how to 'play'...

Audacity Help Forum GNU/Linux
1

Hi Folks

My apologies for this deceptively simple question - I guess I’ve missed the bleeding obvious somewhere…

I have edited my audio to clean up a live recording - I now want to listen back to it to transcribe: stopping/ starting as I go because my typing doesn’t keep up with the dialogue…

Every time I pause (with the space bar) and than play again (from the space bar) - the audio jumps back to the ‘edit cursor’ and/ or ‘The playback start position cursor’ - thus, I never progress in the job, without moving the ‘The playback start position cursor’ by clicking in the timeline, which inevitably is not where I paused the playback. This is very frustrating - I guess I must be missing something.

Essentially, how do I make the ‘The playback start position cursor’ travel with the playback?

Thanks
Morgan

2

The space bar is “Stop”, not “Pause”.

For “Pause”, use the “P” key.

Alternatively, to “Stop” and move the play position to the point where you stopped, press the “X” key.
(Easily remembered from the phrase: “X marks the spot”.)

3

I found this confusing at first, too. You can also start playback at a certain position by clicking on the timeline (11) (above audio track waveform), if you are in quick play mode.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/timeline.html#tqp

4

I thought I should say a big thank you for the replies - after some experimentation I settled on the ‘X marks the spot’ method.
Morgan.