Audacity Forum

A couple of shortcuts in editing a recording from vinyl before i convert it to MP3 that I can't seem to figure out:
-- When replaying the track in order to insert labels, I can't figure out how to move my cursor along the track without just letting it play. In other words, i want to hop from spot to spot on the track but can't find the right command sequence.
-- I also can't figure out how to select a section of the track and then to cut it out. Using the selection toggle will grey a section of the track, but then i can't cut it.
-- A previous post cautioned not to try to save project files as they are unstable. Instead they suggested saving as a WAV. A couple of questions on this:
Can labels be inserted when i recover the WAV file before converted it to MP3, my preferred format?
Can the tracks be cut and edited from that format?
Or, should I just save in MP3 format as an intermediate step and then go back and insert labels and do further editing?

Many thanks to you dedicated, helpful souls who guide us newbies.
TSuber

It's not really that Audacity are unstable - they are tricky things to move about and they are not designed for long-term storage or for use on any music playing software (e.g. WMP or iTunes).

An Audacity projuct should be used for the duration of you project - one per LP is what folkes would normally do. And then once the project has been exported to WAVs/MP3s and those files have been backed up, then you can delete the Audacity ptroject.

My normal workflow for LP transcription and repair is:

1. Capture Audio in Audacity - normally both sides of an LP/tape in a single track (use the pause key between sides)
2. Save the Audacity Project
3. Clean-up - mainly to remove clicks/pops
4. Clean up the the inter-track gaps (they may be too long, too short or too noisy) - consider fad-in/fade-out between tracks
5. Insert labels to identify tracks (including one right at the beginning for track-1
6. Export a multiple set of WAVS and a multiple set of MP3s
7. Burn a music CD with the WAVs
8. Load the MP3s into my iTunes library and onto my iPod
9. Backup the WAVs and MP3s to my two external hard drives (even though MP3 is your pregerred output format - do consider keeping the WAV file too - you can re-import an MP3 into Audacity, but you will have lost audio qality as MP3 is a lossy compressed format - WAV isn't, WAV retains full audio quality)
10. Backup my iTunes library to one of the external hard drives
11. Delete the Audacity project (the .aup file and it's associated folder with all the little .au files)
12. Occasionally defrag the PC hard drive to clean up the unused file space

In answer to your particular questions:
Yes you can import a WAV file into Audacity and label it then. Note that labels are not retained with WAV files, they have no metadata tags, unlike MP3s which do. When you have imported a WAV you get an Audacity project that you can do any Audacity stuff too, including cutting, editing, labelling and exporting. Just be aware that if you open a WAV file Audacity will normally not actually make a copy of the WAV file, but will instead just create a pointer to the WAV and use the WAV (there is an Audacity preferences setting that you can make to force to acually make a full copy - effectively it recreates all the little .au files)

Cursor
You should be able just to move your cursor and click to a new position - it may help you if you zoom out a bit as you will then get more audio in the Audacity window. To select a selection of a track you need to click and drag with the cursor.

WC