Snap to Clicktrack

[mexman]

Hello all,

this is actually the only thing I am really missing in Audacity!
I want to arrange Audio samples!
Of course Audacity is not a sequencer but this feature is why I have to fiddle around with other software....

Regards

Michael

[steve]

+1

I have been begging for this feature for years, but none of the developers seem to have any experience of this type of work and so do not see the point.
Please elaborate on why you would like this feature, how you envisage that it would work and why it would be a huge benefit to Audacity.

[mexman]

This is very easy:
WHAT DO YOU USE THE CLICK TRACK FOR?
If you record audio, it serves to sing/play/record synchroneous to an existing audio.
If you then want to edit audio, you always have to refer to the click track as well!
Inserting (!) any audio sample, e.g. a bass drum, you will need to stick to the click track as well: Copy and paste at every n clicks..... but if I cannot snap to the click track or to any freely adjustable snap time it is juest not possible!
Actually it is working with the preadjustable snaps, but these snaps are very limited in usage and cannot be adjusted e.g. to an existing audio file.

IMHO this is the last thing Audacity is missing.

Regards

Michael

[steve]

Thanks for the comments mexman.

Audacity has a wiki for documenting things that relate to Audacity but that do not belong in the manual. One such purpose is to document and develop ideas as proposals for new features. You can see examples of current and previous proposal pages here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Category:Proposal (some of which have now been incorporated into Audacity). I intend to create a proposal page relating to this feature. You may be interested in contributing some ideas to such a page.

One thought, I don't see that it necessarily has to be an audio click track that audio clips snap to. Many other audio applications provide a "bars and beats" time line with snapping. I would see this as a viable option.

Although this does not fully provide snapping, there is a feature available that you may find useful:
If you have labels in a label track, the label positions have a weak "snapping" effect when you drag an audio clip up to them (see here about Label Tracks: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Label_Tracks )
There is a plug-in that can create labels for bars and beats, which then allows (weak) snapping to bar / beat positions. The plug-in is available here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 42&t=60534

[waxcylinder]

I intend to create a proposal page relating to this feature...

@Steve: does this mean I don't need to move this to Wiki>Pending Feature Requests? Do you want me to park this for you on the FR archive discsussion page for now until the proposal is written?

Peter.

[steve]

Do you want me to park this for you on the FR archive discsussion page for now until the proposal is written?

Yes please.

does this mean I don't need to move this to Wiki>Pending Feature Requests?

Yes.
There are already two very closely related feature requests on the wiki:

• BPM and beat timecode detection with automatic beat matching (54 votes)
  • Let the Timeline display the detected time signature and bars (14 votes)
    While the TimeLine displaying bars and beats is related to BPM detection, it is not dependent on it. Time displayed in bars and beats is a useful feature in its own right. See also: "Snap To: Beats"

• Snap to:
  • Beats (11 votes)

[waxcylinder]

Do you want me to park this for you on the FR archive discsussion page for now until the proposal is written?

Yes please

Done