how to find end of sound in overrun recording?

[philosurfer]

Hi, and thanks in advance for any help you can give. I'm copying cassette tapes to digital. Sometimes I just can't be around to babysit the process, so I start the recording - and often I come back long after the tape has finished (but obviously Audacity kept going). This is all "spoken word" material, so I'm not sure how many silences there are in the recording. I'm looking for a process that says, "find the end of the sound" on the track, so that I can just cut it from there to the end. Does anyone know how to do this?

Rich

[steve]

Press Ctrl + F
The waveform will then be fitted into the window.
You should be able to see where the audio ends and turns into silence.
Select most (not all) of the silence (you don't want to accidentally cut off too much) by clicking and dragging along the waveform.
Press the Del key to delete the selected silence.

Press Ctrl + F again to resize the (now much shorter) waveform into the Audacity window.
If you have a wheel mouse you can use Ctrl + Mouse Wheel to quickly zoom in on the end of the recording (otherwise you can use the magnifier tool or Ctrl + 1 (zoom in), Ctrl + 2 (zoom normal), Ctrl + 3 (zoom out).
Trim the remaining silence.

For future reference, Audacity 1.3.14 has a "Timer Record" function that can be used to start and stop recordings on a timer - very useful if you're not around to press the stop button. http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Transport_Menu#timer

[steve]

See here for more ways to navigate around tracks: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/NavigationTips