Audacity Forum

Hi, I was wondering how (or if) you can start recording halfway through a track, that is, not at the beginning. I'm recording a second track that is just a solo and I don't want to have to sit through 2 minutes of the first track to get to it, I just want to punch in where the solo begins.

You can record the song anywhere on the timeline and then use the Tracks > Align tool to push the performance sooner or later wherever you want it.

I believe Transport > Append Record allows you to start recording anywhere. Shift-R.

Koz

In Audacity 1.3.9 you should be able to place the cursor at the place that you want to start, then press record.
Audacity will create a new track(s) for the recording.
If you select a region of an existing track before you hit the record button, then Audacity will start playing (and recording) at the start of the selection and will automatically stop when it gets to the end of the selection.

stevethefiddle wrote:In Audacity 1.3.9 you should be able to place the cursor at the place that you want to start, then press record.
Audacity will create a new track(s) for the recording.

Cute, a useful feature - this is me writing this down.

stevethefiddle wrote:If you select a region of an existing track before you hit the record button, then Audacity will start playing (and recording) at the start of the selection and will automatically stop when it gets to the end of the selection.

This does not work for me (on 1.3.9 Windows XP-HE-SP3). In record mode it starts at the beginning of the selection ok - but then carries on recording past the slecetion end point. However in play mode it does end at the begiining of the selection correctly.

WC

waxcylinder wrote:This does not work for me (on 1.3.9 Windows XP-HE-SP3). In record mode it starts at the beginning of the selection ok - but then carries on recording past the slecetion end point. However in play mode it does end at the begiining of the selection correctly.

That seems odd. I've just tested on XP (in VirtualBox) and it stops at the end of the selection.
....
....
....(time passes)....
....

OK, I've tested it on a different XP SP3 machine with Audacity 1.3.10 and it stops at the end of the selection.
Could you give it a go with the nightly build?

If you don't want to risk messing up your current Audacity installation, just extract the zip file into a folder somewhere and then create an empty folder called "Portable Settings" inside the Audacity folder. Audacity will then write the "audacity.cfg", "EQCurves.xml" and similar stuff into the "Portable Settings" folder rather than into your user profile. (this is the easy way to have multiple versions on your machine that don't mess up each other).

The nightly builds are here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... tly_Builds

OK Steve - so now you've set me off on the path of Alpha testing ....

I just downloaded last night's 1.3.10 Unicode 7Oct09 - and it still does not stop at the end of the selection when in Record mode.

Curiously the red recording cursor (red triangle and red line) does stop at the end of the selection - it's just the blue waves that carry on - and nor does the window scroll when the recording goes off the screen, focus remains on the selected area. And it is making the recording, it's not just blue wave graphics.

WC

waxcylinder wrote:OK Steve - so now you've set me off on the path of Alpha testing ....

Cool So now that you're an alpha tester and appear to have discovered a bug, the next step would be to look in the Release Checklist to see if it is already known. I've had a look and can't see any mention, so the next step is to contact the developers about it.

If you are registered on the audacity-devel mailing list you can post an e-mail there. If not, you can either post a message to the feedback address (on this page http://audacityteam.org/contact/ ), which I think gets picked up by Gale, or contact Gale directly. Give them a brief description of the issue, and if you include a link to this thread then they can see the details.

Ok done, I am indeed on the devel mailing list so posted there.

I was brave enough (foolish enough) jus to down load the alpha into a new folder and run it. Seemed to cause no preferences problems when I reverted to 1.3.9 for production use following this testing.

WC

waxcylinder wrote:I was brave enough (foolish enough) jus to down load the alpha into a new folder and run it. Seemed to cause no preferences problems when I reverted to 1.3.9 for production use following this testing.

It should not cause a problem, but using a "Portable Settings" folder is a quick and easy way to make the new (testing) install a clean install (it will not use the existing audacity.cfg file). It's probably not likely, but I guess it's possible that 1.3.10 will behave differently if run as a clean install.

stevethefiddle wrote:

waxcylinder wrote:This does not work for me (on 1.3.9 Windows XP-HE-SP3). In record mode it starts at the beginning of the selection ok - but then carries on recording past the slecetion end point. However in play mode it does end at the begiining of the selection correctly.

That seems odd. I've just tested on XP (in VirtualBox) and it stops at the end of the selection.
....(time passes)....

OK, I've tested it on a different XP SP3 machine with Audacity 1.3.10 and it stops at the end of the selection.

Nothing has changed from Audacity behaviour going back to 1.2.6. Audacity will only record into the selection region and stop recording when it reaches the end of the selection if "Play other tracks while recording new one" is enabled in Preferences (also done by enabling "Overdub" in the Transport menu in 1.3.9).

So it's a "behavioural decision" rather than a bug, unless you count the odd-looking behaviour of the recording cursor trapping on the right edge of the region, then there being no scrolling as a bug.

I don't think it's anything we desperately need to fix for 2.0, given 1.2 has the same "issue". I think this may even have been discussed before long ago on -devel, but are there any usability views on whether recording with a selection present should *always" record only that selection, then stop?

waxcylinder wrote:Ok done, I am indeed on the devel mailing list so posted there.

Generally I prefer that reports of "bugs" should be posted to [email protected], as that makes it a bit easier for me to track them (and saves clogging -devel with reports if the problem really isn't a bug). I guess it's OK in this case if we want to revisit what's "best behaviour" here, and discuss if we can improve what happens now if overdub is off and you record with a selection present.


Gale