Just using Audacity 2.4.2 on MacOS 11.0.1, and I’m finding issues with the track labels. I can’t cut and paste from Safari (as digitising compilation LPs I have, so quicker than typing) into the label section when dividing tracks in the edit window. I can open the ‘Labels’ window and do it there, but then it doesn’t transfer to the edit window?
Also, when I Multiple Export and add the Artists names to the Metadata, it doesn’t retain the info for when I need to export again in a different format?
Is this a bug, or is there an Accessibility setting that I need to activate in System Preferences for the new OS?
Any help would be appreciated - as it will save me a lot of manual entries!
That’s a bug. It has been fixed for the next version of Audacity.
There’s a couple of possible workarounds (other than typing the text).
1.If you want to enter the text when you create the label:
In “Preferences > Tracks Behaviors”, enable “Use dialog for the name of new label”
If you want to paste text into an existing label:
Right click in the label and select “Edit Label”
Then click in the “Label” field and “Command + V” to paste,
Then press “Enter” twice (first time closes the editable field, second time close the dialog window)
It works for me, though there’s no guarantee that other applications will show that metadata - there is a lot of variation in metadata support from one app to another.
Try importing this file into Audacity 2.4.2 and look at the metadata - the “Artist” field should say “steve”.
Sorry, I mean for when I next open up the project file to Export Multiple again (if I have to re-edit, or in a different format) – I have to enter all the artist names again?
I usually find it more convenient to use a special-purpose tag editor. Even after ripping a CD or downloading MP3s I’ll often “fix up” the tags that were pulled from the Internet.
You’ll would also be able to embed album artwork which the Audacity metadata editor doesn’t support, and in most cases a special-purpose editor will correctly handle all of the different metadata formats/fields used by different audio formats.
I’m on Windows and I use MP3Tag and there is no OS X version (yet) but I’m sure there are similar Mac applications… I can select all of the tracks in a folder (usually an album) and enter/edit all of the common information once, and then edit the individual songs as necessary. There are features for copying the file name to the track name field (or vice-versa) or downloading the metadata from an online database and auto-tagging, etc.
Thanks – I do have iD3 for Mac, which is a tag editor. I’d just hoped that Audacity would retain that metadata info as part of the project file so I wouldn’t have to keep entering it each export. It was fine on earlier versions, so not sure why it’s not retaining it now?
An Audacity project has one set of metadata for the project.
Export Multiple can either save parts of the project that are labelled, or each track as a separate file. You can also mix some or all of the tracks to a single file, or cut parts from one place in the project and paste them somewhere else. It is not practical for Audacity to attach metadata to tracks or labels because there would be no consistent way to manage such data. It is only practical to have one set of metadata for the project.
Personally, if I want to use metadata, I usually use a separate metadata tag editor (“EasyTag”) after exporting. I may use Audacity’s built-in Metadata Editor for tags that are common to each export, and then use EasyTag to add additional tags.
No it doesn’t.
As far as I’m aware, Audacity has only ever supported one set of metadata tags per project, though I only started using Audacity regularly since version 1.2.4 (2005).