Pasting into a track is slow

Audacity 4
1

I use Audacity to edit / cut up the songs from a band rehearsal. My workflow is as follows:

I load the entire rehearsal recording into a project. I then cut individual songs from teh overall recording and paste them into separate recordings that I can trim, eq, etc.

  1. I select the region I want to copy
  2. CTRL-C to copy that region
  3. CTRL-N to create a new window in Audacity
  4. CTRL-V to paste the copied region into the new window.

Step 4 seems to be much slower than it was in version 3. Is there a setting I can alter, or is this something that the developers would need to look at (and if that is the case, I hope they do)?

2

What’s happening is that the entire track (rehearsal) is pasted when you cut and paste each song into a new project. In Audacity 3 there is a preference to paste just the selected audio when pasting into a new project.

Look at the “Pasted audio” section.

I raised a Github issue for this:

3

Thanks for the reply. I am a bit confused though. When you say the entire track is pasted…what I am seeing is that only the selection ends up in the new window, which is what I want. But it happens slowly. I am not seeing the entire rehearsal being pasted.

Sorry if I am misunderstanding your point.

[I did look at the Tracks Behaviors Prefs that you linked, and I understand the setting from ver 3 you are referring to]

4

In terms of the AU3 preferences, you are pasting a “smart clip” into the new project.

In the new window with the pasted clip, there are handles where you can expand the clip, all the way to the original track it came from. Try it.

5

Thanks again for helping me get a “handle” on this (pun intended). So for now, the whole clip comes in but only the portion that I selected is revealed visibly in the new window unless/until you grab those handles and drag them.

Can I assume that only the portion I selected is saved when I export the individual song as an mp3?

6

Yes. Audacity exports what you hear when you play the project.

But if you are doing no editing on the song, you don’t need to paste it into a new project. You can do File > Export audio then choose “Selected Audio” from the “Type” menu in the Export dialog