Audacity Forum

Is it possible to fade out the last 15 seconds of a track, while having the first 15 seconds of a second track
overlap, so you hear both tracks as they overlap ?

I can't determine this by reading in the manual.
Not the manual's fault, its my own learning skills
at play. I find the manual sometimes not discernible.
All feedback is appreciated

JIMWICK wrote:Is it possible to fade out the last 15 seconds of a track, while having the first 15 seconds of a second track
overlap, so you hear both tracks as they overlap ?

Yes you can do that. It's called a "crossfade".
One of the easier ways to do it is with the "Crossfade Tracks" effect. See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/cr ... racks.html
(read through the full article - it has useful explanatory notes)

And just because everybody gets this wrong, you can't do this with one track. A crossfade has two different songs audible at the same time and so the two songs have to be on different tracks. See instructions.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:And just because everybody gets this wrong, you can't do this with one track.

Of course you can - see Crossfade Clips.

@Steve - why does that page above talk about having to have audio clips (which term it doesn't explain)? AFAICT it works fine with just selecting across the end/start of audio in a track without any need to add split lines. A primary use case for having this effect in the first place is having a recording of an album on one track (no split lines).


Gale

Note to JIMWICK - you can ignore this post because I am talking about features that are not present in the current release version, but will be in the next release.

Gale Andrews wrote:@Steve - why does that page above talk about having to have audio clips

Are you talking about my recent updates to the alpha manual? If so:
A track may contain several audio clips. The automatic detection of the fade direction is based on the proximity of the ends of the selection to the ends of the selected audio clips, not the ends of the track. So for example, if we have a selection like this:
The automatic setting will apply a fade-in for the first track and a fade-out of the second track like this:
Even though the start of the selection is closer to the start of the second "track", it is closer to the start of the selected "clip" in the first track. Similarly the end of the selection is closer to the end of the selected clip in the seconds track.

Gale Andrews wrote:which term it doesn't explain

Do we define the term "audio clip" in the manual? If so, we can make the first occurrence a link.

steve wrote:Note to JIMWICK - you can ignore this post because I am talking about features that are not present in the current release version, but will be in the next release.

Gale Andrews wrote:@Steve - why does that page above talk about having to have audio clips

Are you talking about my recent updates to the alpha manual?

No I am talking about exactly what I said I was taking about. The effect Crossfade Clips in the current 2.1.2 release, whose page is http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/cr ... clips.html.

That was the point of mentioning it, that you can crossfade on a single track now in the released version of Audacity.

I do see in Crossfade Clips if I read carefully

If the selected region is continuous audio with no splits, the first half and last half of the selected audio will be crossfaded.

But that comes after the enumerated instructions!

So my issue is if you have separate songs in one track you don't need to create clips as the instructions suggest. You can just select across the end of one song and the start of another. Right?

If so I'll make that a little clearer for less advanced users.

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:which term it doesn't explain

Do we define the term "audio clip" in the manual? If so, we can make the first occurrence a link.

That's what I was asking for. We usually link to http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Auda ... _and_Clips.


Gale

Oh, OK, though if you have complaints about that part of the documentation you should perhaps take it up with the person that wrote it.

The way that I envisage "typical" use of this effect, is that a number of songs / tracks / sound effect ... have been imported and the user wants to "merge" them into one track. That is, they want them to run in sequence with crossfades from one to the next.

For example, this image shows two songs:
The tracks can be placed one after the other on the same track like this:
Then you will probably want to cut out some of the "dead space" (the lead out / lead in) between the tracks like this:
Then select the part to crossfade:
and crossfade:

Gale Andrews wrote:I do see in Crossfade Clips if I read carefully

If the selected region is continuous audio with no splits, the first half and last half of the selected audio will be crossfaded.

But that comes after the enumerated instructions!

Yes you can do that, but I don't think that is a "typical" use. It has been included for completeness.
If you do have multiple "songs" on a single continuous track, you would probably want to split the recording into separate "songs" (audio clips) so that you can trim out the dead space between the songs.

Of course you can - see Crossfade Clips.

Oh. That's messy. The show gets shorter when you do that, right? I've had to explain this to too many people who don't understand crossfading in either audio or video.

I'm almost finished with my 30 minute show except I need to put a crossfade in the middle. I need it to stay 30 minutes, that's not a problem, is it?

That would be yes.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Oh. That's messy. The show gets shorter when you do that, right?

Yes and yes, but it's quick and easy. My recommendation would be to use the "Crossfade Tracks" effect (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/cr ... racks.html), which is what I suggested to JIMWICK.

steve wrote:Oh, OK, though if you have complaints about that part of the documentation you should perhaps take it up with the person that wrote it.

OK I assumed the author of the effect had written its docs. I certainly need to ask the author if it can be used as many people were asking to use it (on tracks on an album).

steve wrote:The way that I envisage "typical" use of this effect, is that a number of songs / tracks / sound effect ... have been imported and the user wants to "merge" them into one track. That is, they want them to run in sequence with crossfades from one to the next.

I can't see the point in that unless it's essential to have only one track or unless you are one of the "challenged" who want to just click and not make any decisions. You may as well use Tracks > Align Tracks > Align End to End then Crossfade Tracks. So I still thought the typical use was on an album.

Note - a crossfade feature with Align End to End would be a time saver.

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:I do see in Crossfade Clips if I read carefully

If the selected region is continuous audio with no splits, the first half and last half of the selected audio will be crossfaded.

But that comes after the enumerated instructions!

Yes you can do that, but I don't think that is a "typical" use. It has been included for completeness.
If you do have multiple "songs" on a single continuous track, you would probably want to split the recording into separate "songs" (audio clips) so that you can trim out the dead space between the songs.

The reason I was pressing for Crossfade Clips to be included was to help the complainants who could not figure out how to use Crossfade Tracks from the common starting point of multiple songs on one track.

Indeed (unless the inter-track gap is short) you should remove the dead space. I will add that tip. But why would it be mandatory to split the songs to remove the dead space? You can just delete the dead space, no?

kozikowski wrote:Oh. That's messy. The show gets shorter when you do that, right?

Yes, but as Steve says it is "easy".

If you are doing a crossfade on separate tracks and you slide the second song backwards under the first, so that the one track fades out concurrent with the other fading in, are you not shortening the show?

The only difference is that you did the shortening to your exact specification, rather than the effect doing the shortening to a fixed amount of half the selection.


Gale