Audacity Forum

Hi,

Ive transferred a cassette audio book into Audacity and have one 48min track. I want to break this down into 3 minute segments so that I can easily skip back or forward once I have converted to MP3 and listening via my MP3 player.

Is there a feature within Audacity that can automatically segment the track at a given time period?

Ive looked in the program to see if I can resolve this myself but can`t seem to find the function that Im looking for.

I literally want to place a marker / pointer every 3 mins so that my file will be broken up into smaller segments rather than one one large track.

"All I want is..."

Audacity isn't good with defining an edit point. There are a number of very important tools that don't work because of that. This is one of them. I thought somebody came up with a work-around a while back but I can't find it. I thought Audacity 1.3 had something like that, too, but so far, no luck.

You do want labels at specific intervals, management if they don't come out even, and then Export Multiple with sequential filenames, so it's not trivial.

Do an advanced search of the forum (above right) and see if you get any hits -- other than other people complaining about it.

Koz

In Audacity 1.3 there is a plugin that does what you want. It's under the 'Analyze' menu as 'Regular Interval Labels'. You can use 'export multiple' to create the mp3s. If you chose to name all the labels the same (like 'my audio book') the mp3s will be exported as 'my audio book.mp3', 'my audio book - 1.mp3', 'my audio book - 2.mp3' etc.

Thanks for the replies.

I will try to find the work around or upgrade to the Beta version.

As free programs go I really like it albeit Im a very basic user of the software.

Does anyone know of a commercial program that offers the function Im looking for?

BF1 wrote:Does anyone know of a commercial program that offers the function Im looking for?

George13 is correct, the function you require is available in Audacity 1.3. If you really want to pay for a program to do it, see here: http://audacityteam.org/community/donate#donate

Im more than happy to pay for Audacity and often support, financially, freeware / shareware programs.

Thanks for the confirmation that 1.3 supports my request. I wasn`t sure whether to download 1.3 as it is in Beta. However, I believe you can have both programs installed at the same time.

Will I have to install the Lame Encoder again or will 1.3 recognise that I have it already and its location?

BF1 wrote:I wasn`t sure whether to download 1.3 as it is in Beta.

Yes it's in beta, but it is now very close to being released as the new Audacity 2.0 stable version. Most if not all of the forum regulars use Audacity 1.3

BF1 wrote:I believe you can have both programs installed at the same time.

Yes you can. The only limitations are that you can not have them both running simultaneously.
Audacity 1.3 can open Audacity 1.2 projects, but a project that has been saved in 1.3 can not be opened in 1.2.

BF1 wrote:Will I have to install the Lame Encoder again or will 1.3 recognise that I have it already and its location?

That depends on which version of Lame you have installed. 1.3 is fussy about the version and must be used with this one http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/
It doesn't matter if you use the Zip or the .exe as long as it is the Windows version.
If you download the zip version you will need to extract it first. The .exe is a self extracting archive that will create a folder in the Programs Files directory called "Lame for Audacity".

If you have trouble getting or installing Lame, see here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9175

Steve,

Many thanks for your reply.

I have now added the labels so that part of my requirement has been fulfilled but when I tried to export my recording using Export Multiple I get a box that opens titled "Edit Metadata" for which I have to select "OK" for each labeled segment.

After doing this the export begins but only the first file is completed and then Audacity (1.3) crashes.

Any idea as to why?