I need to shorten a stereo track in Mac. Every time I try to highlight and cut, the music starts to play and messes things up. I’m figuring I should be able to select (highlight) and then use the scissors to cut the track I don’t want, which is from the 4.75 min. mark to the end of the track. Sounds simple, right?
Zoom into the track at the edit point, make sure it’s what you want and then a label there. Command-B > Enter.
Then zoom out to the whole show and drag-select from the label to the end. The label is sticky and the drag will stick to it > Delete key on the keyboard.
Koz
Very few tools work from Pause. You have to be in stop, so you have to learn the selection and management tools.
Audacity doesn’t scrub like a video editor.
Koz
OK koz, that worked.
This is background music for a video. I thought that while I was in Audacity, I would damper the volume back some more so it doesn’t override the video narration. But I discovered that when I crank the speaker volume down in Audacity before I output the MP3 file, all I am doing is turning my own laptop speaker down. I thought that I was cranking down the overall volume of the final MP3 audio. Geez. Don’t tell me that recording volume = speaker volume and you can’t do anything with the volume in Audacity!
There’s another volume control in Audacity but it’s for sampling rate. So can I play with the audio volume or not? Or am I stuck with what was recorded?
There are two editing tools for that. Effect > Amplify and Effect > Normalize. They both “turn the volume up and down,” but they have different controls. You can also slide the volume slider to the left of the blue waves. I think the exported track will follow your setting. Watch the bouncing light sound meter to see what you did.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/amplify.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/normalize.html
Koz
You were probably clicking and dragging in the Timeline instead of in the waveform.
See Audacity Manual . Using labels is not necessary, but sometime convenient.
Speaker volume = playback volume. It does not affect the exported file (which is not the same thing as “recording”). If it did, bazillions of users would be annoyed when they turn down their computer volume and then find that their exported mix was way too quiet.
See: Audacity Manual
Try Effect > Amplify to reduce the volume of the track before you export it.
Can’t you adjust the volume of the background track in the video editor? If so, wouldn’t that be better than trying to guess what level your want your exported track to be?
– Bill
Can’t you adjust the volume of the background track in the video editor? If so, wouldn’t that be better than trying to guess what level your want your exported track to be?
That’s where I would be looking.
Koz