Inserting a Pause

[CarrieK]

I have been all through the documentation, and I think my problem is that I'm not using the right descriptive words. I have a piece of dialogue. I want to insert a pause in the dialogue. How do I do that?

[allencmcbride]

Just click (using the Selection Tool) where you want the pause to be. Then select "silence" under the "Generate" menu. Choose the length of silence you want, and that should be it. If there's background noise and the silence sounds unnatural, you can use click "white noise" under "Generate" and then de-amplify that new noise. If the generated white noise still sounds unnatural, you could try copying and pasting background noise from somewhere else in your sample. Or you could upgrade to Audacity 1.3, which has more flexible noise generation options. --Allen

[CarrieK]

Thanks, Allen. Now, how do I adjust the length of the silence once I've put it in? Use the time shift tool? When I get to actually know what I'm doing I'll upgrade. At this point, I'm not even at the noise generation/reduction stage.

[kozikowski]

<<<how do I adjust the length of the silence once I've put it in?>>>

I don't think it's convenient. You make it longer by adding more and shorter by selecting and deleting little chunks. I hope there's a better way.

There's a much more exotic way. Put the second half of the performance on a second timeline and then move the timelnes with respect to each other. Both will play unless you told them not to. That is the timeshift tool.

Koz