How do I paste into tracks without moving everything?

[TheFlameOnABic]

Say I have a track that is silence until the 2 minute mark, where I have pasted in several clips of audio. I don't mean recorded silence, I mean New Track silence, no data. Suddenly I want to paste in a 5 second audio clip at the 30 seconds mark. Everything at 2 minutes shifts 5 seconds to the right, and now I have a gray hair, because I put some time into arranging all that exactly where I wanted it. Now that work's undone. I've been all through the manual and wiki, but I haven't learned how to solve this problem. Can anyone help?

[steve]

Everything at 2 minutes shifts 5 seconds to the right, and now I have a gray hair, because I put some time into arranging all that exactly where I wanted it.

If it bothers you, pluck out the grey hair, then press Ctrl+Z to undo the paste.

To put the new audio clip in the place of the silence without moving the rest of the audio, you have several options.

Probably the best and easiest option is to put the new 5 seconds of audio onto a separate track below the original track. All tracks will be "mixed down" to a single file when you Export (File menu) the finished project.

An alternative method is to select exactly 5 seconds in the place that you want to paste the new 5 seconds. Pasting will replace the current selection with the new material.

[kozikowski]

5 seconds of audio onto a separate track

Really, that's the only good option. That will let you use the Time Shift Tool to line things up and then careful fades to integrate everything together seamlessly.

Koz

[TheFlameOnABic]

Probably the best and easiest option is to put the new 5 seconds of audio onto a separate track below the original track]

I've actually taken to doing pretty much this. So yes, that works, but all the extra tracks tend to crowd the workspace.

Well, it's good to at least know that this is a quirk that I'm working around, and not me just making my life harder. It seems odd that I can do so many magical things with Audacity, yet I can't tell it "Put this here, but don't move anything when I do." Is there a technical reason for this? I'm just curious.

An alternative method is to select exactly 5 seconds in the place that you want to paste the new 5 seconds. Pasting will replace the current selection with the new material.

I think I'm going to work on this method and see if I can make it fly.

My thanks to all who replied.

[steve]

yes, that works, but all the extra tracks tend to crowd the workspace.

Tracks may be "collapsed" to a minimum height by clicking on the little arrow at the bottom of the Track Control Panel: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/au ... l#collapse
Click it again to expand the track back to normal size.
"Normal size" for each track can be adjusted by clicking and dragging the bottom edge of the track.

If you get too many tracks in a project, you can select several tracks and "mix" them to one track with "Tracks menu > Mix and Render".
To select all tracks: Ctrl+A

It seems odd that I can do so many magical things with Audacity, yet I can't tell it "Put this here, but don't move anything when I do." Is there a technical reason for this? I'm just curious.

It is "possible" to do that, but it can easily run into problems.
There is an option in Preferences: "Edit > Preferences > Tracks > Editing a clip can move other clips"
If this option is disabled (not selected) then you can paste audio clips into "white space" ("empty" space) without moving other audio clips.
This mode is normally not recommended. The problem is that it works only if there is sufficient empty space to paste the new material and "strange" (but logical) things can happen if you paste into a selection that overlaps existing audio clips.

The standard mode (existing clips move to allow space for pasted audio) is generally preferred because it allows inserting new audio into a track without needing to first make a space for it. Pasting into a new track also allows audio clips to be cross-faded to make perfect "seamless" joins between different audio clips and allows audio clips to be moved if they are not in exactly the right place when you paste them.

Working with multiple tracks is a more powerful and versatile way of working, but can take a little getting used to if you've not worked that way before. Multi-track editing is one of the most powerful features of Audacity and makes it capable of really professional results, so it is definitely worth spending a bit of time becoming familiar with this way of editing.

[leslllll]

Thanks to whoever posted the bit about going into preferences and changing the preference concerning "editing a clip can move other clips". I cut that off and it was the answer to my problems. I just make sure my clip is smaller than the space it is to fit into. My style uses a lot of cut and paste so this works great for me. If the track won't fit, Audacity tells me it won't fit.
Thanks, very helpful,
Les L

[kozikowski]

Isn't it also possible to park an Audio Silence track last down on the bottom, longer than the show? I know that's one way to resolve the Export problem, where Audacity will not export "no data" silences. In the case of the supervisory silence track, Audacity uses that to "heal" the "broken" slices in the show, and all the exports retain their timings whether they have No Data segments or not. Being silent, it plays no theatrical part in the show.

Koz

[corillian]

No one seems to have mentioned the most obvious and easiest workaround for this bug, simply make the first paste to the right of all the other samples on that track and then, using the "time-shift" (surely this should be called "move") tool, slide it along the track to where ever you need that sample to line up with music.

That's it. No unwanted adjustment of previously placed samples.

The bug here is more of a user testing oversight than a coding error. This could easily be solved by allowing the Insert key to function as a toggle between insert and overwrite (like most editing applications) so that when pasting in overwrite mode the samples is simply placed where you set it and no other information is changed on that track. This must be over 90% of use cases for pasting samples into existing tracks. As demonstrated in this thread, the actual functionality is already present in the application, it just has to be accessed using convoluted methods.

And for the small number of people that don't need or care about relativity between tracks, they can set it to Insert mode.

corillian.

[Gale Andrews]

This could easily be solved by allowing the Insert key to function as a toggle between insert and overwrite (like most editing applications) so that when pasting in overwrite mode the samples is simply placed where you set it and no other information is changed on that track.

Yes so it is a feature request, so moved to "Adding Features".


Gale

[steve]

This could easily be solved by allowing the Insert key to function as a toggle between insert and overwrite (like most editing applications) so that when pasting in overwrite mode the samples is simply placed where you set it and no other information is changed on that track.

If pasting audio into a "gap" within the track, I think that could work well and be convenient, so long as the gap is large enough to accommodate the pasted audio.

Where I see the problem is when pasting and overwriting audio with audio. In this case it will usually cause a "click" at one or both ends of the edit.