Mark an area for edit or copy

[stefaan]

Hi, something i've been struggeling with for a while. I often have to replace areas of a track by an area from the same track or from another track. For instance: a break doesn't sound good on the first take, but I've got a good version on the second take. So I want to zoom in (that's no problem) and accurately "mark" begin and end of the wrong break, and do the same with the correct fragment on the other take. But I can't find how to mark the areas! Copy, paste, position and all that is no problem, it's just marking the areas that I can't find
Thanks for any help!
Stefaan

[steve]

Not sure what you mean, but perhaps Selecting audio, or adding a Label.

[stefaan]

Yes, i've been looking at both, thanks for the tip.
If you label a region, the region and label appear UNDER the tracks, it doesn't allow you to mark or select a precise region in 1 specific track. And if you select an area as specified in "selecting audio", this 1 selection remains until you select an other region (in the same track or in an other track). If you select a second region, the first region is not selected anymore.
What I'm looking for is the possibility to mark/select a region (for instance because I want to replace it), and then to mark/select an other region as well - in the same track, or in an other track - (for istance the region I need to copy & paste to replace the first region). Hope this is a better explanation of my question?

[roadsterUK]

It might help if you realize that when an area is selected for copy you can apply the same selection to other tracks just by making them active by clicking in the far left hand region while holding the control key. Instead of selecting the entire track this will select ( or deselect if you repeat it) the same region in the other track. So you can turn selection on or off on individual tracks without changing the region selected. You can also paste a selection into a new track and use the tracks-align tracks options to get it in the right place before merging back.

[stefaan]

Thanks for the tip again, Mark! I now realise that there are 2 approaches to a solution for my problem, but i'm afraid it would take some development
One would be to enable something like "rulers" for every individual track (like they are used in design programs), so you could use a ruler to the left and one to the right of the fragment you want to indicate. Makes it easy to indicate a section you want to replace, and also to indicate and select the section you want to copy as the replacing fragment. And also the rulers would be useful to allow you to (time)stretch or shrink the pasted section to exactly fit in the tinmeline. - In a lot of design programs, you can actually switch"magnetic rulers" on and off. "Magnetic" allows for very strict positioning, since the borders of the pasted object "jump and stick" to the rulers.
An other solution would simply be to enable multiple areas to be selected in multiple tracks at the same time

[stefaan]

Hi, I now realise I've been calling you Mark (wonder why). Anyway, thanks Steve and thanks RoadsterUK for your constructive tips!
I sometime am really confused, it seems

[steve]

What I'm looking for is the possibility to mark/select a region (for instance because I want to replace it),

If you know the exact start and end of the part that you want to replace, you could select it and then "Edit menu > Clip boundaries > Split".

However, the way that I would do it is to roughly mark the region that I want to replace with a region label (just quickly and approximately), then select and copy the bit that I want to replace it with, and paste the copy into a new track, roughly where I have marked with the label. Then I can delete the label track, and use the Time Shift tool to accurately position the new clip in the correct place below the part that I want to replace. Finally, "Split delete" the part to be replaced, leaving a bit of overlap to make short crossfades from one track to the other and back again.