A feature I really miss from having a DVR is the '8 seconds back' button, to catch a play or repeat something funny.

Recently I've been listening to recorded interviews we've been doing of HPC developers, and updating my notes (in VoodooPad using them. Since people mumble and use jargon I don't always understand, I decided I really needed an instant replay button in QuickTime Player. It'll come in handy if I watch sports on my laptop again, too.

In order to get it, I wrote this quick AppleScript and bound it to a Quicksilver trigger. If you run it while the movie is playing, it backs up 4 seconds and keeps playing from there.

-- 4secondsback.scpt
tell application "QuickTime Player"
    set theMovie to movie 1

    set ctime to current time of theMovie
    set tscale to time scale of theMovie

    set current time of theMovie to ctime - (4 * tscale)
end tell

Update: I just realized that for transcribing interviews I also needed a 'play/pause' command that could control QuickTime Player while keeping it in the background, just as the 4secondsback script does. It's a really simple script, but since QuickTime Player lacks the convenient 'playpause' command that iTunes's scripting dictionary has, I had to do this:

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    if movie 1 is playing then
        pause movie 1
    else
        play movie 1
    end if
end tell

I have this set as a trigger for Control-Option-Space, and the 4secondsback script is control-option-'b'. This way I can listen, type, and control the recordings without leaving VoodooPad. Brilliant!

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