splitting recording headache

[swellfella]

I read the splitting recording tutorial but I'm not getting the hang of it. I have successfully transferred the entire cassette recording of my nephew in conversation as a toddler. So far so good. I have saved it as a mp3 for later burning to CD. OK. What I'd like to do, in addition, is to split just his ramblings into separate audio files for another CD. But I'm not getting how to slow the audio down so I can listen for when he starts to speak. I'd appreciate basic steps in how to accomplish this. So will he. Thanks.

[kozikowski]

I have saved it as a mp3 for later burning to CD. OK.

Or maybe not OK. Audacity captures and internally uses a very high quality, uncompressed format. Music CD is a very high quality uncompressed format. MP3 is a compressed format that adds distortion and damage. You should be exporting WAV for this work.

The reason MP3s are used on the internet is they're small and efficient and download easily -- and nobody cares what they sound like.

You can Export WAV from the original capture or you can Save a Project. Both will give you a very high quality show, but the Project will only open in Audacity, The WAV will open anywhere.

It is highly recommended you save this WAV archive of the work (and not the MP3) against the time you want to use it for some other production, or you can't find the cuts and clips you made.

You can't Continuously make MP3s out of MP3s.

Koz

[kozikowski]

I'm not entirely sure where you're stuck, but if you've never done this before, we'll be talking different words for a while.

The way I find a clip in the middle of a long piece is find the waveforms for the start and end through zooming and placing labels at the two points. Zoom out and drag-select the clip, made easier because the labels are magnetic or sticky. File > Export Selection.

There is no "slow it down so I can find something."

I change the Audacity default where it always shows the segment I'm playing. That may seem logical to want, but it makes it very difficult to set an accurate edit.

Audacity Preferences > Tracks > [ ] Update tracks while playing. (deselect) [OK]

You can click anywhere in the timeline -- the blue waves -- and Audacity will [spacebar] play from that point. [spacebar] again to stop. You don't always have to start from the beginning.

Drag-Select around the place where you think the dialog is. Zoom into the selection Control-E. Play the zoomed piece. Repeat. Eventually, you get it down to the blue waves that make up the first word of the dialog. Set a label (Control-B) just before that point.

Zoom out (Control-3 for a little bit or Control-F for full) and zoom back in again to find the out point. Set another label just after the last word.

Zoom out full and drag select. The two labels will be sticky and guide your selection into the clip.

File > Export Selection.

Koz

[swellfella]

Let's be sure we're on the same page. Firstly, my thanks for your swift reply. I have saved the project to mp3 and have in fact burned it to CD to the delight of family. As you no doubt have read, it is a spoken word project. Hi Fi while no doubt of paramount importance to music buffs, it is of less concern to me. I listen to audiobooks for the most part, and as long as I can make out what is said, that's fine.

You've provided an answer of sorts in your reply. Waveforms. In fact, the zooming of waveforms. I just want to reproduce my nephews actual utterances eliminating extraneous conversation by others on the recording. IOW, separate files of just him speaking, ie, track 1, track 2, track 3, etc.

Being that I am away from the computer on which I have this project, and will be for a while, it will be some time before I actually put this in effect. But again my sincere thanks for your time.

[kozikowski]

I just want to reproduce my nephews actual utterances eliminating extraneous conversation by others on the recording.

That's still fuzzy/slippery.

-- I have a recording alternating between unwanted conversations and the wanted ones.
See: editing, exporting and setting label points.

-- I have a recording with the wanted and unwanted conversations happening at the same time.
You're dead. You can't do that. You can't separate different simultaneous conversations in the same show.

Before I throw around the "impossible" word, if the original show was professionally produced in very high quality stereo, it's sometimes possible for very expensive, custom software to separate one direction of sound from the others. Like: Aunt Emma is speaking to the half-left in the stereo show and we can sometimes cut or isolate her.

She may no longer sound like Aunt Emma when we get done, and if Aunt Emma moves, it stops working. Probably not viable here.

Koz