Larger Audio File is Smashed together - impossible to edit.

Hi There,
I am very new to Audacity and just learning as I go (doing tutorials and playing around as well). I am trying to get my podcast started but I have run into yet another issue! I did an interview with someone over the phone using TapeACall and it works great and the audio is definitely editable, but that’s not the issue. The big issue is that the podcast ran about 3.5 hours. Once I loaded it into Audacity, the file was all smashed together and it looked more like a short, long purple rectangular, making it impossible to edit anything since I can’t tell the difference in soundwaves. What do I do? I copied segments of it in about 30 minute sections, but that’s and then each piece was more editable but I don’t want to have to always do that. I converted it to different formats – wav and a few others, but it didn’t change anything. Is there something I can do so when I load the big file into Audacity that it doesn’t squish up like that? Or is there another possible program I can run it through before loading into Audacity. I hope this makes sense. If you know what to do – HELP ME! Thank you
:smiley:

What were the other issues?

What version of Audacity are you using? Please give us all three numbers from Help > About Audacity… .

Is it a valid file? What extension does the file have? WAV? MP4?

If you cannot play it in any TapeACall software or in other players, perhaps you should contact TapeACall support. We don’t make that product.

If you think other players can play the file, then install the FFmpeg Import/Export Library and try to import the file into Audacity again.


Gale

Are we making this way too complicated? Do you just want to know how to zoom in?

Let’s see… Windows.

Zoom (Windows)
– Drag-select something on the timeline and zoom into it. Control-E
– Zoom out a little bit. Control-3
– Zoom out full. Control-F

– Shift-ScrollWheel or Shift-TouchPadScrub will shift the timeline view left and right (sooner and later).

Change the timeline so it doesn’t shift by itself:
– Edit > Preferences > Tracks > [_] Update display while playing. (de-select)
Note: Update Display is good during recording.

That’s the boiler plate. Audacity doesn’t have Mark-In and Mark-Out like a video editor. The best we can do is set labels at the critical points. They’re Sticky/Magnetic

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/label_tracks.html

Koz

I think Koz is probably right from re-reading. There is nothing wrong - Audacity just fits the entire file to the width of the project window when you import it. I quite like Ctrl + 2 (Zoom Normal) after import. Then you see the first 10 seconds or so.

There is a page about Zooming in the Manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/zooming.html.


Gale

Thank you for all your help you guys. I realized I was zoomed way out in Audacity so the audio looked super small. THANK YOU! :sunglasses: