Audacity Forum

Hello everyone!!

I have 2 questions: 1) I am creating some SuperSleep mp3s that involve recording statements/facts in 24 second intervals, where the fact is stated within 4 seconds and is followed by four seconds of silence (this sequence is repeated 3 times in 24 seconds) . So, if I wanted to record a statement like, 'I eat my cheeseburgers with red wine', the interval would be recorded like this: /'I.e.m.c.w.r.w'/4 sec.silence/'I.e.m.c.w.r.w.'/4 s. silence/'I.e.m.c.w.r.w.'/4 s. silence/. The problem I'm having is with the tempo of my recordings. I had my recording sessions on different days, and my metronome's tempo was slightly off (it was either too fast or too slow) for every session. Is there a very quick, easy and clean way to edit the silences so that they 'measure' ~3.8-4.2 seconds in length from the very end of one statement to the very start of the next (all of my sessions are still in .aud format)? How do I insure that I don't accidentally clip any of the recorded statements while editing the silences?

2) Is there a way to password protect my .aud files from the nosy ears with whom I share my computer? I believe I read about the process in a post before, but I'm not entirely sure...

Thanks for your help,

Chi

if i'm understanding your problem correctly, i think what you can do is manually highlight the silent parts, then use the "Generate > Silence" option to input the exact length of time you want all of the silences to be. this will both delete the silent parts you have now and replace them with silences of whatever time you choose (in this case, 4 seconds). you would have to be careful of where you were highlighting to avoid clipping off the ends or beginnings of your statements, but i think you can get pretty close to the timing you want this way.

I'm not sure either if I understand your questions, but Pele's answer sounds like it would do the job.

ChiNee123 wrote:2) Is there a way to password protect my .aud files from the nosy ears with whom I share my computer?

If you are on XP or later, then simply having a separate user account will block the casual "nosy ears" if you save it in "my Documents", unless they have an administrative account. If they have an admin account, then it's a bit more tricky as they have full access to the computer. However, you could use something like "WinZip" or "IzArc" to "zip up" your files, and password protect the archived files. Messing around with Audacity project files is not generally recommended as it is very easy to break the structure and wreck the project, but if you zip up the files, and then extract them into exactly the same directory, the project should still work.

Hello again,

Sorry my initial post was not clear...The 'silences' I refer to are not really 'silent'; they are actually 4 second pauses that are taken between statements...Since I'm not recording my projects in a prof. studio, there is some ambient noise on my recordings during these pauses (e.g. computer humming, dogs barking) that I would like to keep. Is there a way to adjust the pauses to all have the same length w/o making them silent? I've tried manually highlighting and deleting portions of the pauses and ended up w/ very inconsistent results.

And thanks for the head's up, Steve. The last thing I need is to do 10 hrs of recording all over again...I'll let the nosey ears roam free to listen to whatever they want to...But it would be nice if a 'lock-up' feature would be included in future Aud editions...

Thanks,

Chi