I have imported various clips, most lasting a few seconds, into their own tracks. Of course, there is white, blank space surrounding the tracks.
I want to export the tracks, take them to a much better studio, and have the tracks synch up.
When Audacity exports, it ignores the white, blank space. Therefore, nothing will line up, and shifting everything into it’s proper place will take forever and a week.
Is there a was to turn a clip into a full track, one that starts at the beginning of the complete song and ends at the end?
Let me ask another way: how can I easily add silence to surround the clip?
Audacity can do all that you seem to want to do. You can use the Timeshift tool on each clip to drag it left or right in order that it lines up against the base track. Once you have them all lined up, simply do File > Export to a WAV file to have your mix written out as a single stereo track. Before you close Audacity, do a File > Save Project and save the Audacity project. This will allow you to come back to the audio and re-adjust the position of any of the clips, or delete them or add more, just as you wish.
Yep. My lack of technical language is going to be a problem.
I have some completed songs on Audacity. It’s a pretty thing to look at. Little two second clips all over the place. Everything is where is should be.
My computer sucks. I want to export the tracks individually as wavs and dump them into a folder for the song. No prob. I’ll then take the folder to a better studio. I am assuming the studio will use protools or something not Audacity.
I’d like to simply import the wavs into whatever program they are using and have everything synch up right away.
Here’s the problem:
Audacity will trim away the blank space around the two second clips. The wav will be two seconds long. In the studio, I’ll have to slide everything to its proper place. This will be exhausting, time consuming, and ultimately expensive.
So: let’s say track one is nothing more than a two-second bit at the three minute mark. How can I fill up the space surrounding that clip? This would be especially useful for the beginning of the track before the two-second bit comes in.
Answered my own question, which either makes me brilliant or an idiot. Your call.
1.) Uncheck “editing a clip moves other clips” in Tracks under Preferences
2.) Record and then paste a second or so of silence at the beginning
3.) Click “Join”
4.) Now I have a track that is silent all the way to the two-second bit. I can now export that individually, export the other tracks individually, take them to a better studio, and everything will synch up once imported.
This is an easy solution, but I’m very lazy and therefore open to an even easier one.
If you have got all the clips properly spaced out, just add one more track - a new Audio track with generated silence to extend the full length that you need. Then export all that as a stereo wav. That will preserve the spacing. If want to have separate files of each clip so the “other studio” can do its thing on each of them, then simply select the silent track and a clip together and do File Export Selection to a WAV file; repeat for each clip.
Thanks for this thread, this is exactly my scenario. An option to “fill null with silence” or “insert silence from beginning” or something similar, on a per-track basis, would be a really nice feature.
Select the track (click on the track, then press shift+Home, then shift+End)
Effect menu > Nyquist Prompt. Enter the following into the Nyquist Prompt text box:
()s
and press the OK button.
If you don’t mind trailing silence on the end of shorter tracks you can use this method on all tracks in the project at the same time:
Ctrl+A (select all)
Shift+Home (select to start)
Effect > Nyquist Prompt > ()s