Smart clip trimming issue

I have an issue when pasting a stereo clip into a new track, as the clip seems to want to split the right and left tracks by default.
https://puu.sh/JvyHk/00aa98b03d.png

With some undo/redo trickery, i manage to make it look like a normal stero track, but then trying to trim it results in some inconsistencies where sometimes it only trims the left track, sometime the whole clip.
https://puu.sh/JvyIx/9698410dde.png

It doesn’t seem to me like normal behavior, but maybe I’m missing something?
I run w10 21H2, audacity 3.2.3, i tried to close and remake the project and the issue comes back quickly.

How exactly are you doing that?

I was only copying an audio selection from the first track and pasting it into the second one. Tried both keyboard shorcut and right-click options for copy/pasting.
Later in the track I discovered an anomaly in my recording where the left channel had ben di-synchronised with the right one, making them different length. The problem stayed even when I re-syncronised the tracks, but disappeared when I got to work again with some other non-corrupted tracks.
So this is not an issue for me anymore.
If you want to investigate and can’t reproduce the bug, let met know, I can probably find the recording for you to test.
Thank you for taking the time to anwser.

I think that the only way that the project might be useful is if you can also provide step by step instructions to reproduce the problem.

Oh, the step by step instruction would be real short: 1)open my project, 2)copy any selection of the stereo track into a new track, 3)last step again, and you have what i’ve shown in the first post.
But, my project is a bit big, and if I cut it into parts, the bug is fixed. So it’s a pain to send here. Plus, it’s only one corrupted file in the wild, sort of an edge case.
Here is a visualisation of a general way to sort of reproduce what I’ve experienced, i think :
https://puu.sh/JvFDq/7f862aba6b.gif
here is the step-by-step :
1)create a stereo track of something.
2)Split it into mono and mess with the length and alignement of left&right
3)Make it into stereo again
4)Copy it into a new track, then undo/redo to make it look ‘normal’
5)Copy and paste any selection of audio into a new track
6)Copy and paste any selection of audio into the same track, and there you should have it!

That’s helpful. I think this is a known issue when tracks are “joined mono” rather than true stereo tracks.
I’ll take a look through the issue tracker and see if I can find it.

Here it is: Unable to resize both channels of a joined stereo track at the same time · Issue #4061 · audacity/audacity · GitHub
The new development team have deemed it to be “not a bug” (a “feature”?). Personally I think it’s a design bug, but it’s not my decision.

Oh yeah! You’re on it! A walking audapedia right there :slight_smile:

Thank you, tbh reading the github issue I think I see the argument for it being a feature, as ‘mix and render’ does seem to solve my issue, and I feel it’s kinda helpful to be able to tell when stereo tracks are susceptible to be de-synched. I’m not savvy enough to understand the issue the OP have with ‘mix and render’ solution, tho.
In my case, my original recording file was de-synched or ‘corrupted’, so it actually would have been helpfull for the stereo track to indicate it by showing the two mono tracks like when you join two mono into stereo. But It didin’t, it appeared as a perfectly normal stereo track, until I zoomed at the end and saw the length difference.

But my exemple shows a little bit more, as the undo/redo trickery definitely can’t be classed as a feature, right? It just appears as a normal stereo clip with channels of different length. And the result of the undo/redo trick (or in my case, the original state of my stereo track) is that you can NOT resize the right channel at all.

better in my opinion if they weren’t susceptible to accidental de-synching.


The easiest example is if you have used “Envelope Points” (See: Envelope Tool - Audacity Manual).
Using the Envelope Tool allows you to shape the amplitude of the waveform non-destructively. You can adjust the envelope at any time until the track has been rendered. Once the track has been rendered, the envelope is “burned in” (applied destructively) to the waveform and there’s no going back other than by "Undo"ing.

Sure, that does sound better.

Yes, I used the envelope tool a couple times, I now understand the issue, thank you.
There must be several cases where you don’t have the choice and then it must be annoying to have to resize the channels indivudually.

What do you think about that? I mean it’s certainly a minor issue, but, i don’t think it’s a feature?

I think it’s part of the same issue. In my opinion, when “smart clips” were added to Audacity, the devs failed to think it through or test it thoroughly before releasing it as a flagship new feature in Audacity 3.1.0. Consequently there have been dozens of issues involving “smart clips”, and still about a dozen still open more than a year later.