Hi
When the waveform windows is small, the waveform looks blocky. I can only seem to fix this by making the window almost fill my screen.
Is there another way of getting a more detailed waveform in a smaller window?
Thanks
odododo
Try zooming in.
I still want to see my complete 40 minute file, but clearer. At that point I take a screen shot for visual purposes.
Drag the bottom edge of the waveform down so that it fills the full window height.
Peter
The detail in the waveform display is limited by the screen resolution and the width of the window.
How does a screen shot give you better resolution?
Making the window almost as big as the screen gives me good resolution, but I would rather not to have to do that every time. I think something has changed slightly in the last year or so.
If you are only working with a single track you can go to Tracks preferences and check “on” Auto-fit track height - then it will do it automagically for you.
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Well that’s also very good to know, thanks for that @waxcylinder …
but with a file that’s 1 hour 50 minutes long, even making the window as big as possible, I’m no longer getting as crisp an image as I used to get.
I can live with it, but I thought there might be a setting that I had missed.
I guess it’s not so bad.
At my usual window size for this work, I get something that is not detailed enough.
Are you aware that you can also use vertical zooming yo view a waveform in greater detail?
Please see: Vertical Zooming - Audacity Manual
Note carefully that the cursor needs to be in the Vertical Scale for the useful Shift and Ctrl modified scrollwheel actions to work. I just stumbled over that when reading that manual page I linked to above, so I provided some greater clarity in the alpha manual for the upcoming 3.7.0.
Peter.
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Thanks Peter. That’s also interesting, and I didn’t know about it, but again, not what I’m looking for.
I’m now starting to wonder if I imagined this behaviour that I thought previously existed.
Here is a screenshot I took with version 3.1.2 on 2022-01-03:
And here’s the same file’s screenshot taken just now with version 3.6.1:
The Mac is the same one with the same screen. There seems to me to be a slight difference. That difference is more noticeable if you download the 2 screenshots and open in Preview.
As I said, I can get by without what I’m looking for. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything in the preferences.
It looks like there’s some scaling going on. You said it’s the same screen, but the first screenshot is only 1419x890 while the second is 2834x1780. That’s almost exactly double in size. How can they both be from the same screen?
In the second screenshot, the title bar looks higher resolution than in the first screenshot too, though the Audacity controls inside the window are somewhat blurry, as if they were scaled in a photo application. Then again, the actual resolution (before scaling of the second) of Audacity looks about the same in both.
Does MacOS have a display scaling option? If so, try turning that off.
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You’re right @christop! And I checked. The 2022 screenshot was taken on my old Mac. My apologies for muddying the water there. I got the dates confused.
I didn’t noticed the pixel size difference. They both display at the same size on my present Mac Mini M1. Looking at the detailed info for each screenshot, the newer screenshot has DPI height and width, the older doesn’t. I don’t understand enough about screens to know why they look the same size when they’re both being viewed at what Preview calls “Actual size”, and I don’t really care about that.
As for my present display resolution, I’m using 1 setting up from what is called Default in the “Display”. It’s actually 2560 x 1440. If I go to the next available resolution, everything is too small to use.
I think I’m at the end of the road for this particular goose chase.
Many thanks all for helping. I learned some cool new settings which I didn’t know about.
odododo
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I have this same problem, but it just started now, with 3.6.2. The problem is not the screen resolution, or the fit to height or width. The problem is that the waveform now fills up the whole vertical length, so to find any detail at all, I have to zoom in quite a bit. This is a problem, because the detail is obscured now, & I do not know how to fix it.
Can you not fix that easily by using the Command-1 and Command -3 shortcuts?
I use the shortcuts. The problem is that the information is no longer available at a glance. It actually requires time to get it now.
It’s better to open a new thread if you want to get some help with your problem.
Thanks. It just sounds like OP & I have the same problem.
@waxcylinder has anything changed with regard to the amount of detail shown for the waveform in the main window in the last few minor versions? Say, from 3.1 to 3.6?
the only change I know of is the turning off off the RMS display in the waveform by default.
Peter.
The second one seems to have some anti-aliasing applied. Despite that, when I zoom in (on the screen shots, in Preview) at the 10 minute mark, the anti-aliased waveform seems to have more detail at some points.
Because the track control panel is wider in the second version, the rendering of the waveform is slightly different.