Selecting in Audacity 2

By Karok, 22 August, 2018

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

hi all, i have just gotten audassity for my mac, and am so glad i can use the arrow keys left and right to move through audio: when i press the bracket keys though i just get, it seems, the position of the cursor and a propt to use the context menu to change format. so how can i start and end a sraection, and delete it? what if, i want that starting process at the beginning of a file or perhaps, play it for a while, pause the file, start selection and continue playing to the end of it then delete it?Will Sa

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By PaulMartz on Wednesday, August 29, 2018 - 19:47

I wrote a blog about a year ago for Audacity.

I use the selection controls to select portions of audio. Here's a segment of my blog article that describes them.

The Selection scroll area also contains three time controls, labeled Selection Start, End/Length, and Audio Position. These controls come in handy for precise editing. On my v2.1.1, End and Length are radio buttons, allowing you to set the second time control to either the end of the selection, or its length. The End radio button is mislabeled as “selection start radio button”, so custom label that with VO+/.

I use the Selection Start and End/Length time controls for precision selecting, so I assigned VoiceOver hotspots to both of them so I can jump there quickly – VO+Shift+3 and VO+Shift+4.

I hope that helps.

By PaulMartz on Wednesday, August 29, 2018 - 19:47

If you have any usable vision left at all, by far the easiest way to select is to use the mouse.

I went over my blog article, and found the following, which goes into a lot more detail on selecting.

Instead, move the cursor position to the start of a selection, then Shift+right arrow to select. Periodically hit play to test your selection. Note that Shift+right arrow moves the end of the selection later in the recording, and Shift+left arrow moves the beginning of the selection earlier in the recording. In other words, Shift+arrow key only grows the selection.

You can also use the time controls in the Selection scroll area, but these controls are very difficult to use. To change a digit, you must move a custom highlight to that digit, and because it’s custom, of course it’s not accessible. Here are some tips that might help.

If you set the format to “HH:MM:SS + milliseconds” as I described previously, then there are nine digits you can change, two for hours, two for minutes, two for seconds, and three to the right of the decimal place for fractional seconds. Press Home to move to the most significant digit, then type all nine digits. For example, to set a time control to 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 8.496 seconds, you would hit Home, then enter 0 0 1 3 0 8 4 9 6. VoiceOver is entirely silent while setting these values, so press VO+F3 to read the control to make sure it contains the desired value. Additionally, the End key moves focus to the least significant digit, left and right arrow keys move between digits, and up and down arrow keys increment or decrement a digit (with carryover if necessary).