Audacity Forum

Hi,

I'm trying to correctly loop about 30 seconds of music, however it is frustrating listening over and over the whole loop to see if start/end matches.

Pressing B or Ctrl+Left click will play from a specified position, but it stops looping.

Is there any way to make the audio loop when I select a specific section within a loop?

2mg wrote:Is there any way to make the audio loop when I select a specific section within a loop?

No, you can't adjust the selection borders during looping.

Here's a plug-in that might be of some use to you (windows only) It plays the last and the first second of the current selection in succession. Note that only one track at the time is previewed, not a whole project.
If more than one track is selected, the preview is just repeated for each track.
Put the file in the Audacity Plug-ins folder and restart the application.
It will appear under "Analyze" as "Loop Preview".
It is most convenient to assign a shortcut in preferences --> keyboard.
I've chosen "0" for my layout.

Topic moved to "Adding Features".

2mg wrote:Is there any way to make the audio loop when I select a specific section within a loop?

We currently have a feature request for: "Loop from cursor to track end" which you may want to vote for.

I couldn't find a feature request for looping a selected region from an arbitrary point, which is what I think you want to do (+1 from me for that feature).
Perhaps it could work like a "loop play" version of the "B" key "Play To Selection" (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/pl ... on_.28B.29 )

A possible workaround for checking the loop position is to use the "C" key. That will play a short section before the start of the selection, then skip the selection and play a short section after the selection (as if you had cut out the selection). If that plays smoothly without a glitch, then the loop will probably play smoothly.

I'm so going to try C method right now.

FYI, I actually want the selected portion to always loop, but if I click B/Ctrl+Mouse to start from there and when it reaches end to start again from the beginning of the selection. So actually it's not "Loop from cursor to track end" but "Don't interrupt looping, but start playing on the fly from a certain point" if you get me.

2mg wrote:FYI, I actually want the selected portion to always loop, but if I click B/Ctrl+Mouse to start from there and when it reaches end to start again from the beginning of the selection. So actually it's not "Loop from cursor to track end" but "Don't interrupt looping, but start playing on the fly from a certain point" if you get me.

That may not be easy. B or CTRL + click or click on the Timeline restart playback. It would probably need its own shortcut or mouse gesture (perhaps something like Steve is suggesting below), otherwise you would need a way to tell Audacity to stop looping.

steve wrote:I couldn't find a feature request for looping a selected region from an arbitrary point, which is what I think you want to do (+1 from me for that feature).
Perhaps it could work like a "loop play" version of the "B" key "Play To Selection

I think there are a number of loop requests not yet added to Feature Requests.


Gale

Count me as another person who wants this feature, the C method won't work for me because the loop goes from the beginning to nearly the end of a four-minute piece (I'm chopping off the end to make an endless loop for square dance music). I'd prefer if clicking in the time bar just moved the cursor position without changing play mode (i.e. left it in loop mode), but I can understand that you may not want to change legacy behavior.

(Note that Mixxx does work the way I want.)

@Gale: have you counted the requisite votes yet?

Peter

aahz wrote:I'd prefer if clicking in the time bar just moved the cursor position without changing play mode (i.e. left it in loop mode)

It already does continue to loop in 2.0.5 if you start loop play then click or drag in the Timeline. It may not look like it if you are clicking at a point, because loop without a selection always plays the entire track.

That "continuing to loop" is actually a bug because it assumes you want to continue loop play which you may not. This has been fixed in the upcoming 2.0.6 release. If you start loop play of a selection (or of a Play Region in the Timeline) then want to loop play another region, SHIFT-drag then release that new Play Region in the Timeline.

However there is still no way to dynamically change an already looping selection or Play Region in the Timeline by moving one edge of that selection or region.

If you want to vote for a Preference or control that the play mode (looped or not) does not change when clicking or dragging again in the Timeline (so that if you were loop playing already, SHIFT would not be required to loop play the new Play Region but SHIFT would play it once), please say so.

waxcylinder wrote:@Gale: have you counted the requisite votes yet

Yes, so far. So you can archive it in a week or so if there are no further comments (or whenever comments have ceased).


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:If you want to vote for a Preference or control that the play mode (looped or not) does not change when clicking or dragging again in the Timeline (so that if you were loop playing already, SHIFT would not be required to loop play the new Play Region but SHIFT would play it once), please say so.

What I'd like to vote for is that if the "play region" is changed during loop-play, then the loop should (where possible) use the new play region.

From memory, this may not be so simple to implement because IIRC the play region is "prepared" for playing before the loop play commences. This could be a problem with very short loops as there may not be time for Audacity to "prepare" the loop region, which would cause the start/end times to be out of sync with the available audio data (which would then probably cause a crash). However, we vote on "features" not "implementations", so as a feature I'd vote for loop play to be dynamically adjustable.

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:If you want to vote for a Preference or control that the play mode (looped or not) does not change when clicking or dragging again in the Timeline (so that if you were loop playing already, SHIFT would not be required to loop play the new Play Region but SHIFT would play it once), please say so.

What I'd like to vote for is that if the "play region" is changed during loop-play, then the loop should (where possible) use the new play region.

From memory, this may not be so simple to implement because IIRC the play region is "prepared" for playing before the loop play commences. This could be a problem with very short loops as there may not be time for Audacity to "prepare" the loop region, which would cause the start/end times to be out of sync with the available audio data (which would then probably cause a crash). However, we vote on "features" not "implementations", so as a feature I'd vote for loop play to be dynamically adjustable.

I think votes for "Dynamically adjust loop playback" are actually up-to-date on Wiki Feature Requests, but they seen to envisage this working for selections in the waveform, not just for Play Regions

Dynamically adjust loop playback when selection boundaries move (17 votes)
- A short part of the original selection start or end should be played while and just after the boundary is moved. (1 votes)
- Must be able to move boundary with keyboard while playing (1 votes)

So are you voting for only Play Region to be dynamically adjustable?

I think James/Leland are planning changes here in any case.

I see at http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Propo ... Adjustment

There are also related changes elsewhere. For example with loop-play you could vary the end points of the loop as the loop was playing.

And I see at http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Propo ... on#Toolbar

Playing is loop-play by default. I've not yet added an option to make it stop when it reaches the end of the play region, and I probably won't.

Gale