Audacity Forum

mr-b wrote:I'm *not* looking for a "quick" process. I need one that I can easily rediscover after a period away from the app,

understood.

mr-b wrote:And I don't see any other way than for this to be a simple selectable function in the GUI.

The simple GUI method is the way that you described in your very first post.
Sure there are quicker and more efficient ways - hence the multiple suggestions from various people.

mr-b wrote:Audacity is really only geared for power users and not intended for casual or infrequent users

The developers have worked really hard to provide a multi-track audio editor that is simple enough for novice users, but powerful enough for more demanding users. The program is widely used by school children and pensioners alike, (and also contains pretty good support for visually impaired users).

mr-b wrote:'[' (or was it ']'?)

"[" for the start of the selection and "]" for the end of the selection [the same way round that you would use them for bracketing a piece of text]

mr-b wrote:As mentioned before, GUI clutter can be reduced by various methods e.g. custom toolbars,

You may like to add your vote here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 20&t=34009

mr-b wrote:Also I'm afraid didn't understand the "drag out a selection in the waveform" process

When you initially select part of a track, it is often quicker to just make an approximate selection that is roughly close to the part that you want to select. You can then zoom in and adjust the selection with as much precision as you want to.

mr-b wrote:I'm afraid didn't understand the "drag out a selection in the waveform" process. I was confused as to how it related to trimming the end of a track, since I don't have anything already selected - I'm just focused on audibly cueing up the end point and then trimming everything after.)

You have 3 minutes of audio. You know the bit you want starts around 1 minute and ends about 2 minutes because you can see that from the waveform. So you select that part while zoomed out, listen to it, zoom in if wanted and adjust the selection edges until you get what you want. Then Edit > Trim the selection which removes everything else. You are just making the selection at an earlier stage, with the advantage that you are selecting what you want to play (keep) so can easily adjust that region.

Even with what I think you really want to do - a) Pause; b) select to the end; c) cut - you only need hit Space (to Stop) between b) and c).


Gale

Ah, yes I usually have 45 min of audio and so was just focused on trimming the end. Also to my mind having to select (and trim) a section of audio introduces more potential for errors since you are having to make sure that both the start and end points are accurate before editing. As a new user, KISS is the guiding principle and and so I'm focusing on editing one thing at a time.

I'm confused as to how you select to the end after pausing - nothing seems to select anything using the playback cursor as a start point.

Currently my method is:
- Pause at track end
- Shift A to stop and set cursor (not great since it's an unintuitive step, a hidden option and it may shift the cursor)
- Shift >>| to select to recording end
- Delete

mr-b wrote:I'm confused as to how you select to the end after pausing - nothing seems to select anything using the playback cursor as a start point.

Currently my method is:
- Pause at track end
- Shift A to stop and set cursor (not great since it's an unintuitive step, a hidden option and it may shift the cursor)
- Shift >>| to select to recording end
- Delete

To me this is the "mechanically intuitive" way of doing it. After pausing, hover the mouse over the green line of the playback cursor so that the horizontal centre of the I-Beam mouse cursor aligns with the green line. Then drag to the end of the track and stop dragging when the yellow vertical line appears (you can drag past the end of the visible waveform to scroll the track). Then hit Stop and Delete. It's approximate (so is hitting the Pause button because of delayed reaction time) but you can exactly adjust the selection start to match the original paused audio position by typing in the Selection Start box. Note that if you are not zoomed into sample level, merely clicking in the track may slightly move the audio position (another symptom of above).

Confusingly if you Pause, click and drag part of your selection then zoom out to the end (or zoom in), or drag the horizontal scrollbar, the selection in the waveform moves (so no longer relates to the values in Selection Toolbar) and the selection on the Timeline (which is in the correct place) becomes visually corrupted. Fortunately once you drag the selection in the waveform again (or Stop) the selection reverts to the correct place.



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:To me this is the "mechanically intuitive" way of doing it. Hover the mouse over the green line of the playback cursor so that the horizontal centre of the I-Beam mouse cursor aligns with the green line.

But that's the thing - I can't tell when the I-beam cursor is aligned with the Pause cursor as nothing happens to it as I traverse the pause cursor/line (also are you sure you don't mean vertical line?). This is why I have to use Shift-A to set the cursor. Also the green pause line (if it is green - I have difficulty being red/green weak colour-blind) sometimes disappears whenever you click outside the app window. It would be great if a right-click in that area could have an option to set the cursor.

Then drag to the end of the track and stop dragging when the yellow vertical line appears (you can drag past the end of the visible waveform to scroll the track).

Hmm I didn't see any yellow line, and I'm afraid the rest of this part went way over my head.
I like the "mechanically intuitive" term. But isn't that the starting point for many ppl? Or am I just getting too old? Guess I'll have to wait until my 2YO to start school so he can do it all for me .

Mr-B,
Just discovered a technique you can use with only mouse and menu items.

1) Select the section to play starting well before you really want it to end and ending at the end of the track. (Or Select the whole track by double-clicking on it.)
The reason for selecting well before the eventual stopping point is that it may take a few seconds to execute the parts of step 2.

2) Start playing. While it is playing, use the ALT key method of selecting from a menu by pressing and releasing the ALT key. This causes the menu shortcut keys to be underlined. Once this is done, the case (upper or lower) of the following keys is ignored. Use E (for Edit), S (for Select) and then when the play reaches where you want the track to end, press L (for Left at Playback position [ ) ((This is where the [ key mentioned earlier is accessable from the menus)). This will stop the playback, set the cursor to the playback position, AND move the left end of the selection to the new cursor position.

3) Press Delete.

Rather than use the ALT key method described in step 2, you could use the mouse to make the menu selection, but then the play stops when you release the left mouse button. It might be a bit awkward to have to hold it down if you are going to listen for very long before the place you want to stop.

Where there's a will, there's a way.
Hope this is easier.
Dave

mr-b wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:To me this is the "mechanically intuitive" way of doing it. Hover the mouse over the green line of the playback cursor so that the horizontal centre of the I-Beam mouse cursor aligns with the green line.

But that's the thing - I can't tell when the I-beam cursor is aligned with the Pause cursor as nothing happens to it as I traverse the pause cursor/line (also are you sure you don't mean vertical line?).

I meant centre of the horizontal as stated, because the vertical line of the I-Beam would obscure the vertical line of the playback cursor.

mr-b wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:Then drag to the end of the track and stop dragging when the yellow vertical line appears (you can drag past the end of the visible waveform to scroll the track).

Hmm I didn't see any yellow line, and I'm afraid the rest of this part went way over my head.

When you click Pause, "Audio Position" in the Selection Toolbar at the bottom will give a reading. Note the reading, then carry on dragging until you reach the end of the track. Click in the "Selection Start" box two boxes to left of "Audio Position" and type in the value you noted in Audio Position. That will set the cursor to exactly where the playback cursor paused.


Gale

Well I read and re-read all this several times and I still don't get the aligning of the cursor piece. The movable cursor does not show any sign of aligning with the playback cursor any which way I move it.
And as for noting down 'audio position', this is really getting far away from simple operation.

I really hope that someone who is used to using GUI apps with a mouse assesses common task workflows with Audacity and notes which areas rely heavily on keyboard use, in order to help redress the balance for new or infrequent users. Again I'm afraid that I feel that the power users on here are from the 'vi' school and of the "What's hard about using shift-ZZ to save?" viewpoint rather than a WYSIWIG point'n'click, and so will have trouble understanding where I'm coming from. (I used to do a lot of Unix at work back in the day)
That's in no way meant as a criticism, it's just the way things are I guess, with power users providing the forum support (which incidentally I'm very grateful for, with everyone taking the time to suggest different things).

mr-b wrote:Well I read and re-read all this several times and I still don't get the aligning of the cursor piece. The movable cursor does not show any sign of aligning with the playback cursor any which way I move it.

The select tool cursor does not change when you hover over the playback cursor obviously. I just mean align the select cursor over the playback cursor so that it hides the playback cursor underneath.

mr-b wrote:And as for noting down 'audio position', this is really getting far away from simple operation.

That's agreed I think as a bug (unless you are zoomed in far enough to see individual samples).


Gale