Opening audio in Audacity?

[drmhed]

I'm brand new to Audacity, this forum, and pretty much anything over the MINIMUM basics of audio editing. I have a recording of a big band I play in...two sets...about 80+ minutes of music, (plus a good bit of 'down time' between tunes, and the break between sets.) Recorded using my Zoom H2. I just want to open this recording in Audacity, delete all the 'down time' (dead air) between tunes and sets, and a couple of tunes that didn't exactly go well. When I try to open this file in Audacity, it only opens about 10 minutes (or less) of the entire file. What am I doing wrong? What steps am I missing? Thanks for any and all help with this! Glad to be here!

[drmhed]

Guess I should include that I'm running Windows XP, and used the .exe installer.

[Gale Andrews]

What format is the file in (the three letters after the dot (period) at the end of the file name)?

What length does Windows say the file is (right-click over it > Properties)?

You may need to download FFmpeg, which makes it possible to import and export more formats. See here http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/fa ... tml#ffdown .


Gale

[drmhed]

Well, I changed the 'name' of the file to the club's name. But it says the format is MP3.
The length (duration?) is 2:15:52.

Think I'll wait to install the FFmpeg until I hear from you, concerning my answers to your questions.

Like I said, when I select file>open and select the file, apparently I can import the first 10-15 minutes of the recording, but the rest never shows up in Audacity.
THANKS!

P.s...I've checked the "notify me when a reply is posted" box, but don't recall getting notification in my e-mail.

[Gale Andrews]

Well, I changed the 'name' of the file to the club's name. But it says the format is MP3.
The length (duration?) is 2:15:52.

Think I'll wait to install the FFmpeg until I hear from you, concerning my answers to your questions.

Audacity in principle supports MP3 files over two hours.

But Audacity decompresses the MP3 file to lossless PCM so it may need anything up to 2.7 GB of disk space merely to import that file. Then if you amplified the whole file it needs 5.4 GB of disk space to allow for you undoing the amplify. For the same reasons it needs some extra space even to delete audio. Do you have that amount of disk space?

If so, I would try FFmpeg. If someone has renamed the file extension and it is not really MP3 you may have more success with FFmpeg.

If you do not have the requisite disk space, trim or split the MP3 (if it is an MP3) with MP3 Direct Cut or some other direct editing MP3 tool. This will have the added benefit that you won't need to lose quality by re-encoding the file, which you would if you edited and exported in Audacity.

I've checked the "notify me when a reply is posted" box, but don't recall getting notification in my e-mail.

Look if "Subscribe topic" is available at the bottom of this page. If so, click the link. if it says "unsubscribe" then you may want to check the Trash folder in your e-mail in case the e-mails from the forum are in there.

Gale

[drmhed]

If I'm looking in the right place, (My Computer?), it looks like I have 859 GB of free space on my "local disk (C:)" I'll give that 'MP3 Direct Cut' a shot. THANKS!