using a silence finder to split a long recording

[Hotrod71]

I think I got it. So by clicking at the end of the first track and selecting "silence finder" will automatically break my long tracks into separate tracks? I'll try it and will let you know. Thanks for all.

[Hotrod71]

Unfortunately, I'm still not able to get the drop-downs under the Analyse button to become active after I stop my recording: they ("beat finder and silence finder") remain greyed-out. Where do I go from here to get Audacity to automatically split my long recording into tracks instead of my having to find the end of each track and manually split them? Any assistance is appreciated.

[steve]

Record or import some audio.
Press the "play" button
The audio will play.

ok so far?

Press the "stop" button (NOT the "pause" button).
The audio will stop playing.

still ok?

Left click on the track and drag the mouse across the track to select some audio data
There is now some audio data highlighted.
The highlighted data is the selected audio.
It should look something like this:

selected_audio.png (99.73 KiB) Viewed 1464 times

Now if you click on the "Effects" menu, you should see that the effects are enabled.

are they?

If you click on the "Analyse" menu, you should see that the "Analyse functions" are enabled.

are they?

If, instead of "click dragging" to select some audio data, you just click on the track information block, it will select the entire track and both "Effects" and "Analyse" functions will still be available.

[craigj1]

I have a cassette tape that had recorded an LP. Silence Finder is not finding the tracks. I suspect it's because there's quite a bit of "LP crackle" that's being picked up as noise. I tried raising the decibel setting a bit, but that didn't work.

Any suggestions?


I didn't see this issue in the forum.


Again, does anyone have a suggestion for me here?

[Pauline Bland]

I have a cassette tape that had recorded an LP. Silence Finder is not finding the tracks. I suspect it's because there's quite a bit of "LP crackle" that's being picked up as noise. I tried raising the decibel setting a bit, but that didn't work.

Any suggestions?


I didn't see this issue in the forum.


Again, does anyone have a suggestion for me here?

Sorry, I don't have the answer - I have the same problem! Have you solved it yet? Any tips would be much appreciated.

[steve]

The "silence finder" does it's search with TWO parameters - amplitude (dB) and duration (seconds). In order for a region to be detected as silence it must be both a) Below the threshold level, and b) continue below that level for longer than the minimum duration.

If the silence finder is not finding areas of "silence" it is either because a) the "silent" bits are too loud (try decreasing the figure in the "level" box to a smaller number), or b) the "silence is not remaining low enough for long enough (try reducing the "Minimum duration" to a smaller number).

Note also that the labels are set a given number of seconds before the silence ends.

Note also that the silence finder ignore volume envelopes - it works on the actual wave.

[Pauline Bland]

Thanks stevethefiddle but I have now lost the file I was working on! if I ever find it again I shall let you know how I got on.

[kozikowski]

"Silent Sense" is right up there in the list of tools that don't work. The other two are "Noise Removal" and "Clipping Repair."

All these tools work perfectly when they're not needed. Silent Sense works exactly correctly when the silence between cuts is absolute and the music is of good level and undistorted. Noise Removal works perfectly to get rid of that really quiet but annoying air conditioning buzz in the background of a critical performance. Clipping Repair is less successful, but if you managed to peak clip an occasional drum track in a performance, this is the tool for you.

None of that ever happens.

People without exception arrive with tracks that are so completely destroyed that spoken words or song identity is obliterated. Silent Sense, for all practical purposes doesn't work on favorite phonograph records because of clicks and pops. It should be a little better with cassette tapes because there, the background noise at least doesn't change constantly. But it is high. Depending on the performance, I would expect Silent Sense to be unable to tell the difference between an expressive song and the gap between songs.

It is my experience that if the performance isn't worth carefully rescuing by hand, it's not worth it because you almost always end up rescuing it by hand anyway.

There was one performance of a Irish grandmother telling stories as only a person with Irish blood can do. She will not be doing it again. It was a bad recording and it took several of us and three different software packages to rescue it--by hand--and well worth the effort, too.

On the other hand, we have an acquaintance who decided that the pile of vinyl really can go out in the garage in favor of buying the CDs, or the cuts on iTunes.

Koz

[ronsch]

As a really new newbie I was having the same issue as hotdog in my first attempt to use silencefinder. What I really needed to do was to select the entire single hour-long track and then use silencefinder. Worked like a charm.