Automatically stop recording?

[LCoop]

Hello, new Audacity user here - I'm sure this has been covered before so my apologies - I've read a lot of the material but have not stumbled across it yet - the question is, "will Audacity automatically stop recording after a certain event (silence) or period of time? or can it be so set? - (so that one can leave it unattended for several hours - to sleep or run errands or whatever - or does it have to be "babysat" until its finished?) - thanks in advance for any answers. --LC

[waxcylinder]

You can't in 1.2 - but in 1.3 there is a new feature which enables you to set a Timer Record. This enables you to stop recording at a certain time - or set a future start/stop record event.

AFAIK there is no facility in 1.2 or 1.3 to stop recording on a sustained period of silence.

WC

[LCoop]

You can't in 1.2 - but in 1.3 there is a new feature which enables you to set a Timer Record. This enables you to stop recording at a certain time - or set a future start/stop record event.

AFAIK there is no facility in 1.2 or 1.3 to stop recording on a sustained period of silence.

WC

WC thank you for that quick answer - however I have temporarily (?) abandoned Audicity for the following reason- after recording a music cassette tape (all one continuous intial audacity track), in the process to cut up the initial track into separate song tracks, it was taking about 5 minutes for each song label to "take" (path: Project --> Add Label At Selection) (computer Pentium® M processor 750 [1.86GHz, 2MB L2 cache) - I don't have that kind of time - maybe I can come back to the program again later and learn a quicker way to do it. For the time being I have gone back to the old Microsoft Plus! Digital Analog Recorder - not lots of audio manipulation options but for the specific concentrated job of ripping cassette tapes into digital, not bad.

But I really have to come back to Audacity later and review all the possible procedures for cutting up the master track into separate song tracks - I'm sure I just haven't spent enough learning time on it yet.

[kozikowski]

<<<it was taking about 5 minutes for each song label to "take" >>>

You understand there is a Hot Key you can use to set the labels? It's Apple-B on a Mac.

You have so totally the symptoms of a slow or overloaded computer. If production of any sort in Audacity starts taking minutes and minutes, I would stop dead and find out why. Running our of hard drive room, a million tasks loading on startup, viruses serving {word rejected} to the internet in the background, a Trojan carefully recording all your passwords and emailing them to Slovakia?

Something Is Wrong. Run the activity monitors and see what goes nuts when you try to do stuff. If you're on a PC, pay attention to the drive lights as you do things. They should not go on and stay on for minutes at a time while you're working. Run the task manager and make sure it doesn't go over a single page of "junk" listings.

[Epson Printer and Ink Helper]
[AOL Email Tagger]
[Yahoo Messenger Manager]
[Google Menu Bar Manager]
[Netscape 2 Connection Tasker]

They add up and each one takes a little performance away from your machine.

When was the last time you did a comprehensive, manual virus scan? If you're on a PC, do you defrag once a month--or sooner? How trashy was it the last time you did it?

Koz

[LCoop]

hello Koz thanks for the further advice

<<<it was taking about 5 minutes for each song label to "take" >>>

You understand there is a Hot Key you can use to set the labels? It's Apple-B on a Mac.

hot key - no I didn't find that yet - will look for it when I can get back to audacity.

You have so totally the symptoms of a slow or overloaded computer. If production of any sort in Audacity starts taking minutes and minutes, I would stop dead and find out why. Running our of hard drive room, a million tasks loading on startup, viruses serving {word rejected} to the internet in the background, a Trojan carefully recording all your passwords and emailing them to Slovakia?

yes I suppose any of that is possible, though I haven't noticed it yet (big slow down) on other computer operations here - have 60 gigs free on a 100 gig notebook drive.

Something Is Wrong. Run the activity monitors and see what goes nuts when you try to do stuff. If you're on a PC, pay attention to the drive lights as you do things. They should not go on and stay on for minutes at a time while you're working. Run the task manager and make sure it doesn't go over a single page of "junk" listings.

[Epson Printer and Ink Helper]
[AOL Email Tagger]
[Yahoo Messenger Manager]
[Google Menu Bar Manager]
[Netscape 2 Connection Tasker]

They add up and each one takes a little performance away from your machine.

not sure what all the "activity monitors" are - hard disk light? yes sometimes it runs when I not doing anything - I do run the task manager - there's a long list of stuff there and my "to do list" includes a program that tells you what all that stuff is and helps you unload some of it - whenever the Task manager is solid green I open it up and try to see what process is doing it - I may have done that with audacity but now forgot the details - been several days now.

When was the last time you did a comprehensive, manual virus scan? If you're on a PC, do you defrag once a month--or sooner? How trashy was it the last time you did it?
Koz

I run Norton Utilities, ZoneAlarm, Spysweeper, Adaware (& Adwatch), Spybot (and Windows XP) and keep them all updated and manually run all the utilities at least weekly - they never seem to report anything "bad" - and last thing I do every night after backing everything up to external hard drive is run Norton defrag - wake up in morning and its done and I reboot the computer and start again for the day. my life is just kinda nuts right now taking care of elderly parents and semi-invalid brother - I think I mainly just need time to study audactiy more but that "5-minute song label thing" is what threw me off of it for the time being - otherwise the program looks fantastic and I will definitely get back to it.
--LC