I’m working several podcasts. One of them involves creating audio books from non-copyrighted texts by reading them.
As I read the books, occasionally I mis-pronounce a word or my vocal pausing isn’t quite right, so I read the phrase or sentence over again.
I need to take these Audacity projects and remove the sections where I have mis-read, leaving behind only the correction.
Sometimes there might be 2-3 of these needed deletions in a 30 minute podcast episode.
I want to do these removals non-destructively. Ideally I could just “mask” out the flub areas and Audacity would generate a “corrected” track that would not contain these areas, while still leaving the original track in place (with “mark out” indications on the original track that I could fine-tune).
I can’t seem to find any tutorials for how to do this kind of non-destructive removals of sections in the middle of my recording with Audacity, but perhaps my search terms are just incorrect.
You can get something like that with Audacity Projects. That’s their very reason for existing. Make several copies of the show one above the other and then designate one of them (on top??) as the Export Master. The others can be other edits or shards and fragments as you see fit. You can turn each track on or off with MUTE or SOLO, copy/paste and use the envelope tool to fade in and out of segments, or wholesale cut and insert—all without touching the track 1 master.
You could have a six or eight track show stacked up with versions and different patches.
Projects do not save UNDO, however, so periodically Save the Project under a different name, and never leave an Edit Master without a WAV (Micrososoft) Export version.
Have you ever edited a show before? There’s the five to one rule. Editing takes five times the length of the show. So if you have a nice hour podcast, you will spend at least five hours cutting it. That tends to limit the plans for detailed and perfect editing.
Will you be submitting to ACX or other audiobook publisher? We have some handy tools to get you past the technical inspection robots.
Audacity has a little known feature called “Cut Lines”.
To enable cut lines, go to “Edit > Preferences > Tracks” and in the “Behaviours” section, “Enable cut lines”.
When enabled, if you “Cut” (not “Delete”) a section from a track, the selection is removed and a red line appears at the place where the cut was made. Click on the red line to restore the cut section.
Note that if you apply an effect after making the cut, the effect is only applied to the current visible track. The effect is NOT applied to the invisible section that you removed. That means that if your “restore a cut” after applying an effect, the restored section (without the effect) will not match with the rest of the track (with the effect).
Also, if you “Mix and Render” the track, the cut lines are removed and the cuts become permanent.
Nope. Might be six months until I release the first one. It’s not a typical podcast, and the content doesn’t get stale, so no hurry in actually releasing content.
There’s the five to one rule. Editing takes five times the length of the show. So if you have a nice hour podcast, you will spend > at least > five hours cutting it. That tends to limit the plans for detailed and perfect editing.
Thanks. Makes perfect sense and a good expectation-setter for me to consider. In my case, all that is really required is some deletions and run it through an “equal volume filter” as sometimes my voice is a bit louder or the mike position a bit different.
Will you be submitting to ACX or other audiobook publisher? We have some handy tools to get you past the technical inspection robots.
Koz
I haven’t considered much where to submit the materials. The content will all be offered free of charge, so that may rule out some venues. Appreciate the insights!
Don’t expect too much from an “equal volume filter” (aka “compressor”). They can have unwanted side effects, such as distracting changes to the noise floor level, or causing words to fade in or out. Also, they do not help with timbre changes. Most vocal mics increase the lower frequencies as you get closer to them - too close and your voice may sound boomy - too far away and your voice may sound “thin”. Microphones tend to have a sweet spot, the “Goldilocks” placement
A trick that some vocal artists use when recording in their home studio is to have a piece of string attached to their mic stand. They sit comfortably at their reading desk, then adjust the mic position so that the string, which has been cut to just the right length, can just reach their chest. Then put the pop filter between the mic and their mouth.
(Pop filter: Pop filter - Wikipedia an essential piece of equipment for voice recording - don’t try and make do with a foam windscreen)
