I am using the newest verstion of Audacity for Windows (2.0.5) and I’m having some difficulty with a simple sound recording.
I’m working on recordings of me reading and so I will occasionally make and error and need to go back. I can’t find a way to get Audacity to delete all data after my current position and let me resume my recording from the location of the error. It’s incredibly frustrating needing to restart from the beginning every time.
I’m pretty sure the pros just “keep rolling”, or stop and start a new recording, then edit later. It’s not practical to edit and record at the same time.*
Personally, I’ve never done anything that was too long to just start the whole thing over…
But, I saw someone on TV recording an audio book once. Of course, in that professional setting there was an engineer/producer plus the talent. It seems like all of the paragraphs were numbered. Every once in a awhile, the producer would ask the reader to start-over at a particular paragraph.
The producer was probably making notes on the script, including the recording-time for each paragraph so that they could associate a point in the recording with a point in the script.
They were not erasing anything during the recording session, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they never erased anything… They probably just piece-together all of the good (or best) parts into a new file in post-production.
Assuming you are doing it yourself, I think you could “announce” the paragraph number (and probably the take number) every time you start a take or re-read a section. (Of course, you’d edit-out the paragraph announcements in your final “mix”.) Another way to do it would be to pause (you don’t have to pause the recording) and write down the recording-time wherever there is a screw-up.
…And realize that if you want to make a good production, you WILL spend more time editing than you spend recording! Just listening to the whole program before editing and after editing is twice the recording-time. If you are really good, you might be able to finish a 1-hour recording in half a day, but I’d rather have a whole day to get it done.
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