There is another method of selecting which I should have mentioned.
While I no longer use it very much, there are times when it can be useful.
Very much as with a word processor, a selection can be made and adjusted
with various combinations of the shift, control and left and right arrow
keys. I won't clutter up people's inboxes with all combinations, as
default combinations can be found under Keyboard in Preferences
(control-p). For example though:
Shift-right arrow extends selection to the right
Shift-left arrow extends selection to the left
How much is selected with each press depends on zoom level, so it is not
the last word in precision. Where I have found it useful is when I am
what I want to be the end of a selection. Pressing shift-left arrow
extends selection to the left. On those rare occasions when I have
thought ahead, I will know where I want the selection to start. Once
some audio is selected, I then press left bracket and put in the
required position.
Once you are confident with all this digital gymnastics, you can start
looking at use of labels to make it easy to reselect (if that is a word)
a section of audio.
Andrew
On 31/10/2015 3:14 PM, Maria Chapman wrote:
HI.
this looks like a great explanation. Will save this. Will see how it goes.
thanks again
Maria
On 31 Oct 2015, at 1:27 pm, Andrew Downie <access_tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Until you get the hang of it, selecting audio can seem daunting. I hope the following
explanation translates to reality. If some of it is already familiar, just mutter,
"I already know that," and read on.
Pressing shift-a stops playback at that point and puts the cursor at that
position. Alternatively, pressing left bracket when playing puts the cursor at
that position but the file keeps playing. One option, then, is to hit left
bracket at the point where you want selection to start while playing and then
pressing right bracket at the point where you want selection to end. Then
press spacebar to stop playing. Another pres of spacebar will play the
selection.
That works well (a) if you have good reflexes and (b) if what you want to
select isn't too lengthy.
Vojta mentioned the dialog that appears when pressing left bracket while not
playing. That allows you to adjust the start point of the selection. If you
have time selection to hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, you can adjust
by tiny increments. Pressing right bracket brings up a similar dialog that
allows you to adjust the end point.
If you have selected some audio in order to delete it, pressing c is useful.
It plays before and after the selection so you can decide whether your start
and end points are exactly where you want them. Version 2.1.1 also introduced a
splendid facility:
Shift-f4 plays up to the start of the selection
Shift f5 plays a short passage from the start of the selection
Shift-f6 plays up to the end of the selection
Shift-f7 plays a short passage after the selection
Those commands provide a better idea of exactly where the selection starts and
ends. In the case of a lengthy selection, they also allow easy adjustment of
the end point.
Instead of pressing left and right bracket to set start and end points, you can
use the selection toolbar - control-f6 for Windows and Command-f6 (pretty sure
that's right) for Mac. I used to use that quite a lot, but find the brackets
good most of the time.
Remember not to use shift-a once you have set your selection until you have
done what you set out to do with it. That will reset the beginning of your
selection, causing you to say unpleasant things. Audacity is not like some
other software where it is possible to set beginning and end points and still
play anywhere in the file.
The final word, practise and ask questions if confused.
Andrew
On 31/10/2015 9:24 AM, Maria Chapman wrote:
HI. I would also like to know more about selecting audio. I can select from
somewhere to the end or the start but am not sure how to do it in the middle.
Running the latest audacity on a mac.
thanks.
Maria
On 31 Oct 2015, at 4:27 am, Vojtěch Polášek<krecoun@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:The audacity4blind web site is at
Greetings,
I thought I know how to work with Audacity, but I was probably wrong :-D
I want to do it like in Soundforge. Play sound, find my position, stop
there with shift+A, finetune the position, press "mark start at the
cursor", find my end of the selection, press "mark end at the cursor"
and do whatever I want with the selection.
But I found out that this procedure works only when I leave sound playing.
If I stop and press the [ key, I am presented with the dialog. If I
press OK, and Space to play further, nothing is played. I would expect
that I have set the start position of the selection and I should be able
to play further to set the end of the selection.
What am I doing wrong?
I am running Audacity 2.1.0 on Arch Linux.
Thanks,
Vojta
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