Seemingly randomly, Audacity will stop allowing me to rename clips. Sometimes all current clips, sometimes only one specific clip. Nothing I do seems to trigger this - it’s totally random as far as I can see. Regardless of whether it disables renaming for all clips, just a few, or just one, I can copy/paste that clip elsewhere, then either rename the new pasted clip, or copy/paste it back to its original location and rename that.
This is a bit of a pain in the ass, would love it if this could get fixed. Not sure how to replicate it, but I can offer more information if anyone needs.
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This is a known and logged bug:Can’t rename clips #3704
opened 03:33PM - 27 Sep 22 UTC
closed 09:06AM - 26 Jan 23 UTC
bug
Clips
### Bug description
Seems to be intermittent, but I'm unable to rename audio … clips. Double-clicking the title of the click in the track just selects the clip. Right-clicking and selecting "Rename clip", or pressing ctrl+F2, both do nothing.
### Steps to reproduce
1. Get some audio
2. split it into two clips
3. Separate the clips such that only the first clip is on screen
4. Try to rename the clip, either by double-clicking its title, or selecting it then either right-clicking and choosing "Rename clip" or pressing Ctrl+F2
5. Observe: Nothing happens
_@vsverchinsky Vitaly I, Peter Sampson, edited the STRs following a reliable simple reproducible set pointed out later in this bug-thread by @DavidBailes_
### Expected behavior
You should be able to rename clips
### Actual behavior
I cannot rename clips
### Audacity Version
latest stable version (from audacityteam.org/download)
### Operating system
Windows
### Additional context
Windows 11. Behaviour is intermittent but I can't see a pattern. Possibly once a project gets into this state (or beyond a certain size/number of clips?) it becomes permanently impossible to rename clips. I'm actually able to rename the clips in a new project I just created, but not in my existing one, both open at the same time.
**Workaround**
@DavidBailes points out in a comment below in this bug-thread - there is a workaround to be had by setting the **Tracks Behaviors** pref for "**Use dialog for the name of a new label**" to be **on**.
Somewhat surprisingly this totally undocumented Easter-Egg trick works as for some unknown reason this setting also affects the behaviour of clip renaming forcing that to be done by dialog rather than in the clip-handle drag-bar:
a) this is undocumented in the Manual
b) it is totally unexpected behavior from the labeling of the preference, with no indication that it also acts on clips
c) maybe there should be separate new **Tracks Behaviors** pref for "**Use dialog for editing clip names**" - for greater clarity of purpose,
The bug thread gives a workaround:
I think that there is a workaround for this. In the Track behaviors section of preferences, set “use dialog for the name of a new label”.
Peter.
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eel
December 5, 2024, 4:14pm
3
Thanks so much, I had the same issue and this solved it.
Ditto, any way to auto-configure this as a default in the platform layer 4 windows?