Audacity Forum

I am extracting small snippets of an audio file into separate .mp3 files for language drilling purposes.

The snippets can be anything from aprox. 1 to 15 seconds duration. Example:
file 1 (English): "I will report this to the police"
file 2 (Mandarin Chinese): "Wo yao bao jing le"

When selecting one of these snippets, of say 2 secs duration, and then doing "Export selection"
as mp3 (128 bit 44.1 kHz), this actually saves an .mp3 file of some 5 to 6 secs duration,
including an extra few seconds of audio that I did not select and did not want included.

This was with Audacity 1.3.10 on XPSP3 and the latest version of lame downloaded according to instructions.

Version 1.2.6 does not seem to have this problem. I'd like to drop back to 1.3.7 that
I was using previously and see if it happens there too, but I might not have the time
to experiment anytime soon.

EDIT: Another thing, in case it matters: For some of the snippets I fiddled around with
introducing short silences in between sentences just prior to the export operation. Like
if the audio went ABCDEF and I wanted to extract ABC, I put 3 secs of silence between
C and D like this ABC__DEF, to be able to select the phrase with a nice cushion of
half a second or so of silence around it on both sides.

This is a bug specific to Audacity 1.3.10 - "Export Selection" and "Export Multiple" both export up to the next 5 second boundary.
This has been fixed in Audacity 1.3.11 which is available here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... tly_Builds

Thanks. That solved it.

thanks guys
I had same issue with WAV files and the update has corrected it.

However, I'm not sure about whether the update has installed or just unzipped the files and is running from the folder I unzipped it to. The 1.3.10 is still in my Start menu programs and runs when clicked.
I guess you haven't made an installer??

The ZIP version of Audacity does not require installing, it just runs from wherever to unzip it.
If you want to replace your 1.3.10 version with the new 1.3.11 version, just find the Audacity folder in /Program Files/ and delete all of the files and sub folders that are in it. Then unzip the 1.3.11 download and copy or move all of the files and folders into the old Audacity directory. You may want to change the name of the old shortcut icons.