How do i make Sliding Stretch work or how do I go back to 2.x?

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

First using Audacity 2.x

I just discovered the “Sliding Stretch” feature, so i excitedly opened up Audacity to try it. I couldnt find it in the list, so I typed ‘sliding stretch’ in the help menu. That opened it up. so far so good.

Then everything stopped. I could try to use it once, then when it didn’t do anything NOTHING on the top menu was clickable. I couldn’t even cmd-q to quit Audacity. So i force closed it. (i’ve never ever had a problem like that with Audacity in the 10+ years i’ve been using it)

this happened three times. so I figured maybe i should upgrade. so i jumped from 2.x (i forget, i think was around 2.3) to the latest 3.73

This time I figured out where to find Sliding Stretch. i opened up a clip, selected it ALL and chose to go from -35% to +35%.

Instead of shifting the whole clip it shifted about 3/4 of it, neglecting the rest.

i undid that and tried a smaller selection.

This resulted in a beachball spinning interminably. i remember reading that the stretch takes more resources than the usual pitch change, so i waited a few minutes. but basically Audacity was not responding. so i force quit that.

i don’t think i’m doing anything wrong. and my excitement for the feature has just changed into wondering if it’s possible to download back to an earlier version of Audacity. as you might imagine, my initial impression of this latest version isn’t very good.

but just the same, i’m open to suggestions as to what i should be doing to make this sliding stretch thing work. is it known to be finicky?

mac o/s 14.7.4 64gb ram Max M1

2

Older versions are here.

3

Thank you Doug. I found that after i posted.

I might be too hasty in judging. I just discovered that when I get the result of the Sliding Stretch, what is highlighted is about 3/4 of what I originally highlighted, and that threw me. When I hit play, it of course only played that truncated highlighted version, and that threw me too and I jumped to conclusions.

I just tried it all again and “unhighlighted” the result and discovered the whole area I had chosen was in fact stretched.

so the only glitch that is happening is how audacity shortens the highlighted area AFTER it performs the effect.

so i think i’m happy now. it is a very cool feature that i never knew existed all these years.

EDIT: not completely happy. after playing with it three times in one session, i got the beach ball again. i force quit. reopened and tried the exact same stretch and it worked.
so it seems that there can be something you do that causes Audacity to hang.