Audacity Forum

I have been tranfering my records to mp3 files with complete success until now. I have been doing it the same way for a couple of months, then all of the sudden now when I export the WAV file into itunes and convert it to mp3 it won't seperate the songs. It shows it as one record and plays all the songs but doesn't show the songs them self. I have everything written down in order so I don't forget anything. I have even deleted the program and reloaded it twice thinking it may have been corrupted or something, but no luck. I lable each song as always on the track just like I have always done, but no song seperation when I get to iTunes. I am just about to my witts end. Hope someone can help. I am using XP Pro

When you Export Multiple, do you get a pile of individual music files? If you only got one sound file, then iTunes will make one Music CD that's continuous beginning to end with no breaks.

Reinstalling Audacity 1.2 is a task for the gods. You need to trash and rebuild the Audacity Preferences and in Windows Audacity 1.2, the preferences were saved in The Dreaded Windows Registry. Abandon hope all ye.....

Did each new Audacity program ask you "English?" when you started it the first time? That's the symbol of Audacity starting at First Birthday.

Koz

Or have you inadvertently switched to using simple Export rather than Export Multiple?

Even if you have a label track to identify the individual songs - if you then just do a simple Export then you will only get a single file with all the songs in it together.

WC

Don't remember when I reloaded or even when I loaded the first time if it asked for English or not. Too move on, I did use the Export Multiple thing after this thing started and it seemed like it wanted the names of several sound tracks at the same time. That had never happened before so I went back to using Export, which I think was what I had always used before. Now, if I understand you rignt about when I get to itunes, it looks like one song or albun and plays fine but the songs are not visable. The seperation in between the songs sounds fine. It plays just like a normal recording it just doesn't show each individual song, so you can't pick out one song to make a playlist mixed with other songs. Maybe I should tell what my procedure is and you can pick out what i'm doing wrong, if anything.
1.With Audacity on screen in the stereo mode, 2 tracks showing. I put my recored on @ either 45 rpm or 33 1/3, it never made a difference, I just convert it and it works fine.
2. I let it record the whole album then save it.
3. I usually Normalize it at this point and do any noise filtering and adjust the timing inbetween the songs, then save again.
4. Then I start from the first song and start Labeling the songs. From the Project menu using the Add Lable at Selection feature. I put every song title at the first of each song, then save it again.
5. At this point I send it to a specified file using the File menu Export as WAV... feature.
6. When I go look at the File Folder that I sent it to, there are a bunch of files that say: xxxx.au (File Size) AU Format Sound
and a file with xxxx.aup.bak, the all the songs in the WAV format.
7. This is where I seperate the WAV files from all the other crap and put it in a folder name with the album name. This is what I use when I put it in itunes and convert it. When I finish I have all the WAV and MP3 all in one file, and all the songs are showing seperately in Itunes. OK, this is what is happening, steps 1-5 is the same, but when it gets to the first folder all the au files and one aup.bak is there and only one WAV file with all the songs in it. For some reason it isn't recognizing the lables and seperating it.
Sorry about the discription of terms but I'm rather limited in what I know.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I think I'm doing it like I use to, but maybe not. I may have to go buy a program, but I hate to because this one was working great and looked like it has so much potential. It's got to be something real simple that I'm doing wrong, I just can't put my finger on it.
Well if you can help great, if not, well thanks for your time.

You definitely need to be using Export Multiple and not Export. (You could select one song at a tiemand use Export Selection - but that would be harder work IMHO.(

Here is my workflow:

Workflow to take Audacity Projects to AAC in iTunes

1. Record and edit the project in Audacity
2. Export as a set of WAV files (to facilitate correct ordering later I Label the tracks 01 <track_name_1>, 02 <track_name_2>, etc.)
3. Import the WAV files into iTunes
4. Use iTunes to make AAC copies (at your chosen bitrate) in the library of the WAV files
5. Delete the WAV files from the library.
6. Edit the metadata tags of the tracks/album
7. And last but not least - backup my updated iTunes library
8. Delete the Audacity project file (.aup and folder) to release hard disk space


some more detail:

For step 1. I record and edit with Audacity set at 44.1kHz and 32-bit floating stereo (this gives me good headroom for any required editing) – I down-sample on export to 44.1Khz 16-bit PCM stereo (the Red Book standard for CDs)

For step 2. – I down-sample on export to 44.1Khz 16-bit PCM stereo (the Red Book standard for CDs). All the files for a particular album or show are placed in a specific named folder for that album/show.

For Step 3. in my iTunes application I have the Import Settings ( Edit > Preferences > General > Import Settings ) set to Import Using AAC and with my preferred bitrate set via Custom. I then add the folder created in step 2 above to the iTunes library with the File > Add Folder to Library. This loads the WAV files into the library.

For Step 4. One of the columns I always have showing in my iTunes library is Bitrate. Clicking on the Bitrate column header will re-order the display by bitrate (you need to have All Genres/Artists/Albums showing).
The WAV files should show up as a set at the top of the list (or bottom) - mine show at a bitrate of 1411 kbps. Alternatively you could activate the Kind column - whereby the imported files will show as WAV and similarly clicking on the Kind column header will produce a suitable ordering for you.. Select all the WAV files that you need to convert and then use Advanced > Create AAC version.

Actually to facilitate later location of the converted files I usually edit the common metadata tags for the set of WAVS whilst they are selected - most importantly the album/show name.

For Step 5. The WAV files should still be the only selected tunes at this stage, providing that you have done no further clicking - just take extreme care at this stage (the AACs are created but selection is not forced by iTunes) So then I just Delete the selected files using the Delete key - and send the files to my wastebasket (Note carefully that my iTunes is set to copy files in NOT to reference external files - so the WAVs that are deleted are copies of the original source WAVs that iTunes made in my library in step 3. This is set in Edit > Preferences > Advanced with the “Copy tunes into iTunes folder when adding to library” tickbox.)

For Step 6. In order to edit the metadata for Song Name etc - the album is easy to locate as I have already edited the Album tag in Step 4 above.

Step 7. This is a critical step – as I have no desire to lose the valuable fruits of my labours. I maintain two separate 1TB disks. On each disk I place a complete set of the WAV files I have created in their album/show named folders – with the album folders sorted by genre and placed in “Genre folders”. Each disk also contains two generations of backup of my iTunes libraries - (I actually don't do this library backup after every update - but I do try to do it at least every couple of weeks so I have a roll-back point)..

Step 8. After the backups are made I can then safely release space on my onboard hard drive by deleting the Audacity project files and the originally exported WAV files which remain there.

Yes it's a bit of work - but worth the effort IMHO

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Alternative Method

Actually there is an alternative method I sometimes use when transcribing a vinyl album. I usually make a CD of these from the set of WAV files, retaining the original ordering of course. I then load this CD into my PC - if I am lucky the Gracenote CDDB database will "recognize" the CD and supply all the necessary metadata for me (otherwise I edit the metadata tags and submit them to Gracenote). Then I can simply rip the CD into my iTunes library in the same way as I would do with a commercially produced CD.

WC

Great , Looks like my work is cut out for me now. I do appreciate your time, I'll try this and if I'm still alive and don't blow my brain out, I'll be back and let you know how it worked out. Thanks again for the time you spent helping me.