Stop audio, record feedback, start back playing audio?

[Gale_Andrews]

@ryanmccallum

Professor states there was a button that would stop the audio, allow him to record his feedback (without overwriting the currently playing audio), and then start back playing the audio. I am unable to find this feature in Audacity.

Audacity does not do that in one step.

He should use SHIFT + A to stop, which sets the cursor at the stop position.

@ryanmccallum

The alternatives to his request that I have found are (sent to him for his consideration):

1. While you are listening to the audio play and want to record over a certain section: Click “Stop”; click the area you would like to start recording (such as during the silent pause between a student’s responses); and click “Record” to start recording in this section. I thought he would record over the many silent pauses in the recording.

Audacity would record in a new track, starting from the time point that was clicked. When played or exported, the professor’s recording would be mixed into the silences in the student rendition.

It would be more convenient to select the silent area then he would record for that length of time in the new track and recording would stop automatically.

@ryanmccallum

2. During the recording, when you have found a place to provide feedback, click that area. Hit “Stop”. In the menu at the top, click Generate > Silence. A box will pop up asking how many seconds of silence you would like to add at this point. By default it is 30 seconds, which is a good amount to leave feedback. You can trim the silence later if it is too much and if you need more, you can append another period of silence to the first one. Go ahead and record during this silence. It is seamlessly integrated into the full recording when you export the file (say, as an mp3). This was unsatisfactory as well.

He is absolutely certain there was just a button that would pause the recording and allow him to record as long as he needs during the pause.

Or if he does talk for too long, click at the end of the student’s phrase, CTRL + I (as in “eye”) to create a split, F5, then drag the student’s track rightwards until it is after the end of the professor’s feedback.

The professor would end up with a lot of tracks, and should probably do CTRL + A and Tracks > Mix and Render from time to time to reduce the number of tracks.

A better variant would be to create a new single track for the professor’s recording. Click in that track at the time point to record the response then SHIFT + R. That will always record in that track and not create a new one. If the professor goes on too long, do all the splits and drags as the final step.

Or you could insert pauses beforehand with something like Inserting pauses to aid transcription. or Extend Silences

Whichever way you look at it, Audacity is not ideally suitable for this. We need something like Missing features - Audacity Support.

@ryanmccallum

Audacity 2.0.2 (installed on image, .exe)Windows 7 64-bit

It does not affect this discussion, but the current version is 2.0.6 Audacity ® | Download for Windows.


Gale