I need to split tracks into approximately equal lengths of time; I know from here that I can do that manually with B, making labels and exporting multiple, and that works, at least for “small” sets of tracks.
But I’m wondering if the labels can be caused to be made automatically, by just specifying a duration for the splits, such that if I were to specify “3.00” minutes, then Audacity would make label marks every 3 minutes, preferably in the middle of gaps of relative silence.
That way “exporting multiple” would create for me a set of continuous sound files of approximately 3 minutes each.
use “Silence Finder” under “Analyze” to find places of relative silence;
export the resulting label marks into a text file;
edit away all marks except those near increments of the desired duration;
delete the current label track in Audacity;
import the edited label file;
“export multiple”, which will then use that edited label file with marks at points of relative silence which are also now at just increments of some desired duration.
I did write a small program to do the editing to remove all marks but those at increments of the desired duration, but it’s an interpreted program in an obscure language so I can’t provide it as a “plug-in”; but doing the editing manually will work, although it would probably be a good idea to use a calculator to give you the successive incremented values to look for in the original label file.
And you should look carefully at some of the found places of silence before you export them to a label file, to make sure they are actually silence, as it might take some tweaking of the db value in Silence Finder (and also the length of silence to look for) to find good places at which to split your audio.
And I am presumming that the Silence Finder makes marks only at zero crossing points.
And I’m not sure if “Silence Finder” is available under all platforms, I’m using Windows.
This is now a standard function in Audacity. The tool is at Analyze → Regular Interval Labels, then you can export it as normal with File → Export Multiple.
After so many years, here’s someone who still needs this. I will certainly aporeciate having a look at your software (skaap) that does the quick label editing.
Otherwise, it seems I will follow your tip since other tools also failed to provide such a simple function effectively (tried mp3splitter, cool mp3 cutter and others)