Break up audiobook into sentences, have each repeat N times

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

Hi,

Complete newbie asking an exploratory question. Not asking for detailed directions, just a confirmation whether what I’m looking for is possible, and some hints about where to look.

What I have is audiobooks (language courses) and I would like to listen to each sentence many times in a row, in order to have it sink in. So I’d like to recut a single mp3 into another (single) mp3, inside which some (not all) sentences are repeated a few times, basically converting the file from this:

Click Edit > Trim.
This will remove the rest of the file, leaving only the section you selected.
If you want to use the whole file, then skip this step.

To sound like this:

Click Edit > Trim.
This will remove the rest of the file, leaving only the section you selected.
This will remove the rest of the file, leaving only the section you selected.
This will remove the rest of the file, leaving only the section you selected.
If you want to use the whole file, then skip this step.
If you want to use the whole file, then skip this step.

(Note that sentences repeat different numbers of times.)

Is this possible with Audacity? I was wondering if I can do something like load the file, set some markers to delimit sentences, then maybe export the markers and write a script of some kind to read the mp3 and the the markers and re-glue the sentences back into a single mp3?

I’m a complete newbie at audio processing but I’ll learn just given the assurance that this is possible, and a few indications where to look.

Thanks very much in advance.
Alex

2

Yes, Audacity will do what you want, and very simply too.

You can select a piece of audio, and copy and paste it in the same way as you do in a text document.

Have a look at this: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Edit_Menu


PO’L

3

Yes, but in a text document, if you keep pressing Paste, you get the text repeating multiple times, one right after the other. In Audacity, it just pastes one on top of the other.

So you can’t Copy, Paste, Paste, Paste. You have to manage those sticky labels, and I haven’t found how to inject a label accurately at the end of the last paste.

All of which is still much more work than Copy, Paste-4. Unless I miss my guess, that was the question.

Koz

4

You can do it with region labels.
(This is in 1.3.10. I haven’t tried it in 1.2.6)

Assume you have your audio track and label track below it, and you have ticked “Editing a clip can move other clips” in Preferences.

Select the audio you want to copy.
CTRL+C
Down arrow.
CTRL+B
Write label name.
Enter
Right arrow, CTRL+V, Right arrow, CTRL+V, etc.

PO’L