Multi-Selection ?

Hi all,

Been using Audacity for years but for some reason I cannot achieve a relatively simple selection
of multiple tracks and mixing to a single track.
Someone please tell me that I’m just having a dumb moment and the answer is simple…

Example, select a region of a few tracks:


Mix and render to new track, gives me the sections outside the selection as well:

Tried splitting the sections and adding a label as well, in case it made a difference, same thing.

Version 2.4.2 (32 bit) on Win 10 (64 bit).

TIA.

The “Mix” commands are in the “Tracks” menu because the commands apply to “tracks” (complete tracks, not just a selected region).

OK, thanks Steve, so the only way to get them mixed is to export selected audio,
do a mix down of what tracks go to the final stereo track, then re-import the audio,
then finally align it (relative to the original tracks) on the new (imported) track?

(As the imported audio will always be placed at the start - time =0).

That’s one way, but there’s a much quicker way:

  1. Select the part(s) that you want to mix down
  2. “Ctrl + B” to label the section
  3. Press “Enter” to close the labels text input
  4. Press “Enter” again to deselect the label track
  5. “Tracks menu > Mix > Mix and Render to New Track”
  6. Click on the new “Mix” track
  7. Click on the horizontal bar of the label created in step 2.
  8. “Ctrl + T” (trim to selection)

Steve wrote:

  1. Click on the horizontal bar of the label created in step 2.

Which horizontal bar? I’m using 2.4.2

EDIT:

Haa, got it.
Clicking on the text bar of the label track did the trick.

Your method works perfectly, thank you.

In that case step 7 needs to be:

  1. Click in the label’s text box.

Yep, thank you.

If you do this regularly, there’s a quick way (requires setting up a couple of keyboard shortcuts).

Make keyboard shortcuts to “Store Selection” and “Retrieve Selection”, then:

  1. Select the part(s) that you want to mix down
  2. Shortcut: “Store Selection”
  3. “Tracks menu > Mix > Mix and Render to New Track”
  4. Click on the new “Mix” track
  5. Shortcut: “Retrieve Selection”
  6. “Ctrl + T” (trim to selection)

I note that the Manual is a little unclear about how this works - where it just says:

Mix and Render mixes down all selected tracks to a single mono or stereo track

Whereas it actually mixes&renders all tracks that have a selection in them - or even all tracks that have a cursor position in them.

Perhaps greater clarity would be better there/

Or maybe a GUI/UX improvement would be to make Mix&Render work only on fully selected tracks - and generate a helpful error message otherwise/ If we (@Steve and @Paul2) agree that this might be a good improvement I can write up and enhancement request on GitHub.

Peter.

waxcylinder wrote:

…to make Mix&Render work only on fully selected tracks - and generate a helpful error message…

How about a compromise, Peter?

Certainly an error message would be useful but, why not include a check box (or similar) where it allows the user
to over-ride this and continue anyway?

This would then allow Steve’s method to still work (in use cases like mine) and still make the user aware that the whole track
will not be mixed and rendered.
Or, similar to what spectrum does at the moment, it alerts the user that only the first 234 odd seconds will be displayed and continues anyway.

That would be contrary to how “mixing down” is usually expected to work. Also, if there were “mix” commands that act only on the selection, then they shouldn’t really be in the “Tracks” menu (as the Tracks menu is for commands that act on “tracks”).

The more usual way to mix down a selection would be:

  1. “Duplicate” the selected audio
  2. Mix down the duplicate
    However, that’s a bit awkward in this case because:
  3. There are a lot of selected tracks
  4. For anyone working with the current version of Audacity, they make run into bug 2436.

Hi Paul,

if I’m understanding correctly what you want to do (I think it’s just M&R the selected bits) then what I would do would is@

  1. make the selection as in your image
  2. Edit > Clip Boundaries > Split New
  3. Observe: the selected parts are move to new tracks.
  4. select just your new tracks from the split (note that step 2 will also have left blank selections in the original tracks)
  5. Tracks > Mix > Mix & Render

Plus you can make shortcuts for steps 2 and 5 (as Steve suggests with his method)

Peter.

But as I wrote earlier in this thread the manual says

Mix and Render mixes down all selected tracks to a single mono or stereo track

So selection has a part to play in which tracks are to be incorporated in the M&R - what is confusing to me is that it only requires partial selection - or even just a cursor placement - in tracks for the tracks to be party to the M&R.

Peter

I think my compromise will be that I’ll try to make the Manual a little clearer (not that many folk bother to RTFM) - given that you and Steve seem happy with the current behavior :sunglasses:

Peter.

To make things easier, here’s a macro to mix down the selected audio:
Mix Selection.txt (445 Bytes)
(only tested on the current version of Audacity)

Many thanks to the both of you.

Both methods are far simpler than the way I was doing it.
I quite like having more than one way to achieve something depending on
number of tracks, position of selections, etc.

EDIT:

@Steve

I see you have re-uploaded the macro.
Am I assuming correctly that it now works on both mono and stereo tracks?

Hopefully yes. Let me know how it goes :wink:

Will test shortly, thank you.

Small improvement to the “Mix Selection” macro:
Mix Selection.txt (443 Bytes)

waxcylinder wrote:

I think my compromise will be that I’ll try to make the Manual a little clearer (not that many folk bother to RTFM) - given that you and Steve seem happy with the current behavior > :sunglasses:

Sounds good to me.
Now you just have to convince Steve :wink:

Steve wrote:

Small improvement to the “Mix Selection” macro:

Thanks, good thing I haven’t tried yet, will do so with the latest version.