A HUGE timesaver - Speed up video playback with this FREE tool

All versions of VLC 1.0 and higher allow you to control video playback speed. Versions prior to 1.0 did have limited supported for this, but the audio would be distorted, and you would often hear 'chipmunk' sounds.

Almost all video formats are supported out-of-the-box, and you don't need to install additional codecs:
VideoLAN - VLC media player - Open Source Multimedia Framework and Player



You click on the buttons to the left and right of the seek bar to decrease and increase playback speed by 0.6x. And you also have more fine-grained control - Click 'Playback -> Faster (fine)' or 'Playback-> Slower (fine)' on the menu bar to increase or decrease the speed by 0.1x. Alternatively, use the [ and ] keyboard shortcuts.

There is another program called Enounce My Speed that allows you control the playback speed of online videos. I have that too, and use it often. But for longer videos, I prefer to download them using IDM and play them using VLC.

I often play back videos at 2x speed, and find the audio perfectly understandable, and I get through the video in half the time it would normally take, which is a very big time saver.

Regards,
Mario

P.S. No affiliate links in this post. Just tools I use and find useful