Timeline editing.

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

You have a wonderful product. A few things I would like to see added.

  1. When you play back and stop the cursor stops at the place you stop, does not return to begining.
  2. Maybe be able to put keyframes were you want to edit.
  3. Also being able to scrub the audio would be nice.

Thank You.

2

Press shift + A


Audacity does not use “keyframes” (unlike video, the audio is not in “frames”), but it does have “labels”: http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/help/manual/man/label_tracks.html


That is a very popular feature request. I’ll add your vote.
You may find the “Play to selection” feature useful: http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/help/manual/man/playing_and_recording.html#Play_To_Selection_.28B.29

3

But surely you can set the time format in the Audacity Selection Toolbar (options include: film frames, NTSC frames, PAL frames and CDDA frames). And then if you enable the infamous “Snap To” the editing is restricted to frame boundaries. Or what am I missing here?

WC

4

Well I never knew that, most useful. You learn a little every day …

WC

5

Ctrl + B on Linux.
Command +B on Mac OS X.

See here for the Keyboard Shortcut Reference in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/help/manual/man/keyboard_shortcut_reference.html

6

Steve,
On my system when I press Play and then Stop, the cursor goes back to where it started from. I’m running v2.0.1 under Windows 7. What’s different between:
a) you and I?
b) the original poster and me?

As far as I can see Audacity does what he/she wants it to.

{Edit comment: Sorry, I didn’t realize the age of the original post. However, the question still stands. Why do you need Shift+A when Audacity does it anyway?]

7

Video clips show up cold with frames already marked and the timeline, too, is configured to have the same frame rate as the clips. Audacity would have to arbitrarily assign frame boundaries. This would lead inevitably to the common video complaint of not being able to edit sound on half-frame boundaries.

A very common complaint when editing MP3 (a video format) is that it insists on television frame boundaries, whether you want them or not.

“How come my MP3s will not loop on the notes I selected?”

Koz

8

On my system when I press Play and then Stop, the cursor goes back to where it started from.

You can press P for Pause instead of Stop. Then the show will pick up right where you left it.

You should be careful because Pause will lock out many tools and effects, whereas Stop does not.

Koz

9

JasonMeyer just got himself banned for adding spam to his earlier post.

10

Koz,
You missed the point completely. The original poster was complaining that when he/she pressed Stop the cursor didn’t go back to where he/she had started the Play from. Steve advised using Shift+A to get back to the start point. I was pointing out that, on my system, when I press Stop, the cursor does go back to where I started playing from. So, if the cursor does go back when I press Stop why doesn’t it do so for others? I have no problem with Audacity’s current behaviour. As far as I can recall, it has always done what it is currently doing.

11

Not quite.
The original poster said:
"A few things I would like to see added. "
and then goes on to list three things that they would like to be added.

Currently, when you press Stop, the cursor goes back to where it was before. They want a feature adding so that "When you play back and stop, the cursor stops at the place you stop (and) does not return to begining."

I pointed out that Audacity already has that feature and it is provided by the keyboard combination Shift + A.
Koz pointed out that rather than press Stop, they can achieve a similar behaviour by pressing Pause rather than Stop.