All,
i have a need to record 3,4 hours of a training class. what is the settings/format that i should use to record using audactiy so that it wont take lot of space on my computer.
thanks in advance
Kart
My recommendation is to go to Preferences > Quality and set Rate to 44100 and format to 16-bit PCM. You could go for a lower sample rate of 22050 but you may find that the quality of the audio suffers - also your sound card may not support that rate.
3 hours mono recording at 44100 and 16-bit would be about 900 MB.
– Bill
And do set up for mono. Audacity defaults to stereo and those numbers will double.
How much room do you have?
Koz
And just to play devil’s advocate, Audacity does everything internally at 32-bit. It’s only at Export do you get the numbers you put in Preferences, right? Also, Audacity is accumulating the show internally in real time and the drive space doubles when you export. Koz
Not quite.
If you set the Quality Prefs to 16-bit then Audacity stores 16-bit data. No 32-bit data is stored anywhere.
At Export, you can choose from a myriad of file formats and bit depths. The only setting that affects the exported file is the “Project Rate” in the Selection Toolbar.
When you Export you are creating a new file, so of course that file will take up drive space. However Exporting does not create a new Undo state since no data is changed.
– Bill
OK, so it’s still double what you’re expecting. The original 16-bit capture information and the 16-bit exported file. They both represent one complete show. Double the drive space.
Koz