Proposal for <podcast:Speed> tag

[genen]

I've mentioned this informally to Adam and Dave, but here is the formal proposal.

Add a podcast:speed tag which is set by the podcast creator or producer to indicate the default podcast speed for podcast player Apps that are capable of varying playback speeds. This would only be the default value and used the first time the podcast is added to the podcast App to set the playback speed. If the user ever changes that value, the App should track the last value and never overwrite that value based on this tag unless the podcast is removed and then readded.

<podcast:speed>125</podcast:speed> (optional)

Speed is an integer number in the whole percent of suggested playback speed from 100 to 500 (100%-500% playback)
The tag should be immediately before the podcast:funding tag.

Podcast App would expect to only see values of 100..500, or no tag at all. It would be up to the podcast App to determine if its playback functionality is capable of rendering audio without distortion within those parameters, and adjust parameters to be within its bounds if it is not capable of exact tag speed value. Any value not convertible to an integer should be discarded. Any integer value outside min and max values should be set to min or max value it is closest to.

The benefit of this tag is keeping full playback speed control in the hands of listeners, while at the same time allowing them - by not changing the setting after it is pulled from the tag - to listen to the podcast in the way the creator or producer intended.

Without this tag, it is always assumed that the podcast should be listened to at 1X speed. If the producer wanted to speed up the podcast to fit a specific time or create a faster flow regardless of the time the best they could hope for right now is to add such text to a description or to pre-accelerate the podcast in post-production before publishing, which would serve the same goal but would reduce quality if a podcast is slowed down during playback without sufficient data in the audio file for full resolution.

Including this optional tag in the standard will future proof the RSS format as players become better at processing audio and more people experience podcasts at the speed the creator intended while being recorded at a slower speed. The lack of the tag in older feeds will not affect podcast Apps and default to 100% just like podcast Apps do today.

[theDanielJLewis]

Take a look at #144. :)

[genen]

Take a look at #144. :)

Similar but not the same. I wouldn't be opposed to a focus tag for important (slower) elements in the podcast, but that is a LOT more work for podcast App devs to do.