Option to copy audio position information

Feedback and Discussion Forum Adding Features
1

Hi,
When loading an audio file in Audacity, you can see the audio position of the cursor on the bottom.
For example: 00h04min24.653sec
When clicking on this field, you can change the format to seconds, frames, samples etc.

I would like to be able to copy the value of this field (no matter what format it is) to the clipboard.
Of course I’ve already tried right-clicking on the field or just Ctrl+C - nothing worked.

Can you please add the possibility that users can copy those values?
Would be very useful for audio position, and optionally for start and end of selection.

Regards

2

To do what with it?

This short code can be run in the Nyquist Prompt effect to give the start of a selection in seconds (the caveat being that the Nyquist Prompt effect requires playback to be stopped, and for there to be an audio selection):

;version 4
;debugflags trace
(format t "~a~%" (get '*selection* 'start))
""

Use copy and paste to ensure that you enter the code exactly as written.
(The two double quotes at the end are required in this code)

3

Hi,

It’s indeed an interesting way.
I tried it and the first impression was good.

Why I need this information?
I want to cut the silence of many MP3s at the end of the track.
However, instead of re-encoding them, I’ll use another program which just cuts them.
With Audacity I find out the starting point of the silence and the whole song length.
I store everything in an Excel table.
(I created AHK scripts for that.)

Thanks.

P.S. But you might remember the wish anyway to add Copy support for these fields… :wink:

4

How many is “many”?

If it’s not a huge number, you could do the whole job (apart from automating the trimming) with MP3Split (or similar).

If it is a huge number, then it would be possible to write a script for Audacity and batch process the files to give a text file output something like:

name-of-file  123.4216
name-of-other  120.1000
yet-another  67.213
...
5

It’s like 2000 files, but there could be even more.

I’m not sure if a batch might do the job, because I need to find out the start of the silence for each track.
I use an AHK script for that.
Loop start

  • open mp3 file with Audacity-
  • jump to end
  • move cursor x seconds back
  • start playback
  • check if there is silence → if yes, pause, copy audio position info, paste it to Excel
  • exit
  • select next file
    Loop end

Is it with Niquist also possible to get the total length of the track?
Your code is fine, but would be even better if I have a second value that is the total length.

P.S. For cutting I would use mp3directCut. - To be honest I haven’t checked if an AHK script might be useful there too (as for AHK)

Regards

6

Yes.
If the track starts at time = 0, then you can get the end time with:

(get '*track* 'end-time)

If the track may start earlier or later than time = 0, and you want the length, then:

(- (get '*track* 'end-time) (get '*track* 'start-time))



Perhaps you could use, or adapt Silence Finder Silence Finder - Audacity Manual

7

I’d like to add my vote for this feature request please. I use audacity to find the end of songs and then enter that number into OSX Music.app as a “stop time” in the track’s options. very similar to @4ud4cit4t0r use case.

8

I’d also like to copy the timestamp. I need it to use with ffmpeg to split a recording into multiple files.