Working with a very large (100+) clip library

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi all,

My dad has been editing interviews with SAWPro for 15+ years, and he’s now trying to switch to something more modern. His basic workflow is something like this:

    1. Load an audio file (up to an hour or so long) into SAWPro
  1. Split it into 30+ named clips
  2. Repeat steps 1 and 2 four more times
  3. Open up a brand new empty track
  4. Open the “clip library” which contains the names of all the clips he created in steps 1 and 2
  5. Search through the library for the desired clip, paste it into the new track
  6. Repeat step 6 50+ times

Is there any way to approximate this workflow in Audacity? The crucial point is that he wants to be able to create a very large library of clips drawn from multiple audio files, and then easily pick clips out of that library to paste into a new track.

Thanks for any help!

2

In Audacity you can split-up an audio file into many individual files, each individually labelled , then export [save] the labelled sections as individual files, (e.g. into a [Windows/Linux] folder you’ve named “Clip Library #999”).

You can drag-n-drop audio files [e.g. from a folder] into Audacity , but they will appear as a new track , not inserted into an existing one : you’d have to use copy&paste to insert a copy somewhere in the original track.

Audacity allows multi-track editing : the clip you want to insert can be shifted-about on the timeline …

Once you’re happy with the timing of the clip, use “mix&render” to incorporate the clip into into the track.

If you are just adding the clips together, end-to-end , rather than inserting into , Audacity can do that too … http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_editing.html#How_do_I_combine_two_files_into_one_longer_file.3F

If you are repeating the same editing processes many times, using Audacity’s “Keyboard Short-cuts” can make that quicker … http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/keyboard_shortcut_reference.html