Split a Clip

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chota300
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 4:45 pm
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Split a Clip

Post by chota300 » Sat Jun 23, 2012 5:12 pm

OK I am new to Audacity & new to music editing, but I think something basic is missing from the doc/FAQ/etc.
I just want to split 1 clip into 2 clips at the low point I see in the graph.
Everything I find talks around the topic but never seems to say exactly what to do ( inc where the mouse should point for a click ).

Here is what I did:
I copied one entire side of a vinyl LP to a single project/track.
I ran Click Removal.
I ran Normalize.
I ran Sound Finder to break the track into clips.
Generally Sound Finder identified more clips than the LP side has songs, and even created some overlapping clips.
I clicked on the number of a false clip to select it and used Edit / Remove Audio / Delete to remove the false clip.
I also dragged the edges of remaining real clips to adjust song boundaries.
So far, so good. All of the audio is contained in clips.

HOWEVER, Sound Finder also combined 2 songs into a single clip.
I cannot find any way to select just that clip, identify a break point between the songs, and split that single clip into 2 clips.
It seems so easy yet impossible to find exactly where to point, click, choose the correct action, etc.

Again, help & tutorials seem to talk around the subject without providing exact instructions.
Would someone please post the exact steps required, inc the position of the mouse pointer?

Thanks, John

kozikowski
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Re: Split a Clip

Post by kozikowski » Sat Jun 23, 2012 6:19 pm

Silence Finder and Sound Finder are not our favorite software. Old vinyl has no silence because of noise, dirt and pops.

I'm going to get into trouble here, but traditionally, we told people to set a Label (Tracks > Add Label or the shortcut keys appropriate to your computer) at the beginning of each song. The temptation is to call it a "separator mark", but it's not. It marks the beginning point of each of the songs that Audacity is going to export. You can put Labels in manually anywhere you wish.

The desperation method is to go ahead and export all your songs and then open up the married clip by itself and split it manually.

The failure of the automatic tools is the biggest push toward downloading all your songs fresh from the internet -- if possible. It doesn't take very many albums to project how long it's going to take to digitize all your music, and you got one that worked pretty well.

Koz

kozikowski
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Re: Split a Clip

Post by kozikowski » Sat Jun 23, 2012 6:23 pm

You can drag-select one of the two songs and File > Export Selected. Then drag-select the other one. You can also put a label at the top and another label in the middle and File > Export Multiple. Is that detailed enough? Koz

chota300
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 4:45 pm
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Re: Split a Clip

Post by chota300 » Sun Jun 24, 2012 12:04 am

Making progress ...
With your instructions & the Label Tracks help, I was able to create a new named clip for what appears to be a song.
If I add labels for each clip, then zoom / drag edges, I expect I can create a single label track with the desired clip ranges.

For what it is worth, a few more comments:
1) I find the absence of "right-click" functionality a hindrance. I already sent an email suggestion.
2) I have not found doc to describe the differing effects - if any - of point labels vs. region labels, in particular upon an MP3 export. The doc says how to create/etc each type, but not necessarily why a user would want to create one type vs. the other - or both. I took your instructions to mean region label.
3) I did find that Sound Finder can be very tedious - basically guesswork. It does seem to work better after Noise removal. I think Sound Finder might work much easier if it used a scale from 1.0 to -1.0 like the track graph. If a horizontal red line - that could be dragged up/down - appeared on the audio graphs, it might be easier to set the low noise level threshold ( below which would be considered a gap between songs ). I cannot imagine why Sound Finder would create overlapping clips.
4) I was expecting to break the single clip into multiple clips - in the existing label track. I suspect by your post that I could have done that by manually creating a point or region label within that clip area.

So thank you for all your help.
No need to reply again unless I have misunderstood your instructions.

Thank you,
John

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