Selecting Audio

Peter 27Feb13: Should we consider moving the section currently H3 titled "It is possible to change which tracks are selected and the selected time range independently" further down the page, probably into the Selecting using the keyboard section. Or even moving the whole Special characteristics of audio selection further down the page as to me it gets in the way of the "meat" of this page which is (or should be) "How do I select ... ?"

• Gale 02Mar13: Independent tracks and range selection isn't solely keyboard use, so should not be moved into that, in spite of the duplication between sections. Yes I felt the page takes a long time to get started too (which is good for first time readers but not returning readers). That was why I added the FAQ How do I select audio in one track? and the FAQ underneath it.

Peter: Also I think this page is far too long (leading to TLDR) so I think it is a further candidate for breaking into a landing page with selected sub-pages for some of the detail e.g. the Snap-to Guides and the Selection Format sections.
A custom TOC for the major sections would probably help too. Thoughts?

• Gale 02Mar13:
  1. Really Selection Toolbar belongs in "Selecting using the keyboard" (it's fundamental to that) and only the Selection Formats section of it is also for sighted users.
  2. I think it might work to split off Selection Formats given Selection Toolbar already has a page of its own that covers much of what is here.
  3. And yes I guess it's looking like the section down to "Selecting regions using the mouse" could actually be a landing page for split sections.
  4. I also think "Selecting while audio is playing" might just as well go in my new "Listening to the selection" section.
  • Peter 8Apr13: Done #4 - but the material is not in the right place yet, both bits probably need to move down the page.
  • Peter 9Apr13: Done #1 and #2.
    • I have dealt with #3 pro-tem by reordering the material on the page.
    • The page is still too long imo, my initial proposal is to hive the entire section on Snap-to off to a new page of its own, linking to it both from this page and from the Selection Toolbar page.
    • This may still not give us a short enough page but it should give us a better structured page to work with, possibly hiving off other sections.
    • I do like that in this re-structure the two "how to select sections", using mouse and keyboard, come first ahead of "changing selections" as the reader clearly has to understand how to make a selection before he/she changes it. It makes the page get started more quickly than in its previous incarnation.
  • Gale 09Apr13: I think moving the information about special characteristics of Audacity selection to the bottom is questionable, and if it stops down there would be further justification for renaming the page to "Selecting Audio". If this becomes just a landing page then perhaps that text is a good introduction; if not then it serves little purpose down there.
    • Peter 13Apr13: I've come round to thinking that you're basically right Gale so I restored it to be a pre-amble at the top. But I did think that the latter half of it belonged better in the "selection by mouse" section so I moved that chunk there.
    • Ed 13Apr13 : I see no reason to put this text in a green box, I think it should just be a regular section not in a div.
    • Gale 13Apr13: But it's less easy then to skip the preamble on subsequent visits. The intro and the first paragraph of the note are actually similar so I tried combining them (see below) but I don't think it works as well as intro then note.
    • Ed 13Apr13 : My point is that a "note" is like an "aside" - it is an expansion on the previous sentence/section and is intrinsic to that sentence/section. If in fact this (or any similar) note is directly related to the introduction it should be visually within the introduction. Other than in a novel where it might be (very rarely) used it is considered bad grammar to start a section or chapter with an aside.
    • Gale 14Apr13: I agree it's an aside, but it's very non-intrinsic once you've read it, and we want it out of the way once read. In some cases elsewhere the note under the intro seems more intrinsic. The point in even those cases is that you can only have one intro and we want a mechanism to break the info-before-text up into manageable chunks. You are not saying what your solution is - do you want something like the longer intro but no note that I drafted out?
    • Ed 13Apr13 : I am more arguing in the general then specific here. I would make some major edits to the intro of this specific page which would result in it being somewhat shorter. In this specific case I do not believe that the text in the Note div is in reality a "note" in that it does not relate specifically to immediately proceeding text in a manner to expand upon it parenthetically. How about this - let me throw up a couple of options on the Talk page…
    • Peter 14Apr13: Basically I agree with Ed about not having a note div immediately following an intro div. However, this is currently a Work-In-Progress and yesterday I basically "parked" the remnants of what was the footnote and is now again a preamble at the top of the page (as Gale earlier indicated he preferred); parked there while I consider further the page structure. The way it is now it would not be right to have the pre-amble as plain text for the very reason that Gale gives, the pre-amble is a one-off read and need s to be "out of the way" for subsequent reading visits. We need to remember that the two basic users of this page are naïve users (who need a full "tutorial") and skilled users (who know a fair bit about selection already but need to hone their skills - that's how I stumbled across the shortcomings of this page). It is difficult to suit both users but we do need to try - I'm hoping that splitting the page into landing page and sub-pages will help with this but we will only get to see that when I get to work on the next strawman - and in that strawman it may become clearer how we should deal with the preamble.
    • Peter 14Apr13: With regard to the content of the intro note I am extremely keen to retain the " ... using the mouse then applying an edit or effect. Visually impaired users can fully manipulate selections using the keyboard" text. I specifically added the guide for VI users in response to a comment from Gale in an email thread relating to the upgrade of this page - and I do want them to be able to navigate directly, and as soon as possible, to the section which is relevant to them. I did also add a link in the intro note to use of the Selection Toolbar for "precision" selecting as that as relevant to both sighted and VI users (and currently that subsection lives in the k/b section focused on VI users). Somehow that edit got lost (I probably neglected to submit it after a preview - easily done I find ...) I have restored that link.
    • Peter 14Apr13: I basically like Gales reworking of the into note incorporating the preamble - I implemented Gale's suggestion for the intro note with some slight tweaks.
    • Gale 14Apr13: If we keep the long intro without note then I am fine with Peter's tweak but I have pasted back my intro-then-note for comparison. Aesthetic purity aside, which is easier for the user to assimilate? I think the shorter intro is much better in that it covers all the essentials including dual selection (the range in the track). And easy to bypass the green on next visit. In fact, mentioning the dual selection up front may give a way to trim the second para in the note about "more complex than word processor selection". Perhaps we are being too slavish about preserving all of Dominic's text about comparing word processors.

      I note that unlike Wiki, Manual has no intro template that italicises "aside" information. I think that should be corrected. See below what italicised sub text would look like if we had only an intro.

    • Peter 15Apr13:I agree with Gale's points about a shorter intro and an easier to by-pass green note so I reinstated that formatting.
    • Gale 16Apr13: I doubt Ed will be happy and I am not 100% happy either on the grounds I just don't think we need all of Dominic's text, friendly as it is. If we strip the note down to what really matters we can have something like my attempted reasonably short intro that is relevant on each read.

      Also I don't like that the current intro implies that multiple simultaneous selections are possible, so I tweaked it in that regard.

    • Peter 16Apr13: I made a mash-up of Gale's "digestible" intro and some of mine. I agree that we can abandon Dominic's earlier comparisons with word processing as un-necessary. And Ed should be happier with no note directly following an intro :-)) Returning readers will (should) know that they can skim past the intro box and go straight to the "meat".
    • Gale 16Apr13: Why do we need "Audacity's ability to select a precise part of a sound for editing makes it a very powerful editing tool"? It looks like an ad. I much prefer the first thing we say is the defining point of audio selection that selection is a selected time range in a selected track. The only thing I can see against it is that it could confuse a novice who is only thinking about selecting entire tracks, but don't they need to learn?
    • Peter 17Apr13: OK Gale points taken - I have made a slightly modified version of yours. I have removed the "advertisement" - But I do wryly note that the ad has been there since 12Nov2009 and no-one objected before - in fact for a long while that sentence was the only intro :-))
• Peter 13Apr13: I next plan to hive off the "Snap-to Guides" section to it's own page, providing suitable links to it from here (and maybe other places in the Manual). This will probably be the last change before I move to a strawman to experiment with thinning out this page to a landing page with sub-pages.
  • Peter 14Apr13: I am no longer sure that I want to split this page further, I am coming around to the idea of keeping all the material on the one page now that it has been restructured into a more sensible order and trimmed a little. To that end I have experimented with a custom TOC to aid page navigation. I tested this page on a relative newbie (Mrs Waxcylinder) and she said she liked all the information in one place - and that she learnt a lot from reading the page (which is good to know).
• Peter 14Apr13: I note that we do not discuss Snap-to on this page until way down in selection by keyboard. This is way too late bearing in mind that we still get forum posters who fall into the snap-to bear-trap - Snap-to information is relevant to all methods of selection not just k/b selection.
  • Peter 14Apr13: I have added a note on snap to in the mouse selection section, is this sufficient?
  • Gale 14Apr13: I think the Snap to Guides may be mentioned a little late, although it is logical at the bottom. Since Snap to Guides currently only work with mouse, they may be better mentioned in the section on selecting using the mouse.

    Also I noticed a duplication problem we should decide on first. "Extending or contracting a selection" is a section within "Selecting regions using the mouse", but this duplicates Changing the selected time range. I think you should move the content of "Extending or contracting a selection" into "Changing the selected time range" and remove the duplication.

    • Peter 15Apr13: I moved the note on "Snap To" up the section to make it come earlier. I dealt with the duplication problem as you suggested.

Most Audacity operations involve selecting a time range of audio in one or more tracks, then deleting or moving the selection or applying an effect to it which changes its sound. The selection can be made by mouse or can be manipulated using only the keyboard. Selection of an exact time range accurate to various units of time can be made using Selection Toolbar.

You have the flexibility to select entire multiple tracks (or only a time range within those tracks). This makes your change affect the entire (or selected) range in all those selected tracks. Alternatively you could select all or part of an individual track, and then change each track in a different way.

Contents

1. Selecting regions using the mouse - this is the usual way to make selections
   • Snap-to Guides
2. Selecting tracks using the mouse
3. Selecting using the keyboard - visually impaired users will find this the best method to make selections
4. Selection Toolbar - this enables you to make very precise selections
   • Selection Formats
5. Extending or contracting an existing selection
6. Menu commands for selecting
7. Listening to the selection
   • Selecting while audio is playing
8. Label Tracks

Selecting regions using the mouse

The easiest way to select a region of audio is to click and drag. If it's not already selected, choose the Selection tool from Tools Toolbar, below:

Now click the left mouse button anywhere inside of an audio track, and click and drag to the other edge of your selection, and release.

If you have Snap To selected (see checkbox in Selection Toolbar) this will force all mouse clicks and selections made with the mouse to snap to the current Selection Format.

Some tips:

• You can drag from left to right or from right to left, it doesn't matter.
• You can start your selection in one track, and end it in another track, and both tracks (plus the tracks in-between) will all end up selected.
• If you move the mouse past the left or right edge of the window while dragging, Audacity will scroll the window in that direction as long as the mouse button is down.

Normally, you select both the tracks and the time range simultaneously, by clicking and dragging. For example, to create the selection in the image below, make sure you're using Selection Tool , click in the track just after 2.0 seconds in the first track, then drag rightwards to just after 5.0 seconds as displayed on the Timeline, then downwards so that the gray selection area now includes the second track:

Note that because the drag started in the first track and extended into the second track, only those two tracks are selected, as indicated by the darker gray color of the Track Control Panel. Therefore, any operation you perform will now only affect the selected area of the first two tracks.

Snap-to Guides

Snap-to Guides make it easy to make a selection that starts or ends at a physical boundary, like a label or clip. Whenever snapping is taking place, a yellow vertical line appears to indicate the snap location.

Note carefully that this is distinct from the "Snap To" checkbox in Selection Toolbar which snaps selection edges (or the cursor) to a chosen unit of time.

Selecting tracks using the mouse

There are two very useful things you can do by clicking in the Track Control Panel to the left of a track - make sure that you click in a neutral area, not inside one of the buttons or sliders. See Audio Tracks for more about the Track Control Panel.

Clicking on a track's Track Control Panel will select the entire track. That's a very easy way to apply an effect to an entire track. If you want to select all tracks, you can alternatively choose Select All from the Edit menu.

There's another handy way to select an entire track or clip: just double-click inside it.

If you hold down the SHIFT key while left-clicking on a track's Track Control Panel, you can toggle the selectedness of that track. For example, if you want to select the first and third tracks only, you could choose Edit > Select > All and then shift-click on the middle track to deselect it while leaving the others selected.

If you deselect all tracks (by toggling selectedness off in all tracks or by clicking in the gray background underneath the bottom track in the project), any time region that was present will remain visible in the Timeline. This gives you a way to play this selection even though no tracks are selected.

Selecting using the keyboard

You can modify the selection entirely using the keyboard. The currently focused track is indicated with a glowing border, as you can see from the track called "Guest" in this image:

To change the focused track, press UP or DOWN arrow. In this image, we pressed down arrow to change focus to the "Bkgnd" track:

Once a track has focus, press ENTER or RETURN to change it from being selected to not selected, or from not selected to selected. Selections are only acted upon if the track containing the selection is itself selected.

If you only have a cursor position, but not a selection, pressing LEFT or RIGHT moves the cursor to left or right respectively, giving you a new cursor position from which to start a selection.

• To create a selection starting from the cursor point, hold SHIFT while pressing LEFT or RIGHT arrow to extend the selection leftwards or rightwards respectively from the cursor point, or to further extend the selection.
• If you extended the selection too far, hold CTRL + SHIFT while pressing LEFT or RIGHT arrow to contract the selection from the right or left edge respectively.

You can always use Selection Toolbar if necessary to find out if you have a selection (if there is only a cursor, the "Length" radio button will show a zero time value).

Once you have a selection, hold SHIFT while pressing UP or DOWN arrow to extend or contract the selection up or down tracks.

Creating selections at an exact time

If you already know the exact times at which the selection should start and end, you can use the [ shortcut when the track is not playing, recording or paused to open the "Set Left Selection Boundary" dialog. Use the time digits to set the left-hand boundary of the selection as below. To change the Selection Format of the time units, right-click (or use the keyboard Context Key) or left-click the downward-pointing triangle to right of the time digits.

• If the cursor is currently to left of where the selection should start, advance the current position of the time digits to move the cursor rightwards to the correct start position. Then use the ] shortcut to bring up the "Set Right Selection Boundary" dialog. Here you can set the time at which the selection should end, which draws the selection.
• If the cursor is currently to right of where the selection should start, use [ if necessary to advance the time digits so as to place the cursor at the intended end of the selection. Then use [ again to set the left boundary of the selection which will draw the selection from that left boundary to your chosen end position.

Exact selections can also be created directly within Selection Toolbar by similarly manipulating the time digits.

Sometimes you may want to create a new selection using the start point (left boundary) of the current selection as the new end point, or using the current end point (right boundary) as the new start point. To do this, press LEFT arrow to place the cursor where the beginning of the selection was, or RIGHT arrow to place the cursor where the end of the selection was, in both cases removing the selection. Now create and adjust the new selection as above.

If you put a checkmark in the  Snap To checkbox in Selection Toolbar, then using LEFT, RIGHT, SHIFT and CTRL as above will move the cursor or selection edge to the nearest second, hundredth of a second, CDDA frame or any chosen selection format.

• Use [ or ] as above to force the cursor or selection to a position outside the current selection format, even if Snap To is enabled.

Selection Toolbar

One handy way to keep track of what you've selected and to make very precise modifications is to use the Selection Toolbar. For our purposes here, let's concentrate on its main purpose, the Selection Start and End/Length boxes. By changing the radio button from "End" to "Length", you can display and control the length of the selection instead of the endpoint. Which one is useful for you depends on the circumstances: if you need a clip from a song that's exactly 30 seconds long, you may want to set the length to 30, and then modify the start until you have just what you want. Other times you may know the exact end time but need to figure out where to start, independent of the resulting length.

Selection Toolbar also displays and can move the cursor position without there being a region selected. To move the cursor to an exact position using Selection Toolbar, set the "Selection Start" and "End" boxes to the same value.

Gale 10Apr13: ToDo-2 Add description of using [ and ] to do this.

• Peter 17Apr13: I don't see why one would document [ and ] here. I don't see the relevance in Selection Toolbar. They are (now) documented below in Selecting while audio is playing. Can we thus remove this P2?
• Gale 18Apr13: I've fixed it by adding some text at the end of this section. The point of mentioning it here is that is sometimes more convenient to use these shortcuts than use Selection Toolbar e.g. if focus is in the track and you want to adjust a selection edge, but Selection Toolbar is set to length.

You can set the values displayed in the Selection Toolbar boxes using the mouse and/or keyboard. To change a particular digit in a box, click on it, or you can navigate to it using only the keyboard:

Key	Action
CTRL + F6	Move the focus to/from Selection Toolbar
TAB	Move between the Selection Toolbar controls
LEFT / RIGHT	Move cursor in a box or to/from End/Length
UP / DOWN	Increase or decrease the highlighted digit
BACKSPACE	Reset the last digit entered to zero

Once you have clicked on or navigated to a digit, it will highlight in white to show it is active. You can then increase/decrease its value using the mouse wheel or UP/DOWN, or type a new value over it:

After typing a value, the cursor automatically moves to the next digit along and selects it so that you can type the required values one after the other.

As an alternative to navigating into Selection Toolbar, you can use the [ and ] shortcuts to move the cursor or create selections or to adjust existing selections.

Selection Formats

By default,Selection Toolbar lets you enter values in units of hours, minutes and milliseconds. This is appropriate and accurate enough for most purposes. However if you need for example to make a selection that is accurate to the nearest sample or is defined in CDDA or film frames, numerous other Selection Formats are available to represent time. To choose other formats, click the triangle to right of any box. You can also select in or right-click over any digit in a box (or use a keyboard equivalent).

Extending or contracting an existing selection

Once you have a selected time range you can move either edge of the selection so as to expand or contract the selected length, or you may want to expand the selection at one edge and contract it at the other so as to select a similar length in a slightly different place; Audacity offers multiple methods to facilitate this:

• Hover the mouse pointer near the edge of a selection, when you hover close enough to the edge the mouse pointer changes to a hand with pointing finger (indicating you can now click and drag the selection). Then click and drag with the mouse to move that edge of the selection.

If you want to turn off that feature, open Preferences, choose Tracks then uncheck "Enable dragging of left and right selection edges".

• You can also extend or contract an existing selection by holding down the SHIFT key while left-clicking the mouse near one of the edges of the selection. The nearest edge of the selection will jump to the current mouse pointer location. This is really useful if you know exactly what you want to select but it doesn't easily fit on the screen at once:

1. Click at one edge of the selection
2. Scroll until the other edge is in view
3. Shift-click to set the other edge of the selection.

• Hold SHIFT while pressing LEFT or RIGHT to extend the selection from the left or right edge respectively.
• Hold CTRL + SHIFT while pressing LEFT or RIGHT to contract the selection from the right or left edge respectively.
• Use Selection Toolbar to precisely place the selection boundaries by entering their time positions.

• Use the [  or ]  shortcut when the track is not playing, recording or paused to open the "Set Left Selection Boundary" or "Set Right Selection Boundary" dialog respectively. Then adjust the time position of the left- or right-hand selection boundary. As in Selection Toolbar, to change the Selection Format of the time units, right-click (or use the keyboard Context Key) or left-click the downward-pointing triangle to right of the time digits.

Mac users: remember to substitute the Command key for the Control key.

Including or excluding the existing time range in other tracks

You can also change which tracks are selected independently of the time range, so that selecting an extra track includes the selected range in that track, and deselecting a selected track moves the selected range out of that track. This gives you complete flexibility to extend, contract or move the existing time range up or down between multiple tracks.

To change which tracks are selected without affecting the time range, there are multiple methods.

• Hold SHIFT while clicking on the Track Control Panel to the left of the waveform to toggle its selectedness.
• Press UP or DOWN to change the focused track, then press ENTER to toggle its selectedness.
• Hold SHIFT while pressing UP or DOWN arrow to extend or contract the selection up or down into adjacent tracks.

Use the first two of the above methods when you want to select or deselect non-adjacent tracks.

Note that it is possible to have a time range selected but no tracks selected. In that case, you will only see the evidence of the selected time range in the Timeline.

Advanced: If you enable Sync-Locked Track Groups you don't need to explicitly select other tracks so as to maintain synchronization when inserting, removing or time-shifting audio.

Menu commands for selecting

The Edit > Select menu has several commands that are useful for selecting.

Edit > Select > ...	Action
All	Select all tracks, including the entire content of audio tracks and note tracks.
None	Deselect all tracks, removing any selection they contain and setting the cursor at the start of the former selection region.
Left at Playback Position	Sets the left selection boundary at the current playback position, otherwise opens a dialog for moving the left selection boundary.
Right at Playback Position	Sets the right selection boundary at the current playback position, otherwise opens a dialog for moving the right selection boundary.
Start to Cursor	Select from the start of the track to the cursor position.
Cursor to End	Selection from the cursor position to the end of the track.
Region Save	Captures the currently selected time range or cursor position.
Region Restore	Restores the time range or cursor position from Region Save.
In All Tracks	Extend the current selection or cursor position up or down into all other tracks.
In All Sync-Locked Tracks	Extend the current selection or cursor position up or down into all other tracks which currently have the Sync-Lock icon   .

Listening to the selection

With audio, it usually isn't obvious from the waveform what you want to select, so you really want to listen just to the left and right edges of a selection to make sure you are editing the correct part. Also because the purpose of multiple tracks is usually to mix them together as combined audio, by default the selected time range plays for all the visible tracks, selected or not. To change this you can mute or solo individual tracks in the Track Control Panel.

But if you are new to audio editing, don't worry. For now, you can just click and drag to create a selection on a single track, and press SPACE to listen to all of it. Come back here for more help when you start to work on more advanced projects and are having trouble selecting what you want.

Selecting while audio is playing

Sometimes the easiest way to select an exact portion of audio is to mark the selection boundaries while you're playing (or recording) audio.

To do this, press the [ shortcut to mark the left edge of the audio, then the ] shortcut to mark the right edge and draw the selection.

After you've done that, you'll definitely want to listen to the selection to make sure it was right. Press SPACE once to stop playback and then press SPACE again to hear just the selection. There are additional keyboard shortcuts that let you listen to just the beginning or end of a selection - see Special Playback Keyboard Commands for details.

Label Tracks

A very useful way to recall particular selections is to label them in a label track. For more information, see Label Tracks.