I’ll be creating a podcast shortly. I’ve bought an Audio Technica AT2005USB microphone, and I’ve installed Audacity. For the closing of the podcast, how do I get the theme music to begin immediately after I’m done speaking? I’ve looked at some tutorials on YouTube that involve the use of the time shift tool, but I can’t get it to work as I want. Please help.
Jim
Do you not like doing it on two tracks? You can do it with tricky and critical editing one a single track, but it’s much easier to manage the production timing on two tracks.
Step one Export your show as a WAV (Microsoft) so when you mess up, you don’t destroy everything you did so far. It’s a common mistake that somebody will record a show, make changes to that exact project and then Export to the same filename. One mistake anywhere and you get to read it all again. No safety and no backup.
So now you have your music-less show safely backed up on a thumb drive. File > Import the music soundfile. It will arrive as a separate track under your original show. Select the Time Shift Tool (two sideways black arrows) and push the music sideways to wherever you want it.
I set Audacity so it doesn’t try to update the timeline while I’m editing, but do update when recording. Nothing more entertaining when editing to have Audacity shift the timeline away from you just when you’re trying to set an edit.
Audacity > Edit > Preferences > Recording: [_] Update… (de-select)
You will also need the Zoom tools. I don’t know anybody who can edit without zooming in and out to see what they’re doing.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/zooming.html
I only use three zooms.
Zoom (Windows)
– Drag-select something on the timeline and zoom into it. Control-E
– Zoom out a little bit. Control-3
– Zoom out full. Control-F
– Shift-ScrollWheel will shift the timeline view left and right (sooner and later).
Keep pushing the music around until you get it to sound the way you want it. Obviously, you can also easily change the music making it louder or softer or any other changes because it’s on its own timeline.
Audacity will push all the tracks together into one show when you Export the completed show.
Koz
Thank you, Koz. I am using two tracks. I’ll try your suggestions and report back. Thanks!
Jim