Audacity Forum

I have the following issues using Audacity 2.3 to copy LP's using Audacity
Trouble generating compatible M4A files for use on the applications Music for Mac or iDevices or iCloud. The files transfered inaccordance with your guidance on recording. Everything went nicely until I got to the point of saving to M4a (AAC) format, in File>Export Multiple. Here was my workflow, may you can comment on these issues?

• The nicest way I found to set up the cuts/tracks in Music was to use the Label Track in Audacity to spot the START of each track. Despite instructions to the contrary the start point of each Track in Music corresponds exactly to the Label point (I use a point per tack). If you want a cut to start in Music at the exact track start, put the label point there.
  Label tag must NOT contain a beginning number. If it does then the current version of Music put its Track number IN ADDITION to the label. Interestingly, the generated file name is correct. I think that the issue is in Metadata of the file. Namely the track number put in when you edit the metadata (in this auto-generated by Audacity.
  Likewaise there are metadata issues in the other fields as well, Specifically the information put in using Audacity does NOT transfer to M4a files for the fields "Artist", "Year". There are also no field or data in Audacity for the iTunes fields, "Album Artist", Album Art.

We don't make a "2.3" version. If Audacity > About Audacity... says "2.3", trash it immediately and obtain 2.1.3 from us at http://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac. You will probably also want to install a virus check application and run a deep check.

What instructions are you referring to, exactly? Have a look at http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spli ... racks.html and http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/export_multiple.html. Please let us know if anything there is still unclear.

Artist and Year tags are not written to MP4 (M4A) files due to a bug in FFmpeg. Please see http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/FFmpe ... tion#table. I recommend exporting as AIFF which should support most of the seven standard Audacity tags then convert to AAC in iTunes. See http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tuto ... conversion. You can then add "Album Artist" there.

Audacity does not support album art (pictures) or album lyrics (text).


Gale

We don't make a "2.3" version. If Audacity > About Audacity... says "2.3", trash it immediately and obtain 2.1.3 from us at http://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac. You will probably also want to install a virus check application and run a deep check.

What instructions are you referring to, exactly? Have a look at http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spli ... racks.html and http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/export_multiple.html. Please let us know if anything there is still unclear.

Artist and Year tags are not written to MP4 (M4A) files due to a bug in FFmpeg. Please see http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/FFmpe ... tion#table. I recommend exporting as AIFF which should support most of the seven standard Audacity tags then convert to AAC in iTunes. See http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tuto ... conversion. You can then add "Album Artist" there.

Audacity does not support album art (pictures) or album lyrics (text).

Thanks Gale,

To your points, in no particular order.. I misspoke about the version, 2.1.2 is correct. Thanks for pointing out a work-around for FFmpeg. I will use AIFF (in the LAME encoder, unless it's built-in). I suspect it may have other shortcomings however, since iTunes doesn't deal well with even CD's importing in AIFF these days, which is why I tried the FFmpeg extension route first.

As to other issues when exporting, I notice that there is some window related (seemingly an) Audacity bug, as opposed to third party extensions issue while exporting (File>Export Multiple). During the export process, the top progress is covered showing the status of tracks exporting, unless the focus is moved OFF of the Export Window (e.g., select another open desktop window, not Audacity). Then the current progress window is revealed above the Audacity and export windows. I consider this to be a bug. I have no idea if the beta you're working on (2.2?) addresses this issue. I leave that to you.

Henry

HenryInFlorida wrote:I will use AIFF (in the LAME encoder, unless it's built-in).

AIFF export is built-in to Audacity. LAME is only for MP3 encoding.

HenryInFlorida wrote:I notice that there is some window related (seemingly an) Audacity bug, as opposed to third party extensions issue while exporting (File>Export Multiple). During the export process, the top progress is covered showing the status of tracks exporting, unless the focus is moved OFF of the Export Window (e.g., select another open desktop window, not Audacity). Then the current progress window is revealed above the Audacity and export windows. I consider this to be a bug.

Thanks for the report. A minor bug indeed, but it is already listed in the 2.1.3 Release Notes (bullet point number 8): http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Relea ... .3#Exports.

HenryInFlorida wrote:I have no idea if the beta you're working on (2.2?) addresses this issue.

The current official release version is 2.1.3 (see above).

We work with unreleased alpha builds which we compile from the current codebase. These builds are 2.2.0-alpha because the next official release will be numbered as 2.2.0. The bug you mention is still there in 2.2.0-alpha, not yet fixed.

We don't have any beta versions at the moment. A beta would essentially be an announced release for testing purposes, made between official releases, and which could be less stable than an official release.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote: AIFF export is built-in to Audacity. LAME is only for MP3 encoding.

Thanks for the report. A minor bug indeed, but it is already listed in the 2.1.3 Release Notes (bullet point number 8): http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Relea ... .3#Exports.

Right. Bullet point #8 deals with covered progress windows.

I read through the extensive bug list. Spotted the issues experienced on my version that I won't trouble you with again as your team seems to have them. However you asked for feedback on an issue I experienced related bugs creating useless files. However your link to email goes to the SourceForge main page. Page subsection heading was "MoonPhase." No bug report form there on the provided link. If you want bug reports on this issue (which occurs regularly, as I stated when a recording is produced on one CPU, then the .aup file and data folder complete are copied across to another CPU), how about an actual bug report page to do so?

AIFF copy work much better, BTW, with the limited data fields you provided/supported. However, the drop downs in the metadata entry page need work, at least on MacOS X, Sierra.

Henry

HenryInFlorida wrote:your link to email goes to the SourceForge main page. Page subsection heading was "MoonPhase." No bug report form there on the provided link. If you want bug reports on this issue (which occurs regularly, as I stated when a recording is produced on one CPU, then the .aup file and data folder complete are copied across to another CPU), how about an actual bug report page to do so?

Sorry but I an unclear what you are referring to. Which "link to email goes to the SourceForge main page"? We have no connection to SourceForge now except that they still run our mailing lists. If there is a link as you describe we would want to correct it, if you can be more specific.

HenryInFlorida wrote:I stated when a recording is produced on one CPU, then the .aup file and data folder complete are copied across to another CPU)

Sorry but until this post of yours there is no mention of "CPU" in this topic. Nor do I understand what you mean. Audacity generally speaking only uses one CPU for processing. Do you mean "drive"?

HenryInFlorida wrote:No bug report form ... how about an actual bug report page

Audacity Forum is a secondary bug reporting route. Those who want to report bugs and aren't already asking questions in the Forum are recommended to write to our feedack address because no registration is required to write there.

I agree it might be useful if a form was provided at http://www.audacityteam.org/contact/#feedback but we do not have the resources to do that at the moment, versus the importance of doing it.

HenryInFlorida wrote: the drop downs in the metadata entry page need work, at least on MacOS X, Sierra

Please be specific.

However please be aware that we are a free volunteer-based project with limited developer resources and for some features we depend on other libraries. You may find commercial Mac audio editing software that integrates with iTunes more fulfilling.


Gale