[audacity4blind] Re: Creating Multiple Tracks
- From: Gary Campbell <campg2003@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 11:48:13 -0700
Hi Rick,
You want to generate a separate file for each track. You could record
each track and save it to a file, as suggested, then record the next
track and save it. Or you could record each topic, after each topic
press space to stop, then r to record the next track. Audacity starts
recording a new track at the current cursor position, so the second
track will start at the end of the first track. If you press HOME (i.e.
by accident, or to review what you did, the new track might start
somewhere else, like at time 0, but that's okay. If that happens select
all the tracks and do Tracks > Align end-to-end. This isn't important
for the export, but it will make it easier to listen to what you've done
and understand how your content will fit together, also you can more
easily tell the total length of your project.
This idea of tracks starting at somewhere other than time 0 might seem a
bit odd, but it will become clear with a bit of experimentation. Open a
new Audacity project, press r and record a bit, say 30 seconds, then
press SPACE to stop.
Now, without doing anything else, press r again and record a second
track, then press space to stop. Just for fun, press HOME, then r and
record a third track, and press space to stop.
Now press HOME and listen to what you did. You will hear the first and
third track playing together. When the first track finishes you will
hear the second track.
Press CTRL+SHIFT+a to deselect everything.
Move to the second track and press ENTER. Your screen reader will
indicate it is selected.
Now press j. j and k are for the selected tracks what HOME and END are
for the whole project.
Press space-- the second track will start playing. Press space again to
stop.
Now check your position. If your first track was 30 seconds long, track
2 will start at 30 seconds.
Now press ENTER to deselect the second track, downarrow to move to the
3rd track, and ENTER to select it.
Press j and check your position. It is at 0.
There are several ways to deal with the first and 3rd tracks playing on
top of each other. The first way is to align the tracks end-to-end.
This might be the best thing to do for your job. Press CTRL+a to select
everything, then press ALT+t,a to move to the align submenu of the
Tracks menu. The first item is align end-to-end, so press ENTER.
Now play your project and you will find that the 3rd track starts at the
end of the 2nd.
Press CTRL+SHIFT+a to deselect everything, move to track 3 and press
ENTER to select it, then j. You are at the start of track 3. Check
your position and you will find it starts at the time of the end of track 2.
You can now edit any of the tracks by making sure only the tracks you
are editing are selected. If you do something to change the length of
one of the tracks, you will have to realign them. For example, assuming
your first track was 30 seconds long, move to it and select ENTER.
Position the cursor at 25 seconds by either playing it, or go to the
selection toolbar and set the start of the selection to 25 seconds.
From the track, press SHIFT+k, which will select from the 25-second
point to the end of track 1. You now should have the start and end
times at 25sec and 30sec, respectively. Press DEL to delete.
Now press HOME and play your project. There will now be 5 seconds of
silence between the end of the first track and the start of track 2.
Since you are going to put each track in a separate file, this doesn't
really matter much. However it would probably be easiest to work with
if you fixed this. Select all the tracks and do Align end-to-end again
and the gap is gone.
The second way is to not align the tracks and mute the tracks you don't
want to hear or put the ones you do in Solo mode. Since the first 2
tracks are aligned and the 3rd track is the only problem track, we'll
mute it. Move to track 3 and press SHIFT+u. Now the track will
identify as "mute on", and when you play, you won't hear track 3.
(Sometimes you have to switch to another track and back for the screen
reader to be aware of this change.) Instead of muting track 3, you
could put track 1 in Solo mode. To do this move to track 1 and press
Shift+s. The track will now identify as Solo on. Which you use will
depend on what you are doing and your personal taste, but remember that
muted tracks aren't exported. If you are using mute, CTRL+Shift+u
(unmute all) and CTRL+u (mute all) are handy keystrokes when working
this way.
When you are done and want to save the files, use File > Export Multiple
(CTRL+Shift+L). You can export to MP3, but WAV files would retain more
quality. This might not matter for what you are doing, but if you were
doing something you want to be good quality this would be better, the
files will be bigger though. I use FLAC for my masters. It's bigger
than MP3, but smaller than WAV.
In the Export Multiple dialog you first choose the file format. Then you
choose a folder to place the files in. There is a Choose button to
browse for it, and a Create button to create it if it doesn't exist.
Then you have a set of radio buttons that determine how to split the
project into files. In this case we want to use tracks. Then is the
Name Files group. I think all tracks are called "audio track" if you
haven't renamed them, so I would pick one of the options that add
numbers. Once these are set up, choose Export and it happens. I think
the metadata editor opens for each file. There you can set things like
the track title that might appear on the CD player display when the CD
is played. I say might, because I can't get Media Player to write the
info (called CD text) to the CD. It shows it in the burn list, but it
doesn't show up on the CD. Since Microsoft bothers to show the
information in the burn list, I can't imagine that they wouldn't write
the CD text, so maybe it's my CD drive-- but it can write CD text
because it does work with the CDRecord program, a command line program
that's a port from UNIX and a lot of work to use. I also don't get CD
text with EAC or Winamp. I could probably solve this by buying a
burning program, but I haven't yet. XP came with this capability, and I
just have a hard time getting my head around the idea that a later
operating system (8.1) can't do something for free that one of its
ancestors could.
Whatever program you use to burn your CDs will probably take care of
this for you, but CDs expect a 16-bit 44100 stereo WAV file. If you can
burn MP3s, that means it is doing the conversion. When I use CDRecord,
I have to make sure they are converted to this format.
This all sounds complicated, but I think you will find it not hard if
you play with it for a bit. Good luck!
Hope this helps.
Gary
On 11/28/2014 6:33 AM, Gene wrote:
That is not what the person wants to do. He wants completely separate
files, one for each track. He would then burn the separate files on
cd and the audio format should be used when burning.
Here is one way to do this. Depending on what you are recording, it
may be suitable. Let's say you are recording something you wrote such
as the minutes of a meeting. there are five separate topics, each
topic taking a few minutes to read.
Record the first topic.
Export it as an mp3 file with the name 01. .
Close Audacity and reopen it.
Record the second topic. Save it as 02.mp3
Continue until all topics have been recorded.
Then burn the cd using the audio format.
There is probably a new command that would probably save you a bit of
time but it isn't necessary to use and I won't discuss it here.
Gene
*From*
*:* Robbie <mailto:tickleberryfun@xxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Friday, November 28, 2014 12:49 AM
*To:* audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [audacity4blind] Re: Creating Multiple Tracks
Hi Rick!
You need to align each track to its start position to have them play
in a certain order. Since you're creating a CD you probably want to
play one after the other. The simplest way of doing this is to use the
Align End to End command in the Tracks menu. Press ctrl-A and
alt-T-A-A to do this.
Cheers! Robbie
*From**:*audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Rick Boggess
*Sent:* Friday, November 28, 2014 4:56 AM
*To:* audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [audacity4blind] Creating Multiple Tracks
I am in a support group and prepare print and recorded CD information
(about 5-10 minutes ) each month. I produce an audio CD since most
members are older and do not have access to a daisy player. However,
I would like to make the information more navigable. Someone
suggested that I record each item on a separate track. I have tried
creating multiple tracks using Audacity but they are on top of each
other. I need some guidance on how to create the separate tracks.
Should I label each track and what is the best way to accomplish
this. I must admit that I am a novice when it comes to editing and
producing digital audio. Your help is greatly appreciated. By the
way I am using JAWS 16.
Rick Boggess
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