First things first: I have Audacity 2.0.2 running on Windows XP. Now: is it possible to preserve the various elements of an audio file but shorten (i.e., increase playback speed) or lengthen (decrease playback speed) the playback time somehow? I haven’t seen anything that looks like that in the various tools. Thanks.
Have a look at these effects:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/change_speed.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/change_tempo.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/paulstretch.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/truncate_silence.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sliding_time_scale_pitch_shift.html
The key is “Slightly.” These tools taken to extremes all start sounding funny – like that rapid-fire disclaimer at the end of a medicine commercial. These are the tools you can use if you shot separate sound for your movie and the sound recorder wasn’t completely in sync.
Koz