[audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a selected time range
- From: "Angelo Sonnesso" <asonnesso@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015 04:48:21 -0400
I am attaching a text file to this email.
Let me know if it doesn't come through.
73 N2DYN Angelo
-----Original Message-----
From: audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Daveed Mandell
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:57 PM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a selected time
range
Hello:
Much of the information asked for here can be found in the manual. However,
the online manual is quite awkward and even rather difficult to work with. I
am looking for an offline manual. Where can one obtain an accessible manual
in any of the following formats: MS Word, RTF, TXT, Epub or PDF? I would
apreciate some assistance.
Many thanks.
Regards,
Daveed Mandell
----- Original Message -----
From: Gene <gsasner@xxxxxxxxx>
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Monday, July 20, 2015 12:08 pm
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a selected time
range
That's good to know as are the other matters discussed in response to
my question. However, the discussion raises, at least for me, another
question.
I would think that Audacity would serve more casual blind users better
if there were specific commands, perhaps function key commands for
moving the cursor in small increments. These commands are available in
goldwave and in
Mp3 Direct Cut. I don't know how many other programs they are found in.
For more casual sighted users of Audacity, they may not be important.
But I expect there are a lot of blind users who won't learn enough
about the program to have the information discussed in this thread.
Audacity should be easy for the more casual user to use and having
equivalent incremental commands as in the very popular Goldwave and
Mp3 Direct Cut may encourage more casual blind users to adopt it.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Bailes" <david_bailes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 7:53 AM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected time range
Hi Gene,
just to add that after importing a file, the zoom level depends on
the length of the file, and so can vary widely.
If you execute the zoom normal command (ctrl+2), then the step size
is set to slightly more than a hundredth of a second. You can then
zoom out or in from there. For example if you zoom out three times
(ctrl+3, three times), then the step size will be just less than a tenth
of a second.
David.
On Sunday, 19 July 2015, 17:12, Gene <gsasner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No, I was discussing how you move both markers. I haven't tried the
methods others discussed in answer to my question such as setting
the zoom level.
I
may play with the zoom level later today.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: "L.F. Meijer (Pengaarde)" <lfm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2015 11:04 AM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected time range
Hello, Gene,
I believe you wrote only about setting the right marker. Without
left marker there isnot a selection. Am I wrong?
Loek.
********************
L.F. Meijer
Isathc Sweersstraat 17
3861 EA Nijkerk
T: 033-2464374
M: 06-30022688
E: lfm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
W: www.pengaarde.nl
********************
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
From: Gene
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2015 2:03 PM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected time range
The commands don't do what I'm asking about. The point is not to
create a selection, the point is to incrementally adjust a
selection you have already made, changing both the cursor and the
right marker as needed. And the shift left and right arrow
commands don't change the selection incrementally.
As an example of what I am describing, let's say you set the cursor
somewhere in a file. You then set the right marker.
using the listen commands you find that the cursor is a fraction of
a second too far into the file and you find that the right marker
is a fraction of a second before the position you want it to be.
There should be commands that allow you to move each marker
incrementally, by a tiny fraction of a second back or forward.
Pressing the move back or forward command repeatedly would allow
you to move the markers very precisely to where you want them to
be.
this is an essential feature for blind people to be able to edit
precisely.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve the Fiddle" <stevethefiddle@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2015 6:26 AM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected time range
Gene wrote: "Shift left arrow and shift right arrow couldn't do what
is wanted because whatever they may do, they are only two commands"
The set of 4 commands are:
1) Shift + Left
2) Shift + Right
3) Ctrl + Shift + Left
4) Ctrl + Shift + Right.
For more details and additional selection commands, see;
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audacity_selection.html#keyboard
Steve
On 19 July 2015 at 12:18, Gene <gsasner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No I don't have the JAWS scripts installed. And if I did, how would
shift
left and right arrow do what I want? I asked about moving the left
and
right markers by increments. That means being able to move them both
forward and badckward by tiny increments. Anyone who uses Goldwave
for
serious editing or Mp3 Direct Cut for serious editing should know
what
I
am
describing. Shift left arrow and shift right arrow couldn't do what
is
wanted because whatever they may do, they are only two commands.
What
is
needed are four commands. Move the left marker back incrementally,
move
the
left marker forward incrementally, move the right marker back
incrementally
and move the right arrow forward incrementally.
Gene
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jacob Kruger"
<jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2015 4:43 AM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected
time
range
Gene, do you have the jaws scripts installed, and are you using
windows/jaws?
Asking since think those shift and ctrl + left and right commands
are
included in the jaws scripts.
Stay well
Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome y'''ffthe space janitor's closet..."
----- Original Message ----- From: "Gene" <gsasner@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2015 11:43 PM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected
time range
I doubt it. Are you talking about commands that change where you
are
listening in a file while it is playing? I know that the commands
you
gave
can change where you are listening. I don't know what, if
anything,
they do
when Audacity is stopped with a file opened. Whatever they may do
when
Audacity is stopped, they don't do what I am asking about. I am
asking
about commands that move the left marker or the cursor, the same
thing, a
tiny increment to the right and left and another set of commands
that
move
the right marker incrementally to the right and left.
Gene
----- Original Message ----- From: "L.F. Meijer (Pengaarde)"
<lfm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2015 4:31 PM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected
time range
Hello, Gene,
To change the selected fragment:
a. to move the end position to the right: shift-arrow right.
but. to move the start position to the left: shift-arrow left.
can. to move the end position to the left: control-shift-arrow
left.
do. to move the start position to the right: control-shift-arrow
right.
Is this you wished to know?
Kind regards,
Loek.
********************
L.F. Meijer
Isathc Sweersstraat 17
3861 EA Nijkerk
T: 033-2464374
M: 06-30022688
E: lfm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
W: www.pengaarde.nl
********************
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- From: Gene
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2015 10:45 PM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected
time range
Also, does audacity have a command to move a start or end marker
vack
or
forward by a fractional amount so you can not only hear where the
markers
are located, but also move them an incremental amount?
Gene
----- Original Message ----- From: "L.F. Meijer (Pengaarde)"
<lfm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2015 2:47 PM
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Playback commands for checking a
selected
time
range
Hello, David,
The new commands as shift-f5 up to shift-f8 are useful additional
ones.
Thanks.
However, the c-command for a play cut preview was useful too.
This
command hasnot any
effect in the new version of Audacity, although it has been
defined
as
a
shortcut. How can I repair this?
Kind regards,
Loek.
********************
L.F. Meijer
Isathc Sweersstraat 17
3861 EA Nijkerk
T: 033-2464374
M: 06-30022688
E: lfm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
W: www.pengaarde.nl
********************
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- From: David Bailes
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2015 6:14 PM
To: Audacity4blind
Subject: [audacity4blind] Playback commands for checking a
selected
time
range
In Audacity 2.1.1, there are four new playback commands to check
that
you've
selected the time range which you want:
1. To play a short period before selection start, press shift+F5.
2. To play a short period after selection start, press shift+F6.
3. To play a short period before selection end, press shift+F7.
4. To play a short period after selection end, press shift+F8.
Of these commands, shift+F7 to play a short period before
selection
end
will
probably be the most useful. It allows you to listen to the end
of
the
selection without having to listen to the whole selected time
range.
The periods before and after selection start/end share the same
settings as
the play cut preview command (C), and can be set in the playback
category of
Preferences.
These commands are similar to the corresponding commands
available
in
mp3directcut.
David.
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Audacity 2.0.6 Guide
A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader, written by David Bailes. More
guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.
Contents
Introduction.
Main window.
Opening an audio file.
Saving audio.
Playback.
Toolbars.
Track table.
Selection bar.
Moving the cursor.
Selecting audio.
Basic editing.
More advanced editing.
Metadata editor.
Recording.
Install VST Effects dialog.
Preferences.
Sound dialog in Windows Vista, 7 and 8.
Keystrokes.
Introduction
This is a guide for the 2.0.6 version of Audacity, which is a free multi-track
audio editor. You can use it for recording, simple editing of single tracks, or
more advanced editing involving multiple tracks.
Audacity 2.0.6 can be downloaded from the home page of Audacity's website.
If this is the first version of Audacity that you've run on the Computer,
please read the next section on the Install VST Effects dialog.
The following sections of the introduction introduce projects and the cursor in
Audacity, and then describe the welcome message box and how to get help.
There's also some important information if you using a non us/uk keyboard.
Install VST Effects dialog when you first run Audacity
If you have not used previous versions of Audacity on the computer, then the
first time that you run Audacity 2.0.6, the first window which appears is an
Install VST Effects dialog. Just press Enter to press the default OK button.
You won't see the dialog again, unless you start to use VST plug-ins with
Audacity.
For those of you that do use VST plug-ins with Audacity, see the Install VST
Effects dialog section, which is later in the guide.
Projects
The objects which Audacity edits are known as projects. So projects are
equivalent to documents in Microsoft Word, and workbooks in Microsoft Excel.
An Audacity project simply consists of a number of tracks.
There are a number of different types of track in Audacity: audio, label, and
time. However, the latter two are inaccessible to Jaws users, and so this guide
will only describe the use of audio tracks. For many simple tasks you'll
probably only have one track in a project.
You can save an Audacity project using the Audacity project file format, and
this preserves all the tracks in the project. However, you only need to save a
project in this format if you intend to continue working on the project in the
future.
Cursor
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, and this
is similar to the cursor in Microsoft Word. The cursor in Audacity is used for
defining times such as: the start of playback, the position where you want to
start selecting a time range, and the place where audio is pasted from the
clipboard.
Using keyboards other than US, UK, or Irish
If you're using a keyboard other than a US, UK, or Irish keyboard, then a
couple of important keystrokes won't work if you're using Audacity's default
settings. To fix this, see the The [ and ] shortcuts on keyboards other than
US, UK or Irish section which is in the Customizing section.
Welcome message box
When you open Audacity, a Welcome message box opens, and this contains an HTML
window which contains some information on how to obtain help for Audacity.
Unfortunately the links in this text can't be opened using keyboard navigation,
but details of the available help are given in the next section. The message
box also contains a Don't show this again at startup check box. To stop the
message box appearing in future, just check the check box, and press the OK
button.
Help
Audacity is an extremely powerful program, and this is only an introductory
guide. For more information see:
The Audacity Wiki.
The installed Audacity user manual which can be opened in your default browser
by choosing Manual on the Help menu.
The Audacity4Blind mailing list. On this web page you can subscribe to the
mailing list: type your email address into to the your email address edit
box, Tab to the Go button and press it. You will receive an email to confirm
the subscription. Simply reply to this email without adding any additional text.
Main window
Main components
Title bar. When the window contains an unnamed project, for example, when you
first start Audacity, then the text in the title bar is Audacity. When the
window contains a named project, then the text is the name of the project. To
read the title bar press Insert + T.
Menu bar.
Toolbars.
Track table. This contains the tracks which make up the project.
Selection bar. This contains controls for reading and setting the cursor
position and the start and end/length of any selected time range.
Status bar. When the mouse is over a control in the interface then often the
status bar gives help on using the control, though this is of little interest
to Jaws users. During a recording, the status bar gives the disk space which
remains for recording. When there is no text in the status bar, then if you
read the status bar, then Jaws reads the contents of the controls on the
selection bar (together with a spurious graphic 60034). To read the status
bar, press Insert + Page Down.
Moving around the window
As in any window, to move to the menu bar press Alt, and to leave it press Esc
of Alt.
Pressing Ctrl + F6 moves you around the following components: Toolbars, Track
table, Selection bar, Toolbars, etc. Pressing Ctrl + Shift + F6 moves you
around in the opposite direction.
Opening an audio file
To open either an audacity project file or a standard audio file, use the Open
dialog, which is on the File menu (Ctrl + O). The dialog's title is Select one
or more audio files..., and its structure is similar to the standard Windows
XP Open dialog. The types of standard audio files which Audacity can open
described in the next section.
When you first open Audacity, the window contains an empty track table, and so
when you open an audio file, it opens in this initial window. After opening a
standard audio file, the track table contains a single track, whereas after
opening an Audacity project file, the track table contains all the tracks in
the saved project. If you then open any other audio files, then they each open
in a new window. (If you want to deliberately create a new window with an empty
project, choose New from the File menu, or press Ctrl + N.)
In addition to opening standard audio files, you can also import one or more
standard audio files into the current project. In this case, a new track is
added to the track table for each of the files. For details, see the Importing
audio files section.
Opening standard audio files
The default installation of Audacity can open audio files in the following
standard formats: WAV, AIFF, AU, MP3, MP2/MPEG, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC. In
addition, you can open files in some other formats, including wma and m4a if
you download and install the FFmpeg library, as described in the FFmpeg library
section. This is not included in the installation of Audacity due to legal
issues about patents.
An alternative to using the FFmpeg library for opening files in other formats
is to use another program to convert the file to one of the formats the default
installation of Audacity can open. There are several audio format conversion
programs available, for example, Switch which is free in its basic version, or
dBpoweramp Music Converter.
If you open a compressed file, such as an MP3 file, then after you press the
open button in the Open dialog an Import dialog opens which gives the progress
of Audacity decompressing the file.
Saving audio
You can save the audio in a project in either the audacity project format, or
one of the standard audio formats, as described in the following sections. The
Audacity project format preserves all the tracks in the project. You only need
to save a project in the audacity project format if you intend to continue
working on the project in the future. In contrast, when you save in one of the
standard audio formats, Audacity automatically mixes all the tracks down to a
single track.
When you close Audacity, if you haven't saved your changes to an Audacity
project file, then a Save changes? dialog opens asking you whether you want to
save changes before closing. The default button is Yes, but unless you want to
save the project as an Audacity project file, just Tab to the NO button and
press it.
Saving audio in the audacity project format
To save in this format, choose Save Project... from the File menu. The first
time you do this, you get a Warning dialog box telling you that only Audacity
can read these project files. The dialog box contains a check box which you can
check if you don't want this warning again. If you press the OK button, you
then get a Save Project As dialog.
Saving audio in one of the standard audio formats
The default installation of Audacity can save in the following standard
formats: WAV, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and MP2. In addition, you can save in some
other formats if you download and install some additional libraries which are
not included with Audacity because of legal issues with patents:
You can save in the MP3 format if you download and install the LAME MP3
library, as described in the LAME MP3 encoder library section.
You can save in formats including wma and m4a if you download and install the
FFmpeg library, and described in the FFmpeg library section.
To save audio in one of the standard audio formats:
1.To save all the audio, choose Export from the File menu. Alternatively, to
save only the selected audio, choose Export Selection from the File menu.
2.The Export File dialog opens, and its structure is very similar to a standard
Windows XP Save As dialog.
3.To set the file format which you want to use for saving the audio, there's a
Save as type combo box, which is the next control after the File name edit box,
which is the initial focus. Note that all the formats which use the FFmpeg
library, have FFmpeg in parenthesis after their name.
4.After choosing the file format, you can set the options for the encoding used
by that format by tabbing to the Options button and pressing it. An Options
dialog for the encoding opens. Since the MP3 format is often used, the numerous
options for MP3 encoding are described in the following section.
5.The Metadata editor dialog opens. This enables you to edit various items of
information about the audio data, such as the Artist name, and the Track title,
and is described in detail in the Metadata editor section later in the guide.
If you don't want to edit any of the information, then you can just press Enter
to press the default OK button. Note that if you press Esc to cancel the
dialog, as well as cancelling any edits in this dialog, this also cancels the
saving of the audio. If you don't want the Metadata editor to automatically
open each time you save audio, then you can turn this option off, as described
in the Metadata editor opens during export section, which is in the Preferences
section.
6.Note that if you've tried to save in the MP3 format, but haven't installed
the Lame MP3 library, then a Locate Lame dialog opens. Similarly, if you've
tried to save in any of the formats included in the FFmpeg library, then a
message box opens telling you that it needs to be configured.
MP3 options
This section describes the controls in the Specify MP3 options dialog, and then
gives some recommendations for setting them. The dialog has the following
controls:
Bit Rate Mode, a set of 4 radio buttons: Preset, Variable, Average, and
Constant.
Quality combo box.
Variable Speed combo box, which only appears for some of the bit rate modes.
Channel mode, a set of two radio buttons: Joint Stereo, and Stereo. This does
not appear if the bit rate mode is set to Preset.
These are some recommended settings:
For music: ?Set the Bit Rate Mode to Variable
?the Quality to either 6, 5, or 4 (the lower the number the higher the quality).
?Variable Speed to Fast
?Channel Mode to Joint Stereo.
For speech, or when there's a requirement for small file sizes: ?Set the Bit
Rate Mode to Average
?The Quality to 64, 80 or 96 kbps (the higher the number the higher the
quality).
?Channel Mode to Joint Stereo.
For a full description of the options for the LAME MP3 encoder see the Lame
page of the Hydrogen Audio wiki.
Playback
Playback depends on whether there is a time range selected (see the Selecting
audio section): if there is no selection, then playback starts at the cursor
position; if there is a selection, then playback starts at the start of the
selection, and stops at the end of the selection.
The volume of the playback is controlled by the output slider which is on the
Mixer toolbar in the Toolbars. This volume slider is in sync with the Windows
main volume slider, and so also affects the volume of Jaws.
Keystrokes for playback:
To start or stop, press Spacebar.
To start or stop and move the cursor, press Shift + A. When you use this
keystroke to stop playback, the cursor is moved to position where the playback
was stopped.
Pause or resume, press P.
Seeking/Jumping. Whilst playing, if the focus is in the Track table, you can
jump forward or backward by either a short or long period. To jump backward or
forward by a short period press Left Arrow or Right Arrow respectively. To jump
backward or forward by a long period, press Shift + Left Arrow or Shift + Right
Arrow respectively. The size of both the short and long periods can be set in
the Preferences dialog, as described in the Seek times section.
To play looped, that is to continuously repeat, press Shift + Spacebar.
Toolbars
The Toolbars section contains several different toolbars. You can navigate to
all the controls in the Toolbars just by using the Tab key.
These are the different toolbars:
Control. This contains buttons for playback and recording, and all the
commands are also available on the Transport menu, and have keyboard shortcuts.
Tools. This contains tool buttons for editing which involve the use of the
mouse.
Meter. This contains both an input and an output level meter but both of these
are inaccessible to Jaws.
Mixer. This contains output and input volume sliders.
Edit. This contains buttons for Cut, Paste, etc. These commands are also
available on either the Edit or View menu, and all have keyboard shortcuts.
Transcription. This contains a play at selected speed button and a playback
speed slider.
Device. This contains combo boxes for Audio host, the output and input device,
and the number of channels of the input device. Note that if one of these combo
boxes is the focus, and you press a character key which is an Audacity
shortcut, then the key is used for the shortcut, rather than selecting an
option beginning with that character. So selecting an option using its first
character is not recommended. In addition, if you start playback or recording,
then the focus is then automatically moved to the Track table.
All these settings can also be made either in individual dialogs, or in the
Devices category of the Preferences dialog. The keystrokes for the individual
dialogs are Shift + H for audio host, Shift + O for output device, Shift + I
for input device, and Shift + N for number of channels.
You can show and hide all these toolbars using the Toolbars sub-menu on the
View Menu. Only showing the toolbars you're likely to use, such as the Mixer
Toolbar, has the advantage of greatly reducing the number of Tabs needed to
find a particular control.
You can press any of the buttons in the toolbar by pressing Enter. However, you
can't use Spacebar as this key is used for starting and stopping playback.
Track table
The Track table contains the tracks which make up the project. The table just
has one column, and a row for each of the tracks. Each track has a name, and
Jaws reads this when you move to the track, or press Insert + Up Arrow to read
the current line.
An audio track is a container for audio data, and this is displayed as a
waveform. Often the audio data starts at time zero, but after editing, this is
not always the case. At the left hand end of an audio track there is a small
area containing various controls, which include a menu, and controls for track
gain and pan. Using these controls is described in the More advanced editing
section of this guide.
The Cursor is displayed in the track table as a vertical line, as is the
playback position during playback. The positions of both the cursor and the
playback position are available to Jaws users via the Selection Start and Audio
Position spin boxes in the Selection Bar.
Track focus
Whenever the focus is within the track table, and the table contains one or
more tracks (rows), then one of the tracks has the focus, and you can move
between tracks by using Up Arrow and Down Arrow.
Track selection
You need to be able to select tracks:
For operations such as aligning tracks which can be found on the Tracks menu.
As part of the process of selecting some audio, as described in the Selecting
audio section.
You can select or deselect tracks using the following keystrokes:
To toggle the selection of the focused track, press Enter.
To select all the tracks (and all the audio, as described in the Selecting
audio section), press Ctrl + A
To deselect all the tracks (and any time-range), press Ctrl + Shift + A.
Jaws tells you whether a track is selected, if you do any of the following:
Move the focus to the track.
Press Insert + Up Arrow to read the current line.
Toggle the selection of the track, by pressing Enter.
More precisely, if you do any of the above, then:
If the track is not selected, then Jaws says table the name of the track row
If the track is selected, then Jaws says table the name of the track select
on row.
Selection bar
There are six controls on the Selection bar, and you can cycle forwards or
backwards around these controls using Tab or Shift + Tab respectively.
End/Length radio buttons, which determine whether the second edit spin box,
described below, shows the length or end of the selection.
Project Rate edit-combo box. This is the sampling rate of the project.
Snap To combo box, which is described below.
Selection Start edit spin box. If there is a time range selected then this
gives the start of the selection, otherwise it gives the position of the cursor.
Either a Selection End or a Selection Length edit spin box, depending on the
setting of the End/Length radio buttons described above.
Audio Position edit spin box. This gives the position of playback or recording.
Edit spin boxes
Each of the spin boxes contains a time which can be in a number of different
formats. You can change the format by choosing on the options on a spin box's
context menu, and this changes the format of all the spin boxes. The default
format is hh:mm:ss, but the format hh:mm:ss + hundredths is normally more
useful, as it allows you to change the time by smaller amounts. Nearly all the
examples in this guide will use this format.
The time can be considered to be made up of one or more sections, depending on
the format used. For example, when using the hh:mm:ss format, the time consists
of three sections each consisting of two digits: hours, minutes, and seconds.
Alternatively, when using the hh:mm:ss + hundredths format, the time consists
of four sections: hours, minutes, seconds, and centi-seconds (hundredths of
seconds), again each consisting of two digits.
If you move to a spin box by tabbing, then Jaws reads the entire contents of
the spin box, for example, 00h13m04.73s, that is 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 4.73
seconds.
Within a spin box, one of the digits is the focus. When you first move to a
spin box after opening Audacity, the first digit is the focus, but if you
subsequently return to the spin box, then the digit which was the focus when
you left the spin box is the focus. The keystrokes for moving the focus are:
Home or End move you to the first or last digit in the spin box respectively.
Left Arrow or Right Arrow cycle you through the digits to the left or right
respectively.
When you use one of these keystrokes, Jaw reads the digit which is now the
focus. In addition, if you've moved to a different section of the time, then
Jaws reads the new section before reading the digit. For example, if the time
is 01h42m38.46s and the focus is the second of the minutes digits (the digit
2), then if you press Right arrow Jaws says 38s, 3. Alternatively, if you press
End then Jaws says 46 centi-seconds, 6.
There are a couple of ways of changing the value of the time:
Increasing or decreasing the value of the control by one unit of the focussed
digit using Up Arrow or Down Arrow. This is a way is useful for increasing or
decreasing the value by a given amount of time. After each of these keystrokes,
Jaws reads the value of the current section. For example, if you want to
increase the time by 3 tenths of a second, and assuming that the format is set
to hh:mm:ss + hundredths: press End to move to the last digit, press Left arrow
to move to the tenths of a second digit, and press Up Arrow three times.
Type in digits. This way is useful for setting a time which not connected to
the current value. If you type a digit (0 to 9), then the value of the focussed
digit is replaced by this, and the next digit becomes the focus. If the last
digit is the initial focus, then after you type a digit, then the first digit
is the focus. After typing a digit, Jaws reads the section containing the
focussed digit. For example, if you want to set a control to 32 minutes, and
again assuming the control has the hh:mm::ss + hundredths format: press Home to
move to the first digit, and then type the following 8 digits: 0,0,3,2,0,0,0,0.
This completely replaces the existing time with the time of 32 minutes.
To read the entire time, press Insert + Up Arrow.
Snap To combo box
The Snap to combo box contains three options: Off, which is the default,
Nearest, and Prior. If the combo box is set to either Nearest and Prior, then
this has two effects on using the left and right arrow keys to move the cursor
or the start or end of a selected time range.
The first effect is that if Snap combo box to is set to Nearest, then you move
the cursor or the start or end of a selected time range, then its position is
always automatically adjusted to the nearest whole number of the smallest unit
in the format of the edit spin boxes. For example, if format is hh:mm:ss, then
a position of 1.3 seconds would be adjusted to 1 second, and a time of 1.8
seconds would be adjusted to 2 seconds. In a similar manner, if the Snap to
combo box is set to Prior, then the times 1.3 seconds and 1.8 seconds would
both be adjusted to 1 second.
If the Snap to combo box is set to Nearest or Prior, the second effect is that
the minimum amount that the position of the cursor or the selection start or
end changes by is the smallest unit in the format of the edit spin boxes. So,
for example, if the format is set to hh:mm:ss, and you press Right arrow to
move the cursor to the right, the minimum change in position is 1 second.
Moving the cursor
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, for
example, the start of playback, the position where you want to start selecting
a time range, or the position where audio is pasted from the clipboard.
Reading the current position of the cursor is described in the next section,
and the ways of moving the cursor are as follows:
To move the cursor to the start of the tracks (time zero), press Home.
To move the cursor to the end of all the audio, press End.
To move the cursor to the start or end of the audio in the selected tracks
press J or K respectively.
You can move backward or forward by either a short or long period, as long as
the focus is in the Track table. To move backward or forward by a short period,
press Comma or Period respectively. To move backward or forward by a long
period, press Shift + Comma or Shift + Period respectively. These short and
long periods share the same values as the short and long periods used for
seeking/jumping during playback, which was described in the Playback section.
The size of both the short and long periods can be set in the Preferences
dialog, as described in the Seek times section.
Left Arrow and Right Arrow keys. If the focus is in the Track table, then
pressing Left Arrow or Right Arrow moves the cursor to the left or right by a
small amount respectively. Adjusting the step size is described in the Step
size of the left an right arrow keys section below.
The [ key during playback. If during playback you press [ and then Spacebar to
stop, the cursor is moved to the point in the audio where you pressed the [
key. In practice, the following method is more flexible: 1.During playback,
press P to pause when you reach the position where you want to move to cursor
to.
2.If you're unhappy with this position, pres P to resume and using the
Seeking/Jumping keys have another attempt to pause in the right place.
3.Press [ to mark the new cursor position.
4.Press Spacebar to stop.
Pressing Shift + A stops playback, and moves the cursor to the position where
the playback stopped. You can also use this keystroke to start playback.
The Selection Start spin box on the Selection bar. This is described in detail
in the Moving the cursor with the selection start control section below.
Reading the position of the cursor
There are a couple of ways of reading the cursor position. The first is to read
the Selection start control on the Selection bar:
1.Assuming that the Track table is the focus, press Ctrl + F6 to move to the
Selection bar.
2.If necessary, Tab until you get to the Selection start control, which
contains the cursor position, and which Jaws reads out. Note that when
returning to the Selection bar, the control that was previously the focus is
the focus again, so you often don't have to Tab to the Selection start control.
3.Press Ctrl + F6 twice or Ctrl + Shift + F6 to return to the Track table.
The second way of reading the cursor position is to open the Set left selection
boundary dialog:
1.Whilst there is no playback, press the [ key to open the Set left selection
boundary dialog.
2.The position control is the initial focus, and its value is the cursor
position. Press Esc to close the dialog.
Moving the cursor using the selection start control
1.Press Ctrl + F6 to move to the Selection bar.
2.Tab to the End/Length radio buttons, and make sure that the Length option is
selected. If it's set to end, then you can accidentally select a time range,
instead of moving the cursor, as described below.
3.Tab to the Selection start control, and change its value, as described below.
4.To return to the Track table, press Ctrl + F6 twice.
As described in the Edit spin boxes section, there are a couple a ways of
changing the values of the controls like the start control:
Incrementing or decrementing the value of the control by one unit of the
focussed digit using Up Arrow or Down Arrow. For example, to move the cursor
forward by 2 minutes, assuming that the format is set to hh:mm:ss + hundredths:
press End to move to the last digit, which is hundredths of seconds, then press
Left Arrow 4 times to move to the minutes digit, and then press Up Arrow 2
times.
Typing in digits. For example, to move the cursor to the time 45 minutes,
again assuming the format is set to hh:mm:ss + hundredths, press Home to move
to the first digit, and then type the following 8 digits: 0,0,4,5,0,0,0,0.
Reason for setting the length option
With no time range selected, consider the two cases:
Length/End radio buttons set to Length. The selection start control displays
the cursor position, and the selection length control displays zero. If you
change value of the selection start control, then the selection length control
always remains unchanged at zero.
Length/End radio buttons set to End. The selection start and end controls both
display the same value, which is the cursor position. If you increase the value
of the selection start control, then the value of the selection end control is
automatically increased to the same value. However, if you decrease the value
of the Selection start control, then the selection end control remains
unchanged. So you've accidentally selected a time range.
Step size of the left and right arrow keys
This section describes how the step size of the left and right arrow keys
depend on the horizontal zoom of the audio data, and how to set the amount of
zoom so that the step size has suitable values. The same step sizes are also
used by the Shift + Left or Right Arrow and Ctrl + Shift + Left or Right Arrow
keystrokes for expanding or contracting selected time ranges.
Audacity has the ability to vary the amount by which the audio data is zoomed
in the horizontal direction. This allows sighted users to view the audio data
in either more or less detail, depending on the task.
Pressing Right Arrow or Left Arrow moves the cursor by the same physical
distance on the screen, whatever the amount of horizontal zoom. So if the
amount of zoom is increased, then the time by which the cursor is moved is
decreased. Similarly, if the amount of zoom is decreased, then the time by
which the cursor is moved is increased.
After opening or importing a file, the horizontal zoom is adjusted so that the
longest track in the project takes up the available space in the track in the
window. So the initial amount of zoom, and so the step size of the arrow keys
depends on the length of the tracks.
However, you can set the horizontal zoom to a predefined amount. You can do
this by choosing Zoom normal from the View menu (Ctrl + 2). When the zoom is
set to normal, then the left and right arrow keys move the cursor by slightly
more than one hundredth of a second. This step size is normally too small to be
useful. However, you can easily adjust the step size using the zoom in and zoom
out commands which are available on the View menu:
Zoom In (Ctrl + 1). This doubles the zoom, and so halves the step size of the
left and right arrow keys.
Zoom Out (Ctrl + 3). This halves the zoom, and so doubles the step size of the
left and right arrow keys.
So, for example, after setting the zoom to normal (Ctrl + 2), which sets the
step size to slightly more than one hundredth of a second, if you zoom out
(Ctrl + 3) three times, this multiplies the step size by 8, resulting in a step
size which is slightly less than a tenth of a second. As another example, if
you press Ctrl + 2, and then Ctrl + 3 7 times, then the step size is about one
and a half seconds.
Selecting audio
In the case of an audio editor which can only edit a single audio track, then
selecting audio simply consists of specifying the start and end times of the
audio which you want to select, that is, a time range. For example you might
want to select the audio between the times 1 minute 2 seconds and 5 minutes 23
seconds.
However, Audacity is a multi-track editor. If the project consists of a number
of tracks, then you may want to select the audio on only some of the tracks for
a given time range. So in Audacity, as well as having to select a time range,
you also have to specify which tracks are selected. If you've selected some
audio, tried to edit it, and nothing's happened, it may well be because none of
the tracks are selected. The selection of tracks was described in the track
selection section above, and selecting a time range is described in one of the
following sections.
Select all audio option
There is an option to select all the audio in the project, if none is selected,
and this option is on by default. This option affects what happens, for
example, if you try to apply an effect when no audio is selected, that is
either no tracks are selected and/or no time range is selected. If this option
is off, then the commands on the Effects menu are unavailable, so stopping you
from applying an effect. However, if this option is on, then even though no
audio is selected the commands on the Effects menu are available, and the
effect is applied to all the audio in the project. In addition, after the
effect is applied, all the tracks are selected, and a time range which covers
all the audio in the project is selected.
Because the automatic selection of tracks and time-ranges occur with no audible
feedback, then for users of screen readers it's recommended that you turn this
option off, as described in the Select all audio section of the Preferences
section. All the instructions in the remainder of this guide assume that the
option is off.
Selecting a time range
A quick way of selecting all of the audio in the project is to use the shortcut
Ctrl + A: this selects all the tracks, and selects a time range which includes
all the audio.
The general way of selecting a time range consists of two steps:
1.Move the cursor to where you want to start or end the selection, using one of
the methods described in the Moving the cursor section above.
2.Set the other end of the selection using one of the methods described below.
Note that when a time range is selected, playback plays the selected time
range. In addition you can have a preview of what the audio would sound like if
the audio in the selected time-range were deleted by using the Play cut preview
command (C). This command plays the audio from a short time before the selected
time-range to a short time after it, but omitting the selected time range
itself.
You can use any of the following methods for setting the other end of the
selection:
With the cursor at the position where you want the start of the selection, to
set the end of the selection at the end of all the audio, press Shift + End.
With the cursor positioned where you want the end of the selection, to set the
start of the selection at the start of the tracks (time zero), press Shift +
Home.
Set the end of the selection using the ] key during playback. If during
playback you press ] and then Spacebar to stop, the end of the selection is set
at the point in the audio where you pressed the ] key. In practice, the
following method is more flexible: 1.During playback, press P to pause when you
reach the position which you want to be the end of the selection.
2.If you're unhappy with this position, press P to resume and using the
Seeking/Jumping keys have another attempt to pause in the right place.
3.Press ] to mark the position for the end of the selection.
4.Press Spacebar to stop.
With the cursor at the position where you want the start of the selection, to
set the end of the selection at the end of the audio in the selected tracks,
press Shift + K.
With the cursor positioned where you want the end of the selection, to set the
start of the selection at the start of the audio in the selected tracks, press
Shift + J.
Using the selection controls on the selection bar, as described in the next
section.
Using Shift + Left Arrow or Shift + Right Arrow. With the cursor positioned
where you want the start of the selection, you can press Shift + Right Arrow
one or more times to move the end of the selection to the right in small steps.
Similarly, with the cursor position where you want the end of the selection,
you can press Shift + Left Arrow one or more times to move the start of the
selection to the left. Adjusting the step size is described in the Step size of
the left an right arrow keys section above. Note that Track table must be the
focus to use these keystrokes.
Setting the start or end of the selection using the selection controls
With the cursor positioned where you want to start the selection, to set the
end of the selection:
1.Press Ctrl + F6 to move to the Selection bar.
2.Tab to the End/Length radio buttons, and set it to whichever option you like.
If you increase the value of either Selection length, or Selection End, then
the value of the selection start control remains unchanged at the initial
cursor position.
3.Tab to the Selection End/Length control.
4.If it's the Selection End control, then increase its value. For example if
you want to move the end of the selection to five seconds after the start of
the selection, and assuming the format is set to hh:mm:ss + hundredths, then:
press End to move to the last digit, press Left Arrow twice times to move to
the seconds digit, and then press Up Arrow five times.
5.If it's the Selection Length control, then you can increase the value of the
length by either by using Up Arrow, or by typing in digits, as described in the
Edit spin boxes section, which is in the Selection bar section.
6.Press Ctrl + F6 twice to return to the Track table.
With the cursor positioned where you want the end of the selection, to set the
start of the selection:
1.Press Ctrl + F6 to move to the Selection bar
2.Tab to the End/Length radio buttons, and set the End option. With this
setting, when you decrease the value of the selection start control, the value
of the selection end control remains unchanged at the initial cursor position.
3.Tab to the Selection start control, and decrease its value. For example, if
you wanted to move the start of the selection to ten seconds before the end of
the selection, and assuming that the format of the selection controls is set to
hh:mm:ss + hundredths: press End to move to the last digit, then press Left
Arrow three times to move to the tens of seconds digit, and then press Down
Arrow once to decrease the time by 10 seconds.
4.Press Ctrl + F6 twice to return to the Track table.
Adjusting a selected time range
There are a couple of ways of making small adjustments to a selected time range:
Using the the Selection controls on the Selection bar, as described in the
next section.
You can use the following keystrokes to move the start or end of the selection
by a small amount. Adjusting the step size is described in the Step size of the
left an right arrow keys section above. ?To move the end of the selection to
the right, so expanding the time range, press Shift + Right Arrow.
?To move the end of the selection to the left, so contracting the time range,
press Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow.
?To move the start of the selection to the right, so contracting the time
range, press Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow.
?To move the start of the selection to the left, so expanding the time range,
press Shift + Left Arrow.
Note that the two keystrokes that use Ctrl contract the selected time range,
and the other two keystrokes expand the selected time range.
Adjusting the selected time-range using the selection controls
1.If the current focus is the Track table, then press Ctrl + F6 to move to the
Selection bar.
2.Tab to the End/Length radio buttons, and set the End option. This allows you
to adjust the Start or the End of the selection without affecting the other one.
3.Tab to either the Selection start or the Selection end control. If the format
isn't already set to hh:mm:ss + hundredths, then you probably want to do this
so that you can make small adjustments to the times. The format can be changed
using the context menu of the control.
4.If, for example, you want to adjust the time in tenths of a second, press End
to move to the last digit, and then press Left Arrow to move to the tenths of a
second digit. You can then press Up Arrow or Down Arrow to increase or decrease
the time by a tenth of a second respectively.
5.Adjust the other selection control if desired.
6.Press Ctrl + F6 twice to return to the tracks.
Deselecting a selected time range
If you press any of the following keystrokes which move the cursor, then any
selected time range is deselected: Home, End, J, K, Left Arrow, Right Arrow,
Comma, and Period. After you have pressed Left Arrow or Right Arrow, then the
cursor position is at the start or end of the selection which has just been
deselected.
To deselect all the tracks, and deselect any time-range, press Ctrl + Shift +
A. The new cursor position is at the start of the selection which has just been
deselected.
Basic editing
Undo and redo
To undo press Ctrl + Z, and to redo press Ctrl + Y.
Deleting audio
To delete the selected audio, press the Delete key.
If you want a preview of the audio after deletion, press C which plays back
from a short time before the selected audio to a short time after the selected
audio, but omitting the selected audio. The length of the times of playback
before and after the selection can be set in the Cut Preview section of the
Playback category in the Preferences dialog.
Cut, Copy, and Paste
To cut the selected audio, press Ctrl + X. For a preview of the audio after
the cut, press C.
To copy the selected audio, press Ctrl + C.
To paste the audio on the clipboard into the selected track(s), move the
cursor to where you want to insert the audio, and press Ctrl + V.
Alternatively, if a time range is selected when you press Ctrl + V, the
selected audio is replaced by the pasted audio.
Replace with silence
To replace the selected audio with the same length of silence, on the Edit
Menu, open the Remove Audio sub menu, and choose Silence Audio (Ctrl + L).
Insert silence
To insert a period of silence into the selected tracks:
1.Move the cursor to where you want to insert the silence.
2.Choose Silence from the Generate menu.
3.A Silence Generator dialog opens, and the focus is a spin box which allows
you to specify the length of the silence. The spin box is identical to the spin
boxes used on the Selection bar, though the first non-zero digit is the initial
focus, rather than the first digit.
Set the time that you want, and then press Enter to press the default OK
button. The period of silence is inserted, and a time-range which covers this
period is selected.
Note that all the commands on the Generate menu have the following behaviour.
If one or more tracks are selected, but no time-range, then the generated audio
is inserted at the cursor. However, if a time-range is also selected, then the
selected audio is replaced by the generated audio. Also, all the spin boxes in
the dialogs which are opened from the Generate menu have a default format of
seconds, and the first non-zero digit is the initial focus, rather than the
first digit.
Effects
Audacity provides a large number of effects which are available on the Effects
menu. Some of the commands, like fade in or fade out, simply execute the effect
on the selected audio, but most of them open a dialog box so that you can
adjust the parameters for the effect.
Nearly all the effect dialogs contain a Preview button which allows you to hear
a short sample of the effect applied to the selected audio. By default, the
length of the preview is 3 seconds, but you can change this in the Preferences
dialog. In the Playback category there's a Length of preview edit box, and the
units are seconds.
Deleting tracks
To delete the focused track, press Shift + C.
To delete the selected track(s), choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu.
This provides a quick way of deleting all the tracks if you first press Ctrl +
A to make sure that all the tracks are selected.
Avoiding introducing clicks when editing
If you delete or cut part of the audio in a track, and if the beginning or end
of this part hasn't zero amplitude, then this can result if sudden changes in
the amplitude of the audio. If the size of these sudden changes are large
enough, then you'll hear them as clicks. A similar problem can occur if you
copy and paste audio.
You can avoid introducing these clicks by using the Find zero crossings
command, which is on the Edit menu, and has the shortcut Z. If a track is
selected, but there isn't a selected time range, then if you apply this
command, the position of the cursor is moved to the nearest position where the
amplitude of the audio in the selected track is zero. The change is position is
very small, so you don't have to worry that this will make a large change to
the cursor position. In a similar manner, if there's a selected time range, the
positions of both the start and the end of the time range are adjusted so that
the amplitude of the audio in the selected track is zero.
So to avoid introducing clicks:
After selecting part of the audio in a track, and before cutting, deleting or
copying, Find the zero crossings.
After you've positioned the cursor for pasting audio into a track, and before
pasting, Find the zero crossings.
More advanced editing
Adding a new empty track
To add a new empty track, choose an option from the Add New sub-menu which is
on the Tracks menu.
Importing audio files
You can import one or more audio files, and these become new tracks in the
existing project. To import standard audio file(s), open the File menu, and
choose Audio from the Import sub-menu (Ctrl + Shift + I). A Select one or more
audio files dialog opens, which has the same structure as a standard Windows
XP Open dialog. Select one or more files, and press Enter to press the OK
button.
Note that immediately after the import, the last track in the project is
selected, and all other tracks are unselected.
Duplicate
To duplicate the selected audio into new track(s), choose Duplicate on the Edit
menu. The duplicated audio retains the same timings as the original selected
audio, so in the new track(s) the audio data starts at the start of the
selected time range.
Align the audio in tracks end to end
If you select two or more tracks, you can align the audio in these tracks so
that the audio in a track starts at the end of the audio in the previous track.
To do this, open the tracks menu, open the Align tracks sub menu, and choose
Align end to end. Notes:
The order in which the audio in the selected tracks is aligned is the same as
the order of these tracks in the track table. If you need to change the order
of the tracks in the table, you can do this using commands on a track's track
menu.
The position of the audio in the first selected track remains unchanged.
Time shift
You can time shift the audio data in one or more selected tracks so that either
the start or the end of the audio is at some desired position. You can specify
this position either with the cursor, or the start or end of a selected time
range. All the commands for moving the audio are available on the Align Tracks
sub menu which is on the Tracks menu, and some examples of using them are given
below.
For example, to move the audio in one or more tracks so that it starts at some
desired time:
1.Move the cursor to the desired time, using any of the methods described in
the Moving the cursor section.
2.Select the tracks containing the audio you want to move, and make sure that
the other tracks are not selected.
3.Open the Align Tracks sub menu on the Tracks menu, and choose Start to
Cursor/Selection Start. Note that if more than one track has been selected, and
the audio in these tracks start at different times, then the audio in all the
tracks is moved by the same amount, so that the earliest audio in the tracks is
positioned at the cursor.
If you'd wanted to move the audio in one or more tracks so that it ended at
some desired time, then you'd simply change step three to use the End to
Cursor/Selection Start command, instead of Start to Cursor/Selection Start.
As another example, if you want to time shift one or more tracks by a certain
amount of time, then:
1.Select one or more tracks that you want to time shift, and make sure that the
other tracks are not selected.
2.Press J to move the cursor to the start of the audio in the selected tracks.
3.Press Ctrl + F6 to move to the Selection bar, and then Tab to the End/Length
radio buttons. Make sure that the Length option is selected.
4.Tab to the Selection Start spin-box.
5.Depending on whether you want to time shift forward or backward, you now need
to move the cursor forward or backward by incrementing or decrementing the time
in the spin-box. For example, if you want to move the audio forward by 1.5
seconds, then use the following keystrokes to increment the time : End moves
you to right most digit, which is hundredths of seconds; Left Arrow moves you
to the tenths of second digit; Up Arrow five times increments this digit by
five; Left Arrow moves you to the seconds digit; and finally, Up Arrow
increments this digit by one.
6.Go to the Align tracks sub-menu on the Tracks menu, and choose Start to
Cursor/Selection Start. This moves the data in the selected selected tracks, so
that is now starts at the modified cursor position.
Note that if you're wanting to move a track which you've recorded and which
doesn't line up with the existing tracks, then you may need to move the start
of the audio to earlier than time zero. Because you can't move the cursor
before time zero, the above method has to be modified so that in step two, you
press K to move to the end of the audio in the selected tracks, and then in
step five, you use the End to Cursor/Selection Start command. Note that
Audacity does have an automatic latency correction.
Track menu
You can open the menu of a focused track by pressing either the Application Key
or Shift + M. The commands on the menu include renaming the track, and moving
the track up, down, to the top, or to the bottom of the track table.
Track gain
To change the gain of the focused track, press Shift + G. A Gain dialog opens
which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the gain. The range
of gain (db) is -36 to +36.
The gain of a track is applied to the whole track, and is only applied during
playback, or when the track is exported to a file, or when you use the mix and
render command. Changing the gain doesn't affect the amplitude of the audio
data in the track.
Track pan
To change the pan of the focused track, press Shift + P. A Pan dialog opens
which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the pan. The range of
pan is -1 to 1, corresponding to left and right.
Track Mute and Solo
Each track has a mute setting which can be on or off, and a solo setting which
can also be on or off. These settings are used to control which tracks
contribute to playback, and in addition the mute settings, but not the solo
settings, affect which tracks contribute to audio saved in one of the standard
formats. By default, the mute and solo settings for each track are off. After
reading the name of the track, Jaws says mute on, if the mute setting is on,
and solo on, is the solo setting is on.
Mute
If a track's mute setting is on, then it doesn't contribute to playback, or to
the audio saved in one of the standard formats. You can either change the mute
setting of an individual track or the settings of all the tracks:
To toggle the Mute setting of the focused track, press Shift + U.
To mute all the tracks, press Ctrl + U.
To set mute off for all the tracks, press Ctrl + Shift + U.
Solo
If one or more tracks have their solo setting on, then only these tracks
contribute to playback, regardless of the Mute settings of all of the tracks.
To toggle the Solo setting of the focussed track, press Shift + S.
There are, in fact, a couple of options for how the Solo settings and the Mute
settings of the tracks interact with each other. Using the default option, the
Solo and Mute settings are completely independent: changing a mute setting has
no effect on any Solo setting, and changing a Solo setting has no effect on any
Mute setting.
The options for how the Solo and Mute settings interact can be found under the
Interface category of the Preferences dialog. There's a solo button combo box
in the Other interface choices section which has the options: standard
(default), simple, and none. For users of screen readers, the simple option is
not actually very simple, and the none option removes the solo option from the
tracks.
Metadata editor
Metadata is data which describes other data, and the metadata for audio files
consists of a number of tags, where each tag is made up of a tag name and a tag
value. The Metadata editor in Audacity allows you both to edit the values of a
number of preset tags, and also to create your own custom tags.
You can open the Metadata editor at any time by choosing Open Metadata Editor
from the File menu. In addition, if you save audio in one of the standard
formats, then unless you've turned the appropriate option off, the Metadata
editor automatically opens, as described in the Saving audio section above.
The Metadata editor contains the following controls:
A table which contains the names and values of the tags, and is described in
the next section.
Add, Remove, and Clear buttons which are used for editing the table. Pressing
the Clear button deletes all the values of the preset tags, and all names and
values of any custom tags. The Add and Remove buttons are described in the
creating and editing custom tags section.
A genres section, consisting of Edit and Reset buttons which are used for
editing the preset list of genres, as described in the Editing the list of
genres section below.
A template section, which won't be described in this guide.
The table
The table has two columns: Tag and Value, and the first 7 cells in the Tag
column contain preset tag names such as Artist Name and Track Title. Jaws
indicates that these preset tag names are not editable by saying unavailable
after their names.
To navigate the table:
To move forward through the cells in the table, press Tab or Right Arrow. If
you're in the last cell, pressing Tab moves you to the next control, which is
the Add button.
To move backwards through the cells in the table, press Shift + Tab or Left
Arrow. If you're in the first cell, then pressing Shift + Tab move you to the
previous control which is the Cancel button at the bottom of the dialog.
From any cell in the table, you can move directly out of the table to the next
or previous control by pressing Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + Shift + Tab respectively.
To move to the cell directly below or above the current cell, press Down Arrow
or Up Arrow.
To move to the first or last cell, press Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End
respectively.
Editing tag values
All the tag values except the genre tag value are edited using an edit box, but
the genre tag value is edited with an edit combo box, which allows you to
quickly choose from a list of genres.
To edit any tag value, except the genre tag value, there are two options:
either overwriting or editing the current value, as described below. Both
involve using the keystrokes Enter or Tab to confirm the edit. Enter moves you
the cell immediately below the current cell, and Tab moves you to the next
cell, which is the tag name in the next row.
To overwrite the current value, simply type in some text, and then press Tab
or Enter to confirm the edit, or Esc to cancel the edit.
To edit the existing value, press F2, which selects the existing text. To
deselect the text before editing, press Right Arrow or End which positions the
current character immediately after the existing text, or press Home which
makes the current character the first character in the text. To confirm the
edit press Tab or Enter, or to cancel the edit press Esc.
To edit the genre tag value:
As in the case of other tag values, you can start the edit either by just
starting to type, or by pressing F2. However, in the former case Audacity
looses the first letter, and you have to type it again.
You can use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys to select a genre from the preset
list of genres. To quickly find a genre beginning with a given letter, type
this letter, and then press Down Arrow to move through all the genres beginning
with that letter.
To confirm the edit press Tab or Enter, and to cancel the edit press Esc.
Creating and editing custom tags
You can use the rows in the table after the preset tags to create your own
custom tags. In these rows you can edit both the tag name and the tag value.
For a new set of metadata, there's one spare row after the preset tags. You can
add and remove rows from the table using the Add and Remove buttons which
follow the table. The Add button appends a row, and the Remove button removes
the current custom row.
Editing the list of genres
To edit the list of genres which is available in the edit-combo box when you
edit the genre value:
1.Press the Edit button in the Genres section.
2.An Edit Genres dialog opens. The first control is a multi-line edit box which
contains the genres, one genre on each line. Note that when you first open the
dialog, all the genres are selected, so unless you type a text navigation
keystroke first, for example Right Arrow, you'll overwrite all the genres. To
move to the top or bottom of the list press Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End
respectively.
3.When you've finished editing, Tab to the OK button and press it.
To reset the list of genres to the default list of genres, press the Reset
button in the Genres section. A Reset Genres message box opens, asking you
whether you're sure that you want to reset the list. Press Enter to press the
default OK button.
Recording
The next three sections on settings, recording controls, and adjusting the
recording level cover material which is relevant to nearly all recording. After
that there's a latency correction section, which describes how Audacity can
correct for the delay in the recorded audio when recording a vocal track whilst
listening to existing tracks.
Recording settings
There are a number of settings which may need changing before you make a
recording, and they're described in the following sections. Note that a number
of these settings can be made either in the Devices section of the Preferences
dialog or an individual dialog, or the Device Toolbar.
Audio interface
Audacity provides a number of options for the software interface which Audacity
uses to interact with the playback and recording devices:
MME (Multimedia extensions). This is the default interface.
Windows DirectSound. This may have lower latency on Windows XP.
Windows WASAPI (Windows audio session API). This is only available in Windows
Vista and later. The only recording devices available using this interface in
Audacity are the so called loopback versions of the playback devices. Using
these, you can record the audio which is sent to one of these playback devices.
This offers an alternative to the stereo mix recording device which may or
may not be provided by your sound card.
You can set this option using either the Interface host combo box in the
Devices category of the Preferences dialog, or the Audio host combo box in the
Select Audio Host dialog (Shift + H), or the Audio Host combo box on the Device
toolbar. Note that when you change this option, the settings of the recording
and playback devices may change, and so you should check these settings.
The audio interface setting affects which controls affect the playback volume
in Audacity:
For MME and DirectSound, the playback volume is controlled by the output
slider which is on the Mixer toolbar in the Toolbars. This volume slider is in
sync with the Windows main volume slider, and so also affects the volume of
Jaws.
For WASAPI, the playback volume depends on both Audacity's output slider, and
the Windows main volume slider. In this case the volume of Jaws is unaffected
by Audacity's output slider.
Recording device
You can select the input device using either the recording device combo box in
the Devices category in the Preferences dialog, or the input device combo box
in the Select Input Device dialog (Shift + I), or the input device combo box on
the Device toolbar.
If an onboard sound chip or an internal sound card has a number of possible
inputs, such as microphone or line in, then each of these inputs is listed as a
separate device in the combo boxes. In addition, if you're using either the MME
or the DirectSound audio interface, then the available devices may also include
either Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input or Primary Sound Captive Driver,
respectively. Both of these correspond to the device which has been set as the
default recording device in Windows.
In Windows Vista and latter these combo boxes list all the recording devices
which were plugged in and enabled when audacity was opened. If a device isn't
listed, then check the Recording page of Windows Sound dialog to see if the
device is enabled. This dialog is described in the Sound dialog in Windows
Vista, 7, and 8 section, for those unfamiliar with this dialog.
Recording level
This section describes which control to use to adjust the recording level. How
to adjust the recording level so that you don't get too much noise or clipping
is described in the Adjusting the recording level section below.
If Audacity can control the level of the recording device, then you can use
either Audacity's input slider, or the appropriate Windows control. It's
normally easier to use the input slider in Audacity, which is in the Mixer
toolbar in the Toolbars section of Audacity's main window. To move to it from
the Track table, press Ctrl + F6 twice, and then Tab or Shift + Tab until you
get to the input slider.
When Audacity can't control the level of the recording device, this is
indicated by the input slider being unavailable. For sighted users, the slider
appears greyed out, and for users of screen readers, you can't Tab to it. In
these cases you have to use the appropriate control which is part of Windows,
as described below.
Whether Audacity can control the recording level depends to a large extent on
the audio interface which you are using:
MME or Direct Sound. For many recording devices, you can use Audacity's input
slider.
WASAPI. For the loopback devices provided by the WASAPI interface, the
recording level depends only on the volume levels set in the programs which are
sending their output to the playback device which you're recording. It doesn't
depend on the Windows volume of the playback device, or the input and output
sliders in Audacity.
The location of the Windows' control to adjust the level of a recording device
depends on the version of Windows. For Windows Vista and 7 this is described in
the Sound dialog in Windows Vista, 7, and 8 section. In Windows XP:
1.In the Control Panel, open the Sound and Audio Devices Properties dialog.
2.Move to the Audio page of this dialog, where there's a Sound recording
default device combo box. Select the device in this combo box, and then Tab to
the next control which is a Volume button, and press it.
3.A dialog opens, which contains a volume slider for the device.
Bug Warning: On some computers running Windows Vista, if Audacity is open and
you change the input slider, then when you next start recording, the volume is
reset to its original value. However, this reset does not occur if Audacity is
in the process of recording a track. So there are two ways of working around
this bug:
Press R to start recording, and then change the input slider. Move to the
Track table, and if necessary move to this recorded track which will be the
last track in the table. Press Shift + C to delete this track.
Close Audacity, change the volume in the device's properties dialog, and then
reopen Audacity.
Number of channels
The number of channels of the recording device can be set using either the
recording channels combo box in the Devices category of the Preferences dialog,
or the input channels combo box in the Select Input Channels dialog (Shift +
N), or the Input Channels combo box in the Device toolbar. If you're recording
using a microphone, then the appropriate setting depends whether it's a mono or
stereo microphone.
Sampling
The default sampling rate for a new project is 44100Hz, and the default
sampling format is 32-bit float. These should be fine, but they can be changed
in the Quality category of the Preferences dialog, as described in the Sampling
section of the Preferences section.
Overdub option
The Overdub option controls whether Audacity plays any existing tracks while
recording a new one. You can check or uncheck this option either on the
Transport menu, or in the Recording category of the Preferences dialog.
Software Playthrough option
The Software Playthrough option controls whether Audacity plays the new track
while it is being recorded. Normally this option should be off, but it's useful
if you want to hear what you're recording from a device such a USB turntable.
It can be checked or unchecked either on the Transport menu, or in the
Recording category of the Preferences dialog.
Recording controls
To start recording, with the recorded audio inserted into a new track, press R
or choose Record from the Transport menu. A new track is automatically added to
the project, and the default name of the new track is Audio Track. Note that
Jaws reads this name as Track n, where n is the row number of the track. The
recorded audio is inserted at the cursor position. (If there are initially no
tracks in the project, then the cursor position is normally at time zero.) The
new track is initially not selected.
To start recording, with the recorded audio appended to the audio in an
existing track, press Shift + R, or choose Append Record from the Transport
menu. If there's a single audio track in the project, then the recorded audio
is appended to this track, whether or not the track is selected. If there's
more than one audio track, then the recorded audio is appended to the selected
track.
To pause or resume recording, press P.
To stop recording, press Spacebar.
Adjusting the recording level
There is an input level meter provided for helping to set up the recording
level, but it isn't accessible to Jaws users. However, it's easy to set up the
recording level by making some short test recordings and using the dialog box
of the Amplify effect to measure the peak level of the recorded sound. Before
giving a list of step by step instructions for making the test recordings,
there's a description of how the Amplify dialog can be used to measure the
level of the recorded sound.
If you select some audio, and then open the Amplify dialog on the Effects menu,
then the initial focus is on an Amplification edit box. The initial value in
this edit box is the amount of amplification in decibels needed so that the
recording uses the full dynamic range, and it indicates if you need to change
the value of the recording level. Normally a good value to aim for if about
6db. This should ensure that the recording level is both low enough so that
distortion or clipping doesn't occur, and high enough so that you don't get an
unnecessary amount of noise. So if the value's less than about 6, try lowering
the volume, and if it's more than about 6, try increasing the volume.
To make some short test recordings so that you can adjust the recording level,
start with an empty project. The location of the recording level slider depends
on a number of factors and was described above in the Recording level section.
Note that the latter section describes a bug when setting the input volume
which occurs on some computers running Windows Vista, so if that bug is present
on your computer you'll have to incorporate one of the work arounds described
in that section into the instructions below. Go round the following loop until
you are happy with the setting:
1.Move to the appropriate level slider. If this is the first time round this
loop, set the slider to your best guess. On subsequent times round the loop,
adjust the slider on the basis of the Amplification value in the Amplify dialog
the previous time round the loop. If the volume slider isn't in Audacity's main
window, then switch back to the Audacity window for the remaining steps.
2.Press R to start the recording.
3.Make some representative noises for a short while, and then press Spacebar to
stop.
4.Press Ctrl + A to select all the audio.
5.Choose Amplify from the Effects menu.
6.The Amplify dialog opens, and the initial focus is on the Amplification edit
box. On the basis of this value, decide if you need to repeat this loop with a
different setting of the recording level slider as discussed above.
7.Press Esc to close the Amplify dialog box.
8.Choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu to delete the test track.
Latency correction
If you record a vocal track whilst listening to one or more existing tracks,
then due to various delays, the newly recorded track won't be in sync with the
original tracks. The total delay is known as the latency and some of the
factors which affect its size are: the recording and playback devices, the size
of the audio buffers within Audacity, and the audio interface being used (for
example, MME or DirectSound).
Audacity can automatically correct for the latency, once the latency has been
measured, as described below. In the Preferences dialog, under the Recording
category, there's a Latency correction edit box, where the units of the
correction are milliseconds. If you record audio in a new track, then the audio
is automatically moved later in time by this latency correction. So to shift
the audio earlier in time to offset the latency, the number should be negative.
The default value of the latency correction is -130 milliseconds. The default
value will be only roughly correct for a particular recording set up, and it's
recommended that you measure the actual latency.
The following method for measuring the latency when using a microphone for
recording is accurate to about 10ms, which normally should be good enough. It
consists of the following three parts, which will be described in detail in the
following sections:
1.Generate a click track, which consists of a series of clicks with 1 second
spacing.
2.Record this click track. Due to latency and its current correction, the
clicks in the recorded track may occur before or after the clicks in the
original track.
3.With the help of the selection start spin box in the Selection bar, find the
position of the click in the recorded track which corresponds to the click at 1
second in the generated track, and work out a new correction.
Generate a click track
1.Choose Click Track from the Generate menu.
2.The second control is the Tempo [beats per minute] edit box, and its default
value is 120. Type 60, and then press Tab twice to move to the next edit box.
3.The Beats per measure [bar] edit box has a default value of 4. Type in the
number 1, and then press Enter to press the default OK button.
4.The click track is created. The track is initially selected, and a time range
is selected which includes all the audio.
Record the click track
To record the click track being played back through your headphones, you'll
obviously need to take them off temporarily. If you're using a separate
microphone, rather than a headset microphone, then position it close to the
headphones so that it can pick up the clicks. Press R to start the recording,
and then press Spacebar to stop the recording after a handful of clicks.
With the first track still being the focus, press Shift + U to mute it, and
then playback the recorded track. If the clicks are very quiet compared to
Jaws, then amplify the track:
1.Unselect the first track, and select the second track
2.Press Home, then Shift + End to select a time range.
3.Choose Amplify from the effects menu.
4.In the Amplify dialog, just press Enter to accept the default amplification.
Find the position of a click in the recorded track
The following instructions describe how to find the position of the recorded
click which corresponds to the click which occurs at 1 second in the generated
track, and then update Audacity's latency correction. It's assumed that the
original track is still muted from when you checked the level of the recorded
track above.
1.Press Home to set both the selection start and selection end/length spin
boxes in the selection bar to zero.
2.Press Ctrl + F6 to move to the selection bar. Tab to the End/Length radio
buttons, and make sure that the Length option is selected.
3.Then Tab to the Selection Start spin box, and change the format to hh:mm:ss +
milliseconds using its context menu.
4.To set the selection start to 1 second, press End to move to the last digit
(milliseconds), press Left Arrow three to move to the seconds digit, and then
press Up Arrow to increment it to one.
5.Press Spacebar to listen to the first few clicks. There are two cases: if the
recorded click is later than the original click at 1 second, then time to the
first click is much less than the one second spacing of the remaining clicks;
if the recorded click is earlier than original click, then the time to the
first click is roughly the same as the one second spacing between the remaining
clicks. Finding the position of the recorded click, and modifying Audacity's
latency correction is described for these two cases in the following steps.
6.To find the position of the recorded click when it's later than the original
click, go round the loop of incrementing the selection start by 10 milliseconds
and then pressing Spacebar to check the time to the first click. When you've
just gone past the click, it will suddenly change to roughly a second.
Decrement the selection start by 10 milliseconds so that you can still hear the
first click almost immediately, and then press Insert + Up Arrow to read the
number of milliseconds. Adjust the latency correction by subtracting this
number from it. For example, if the initial correction was -130ms, and the
recorded click was 40ms late, then the latency correction should be changed to
-170ms.
7.To find the position of the recorded click when it's earlier than the
original click, go round the loop of decrementing the selection start by 10
milliseconds, and then pressing Spacebar to check the time to the first click.
When you move to just before the click, or during it, the click will suddenly
sound immediately. Press Up Arrow, followed by Down Arrow to leave the time
unchanged, but to get Jaws to read the number of milliseconds. Subtract this
number from 1000 to get the number of milliseconds by which the recorded click
was early. Then adjust the latency correction by adding this number to it. For
example, if the initial correction was -130ms and the recorded click was 20ms
early, then the latency correction should be changed to -110ms.
Install VST Effects dialog
VST plug-ins are not covered in this guide, but this section on the install VST
Effects dialog has been included because Jaws does not read this dialog
correctly.
This dialog opens when you open Audacity:
The first time you run Audacity 2.0.6 if you haven't run previous versions of
Audacity on the computer.
If you've requested Audacity to rescan your VST effects by checking the
appropriate check box in the Effects category of the Preferences dialog.
Notes on this dialog:
If you want to load all the plug-ins, just press Enter to press the default OK
button..
The list view of plug-ins is a check box list view, and all items in the list
are initially checked.
Jaws doesn't read whether or not an item is checked, but Spacebar works as
normal, and changes whether the item is checked.
Preferences
The Audacity Preferences dialog allows you to adjust many of the settings in
Audacity. After a brief description of the dialog box, the following sections
describe some of the more common settings.
Audacity Preferences dialog box
To open this dialog box, choose Preferences on the Edit menu (Ctrl + P).
On the left hand side of the dialog is a tree view which contains a list of
categories. To the right of this tree view are controls for setting the options
which correspond to the category which is selected in the tree view. The
dialog's default button is the OK button.
Seek times
Whilst playing, you can jump (seek) forward or backward by either a short or
long period. To set the values of the short and long periods:
1.In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Playback category.
2.Tab to the Seek Time when playing section which contains two edit boxes:
Short period and Long period. Both times are in given in seconds.
Select all audio
The Select all audio option is described in the Select all audio option section
of the Selecting audio section above. This option is on by default, but for
users of screen readers, it's recommended that it is turned off. To set this
option either on or off:
1.In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Tracks category.
2.In the Behaviors section, set the Select all audio in project, if none
selected check box to be either checked or unchecked.
LAME MP3 encoder library
Due to legal issues about patents, the Audacity installation does not include
an MP3 encoder. There are several patents covering MP3 encoding, and these are
owned by a number of different companies. Up until very recently, the only
company that has asked for royalties has been Thomson, and they are quite happy
for people to use the free LAME MP3 encoder for private, non-commercial use.
However, other companies are now fighting court battles over MP3 patents, and
it remains to be seen how they view the private use of the LAME MP3 encoder.
To download and install the LAME library:
1.Go the website whose address is lame.buanzo.org/lamewindl .
2.On this page, find the link which starts with lame and ends with windows.exe,
and then open it to download a file which has the same name as the link.
3.Open the downloaded file, and a setup wizard opens. The default location for
the LAME library is a newly created Lame for Audacity folder in either the
Program Files (x86) folder on 64-bit Windows, or the Program Files folder on
32-bit Windows.
FFmpeg library
The FFmpeg library contains decoders and encoders which enable Audacity to open
and save files in formats which are not supported by the standard installation
of Audacity. The FFmpeg library is not included with Audacity due to legal
issues about patents. Nearly all encoders are covered by one or more patents,
but these patents aren't recognized in all countries. The FFmpeg License and
Legal Considerations page of the FFmpeg website contains a few comments on
these issues.
Note that Audacity 2.0.6 requires a more recent version of the FFmpeg library
than previous versions of audacity.
To download and install the FFmpeg library:
1.Go the website whose address is lame.buanzo.org/#lamewindl .
2.On this page, find the link ffmpeg-win-2.2.2.exe, and then open it to
download a file which has the same name as the link. Note that if the link on
the page is to a version later than 2.2.2 then that will be OK too.
3.Open the downloaded file, and a setup wizard opens. The default location for
the FFmpeg library is a newly created FFmpeg for Audacity folder in either the
Program Files (x86) folder on 64-bit Windows, or the Progam Files folder on
32-bit Windows.
Then, the next time Audacity is opened, it automatically finds the FFmpeg
library.
Metadata editor opens during export
To set whether the Metadata editor automatically opens each time you export
audio:
1.In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Import/Export category.
2.Move to the Show Metadata Editor prior to export step check box, which is
in the When exporting tracks to an audio file section. This check box is
checked by default.
Sampling
To set the sampling rate and format for a new project:
1.In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Quality category.
2.Tab to the Sampling: Default Sample Rate combo box. For music, set the rate
to 44100 Hz, but for speech 22050 Hz is OK if you you need to keep file sizes
to a minimum.
3.Tab to the next control which is the Sampling: Default Sample Format combo
box. Audacity recommend that you leave this on 32-bit float, but for speech
16-bit is fine.
Recording options
A number of recording options can be set in the Preferences dialog, and these
are described in the Recording settings section of the Recording section.
Keyboard shortcuts
The Keyboard category of Audacity Preferences enables you to change the
keyboard shortcut for any of the commands in Audacity.
The first three controls are:
A group of radio buttons which controls how the commands and associated
shortcuts are displayed: View by Tree, Name, and Key. These are described in
the next three sections.
A Filter edit box, which allow you to search for commands and shortcuts, as
described in the Searching section. Note that for sighted users, the name of
this edit box is Search if the View by setting is Tree or Name, and Hotkey if
the setting is Key.
A tree view or a list of commands, depending on which View by radio button is
selected.
View by tree
The commands are displayed as a tree view, and if a command has a shortcut
associated with it, then this appears after the name of the command.
The tree view contains the following items:
Each of the menus in the menu bar. Each menu contains the commands in than
menu, and any sub-menus contain the commands that sub menu.
Command, which contains the commands which are not included in the menus in
the menubar.
View by name
The commands are displayed as a list which is sorted alphabetically be the name
of the command. If a command has a shortcut assigned to it, then this is
displayed after the name of the command. Note the if the command appears in a
sub menu, then the name of the command is prefixed with the name of the sub
menu, for example Add New - Audio Track. This is so that commands which have
the same name, but which appear in different sub menus can be distinguished
from one another.
View by Key
The commands are displayed using a list of commands, and if the command has a
shortcut assigned to it, this is displayed before the name of the command. The
commands with shortcuts are listed first, and these are sorted alphabetically
by the command's shortcut. The commands without shortcuts are then listed
alphabetically by the name of the command. As in the case of View by name, if a
command appears in a sub menu, then the name of the command is prefixed with
the name of the sub menu.
Searching
You can search for a command or commands using the Filter edit box. The search
results are shown in the tree view or the list as soon as anything is entered
in the edit box you don't have to press enter. The details of the search
depend on the view:
View by Tree. The text you enter is matched against both the names of the
commands and any assigned shortcut.
View by Name. The text you enter is matched against only the names of the
commands.
View by Key. The key or key combination you press is matched only against the
shortcuts.
Changing a shortcut
To set a shortcut:
1.In the tree view or list, select the command whose shortcut you want to
change.
2.Tab to the short cut edit box, and press a key or key combination for the
shortcut.
3.Tab to the Set button, and press it. If the shortcut is already assigned to
another command, then an Error dialog opens which tells you the name of this
command. If you press the OK button, then the shortcut will be set a requested,
and removed from the other command.
To clear a shortcut:
1.In the Tree view or list, select the command whose shortcut you want to clear.
2.Tab to the Clear button, and press it.
To reset all the shortcuts to their default values, Tab to the Defaults button
and press it.
The [ and ] shortcuts on keyboards other than US, UK or Irish
By default, the keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor to the playback
position and setting the end of the selection to be the playback position are [
and ]. These shortcuts can also be used to open dialog boxes when there is no
playback.
On US, UK, and Irish keyboards, you can type [ and ] using the [ and ] keys,
which are the two keys to the right of the P key. On nearly all the keyboards
used in other countries, the keys used to type [ and ] are in different
positions, and you often have to use modifier keys, such as Ctrl + Alt to type
these characters. Unfortunately, using Audacity's default settings, [ and ]
only work as the shortcuts when there are [ and ] keys to the right of the P
key.
Fortunately, there is a straightforward solution to this problem. All you need
to do is set the keyboard shortcuts for the two commands using the method
described in the previous section. The letters G and H are currently not used
as the shortcuts for any commands, so a suitable option is to set the shortcut
for the Left at Playback Position command to be the letter G, and the shortcut
for the Right at Playback Position command to be the letter H.
Note that you could set the shortcuts to be [ and ], but they often involve
modifier keys and keys which aren't in very convenient positions.
Sound dialog in Windows Vista, 7, and 8
Vista's Sound dialog has three pages: Playback, Recording, and Sounds, and the
dialog in Windows 7 and 8 have an additional communications page. The following
sections describe how to open this dialog, the controls on the Recording page,
and how to open a device's properties dialog where you can adjust the input
level of the device.
Opening the Sound dialog
Here are a couple of ways of opening the dialog, and moving to the Recording
page. Method one:
1.Press Insert + F11 to open the Select a System Tray Icon dialog.
2.On Vista, select Volume, and on Windows 7 or 8 select headphones or whatever
is appropriate. Then press Enter to press the default Right Single Click button.
3.The Volume's context menu opens. Choose Recording devices, which has the
access key R, and the Sound dialog opens on the Recording page.
Method two:
1.On Windows Vista or 7, open the start menu. On Windows 8, press Windows Key +
W to search for settings.
2.Type sound, then press Down Arrow until you get to Sound in the list of
search results, and then press Enter.
3.The Sound dialog opens on the Playback page, so you then have to move to the
Recording page.
Recording page
The recording page contains a list of devices, and when appropriate, one or
more of the buttons: Configure, Set Default, and Properties. The commands
provided by the buttons are also available on the context menus of the devices
in the list, and it's normally easier to use these, rather than the buttons.
There are two options which control which devices appear on the list, and they
appear on the context menu of any of the items in the list. The two options are
Show Disabled Devices and Show Disconnected Devices, and by default both
options are not checked. If you can't find a device which you think should be
there, it may be disabled, and so will show up if the Show Disabled Devices
option is checked.
For each item on the list there are three lines of text: its name, a short
description, and its status, which can be working, disabled, or Not plugged in.
Unfortunately, Jaws only reads the the first of these lines. If you need to
read the other lines, then you can press Insert + Numpad Minus to route the
Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, and then use Up Arrow and Down Arrow. To switch
back to using the PC cursor, press Numpad Plus or Insert + Numpad Plus. One way
of telling if a device is disabled without having to use the Jaws cursor, is to
open its context menu: if there's an Enable item, then the device is obviously
disabled.
Device properties dialog
To open the Properties dialog of a device which is selected in list on the
Recording page, press Spacebar, or choose Properties from its context menu.
The input volume (level) can be set on the Levels page of this dialog. For many
devices there's a single slider, but a microphone may also have a microphone
boost slider.
Keystroke
General
Command
Keystrokes
Open audio file Ctrl + O
Import audio file Ctrl + Shift + I
New project Ctrl + N
Save project Ctrl + S
Preferences dialog Ctrl + P
Cycle forward through Toolbars, Track table, and Selection bar Ctrl + F6
Cycle backward through Toolbars, Track table, and Selection bar Ctrl + Shift +
F6
Zoom normal Ctrl + 2
Zoom in Ctrl + 1
Zoom out Ctrl + 3
Playback
Command
Keystroke
Start/Stop Spacebar
Start/Stop and move cursor Shift + A
Pause/resume P
Seek backward short period during playback Left Arrow
Seek forward short period during playback Right Arrow
Seek backward long period during playback Shift + Left Arrow
Seek forward long period during playback Shift + Right Arrow
Play cut/delete preview C
Play looped Shift + Spacebar
Output Device dialog Shift + O
Track table
Command
Keystroke
Move to previous track Up Arrow
Move to next track Down Arrow
Toggle selection of focused track Enter
Select all the tracks (and all the audio) Ctrl + A
Deselect all the tracks (and any time-range) Ctrl + Shift + A
Open menu of focused track Application Key or Shift + M
Close (Delete) focused track Shift + C
Audio track
Command
Keystroke
Change gain of focused track Shift + G
Change pan of focused track Shift + P
Mute/Unmute focused track Shift + U
Mute all tracks Ctrl + U
Unmute all tracks Ctrl + Shift + U
Solo/Unsolo focused track Shift + S
Moving the cursor
Command
Keystroke
Move to start of tracks (time zero) Home
Move to end of all audio End
Move to start of audio in selected tracks J
Move to end of audio in selected tracks K
New cursor position at playback position [
Stop playback and move cursor Shift + A
Move backward short period Comma
Move forward short period Period
Move backward long period Shift + Comma
Move forward long period Shift + Period
Cursor left by a small amount Left Arrow
Cursor right by a small amount Right Arrow
Selecting a time range
Command
Keystroke
Select time range which includes all the audio, and select all tracks Ctrl + A
Selection start at start of tracks (time zero) Shift + Home
Selection end at end of all the audio Shift + End
Selection end at playback position ]
Selection start at start of audio in selected tracks Shift + J
Selection end at end of audio in selected tracks Shift + K
To move the end of the selection to the right by a small amount Shift + Right
Arrow
To move the end of the selection to the left by a small amount Ctrl + Shift +
Left Arrow
To move the start of the selection to the right by a small amount Ctrl + Shift
+ Right Arrow
To move the start of the selection to the left by a small amount Shift + Left
Arrow
Editing
Command
Keystroke
Undo Ctrl + Z
Redo Ctrl + Y
Delete selected audio Delete
Cut selected audio Ctrl + X
Copy selected audio Ctrl + C
Paste Ctrl + V
Replace selected audio with silence Ctrl + L
Close (Delete) focused track Shift + C
Find zero crossings Z
Recording
Command
Keystroke
Record R
Append Record Shift + R
Pause/resume P
Stop Spacebar
Audio Host dialog Shift + H
Input Device dialog Shift + I
Number of channels dialog Shift + N
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