build

Problem you may be having, or feature you want:
The playback of a media file at an increased speed requires frequent/constant wake compared to the playback of a file which has been sped up. Using another audio player (Audioanchor) I can play the file at double speed directly or I can speed the file up in advance using FFMPEG on my computer. I do not have good data on the difference between playing a sped up mp3 or speeding it up at runtime but anecdotally it does seem to use less power to play the sped up file at single speed than to do that processing at runtime.

Suggested solution:
Have an option, perhaps global and per podcast, to download and alter the file to the intended speed for playback. Allow this to be played at single speed using the default settings and not do the conversion at runtime. Potentially keep the original file in case you change the speed during playback, but allow the conversion as a default on download.

Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details:

2

I don’t think there is any noticeable difference in battery usage. It would need a controlled lab environment to measure anything like this, because power consumption is very noisy.

Doing audio encoding on the phone is

  • Not efficient
  • Error prone
  • Less flexible during playback
  • Not working with streaming
  • Confusing to average users
  • A huge amount of work to implement
  • A huge amount of work to maintain/support