I’m a new member - - - just joined today searching for a FAQ that I also had: “How to rename multiple tracks automatically without having to rename each individually.” I discovered several folks sought answers to the question - - - but I found no solution posted. One enterprising fellow mentioned automating Excel to create his list of names but didn’t take it much further. He’s on the right track . . . . .
Anyway - - - I have the same need as the original poster (I believe his name was Steve Bender) and I discovered how to do it. I only have 14 tracks to rename where Steve had a couple hundred, but the principle is identical regardless.
Problem is - - - the topic is locked so I can’t post the solution. It’s really quite simple. I can now rename my fourteen tracks in about 1/2 second! I can think of several ways to provide an automated solution to Steve, but the forum won’t allow me to post because I’m too new! Sort of a “Catch-22.”
My current version of Audacity is 2.3.2 running under Windows 10
So I’ll keep an eye out for suggestions about how I can be of assistance.
Please forgive my previous attempts to post a reply. I keep hitting some wrong key long before I’m ready to submit the post. Please remove those false starts and this intro to this post . . .
A description of the solution to the challenge of renaming multiple tracks in Audacity would be far too lengthy and convoluted to try to post here.
Instead, I prepared a video of the solution that can be accessed on YouTube. Here is the URL to that video for the benefit of anyone who might be interested: https://youtu.be/y7g8mLnk-F8
Nice video, though I thought it a bit unfair to complain about the answers given 5 years ago and then say “but hey, Audacity already has this functionality, if you know where to look for it.” 5 years ago, Audacity did not have this functionality, but in response to user’s “feature requests”, the functionality was added and is now available in Audacity, through “Macros”.
I liked your clear and thorough description, and very good that you clearly stated the Audacity version number - most videos miss that out, which confuses people if later versions are different.
Yup! My bad 5 years ago I couldn’t even spell Audacity! I failed to make allowances for development over time. I apologize for what came across as accusatory. It was unintentional.
Anyway - - - I genuinely hope there are people who will find the technique helpful. I’m sure anyone who has invested in a Rodecaster Pro will be interested.
Thanks for enlightening me. I’m looking forward to enjoying this forum.
renametracks.ny is it still good for aup3 ? If yes I need to rename all tracks beginning “001_Some_Name”, “002_Some_other_name”, etc to keep names but suppressing 4 leading char “nnn_”. How could I do that ?
Please note that before aup3 I opened .aup project in a text editor to find/replace unwanted chars.
To answer that question, I would need to download the plug-in, install it, and try it.
Here’s the thing; You could do that yourself, and come back to us if there is a problem.
I have installed renametracks.ny in Audacity 3.5.1 (W10 Pro 64 bits). Under tools I can launch “Rename tracks”. Now my project has several tracks : “001_Some_Name”, “002_Some_other_name”, etc. I need to trim the first 4 chars in all tracks names. What do I put in “Track names” field to do this ?
YES that “Some_Name” “Some_other_name” “Third_name” does trim first 4 char IF all 3 tracks are selected (Ctrl+A).
BUT I have 18 +/- tracks : different names, one per audio book chapter. So an asterisk joker char (or better REGEX) option would be useful. Thanks in advance to a better Nyquist skilled than me to implement that !
The problem with this kind of plug-in, and the reason why I am not interested in developing it further, is that there could literally be dozens of renaming schemes - everyone wants a renaming scheme to suit their specific project. To satisfy everyone would require either providing an interface with dozens of options, which would make the effect very complex and is not really practical, or would require devising some kind of mini-language like a subset of REGEX which would need to be comprehensively documented, would be a lot of work to develop, and would be complicated to use.
What I did instead, was to write the renametracks.ny plug-in as an example to help others create the specific functionality that they need.
Thank’s for your reply. I fully understand your reasons for not pursuing the development further and I appreciate your approach of leaving an example that will perhaps enable me to adapt it to my needs.
In the meantime I’ve imported my 18 wav files in Audacity 2.4.2. Then I used Notepad++'s regular expressions to modify the .aup file replacing all ‘<wavetrack name="…’ by ‘<wavetrack name="’ in one clic.
5 years ago I couldn’t even spell Audacity! I failed to make allowances for development over time. I apologize for what came across as accusatory. It was unintentional.