Export a long Recording of separate tracks

[mrbassman]

Hi, I have Audacity version 2.0.2 running on OSX 10.6.8. I have looked at everything I can find which relates to my issue but can't find the feature. I recently recorded my band at a gig, I set my multitrack recorder going at the start of the gig and stopped it at the end. Now I need to separate each song for each track from the recording, there are 7 tracks (3 mics for drums, 1 for bass, 1 for vocals and 1 each for the 2 guitars) so as you can see that would be alot of separating and alot of time spent making sure each track is the same length and in time. Please can you help me find the feature which will allow each of the tracks to be exported as the separate tracks they went in as and split up by each song. I have followed this guide to the letter but it exports the full 1 hour 45 minutes of the recording for each of the tracks (which I obviously already have), instead of exporting only my selection or label selection. http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sp ... racks.html

I hope you can help.

Thanks

[steve]

How many songs in the recording?
Do you intend to mix down in Audacity or in some other program?

[billw58]

Do you have 7 tracks in Audacity, each 1 hr 45 min long?. Are the 7 tracks synchronized?

The tutorial you have referenced should work, assuming what you want to export is a mix of each song. But that's not what you want as I understand it. You want to break each of the 7 original recorded tracks by song, and have each exported track (you'll have a lot when you're done!) exactly the right length and starting at exactly the right time.

Audacity is not optimized for doing this job. This is the best I can come up with.

1. 1. Use labels as per http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sp ... racks.html to mark the start of each song
   2. Use this format to name the labels: FirstSong01, SecondSong01, ThirdSong01 etc. (Use the real names of the songs).
   3. Mute all tracks except the first
   4. Do File > Export Multiple, http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/ex ... tiple.html choosing to Split Files Base On Labels and Name Files Using Label/Track Name. Choose AIFF as the export format.
   5. After exporting:
   • Rename all the labels to: FirstSong02, SecondSong02, ThirdSong02
     Mute all tracks except the second.
   6. Go to step 4
   Repeat steps 4 through 6, changing the number at the end of the label names to correspond to the track you are exporting (that is, the track that is not muted).

When you're done, you'll have, for example, 7 files named FirstSong01, FirstSong02, FirstSong03 etc. You can then import all the "FirstSongxx" files into a new project and you will have an Audacity project containing the 7 original recorded tracks for the first song.

I have followed this guide to the letter but it exports the full 1 hour 45 minutes of the recording for each of the tracks (which I obviously already have), instead of exporting only my selection or label selection.

You're missing a step or a setting. Make sure the label track is the bottom track in the project, and that you have made the selections in the Export Multiple dialog box as I have specified above.

Good luck.

-- Bill

[mrbassman]

Bill, thank you, a perfectly excellent work around, it did the job brilliantly. Thanks and thanks again, now the mixing fun begins.

[Gale Andrews]

Someone else asked about this recently. Do you want to vote for a feature to export by labels AND tracks at the same time, to cover this case? In other words, no mixing, it runs through one track at a time, exporting based on labels for each track in turn. Mute could still be used to omit tracks from the export sequence.


Gale