Delete extraneous labels

I like to use “Silence Finder” to divide my recordings and set label locations. Sometimes that takes a lot of tweaking of the parameters and still I might get 1 or 2 “extra” labels generated in the silent sections or in a pause in the ongoing track. I can’t seem to find a way to just delete the extraneous label. Can someone help?

Bill
Delete extra label.jpg

Firstly, I’m currently working on “Silence Finder” to try and make it more accurate at detecting sounds/silences with less extraneous labels. Progress is good so far, but it will still take a while to complete the work.

Secondly, to delete a label, click at the end of the text in the label, then use the backspace key to delete the text. When you have deleted all of the text characters, one more backspace will delete the label.

Thirdly, I’ve been looking into having a right-click menu item for deleting labels as I think that this would be far easier that having to delete “all the text then one more”. Is this a feature that you would like to see in Audacity?

First, thank you for your reply. Secondly, yes. context menu delete choice! Right clicking was the first thing I tried to find a “delete label.” The next place i looked was in the tracks menu.

Thank you for your work on this project.

Bill

/// Remove Label if remove menu item is selected
void TrackPanel::OnRemoveLabel(wxCommandEvent &event)
{
   LabelTrack *lt = (LabelTrack *)mPopupMenuTarget;
   int labelIndex =  lt->getSelectedIndex();
   lt->DeleteLabel(labelIndex);
   MakeParentPushState(_("Removed Label"),
                          _("Label Remove"),
                          true /* consolidate */);
  // RefreshTrack(lt);
}

Nice script but i have no Idea how to use it :confused:
Anyway, knowing the “one more backspace” trick, all is good.

BTW, I was supposed to tell you: I’m ising windows 8 and Audacity 2.0.5

That was just a hint for Steve :slight_smile:>

Yes please :slight_smile:

WC

The other cute trick you can use to delete a label or group of labels (but perhaps not useful in this case as the extraneous labels are clumped with a label that is required) is to select over the labels with click and drag, just in the label track and NOT in the audio track - then use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+K

I use this a lot - and find it extremely useful.

See this page in the Audacity Manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/label_tracks.html#remove

WC

Thanks Edgar. I think we must have discussed this before because that is identical to part of my “RemoveLabels-05.patch” :wink:

I doubt that there would be much enthusiasm for adding just one right click option for label tracks, but the developers don’t like to review huge patches either, so perhaps I’ll see if I can get it committed as “experimental” while we sort out other useful right click label track items.

But you would not be creating a drop-down menu with just one item - there are already three there.

And I suspect the developers may be receptive to smaller incremental changes rather that a big bang approaching adding several menu functions all in one go.

Jus this one change would make a huge difference to usability - the current method of deletion is somewhat cack-handed with the delete-delete-delete … - and the “cute trick” Ctrl+Alt+K whilst powerful isn’t always useful. Implementing a delete label in the right-click drop-down menu would save an awful lot of clicking (especially as I do sometimes with classical pieces).

Peter.

The Metadata Editor can be called up at any time from the “File” menu.
You can disable the Metadata editor from popping up before Export in Preferences. See here: Audacity Manual

That is not so simple because the “correct” behaviour depends on what the user wants to do.
For example, If you had three tracks that have different metadata and you mix them down to one track, what should happen to the conflicting metadata tags?
Currently Audacity supports just one set of metadata tags for the “project”.

This is going a bit off-topic, so if you would like to discuss ideas for improving metadata handling I’d suggest that you start a new topic here: Adding Features - Audacity Forum

I knew that I had not written it (not my style:

wxCommandEvent &event
becomes
wxCommandEvent & pEvent

The word “event” is a reserved word in many compilers, MS VS 2010 complains about it as a warning; I also like to put a space in there so it’s more readable.

LabelTrack *lt = 
becomes
LabelTrack *labelTrack =

When there is only a tiny bit of code it’s easy to look back up to see what the variable lt represents but in longer sections labelTrack (camelCase) makes it easier to see what is being represented. This is especially important when someone else must come back and maintain the code after the original author is long gone.)

I count 4 items (Name, Font, Move Track Up, Move Track Down)
And the new “Move Track to Top” and “Move Track to Bottom” will also be listed after the patch has passed the developers review.

waxcylinder is referring to the “right click on label” menu which has the options “Cut, Copy, Paste” for the label text. These are equivalent to using Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.
The proposed right-click menu item should be the same as tabbing into the label then End, Shift+Home, backspace, backspace, though I was hoping to also have an option to delete labels in the Edit menu.

Ah, I see. Just another unaccessible item.

Yep, really handy and popular too!


“Remove Last Bit” removes everything past the last label and that last label. The others are pretty self-explanatory.

Inaccessible because they are in a context menu?

Yes, partly so. All context variants (context menu, shift F10) do only show the drop down menu for the selected label track.
I could theorethically place the mouse pointer to the actual navigator object (like an edit box, radio button, normal text etc) but the labels aren’t programmed such that each label was a child of the label track and are therefore not reacheable as individual objects.
I can easily move to the label track and through the labels (tab) but the screen reader gives no feedback if I’m currently editing the label.
I realize that I am in edit mode when I press space and nothing is played. Also, present text or text that is written is not read out.
I’ve assigned Ctrl-Space to play the label, even if it is in edit mode.
However, I do generally not use them at least not until the edit labels dialog offers comparable functionality to that of the track view (which will never be made accessible, I reckon).
It might be a thrilling experience for some to download the free screen reader NVDA and to try to navigate through Audacity and the labels–with display turned off.
You have to hear to understand. :wink:

I don’t see (in Audacity 2.0.5) the same edit menu items as in your screen capture. What contex is required to get those choices in the Edit menu?