Clip Boundries 'Split' stopped working HELP !

Hello,

Disclaimer: I have only 1 month doing voice-over practice using Audacity. I am using the latest Audacity download on my Windows & laptop.

I have made dozens of nice audio voice-over demo / practice recordings, with edits, normalization, exporting Mp3’s, opening / importing audio, re-edits etc… over this one month time, it’s fun.

Now I have my 1st ever voice-over job today ( Yippie lol ) and its a long one of 2,400 words.

I have already recited 5 of 57 pages and need to insert some silence between couple of rushed pauses, no problem right, YES , yes I have a problem lol.

PROBLEM 1) I usually CLICK on the part of the audio track I want to split by leaving a vertical marker, then go to EDIT slide down to
CLIP BOUNDARIES then move right over to SPLIT, then go back up to the ↔ icon click on it to activate it and then bring it over to the audio track just to the left or right of the split marker ans then hold my left mouse button down and slide the right hand track to the right , ok that ‘was’ working all this time except for now , why ?


The technique described above has always worked for me it has always opened up a gap, how wide depending on how far the the right I pull the track away from the split marker, well it now does NOT work at all I get as far the the ↔ and it wont ‘pull the track sideways’ !

I am going crazy *sigh.

Is it because I have too much / too long a track to pull it open ?

All this time I could always do it with a shorter 1 min track but not with this longer track, is it too long and it hits the right hand boundary of the track window perhaps ?
HELP ???

ISSUE 2) I have to re-click on my RECORDING DEVICE and my LISTENING DEVICE every time I stop recording and attempt to play back a section to check it for basic quality, what gives ???

If I want to start recording again, I then have to ‘re-click’ on my Microphone that I want to use and then re-click on my speakers that I want to listen back with each and every time and that is also driving me nuts lol .

Is there some way to permanently only use my professional XLR Condenser mic… and… only my studio monitors or my headphones as a toggle and NOT my laptop speakers as an unwanted 3rd option , I just want ‘simplicity’ Audacity & Simplicity , the newest version for Us morons it’s called Sim-Dacity lol ( I wish ) lol.

Do I have to go into my p.c and disable the other options in order for Audacity to only recognize my pro mic and not the laptops built in Mic and Only my headphones etc. ???

Thanks for any help, I have to record this before Monday and between rains storms making nice LOUD background tapping on my roof lol .
regards
Steve

If you’ve paused the audio, rather than stopped it, then functions are blocked.

Which version of Audacity are you using? (look in “Help menu > About Audacity”)

When you do that, do you see a “split” (dark vertical line) appear on the track?

To be able to slide a clip left / right, there has to be empty space to move it into. If you can’t move a clip to the right, the clip you are trying to move may be hitting up against another audio clip further to the right. Zoom out so that you can see the right hand end of the audio clip and check that there are not other audio clips in the way.

If you want to move multiple clips at the same time, you will need to make a “selection” across all of the clips that you want to move, then with the Time Shift tool, click and drag from within the selection.

Trebor, thanks for jumping in here.

Well, I never click the 2 verticals lines known as the pause button on the far left margin.

I always and only click the solid square ‘stop’ button.

From what You are saying my Mic & Speaker settings should stay in effect (( but they actually are not ))

Now I am more confused lol

Steve

If there is another split to the right of the new split that will stop you using the time-shift ↔ tool …

OK, that may be the problem ( I though it would be ) UPDATE: This morning I split, inserted , thus added my tracks too make one long single track successfully .

Yes , there needs to be room to the right and or left in order to slide the track over and so I zoomed WAY out in order to make that open room to maneuver / slide the tack to the right in order to open a gap.

THANKS for putting in the time to answer my quandary.

I still ‘stop’ and loose my mic & speaker setting, wazupwitdat ? lol

(( my inner thought bubble )) >>>> ’ why do voice over actor use the expensive Adobe Audition or Reaper, do they have some magic mojo that Audacity doesn’t ’ ?

Hello - I am having the same problem. No matter what I try, I am unable to split the track and insert additional audio. I realize I’m supposed to hit stop so the different functions work. However, whenever I hit stop, the cursor keeps jumping off the screen back to the start of the audio…This is extremely frustrating. I have an audio that I am trying to complete and unable to do so. I am using windows 10 and I have audacity version 2.4.2. Does anyone have a solution to this, I don’t understand why such a simple function is so difficult. Thanks for any help from the thread.

This is a duplicate of this post: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/clip-boundaries-split-not-working/57296/4

Topic locked to avoid confusion.