Don't know what to call it

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

OK, I’m really new at this.
Win 10, Audacity 2.3.2

What I want to do is cut the silent bits out of a 3+ hr recording I made of my parrot, which I managed to get onto Google Drive.

I’m sure it’s in the manual - if only I had any idea what to look up.
Can someone tell me that, and (I hope) I’ll take it from there?
TIA
~m
“She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”
–Mark Twain

2

Effect > Truncate Silence.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/truncate_silence.html

Koz

3

There is one shortcoming. Audacity doesn’t do well with Network Drives. Can you pull the work down into your computer?

Koz

4

Thanks for the reply.

I’ll try.
TIA,
~m

5

OK, I think it’s downloaded.

The other thing is, since it was recorded on my phone, it is a .wav file. Can audacity change the file type?

I’m sure I had a program in the '90s, before the grandkids started arriving and I forsook my computer for other things, where I could change file types. I know I had Audacity too, but as I remember, the file changing was a separate program.
TIA,
~m

6

Can audacity change the file type?

Yes, you can export as MP3 or other formats. If you install the optional FFmpeg Import/Export Library, you can export as almost any valid audio format.

since it was recorded on my phone, it is a .wav file.

WAV is actually a good format for recording, editing , and “production” because it’s lossless. If you open an MP3 file (or other compressed format) in Audacity (or any “regular” audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you then re-save (re-export) to MP3, you are going through another generation of lossy compression and the “damage” does accumulate.

If you want MP3 or another lossy format it’s best to compress ONCE as the last step after all editing.

7

Thanks, kozikowski and DVDDoug.

I did find the place to change it to .mp3 as I was saving. Also still have the original .wav file.

I have some work to do to figure it all out, but this first experience left me in gales of laughter. Almost 4 hrs of recording time came down to less than 10 minutes when I did the truncate thing. I left the defaults where they were and with the short lead for silent time, my bird ended up sounding like a major rap star. I was on the floor. <(^o^)>

Thanks so much for your generous help!