I just finished building a Fedora 27 version of Audacity 2.1.1, which looks really good, thanks.
This is by no means critical, but I think it would be helpful to modify the segment numbering option under “Export Multiple” to allow for three-digit numbers with leading zeros: 001, 002, 003 … usw. At the moment I believe you may be able to exceed 100 segments, with the numbering continuing past 99, but the first 99 segment numbers will be only two digits wide, which screws up numbering consecutive tracks for values greater than 99. That sounds like a lot of tracks, but if you are creating an audio book of some length with individual segments timed at about 5 minutes (convenient for going back and forth during playback, or halting and resuming) you can easily exceed 99 segments for something like, say, Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day.
And you’re perfectly correct, however, can we assume you’re assembling your segments from copies of the performed work? Nothing like assembling an audiobook across many multiple original tracks and have the machine fall over for whatever reason taking the show or even portions of the show with it.
You have the feel of someone several books in. How are you preparing the work to meet technical standards? Five minute segment by segment? Processing by chapter?
How did you get around the New User dilemma of recording in a noisy house?
Umm. I believe I may have come across as more professional than I am.
The case in hand is that I am dicing a couple of looong (multiple hours) recordings assembled from (at least in one case) audiotape recordings into the aforementioned bite-sized digital files. So the “master” recording, so to speak, already has been edited and assembled into large, contiguous, digital audio files. I’ve been using audacity because it makes the task of finding appropriate cut points, where words or thoughts aren’t inconveniently split, very easy. But I do wind up with projects with well over 100 labelled segments. Also, it’s not that unreasonable a workflow model if you were working with the original recording artist to edit and assemble all the takes into one complete master before segmenting it.
I vaguely recalled that ffmpeg has – or maybe had – a segmented output feature where you could specify the name for each output file using a simple regexy template such as “%03d-Moby_Dick_Part_1.mp3” sort of thing.
Even mo’ better would be the ability to specify the starting index – “I want to start counting at 232…” – to make it easier to work over several project files. But one mustn’t be greedy.
I’d be tempted to use a more sophisticated naming scheme, such as: “short-title_chapter_NN” where “NN” is a 2 digit number (I doubt any chapter will exceed 8 1/4 hours)
That sounds likely, but how many people actually use audio CDs anymore? I burn the segments as mp3 files to a data CD and use my car player that recognizes mp3s. Others likely drop them in a smartphone or something.