Audacity Forum

A friend of mine started working for a website and asked me to do some basic editing for their podcasts. I have dabbled in the past but i still need a few pointers.....

The pod casts usually have 4 members recording 4 separate mp3's that are then syncronised and edited appropriately.

The files are in stereo, each about 90mb in size, and once i had dragged and dropped them in and saved them as a project file. The file size was automatically 7GB?!? Could someone pleeeeeeease explain to me how that works!? Now that i have done all the basic editing, removing noise, chopping things up etc. and once again saved the project file, the data folder ballooned to 14.3GB?!

................ hmm i just checked it again and now it is 3.95Gb........... this appears to be so random to my inexperienced brain..... still somewhat huge tho, no?

(brief note, if it helps, i am using version 1.2.6 on windows xp)

I have learned to do tons of stuff on audacity watching youtube videos and checking out these two pages:

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... cks#p33781

http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... ,_and_More

functions such as split delete etc.... i am deducing that these are only in the beta and future versions of audacity? the keyboard shortcuts do not work for me and i can't find the things i want in the drop down menus.... if this is the case, should i risk trying the beta version?

one problem i come across is wanting to paste pieces of audio into a track. but instead of clicking in an area and pushing both sides outwards throwing everything out of sync, i just want to paste some audio on top, essentially over writing what is already there in that space. is this possible? essentially a... split paste?! (the best name i could conjure.....)

another basic function i would like to do, is click a marker on all 4 tracks but in difference places. highlight everything to the right on all the tracks with their respective markers and basically drag the highlighted sections to the right. what would be left i guess, ideally, a gap all the same length on each track looking like a silenced section that i can mess with. the reason i want to do this is that sometimes two or three of the people participating in the podcast might have an interesting sentence that i don't want to simple edit out two just to hear one clearly. ideally i would like to hear one after the other with the rest of the syncronised track ensuing afterwards......

another use for this of coarse would be for adding sections of music, jingles, or topic related music snippets to set a tone for the new topic's inception.

anyways i didn't want this post to get too long and i hope that i have made some sort of sense. i tried searching the forums, but i just don't think i know the correct key phrases.

thank you anyone willing to help me out, it would be hugely appreciated,

Ian

OK. Basics. The elves are going to start giving you pointers on the tools in Audacity 1.3.12, not 1.2. You can safely have both versions on your machine, just use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 projects will not open in 1.2

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Next. Audacity is not an MP3 editor. Audacity converts MP3 works into the highest possible quality internally in order to avoid editing and effects damage. You didn't say how long the shows were, but if they're an hour long and there are four of them, then yes, the production would have skyrocketed up into the GB range in a hurry. My modest weekly editing comes in at 700MB per hour each show, and I'm not trying very hard.

Stop editing in MP3. MP3 format creates sound damage. Always. Every time, and you can't stop it. Every time you go into and out of MP3 compression, the damage goes up and you can't stop that, either. I understand if your production is gathered from people all over Earth, then you may not have any choice, but if they're in any position to provide you with WAV files, then that's totally the way to go.

I need to take a break.

Koz

I'm not the editing wiz kid, but you can use the Time Shift Tool (left and right black arrow button) to slide sound or portions of sound earlier and later in the production -- although I'm sure you already knew that. One way to introduce open and closing themes and stingers is to put the audio on its own track (on the bottom) and use the Envelope Tool (two white arrows and bent blue line) to fade or advance the volume over time, and you can do that to all the tracks. This will let you cover up existing work with the music and do it in a highly controlled manner.


Back to some Audacity oddities. Audacity will not save a sound file. AUP is not a sound format, it's a programming scripting language. To get one single sound file, you need to Export one from the File menu.

You may get a damaged file if you do that. Audacity will mix your show down to stereo from wherever it is now and it just adds up all the loudnesses in the show and it could easily go over the maximum allowed and create clipping damage. Use Tracks > Mix And Render to create a stereo version of the show to see where the problems are.

Audacity Projects will save a multi-track production (unlike a WAV file), but it will not save all the UNDO layers. This has killed many people in the past. "How come I can't UNDO the mistake I made yesterday?"

Audacity Projects are bolted into the computer where they were created. Do Not move, rename, delete or otherwise change any part of the Project or any of its files until you produce the final show file. People who "just need to clean up all those sound files" before they export have no show.

We need to wait for actual editors to arrive to tell you how to split your edits.

Koz

darkvoid86 wrote:functions such as split delete etc.... i am deducing that these are only in the beta and future versions of audacity? the keyboard shortcuts do not work for me and i can't find the things i want in the drop down menus.... if this is the case, should i risk trying the beta version?

Yes you deduce correctly - many of the really useful editing features are only available in the later 1.3 version.
It's not much of a risk to try it - you can have both versions installed on the same machine. A couple of issues to note - you cannot run the two versions simultaneously, and although Audacity 1.3 can open projects saved by Audacity 1.2, Audacity 1.2 cannot open projects after they have been saved by Audacity 1.3.
Most users find Audacity 1.3.12 to be a lot better than the old 1.2.6 version (myself included).

darkvoid86 wrote: another basic function i would like to do, is click a marker on all 4 tracks but in difference places. highlight everything to the right on all the tracks with their respective markers and basically drag the highlighted sections to the right. what would be left i guess, ideally, a gap all the same length on each track looking like a silenced section that i can mess with. the reason i want to do this is that sometimes two or three of the people participating in the podcast might have an interesting sentence that i don't want to simple edit out two just to hear one clearly. ideally i would like to hear one after the other with the rest of the syncronised track ensuing afterwards......

You can produce that result, but not quite in that way. Using Audacity 1.3.12 you can create splits in the tracks at the point(s) where you want the silences to be, then select a section that is common to all of the tracks that you want to move and drag them together using the Time Shift tool. tracks may be toggled selected/deselected by moving the track focus with the up/down cursor keys, then select/deselect using the ENTER key.
This may be obvious once you have had a play with 1.3.12 but if you need clarification, post a new question in the 1.3.12 part of the forum.