Quick and easy crossfade

[steve]

1) Place your audio clips end to end in a track:

1.png (13.96 KiB) Viewed 1186 times

2) Zoom in a bit:

2.png (15.14 KiB) Viewed 1186 times

3) Select the part that you want to crossfade (doesn't matter if the tracks are right up against each other or not - just select the parts to crossfade):

3.png (16.49 KiB) Viewed 1186 times

4) Select the "Crossfade Clips" effect:

4.png (14.44 KiB) Viewed 1186 times

5) Done:

5.png (16.07 KiB) Viewed 1186 times

mix.ogg

(926.39 KiB) Downloaded 44 times

[Gale Andrews]

Well it goes without saying I like this one - I was disappointed we had to wait until after 2.1.0.

Where is the NY file?

Gale

[waxcylinder]

I'm liking the look of this too

So is this going to replace the existing Crossfade Tracks or do we need both tools?

Peter

[steve]

Well it goes without saying I like this one - I was disappointed we had to wait until after 2.1.0.

Where is the NY file?

The small code change in Audacity that allows this to work as intended was committed today, so should be in the next nightly. Glad you are still in favour - I'll post the NT file tomorrow when there is a nightly build that will run it correctly.

So is this going to replace the existing Crossfade Tracks or do we need both tools?

Definitely still need "Crossfade Tracks".
This effect is quick and easy, but lacks the finesse of "Crossfade Tracks". It's a one click effect, so no way to adjust the fade shape, and because it works in one track there is no way to align the tracks precisely. Crossfade Tracks now supports Preview. Crossfade Clips is a one click effect, so there is no preview.

[billw58]

Looks good.

How does it handle clips of different lengths. Say (for the sake of argument) that the last 1 second of the first clip is selected and the first 2 seconds of the second clip is selected. How long is the fade duration? Is it the same for both selections? How are the two selections overlapped? Do both selections always fade to/from zero/full?

-- Bill

[steve]

How does it handle clips of different lengths. Say (for the sake of argument) that the last 1 second of the first clip is selected and the first 2 seconds of the second clip is selected.

Normally you would try to make your selection such that the selection at the end of the first clip is roughly the same as the selection at the start of the second clip.

If we first consider a more realistic example, then move onto your "extreme mismatch" example.

If you have selected the last 5 seconds of the first clip, and 4 seconds of the second clip, then the first clip will fade out over 5 seconds and the second clip will fade in over 4 seconds. The fade length is the longer of the two, so the second clip will not start fading in until 1 second into the crossfade. In practice this will be virtually unnoticeable because the effect applies an equal power crossfade, and over the first 1 second the first track will have reduced by less than 0.5 dB. You can get away with being remarkably sloppy using this effect

With your "extreme mismatch" example. The total length of the crossfade will be 2 seconds.
After 1 second, the first clip will have dropped to silence and the second clip will have risen to 3 dB below full gain.
During the 2nd second, the second clip will continue to rise up to its original level.
It will probably be noticeable that the crossfade is "a little off", but even with such a bad mismatch it is not disastrous (it is surprisingly forgiving).


I've just made a small change to the effect so that it now handles the fringe case of stereo tracks with different channel lengths better. Just testing the changes now - will post shortly.

[steve]

Another use case.

Here we have just one track with two "tunes". The first tune ends, then the second tune starts (small gap between the two tunes):

firsttrack000.png (20.4 KiB) Viewed 1180 times

The job here is to "merge" the two tunes so that one fades into the other.

I've already made the selection, so just one more step - apply the "Crossfade Clips" effect:

firsttrack001.png (20.97 KiB) Viewed 1180 times

In this case, because it is one continuous track, the first half of the selection fades out while the second half of the selection fades in.

[steve]

It can also help to fix glitches when there are no convenient zero crossing points for making a clean edit.

firsttrack002.png (16.2 KiB) Viewed 1180 times

firsttrack003.png (16.24 KiB) Viewed 1180 times

[steve]

Some brief usage hints in the file comments:

;; Instructions:
;; Place two audio clips into the same track.
;; Select (approximately) the same amount of audio from the
;; end of one clip and the start of the other.
;; Apply the effect.
;; The selected regions will be crossfaded.
;;
;; Note, the audio clips do not need to be touching. Any
;; white-space between the clips is ignored.
;;
;; If the selected region is continuous audio (no splits),
;; the the first and last halves of the selected audio
;; will be crossfaded.
;;
;; Advanced Tip:
;; A discontinuity in a waveform may be smoothed by applying
;; a short crossfade across the glitch.

;; Limitations (should not occur in normal usage).
;; 1) There may be no more than two clips selected in each channel.
;; 2) The selection may not start or end in white-space.

[steve]

The plug-in. Should be used with 2nd June nightly or later.