WAV audio not time shifting

[vishwanath]

Hi There

I am trying to align 5.1 channel audio tracks of a movie using Audacity. What I did was I opened all the tracks and then I time shifted all the waveforms using the zoom tool and time shifting tools to the maximum possible precision. (My Requirement 1 min and 14 secs). The waves get time shifted in the session and when I play it in the session I can see the difference as well. The problem comes when I again export it as a .WAV file. It exports successfully. When I again close and open the files in Audacity what I see is that they haven't got time shifted and are back to the position from where I had time shifted. Could you please help in this regard? I've tried export, export selection etc but to no avail. Kindly help.

[bgravato]

I'm not sure if I understand what you're trying to do...

If you save it as an audacity project, when you open the project again the tracks should be in the same shifted position.

If you export the tracks separately to wav files and then import them back to audacity, what you're describing will happen, unless you add silence to the beginning of each track so that they all start at the same point.

[kozikowski]

Since WAV will not save multi-tracks over 2, that's a feature request, isn't it?

Koz

[bgravato]

Since WAV will not save multi-tracks over 2, that's a feature request, isn't it?

Koz

Actually you can save WAVs with more than 2 channels...

Go to Preferences -> Export -> Use custom mix

Then when you export as WAV you'll be prompted about how many channels you want and to which channel you want each track to go.

You can then import that back and have all channels in separate mono tracks.

If you have stereo tracks before exporting, after importing you'll have mono tracks only... (one of each channel of the previously stereo track)

Time shifts will preserved since all tracks will be padded with silence in the beginning and at the end, so that all tracks are the same length.