Creating a 30 second preview of audio files

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I hope that somebody can help me create preview versions of some mp3 files we have.

We’ve like to take 20+ mp3 files, reduce their length to 30 seconds and fade them out so that we have a 30 second “preview” files for each track, like Amazon did when you could preview an album.

I can get Audacity to do individual files but am struggling to get it to do a whole album in one go. I’m sure that this is a user problem and I’m lacking some pretty basic knowledge.

If anybody can help then I’d be really grateful.

Thanks

Audacity 3.0.5
Windows 10 (21H1 OS Build 19043.1237)

2
  1. import all the MP3 files
  2. they will all start at T=0
  3. select-from 30 seconds to the end of the longest track in all tracks at the same time
  4. Delete
  5. Export Multiple (based on tracks)

Peter

3

The job could be done by batch processing with a macro, but for just 20 files, the method described by waxcylinder is probably the quickest and easiest way to get the job done.

4

Selecting the same interval on all the tracks (for the fades) is the only tricky bit …
select end of all tracks.gif

5

Thanks for the replies - it’s going to be needed for 15 albums in all so I might try the macro route if it speeds things along.

Much appreciated.