I always place a label 1 second before the audio and 2 seconds after the audio. I have looked into making ths automatic but I haven’t seen anyway to make it happen but it would be a cool feature and a time save since I always do the exact same pattern.
Thanks,
WeirDave
Could you post a screenshot to show what you mean. I’m not sure if I’m visualising it correctly.
Here is a 1 second before the audio shot
Here is a shot of the 2 seconds after label
Perhaps the “Sound Finder” tool will do the job (Analyze menu) http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/silence_finder_and_sound_finder.html#sound
The slider range for “Label Starting Point” and “Label Ending Point” only go up to 1 second, but you can type bigger values into the box before the slider.
The sound finder works on the tracks in the middle but the last track it still only picks 1 second afterward. Is there a code fix on the way to allow different values for that feature?
– edited after doing a couple more records I quickly discovered that entering in a number does NOT work consistently, as I previously thought.
It sure would save me a boatload of time if it did!
Weirdave
Sound Finder only operates up to the end of the selection. If you want the final label to extend beyond the end of the audio track you need to make the selection longer so that there is space for the final label.
As you will see in my previous posts edit. I discovered that the process of adding a “2” into the field does not really work It still stops at 1 second which is the max in the “applet window”. I want to suggest that we be able to edit this to whatever number we wish to have in the front and rear of the “sound” instead of just 1 second as most tracks in succession are 3 seconds apart 1 second previous to sound and 2 seconds after sound with the current setup we are unabvle to achieve this automatically and must manually edit each label.
Here’s a slightly modified version of Sound Finder.
In this version, the default “Label starting point [seconds before sound starts]” is 1 second and has a maximum range of 5 seconds and the default “Label ending point [seconds after sound ends]” is 2 seconds and has a maximum range of 5 seconds.
To install, download this file and put it into the Audacity Plug-ins folder. On Windows computers, this is usually at C:Program FilesAudacityPlug-ins. On 64-bit Windows this directory will be “C:Program Files (x86)AudacityPlug-ins”. Then restart Audacity.
The new plug-in is called “Sound Finder 2”
SoundFinder2.ny (6.29 KB)
WOW! SO awesome. Thank you!!!
I do have one small question now. If I have a song that fades at the end. (which happened to be the first one I tested), How do I know what level to place the -dB at so that I can get the correct spot for those songs or am I stuck manually editing them because of the fade?
I decided to describe it in case there is a way to improve my methods. Okay so I fiddled around I clicked in the area that listed the -dB and I noticed it was a little magnifying glass with a “+” sign when left clicking and right clicking seemed to reverse. so I spread out the wave form to fill the window then I can see on the left that -54 seemed to be where the audio dropped off and random noise was scattered so I picked that number and it seemed to work. 
I am going to use that as my value today while I work and see if that is fitting and will report back my findings!
Thanks again for all that you do,
WeirDave
Yeah not so much -54dB seems to mess up the front of the track now if there is any noise it moves the label way off the front value… back to the drawing board. (-26dB)
A little “trick” for finding the peak level of a selection is to select the part that you are interested in, then select the “Amplify” effect. Don’t apply the amplify effect, just look at the “Amplification (dB)” amount. That tells you how much amplification is required to bring the peak level up to 0 dB. So if it says “26”, then you know that the current amplitude is -26 dB.
To get Sound Finder as accurate as possible you need to find the level of the background noise in the track, then set the Threshold level a little higher. So, for example, if the background noise has a maximum level of -32 dB, then try setting the Threshold in Sound Finder to around -30 dB (smaller negative numbers indicate a higher level. “0” is maximum level).
Can’t seem to really get it where I don’t have to move the damn pointer/label. It’s way better than it was and I thank you for that! I guess I am asking too much.