Questions about labels and saving

[rmcellig]

As per the advice of an audacity user who posted to one of my previous enquires, I was told to keep at it with Audacity and eventually things will start to click and make sense. Thanks to his advise, I am starting to spend more time with Audacity and making progress!!

At the moment I use Sound Studio for the Mac. I have a couple of things in Audacity that I need some clarification on. I looked at the Audacity help file but I think I need better clarification from this post.

Setting markers:

Here is what I do at the moment in sound studio regarding labels.
1. I click the mouse at the beginning of the selection by pressing the letter M. Then I click at the end of the selection to insert another marker.

2. I then press option left arrow to go back to the first marker, and then shift-option right arrow to select the sound between the two markers. From there, I can copy, cut, normalize or whatever with the selected waveform.

What do I have to do in Audacity that would come close to the two steps described above?

When I open up my aiff file to exract my audio snippets, I would like to save the file on a regular basis so I don't lose anything. In Sound Studio, I just press Command S to save the file. It seems that the only way to do this in Audacity is to save the file as an Audacity project? Am I right assuming this?

Thanks so much for all of your help!! I need to get back to Audacity now to continue working on my shows

Randy

[steve]

I'm not a Mac user, but hopefully I've got these shortcuts correct (This is only really 2 steps, but I've broken it down into tiny steps for clarity).

1) Put the cursor where you want the first marker and press COMMAND+B
Don't worry about getting the position exactly right, it can be adjusted later - This is a temporary marker and it just needs to be somewhere close.
Alternatively, you can use COMMAND + M while the the track is playing, (then press the ENTER key so that you're not editing the label text).

2) Find the end position (roughly) where you want the selection to end and click on the track.

3) Zoom out far enough to see the first marker.

4) Hold down the Shift key and click somewhere near the first marker.

5) Press COMMAND +B. This will make a "region label" that marks the selected area,

6) Delete the first (temporary) marker by clicking on the label box and pressing delete or backspace.

7) You can now adjust the exact positions of the start/end of the region marker by dragging the little arrows (not the circles) on the start/end lines of the label.

Useful tips:

• The label can be given a name (label text) by clicking on the little box and typing (then press ENTER so that you are not editing the name).
• To select the audio area defined by the region label, click on the label name (then press ENTER so that you are not editing the name).
• Use the Up/Down arrows to move focus from one track to another without changing the selection. (the track that has "focus" will have a yellow glow around it).
• Position your mouse pointer near one end of a selection (don't click) and press the B key. Audacity will play the section between the pointer and the closest end of the selected region.

Full details and illustrations of labels are here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Label_Tracks

[alexius]

Mac OS v10.6.8, Audacity v1.3.13-beta

Hello,

A newbie to this forum, with a very critical comment.

One of the main reasons I use Audacity rarely is the problem I have with labels vs markers and with selecting audio. It's similar to the problem described by the OP, and also discussed for the Windows version here

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 12&t=61359

It's easier to explain with an example. I'll compare Audacity to Sound Studio 2, an ancient (~10 years) piece of Mac shareware that still works very well under Snow Leopard, with the limitation that it can't open files > 2GB.

Say I have a 12-hrs long audio file, of which I want to keep only a 30 min clip.

In Sound Studio, it couldn't be more simple or intuitive. Define the beginning of the clip by inserting a marker; do the same thing for the end; double-click anywhere inside the marked audio to select exactly the audio between markers and nothing else; and choose File > Save Selection As.

In Audacity, it's a pain. I can mark the beginning and the end of the clip respectively with labels (Add Label at Selection or Add Label at Playback Position), but those are point labels. There's no way to select the audio between them. It might be done with region labels (clicking on the label is supposed to work like double-clicking in Sound Studio), but there's no way to add a region label except by selecting the audio clip I want to begin with. In other words, Catch-22. And dragging to select in a 12-hr file fit to a 15-in laptop display is like a competition in fine mechanical skills. It's much easier to Export Multiple -- if I have the disk space (because Export Multiple requires space for 12 hrs, even though all I want is 30 mins).

It seems to me that the fundamental problem is that labels in Audacity are an afterthought -- first select, then label. But selecting parts of a waveform is tricky, and making a correct selection is the beginning of successful audio editing. Sound Studio had it right 10 years ago -- place accurately one marker, then place accurately the second one, then easily and precisely select the audio between them. Then you can delete, or crop, or apply effects, whatever.

Why can't Audacity do it right?

[waxcylinder]

With Audacity 1.3.x you can create either point labels or region labels (or a mixture of both) - see this page in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Label_Tracks

If you are happier just using point labels and fine tunning them then it is quite easy to select the audio betweenthe two labels:
1) zoom out so that you can see both labels
2) click in the waveform at the first label position - you should find that the label postion is sticky/magnetic and should light up yellow when locked on
3) drag along the waveform to near the second label and get the yellow locked-on line

Then your region will be selected

WC

[steve]

Say I have a 12-hrs long audio file, of which I want to keep only a 30 min clip.

In Sound Studio, it couldn't be more simple or intuitive.

IF you can open it. A 12 hour CD quality file will be about 7 GB.

Define the beginning of the clip by inserting a marker; do the same thing for the end; double-click anywhere inside the marked audio to select exactly the audio between markers and nothing else; and choose File > Save Selection As.

Here's a quick way to do the same in Audacity:
1) Define the beginning of the clip by inserting a "Split" (Ctrl+I on Windows or Linux)
2) Do the same thing for the end.
3) Double-click anywhere inside the marked audio to select exactly the audio between markers and nothing else.
4) File > Export Selection.

An even quicker way if the selection does not need to be exact:
1) Zoom out so that you can see all of the 30 minutes that you want (Ctrl+Mouse Wheel to zoom in/out on Windows/Linux)
2) Click and drag to select it.
3) File > Export Selection.

My preferred method for making an exact selection (the keyboard shortcuts are probably a bit different on a Mac, but they are all listed here and the most useful ones will become second nature when you've used them a few times)
1) Click at the start point of the 30 minute section then press Shift+Home
2) Del
3) Click at the end of the 30 minute section then press Shift+End
4) Del
5) File > Export.

When I first started using Audacity I had already got a lot of experience using CoolEdit Pro and it would bug the heck out of me that Audacity did things differently. However once I started using Audacity regularly I found that a lot of of my audio editing work I could actually do much quicker and more easily on Audacity than I ever could on CEP. I now have Adobe Audition as well as Audacity, but often I can complete the job in Audacity faster than it takes for Adobe Audition to launch. The benefits of familiarity with a program are easy to underestimate.

[rmcellig]

I am a Sound Studio user on the Mac site as well and this post shows that you can do the same thing as easily in Audacity. Great post!! Thanks so much!!

[steve]

You're welcome.

[alexius]

With Audacity 1.3.x you can create either point labels or region labels (or a mixture of both) - see this page in the manual

Thanks for your reply. I read the manual before posting -- doesn't everybody?

The problem with labels is the distinction Audacity makes between point and region, and the fact that you can't select audio between points, and you can't create regions except by dragging.

If you are happier just using point labels and fine tunning them then it is quite easy to select the audio betweenthe two labels

Perhaps, if you deal with a small file. But if you try to select several small clips in a big file zoomed out to fit on a laptop display, then -- as a I said in my post -- it becomes a contest in fine mechanical skills, because the cursor may change shape and function before the label becomes magnetic.

Even so, again, it's much easier in Sound Studio. I can zoom in at max resolution, place a marker very precisely, repeat it, then double-click, and, voilà, my clip is selected, exactly as I wanted and no further adjustment required. Whereas in Audacity I have to drag -- clumsy and tiresome at high rez, because of scrolling through the waveform -- to mark the region approximately, zoom in to fine tune the delimiters, zoom out to see the region label and click on it to make the selection.

Again, the real problem is Audacity's basic concept of selecting by dragging, and the lack of markers.

[billw58]

the real problem is Audacity's basic concept of selecting by dragging, and the lack of markers.

See Steve's reply further up this thread on using Splits instead of Labels to mark selections. I do this all the time for the very reasons you cite.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Edit_Menu#split

It seems the primary purpose of the Edit > Split command is to create Clips, but I often use them to mark selections.

1) Find the exact spot for the beginning of your selection
2) Cmd-I
3) Find the exact spot for the end of the selection
4) Cmd-I

Your selection is now a clip, and can be selected by double-clicking anywhere inside the clip.

-- Bill

[alexius]

IF you can open it. A 12 hour CD quality file will be about 7 GB.

Of course. I did say SS had a 2GB limit. Nevertheless, for an app of this type to still work, and work well, after a decade and so many OS changes is remarkable.

Here's a quick way to do the same in Audacity

Yes; but, splits are not, as you say, markers. You can't move them; you can't
use them for Export Multiple; unless I'm mistaken, you can't convert audio between them into regions; etc.

An even quicker way if the selection does not need to be exact

But that's precisely my point -- that, in Audacity, it is difficult to make exact selections.

My preferred method for making an exact selection

And what do you do if you want to keep two non-adjacent 15 min clips from the 12 hrs file? (I assume Audacity is well engineered, and keeping undo alive while deleting 11.5 hrs from a 12 hrs file does not involve too much disk work.) Or if you change your mind, and want to extend the selection just a few samples?

often I can complete the job in Audacity faster than it takes for Adobe Audition to launch. The benefits of familiarity with a program are easy to underestimate.

Your point is well taken. But my problem is not that Audacity does things differently, but that it doesn't have the tools to do things right. The first basic task of a GUI audio editor is to open and display the waveform. The second is to allow for convenient and precise selection of the portion of the waveform on which other tasks are to be performed.

Say I digitised an old tape. I open it in Audacity to process it for CD. I need to mark different segments, on which to apply different effects, and then export them. Quality work demands precise selections. I could use Split -- but I can't move a split, and I can't convert splits to labels, and (somewhat counterintuively, I'd say) I can't actually split (export multiple) the file by splits. I can use point labels, but I can't select quickly between them. I can use region labels, but I can only do it by dragging, which is inaccurate. Sound Studio does all that easily, and with just one type of marker instead of three.

As a result, I use Audacity almost exclusively for one purpose -- split files > 2GB into segments Sound Studio can open (and that, only because I don't want to bother to learn the sox syntax). Audacity probably normalizes thrice as fast as Sound Studio; but that is as nothing compared to the time wasted (and frustration experienced) in trying to make an accurate selection.