Audacity Forum

I just installed 1.3.14 and wanted to do my usual editing.

To my dismay, I did not see any "cut" function under Edit. I looked elsewhere and could not find it.

What Happened?

Thank you.

mdubin

Cut has been grouped under "Remove Audio" in the Edit menu. CTL + X still works for Cut.



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:Cut has been grouped under "Remove Audio" in the Edit menu. CTL + X still works for Cut.



Gale

Thank you. Now please tell me what is the difference between "cut" and "delete". It appears that both can be undone.

mdubin

"Cut" removes the selected audio and puts it on the clipboard, just like doing "Cut" in a word processor. "Delete" just deletes the audio.

See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Edit_Menu

-- Bill

Please excuse my ignorance but I do not understand anything about the clipboard.

I usually just "cut" very small selections which contain glitches and then listen to the result. If it is not what I want, then I "undo" it and fine-tune the edit further, otherwise I go on to the next section to be edited.

It seems for my purpose, "cut" and "delete" accomplish the same thing.

So please explain about the clipboard.

Thank you.

mdubin

Cut is generally used when you wish to paste the section you just removed somewhere else. Delete just removes it

Think of the clipboard as a storage area that contains the last item you either copied or cut. Waiting for the moment that you use the paste feature to place it in your project

Keyboard shortcuts are incredibly handy for these functions

mdubin wrote:Please excuse my ignorance but I do not understand anything about the clipboard.

A little more detail to amplify on 58Mark's reply. It is Audacity's own "clipboard" which can store audio, as distinct from the Windows clipboard which mainly stores text and images.

Once audio has been cut or copied to the Audacity clipboard, you can paste it wherever the cursor (or selection) is in any track that is selected.

Both the Audacity and Windows clipboard only store one "thing" at a time. So if you cut some guitar, paste it somewhere else, then cut some piano, you can only paste the piano, not the guitar.


Gale

Thanks everyone for your explanations.

I would be safer using "delete" rather than "cut", since I would not want anything to be accidentally pasted elsewhere.

mdubin

I prefer Cut to delete, as you never know when you might have a last minute idea to use the piece elsewhere. But remember also that the clipboard retains only the last thing cut. If you cut two things, only the last thing cut will be on the clipboard. Or is that wrong?

Actually, if I'm not sure about possibly using a cut elsewhere, I'll usually save it somewhere as a 'clip' so to speak.

polkat wrote:the clipboard retains only the last thing cut. If you cut two things, only the last thing cut will be on the clipboard. Or is that wrong?

That's correct.
What I sometimes do if I'm using a lot of "clips" is to add a new track (Tracks menu) and mute it (mute button on the left end of the track), then when I cut a section out, I paste it onto the muted track. Because the track is muted it does not play, but the clips are there in case I need to use them again.