Editing in Audacity

[mhardwick]

I have Audacity on both my desk top using Windows 7 and on my laptop using Windows XP. When I edit sound using the "split" function in my desktop it works perfectly satisfactory. But when I try to use it in my laptop it simply will not work. Can anyone suggest what is wrong?

[steve]

How are you doing the "Split"?
Are you using the menu option (if so, which exact menu item?) or a keyboard shortcut?
Which exact versions of Audacity are you using (recommended version for both systems is 1.3.14 Unicode)

[mhardwick]

I use the Edit - Split. It works on my desktop and not on my laptop.
The version of Audacity on my desktop is 1.3 Beta. The version on my laptop was downloaded recently and I cannot see anyversion numbers.

[steve]

There's three parts to the version number, for example: 1.3.14
The last number (in the example "14") is important.
The version number is shown in "Help menu > About Audacity".

[mhardwick]

My version ofAudacity on my laptop is 1.2.6 where as my desktop is 1.3.12-Beta(Unicode). Is this the reason the split function won`t work on my laptop?

[steve]

My version ofAudacity on my laptop is 1.2.6 where as my desktop is 1.3.12-Beta(Unicode). Is this the reason the split function won`t work on my laptop?

Yes. In Audacity 1.2.x the "Split" function is the equivalent of "Edit > Clip Boundaries > Split New" in Audacity 1.3.x The other "split" options are not available in Audacity 1.2.x

The current version of Audacity is 1.3.14
I would recommend upgrading both systems to this version.

When upgrading Audacity 1.3.12 the currently installed version will be updated and no other action should be required. However if you have LAME and/or FFMpeg installed then you should check that these still work as it may be necessary to update these as well.

When installing Audacity 1.3.14 on your laptop, the existing Audacity 1.2.6 is not overwritten and will remain usable.
Audacity 1.3.14 can open most projects that were created by Audacity 1.2.6, but due to a bug in 1.2.6 it is possible that some project may not open in Audacity 1.3.14, so if you have a lot of Audacity Projects on your laptop it will probably be a good idea to keep the old 1.2.6 version on your machine for now.
Audacity 1.3.14 will still work, but you can only run one version of Audacity at a time. Projects that have been saved by Audacity 1.3.x cannot be opened by Audacity 1.2.6.

If you use LAME (for MP3 export) on your laptop it will probably be best to uninstall your current version of LAME and install the current version which is available from here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/FAQ: ... encoder.3F

[billw58]

Yes. In Audacity 1.2.x the "Split" function is the equivalent of "Edit > Clip Boundaries > Split New" in Audacity 1.3.x The other "split" options are not available in Audacity 1.2.x

Kind of. To be a bit pedantic, Audacity 1.2.x does not support "clips"- that is, separate audio regions in a track that can be moved independently. If you make a selection in a track and then do Edit > Split in 1.2.x you end up with the original track with silence where the selection was and a new track with the selection copied into it. You cannot move the apparently "separate" regions of audio in the original track because they aren't separate. Also, if you open this project in 1.3.14 you still won't have separate clips in the original track.

Your situation is like have Photoshop Elements on one machine and Photoshop CS5 on the other. "Hey, how come I don't have layers and actions?"

-- Bill

[mhardwick]

To Steve and billw - Many thanks for the advice and suggestions forward.