Audacity Forum

I have used Audio Recording software before but this is my first time using Audacity. I am converting cassette tapes into mp3 files etc but the majority of the cassettes which I would like to import are "live" events which means that there are no gaps or silences (to know where to break the file into tracks) after each song as u still get the crowd noise and also with dance music it will generally be constant music for the hour.

Previously I have got round this by saving the whole tape as 1 file, then going back to it and listening to it and manually breaking into tracks - the problem is that without a fast forward button I'd have to listen to the tape all the way through (and given that I have many, many tapes to convert it would take me a lifetime!!!!)

What i really need to know is if Audacity has a manual skip/fast forward button so that i can skip to various sections on the tape (e.g. after 3 mins which is kind of the usual length of time for a track) and listen to it to check if the track is near the end and then put in the split????

I know how to put the split in but can't sit at the comp for an hour listening to the whole tape each time!!!

Hope someone can help

Cheers

There are several ways to navigate through a track - for slowly skipping through a track there are some keyboard short-cuts (right/left cursor keys - holding down the SHIFT or CTRL keys alters the speed)

For navigating through long files:
Home key = jump to the beginning
End key = jump to the end

The most useful tool is to zoom in/out and click with the mouse.
To zoom, you can use the Audacity zoom buttons (look for the magnifying glass buttons), or you can hold down the Ctrl key, and use the wheel of your mouse (if you have one).

And if you have a label track with labels you can tab to the next label position with the tab key.

This exhibits slightly odd behaviour in 1.3 - and it depends on whether you have single point labels or the selected-range labels

With single point labels: if you have your cursor in the audio track it starts by going back to the first label and you have to tab through the labels - but if you have your cursor selection in one of the labels, it will exhibit the more logical behviour of tabbing on to the next label.

With selected-range labels: if you have your cursor in the audio track, it won't tab at all. But if you have your cursor active in any of the track label areas it will tab on (and select) the next labelled selection-range.

It is possible to have both types of labels - and it's hard to describe the behaviour in this instance. Just try it with a small section of audio

WC

Nice one WC, I've just learnt something