Can't paste text to existing label, 17-jan-17 build

[DickN]

Using 64 bit Vista Home Premium SP2, I observed this problem using the 08-feb-17 build (Audacity 2.1.3) and have found that it first appears in the 17-jan-17 build.
If I have the text cursor in a label, Ctrl-v does not paste the clipboard text into the label. Paste Text to New Label still works. The 07-jan-17 build does not have this problem.

I'm getting all my Audacity revs from the .zip files and copying my Portable Settings folder to each unzipped folder - it simplifies testing multiple builds for the onset of a problem.

- DickN

[steve]

Moved to the feedback board.

Ctrl-v does not paste the clipboard text into the label. Paste Text to New Label still works.

Same here on Linux.

I observed this problem using the 08-feb-17 build (Audacity 2.1.3) and have found that it first appears in the 17-jan-17 build.

Thanks for the helpful detail.

[steve]

Found the problem.

[steve]

I've got a workaround for you Dick.
Copy some audio first (any audio will do, even empty space). Now you can copy and paste text into existing labels.

[waxcylinder]

I've got a workaround for you Dick.
Copy some audio first (any audio will do, even empty space). Now you can copy and paste text into existing labels.

Cute trick Steve

And this is me writing this workaround down for use until we get to fix this

Peter

[DickN]

Steve -

I was starting to question my sanity when I noted that the same Audacity rev that wouldn't paste text into a label in my project (with multiple audio tracks amounting to over an hour) would successfully paste into a label when I used Generate to make a 30 second audio track. The last thing I tried was a label track with no audio track, and that became my quick test for comparing Audacity revs. There doesn't seem to be a threshold for number of tracks (I had 3 label tracks and 2 audio tracks when I first encountered the problem), but there might be a threshold for length of audio.

So my hasty conclusion is that yes, there seems to be a positive correlation between having a short audio track and successfully pasting a label, but the correlation doesn't extend to having multiple long audio tracks.

[edit]

Just tried an experiment. I opened my project with Feb 8 build, selected 42 minutes of audio, created a new label (Ctrl-b) and tried to paste into it. No paste. I removed the blank label.
Then I made a new blank audio track, selected the same 42 minutes of audio, hit Ctrl-b and tried to paste into the label. Again, no paste.

I closed and restarted Audacity without saving.
Then I made a new audio track and copied/pasted about 7 sec of audio into the new track, hit Ctrl-b with the short region still selected, and tried to paste into the label. Success!

I closed and restarted Audacity without saving.
Then I selected approximately the same 7 seconds of audio, hit Ctrl-b and tried to paste into the label. No paste. I removed the empty label.
Then I Duplicated the selected audio, creating a new audio track, hit Ctrl-b and tried to paste into the label. No paste.

I backed up with Ctrl-z to the project as initially loaded. I created a new empty audio track with the same region still selected, then hit Ctrl-b (which made a new label track) and tried to paste to the new label. No paste. I removed the empty label.

Then I copied and pasted the 7 seconds of audio into the empty audio track, copied some text from this post into the clipboard (since it now contained audio), hit Ctrl-b and tried to paste the text. Success!

I backed up (Ctrl-z) to where I had the original project plus just the extra empty audio track. Then I selected the 42 minute clip, copied and pasted it to the empty track. Then I put some text in the clipboard, hit Ctrl-b and tried pasting into the new label. Success!

So at least in this project, which now (ignoring the extra tracks due to experimenting) contains 4 audio and 5 label tracks and has overall length of 1:21:26+34f, copying/pasting a short (7 second) or long (42 minute) piece of audio into an empty audio track enables pasting into a label. Duplicating selected audio to a new track does not enable pasting into a label.

Hope this syndrome sheds some light on the cause, or at least provides some useful test scenarios. Might be coincidence, but it looks like the pasting of audio causes pasting text into a label to start working.

[steve]

I backed up (Ctrl-z) to where I had the original project plus just the extra empty audio track. Then I selected the 42 minute clip, copied and pasted it to the empty track.

If there is audio on the clipboard, pasting text into labels will work. The number of tracks is a red herring.

The problem can be seen in the edit menu. The "Paste" command is greyed out unless there is audio on the clipboard.

I've looked at the code and I see exactly where the problem is, but we're currently in freeze until 2,1.3 is released. It's the release manager's call, but I doubt that this bug will be serious enough to delay the release.

[waxcylinder]

Tests ok on the latest alpha nightly build - so looking good for when 2.1.3 gets released.

WC