Delete with crossfade

Frequently after deleting a section of a recording, I find that a short crossfade between the remaining parts is useful to achieve a really smooth transition.
While the results are often worth the effort, I thought it would be nice if I could reduce the amount of effort required, so I wrote this little plug-in:
Del+crossfade.ny (992 Bytes)
To use it, just select the audio to delete and launch the effect. You will be prompted to select how long you want the crossfade to be (default = 0.05 seconds), then click “OK”.

Note that the beginning and end of the selection are used for the crossfade, so slightly less audio is deleted than the selection length.
Example: If you select 1 second, and a crossfade length of 0.1 seconds, then the first and last 0.1 seconds of the selection form a crossfade 0.1 seconds long, and the middle 0.8 seconds is deleted.

Installation instructions: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/installing-nyquist-plug-ins/62380/1
When installed, the plug-in “Del + crossfade” appears in the bottom section of the Effect menu.

Tip: If you want to use this effect frequently with the same crossfade length, you can create a macro containing just this effect, and then create a keyboard shortcut to run the macro.

Hi Steve, I use an older version of this plugin which I’ve noticed introduces SBEs on tracks that previously had none. Does your plugin delete on frame borders? If not, that would be a useful feature. Thanks.

What’s that?

What sort of frame borders? Film frames (24 fps)? NTSC frames? CDDA frames? PAL frames?
You can “Snap To” various types of frame when selecting the audio: Selection Toolbar - Audacity Manual

In my case, CDDA frames. I always use “Snap To”, but delete with crossfade breaks it.

Set the fade length to 0.04 seconds (that’s exactly 3 CDDA frames)

That works, or any multiple. Thanks.

If you do this a lot, it may be worth modifying the plug-in to use a time control instead of a slider.
I don’t want to change the “official” version in this way, as I think most users will find the slider control more convenient, but in your case you could set the time control to use CDDA frames.

To modify the plug-in, you will need a “plain text editor”, such as NotePad++ (available here: Downloads | Notepad++)

Find the line:

;control xfade "Maximum crossfade length" float "seconds" 0.05 0 0.5

and change “float” to “time”, like this:

;control xfade "Maximum crossfade length" time "seconds" 0.05 0 0.5

Thanks, that works unless you set it to the max 38 frames (~0.5 sec). Had to change that last value to “1.0”.