Edit Menu

Peter 22Nov12: ToDo-2 Plan for a rework of this, imo, over-long page. I note from reading the Talk page that James proposed something similar two years ago and to date nothing has been done or further considered, apart from removing the "Cut Paste and More" section that James discussed.

1. Split the current page not by command (as with Effects) but by groups of commands (as listed in the pseudo-table below).
   1. Remove Audio
   2. Clip stuff
   3. Copy, Paste & Duplicate
   4. Labelled Regions
   5. Select
   6. possibly - Find Zero crossings
   7. all other commands to remain in-line on this page
2. Provide explicit backlinks to the menu page at the footer of each section's page (as with the tutorials) to encourage browsing.
3. Provide links to previous and next section (as with the tutorials) also to encourage/facilitate browsing.
4. Enhance the header text of the remaining "menu page" to: make the page less "threadbare" and encourage browsing and further/fuller reading.

The Edit menu provides the standard edit commands (Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete) plus many other commands specific to editing audio.

• Ed 1May11 there are a lot of sentence fragments like: Delete
  • Delete
    • Removes the audio data that is currently selected without copying it to the Audacity clipboard.
• compare to: Undo
  • Undo
    • This will undo the last editing operation you performed to your project.
• do we want to fix them all and if so do we want a note in Consistency about this?
  • Peter 26Nov12: Connie already tells us that the former is the correct form see here.
• Ed 1May11: checked new links
• Bill 17Apr11:
  • Updated all images for 1.3.13 and made them all from the same project
  • Possible further improvements:
    • More descriptive alt text
    • Images in tables so they can have captions
• Ed 1May11: redid the top note div to reflect new menu structure
• Bill 01May11: New text and images for Select > In All Tracks and Select > In All Sync-Locked Tracks
  Tried top "TOC" without the note div colour.

The Edit menu is divided into several sections.

Undo and Redo Remove Audio: Cut, Delete, Split Cut, Split Delete, Silence Audio, Trim Clip Boundaries: Split, Split New, Join, Detach at Silences Copy, Paste and Paste Text to New Label Duplicate Labeled Regions: Cut, Delete, Split Cut, Split Delete, Silence Audio, Copy, Split, Join, Detach at Silences

Select: All, None, Left at Playback Position, Right at Playback Position, Track Start to Cursor, Cursor to Track End, In All Tracks, In All Sync-Locked Tracks Find Zero Crossings Move Cursor: to Selection Start, to Selection End, to Track Start, to Track End Region Save and Region Restore Play Region: Lock, Unlock Preferences

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Undo

Undoes the last editing operation you performed to your project. You can undo as many times as you want, all the way back to when you opened the window. To undo many operations, select History... from the View Menu. The name of this menu item will change to reflect what will be undone; if you just recorded some audio, the menu item name will be Undo Record.

Redo

Redoes any editing operations that were just undone. After you perform a new editing operation, you can no longer redo the operations that were undone.

Remove Audio

Peter 24Nov12: ToDo An item on the To Do page suggests that we need to explain "Why do I get clicks' when I remove sound?". We could either put an ednote here - or create a new FAQ and link to the FAQ from here.

Cut

Removes the selected audio data and places it on the Audacity clipboard. Any audio to the right of the selection is shifted to the left. Only one item can be on the clipboard at a time, but it may contain multiple tracks and clips.

Delete

Removes the audio data that is currently selected without copying it to the Audacity clipboard.

Split Cut

Same as Cut, but none of the audio data to the right of the selection is shifted. This leaves a gap and also splits the existing audio clip into two clips that can be moved independently using the Time Shift Tool.

Can also be used to remove one or more adjacent labels without affecting any labels to right of the split cut. Select only in the label track over all the labels to be removed.

Split Delete

Removes the selected audio without placing it on the Audacity clipboard, but does not shift the following audio. The preceding and following audio are now separate clips that can be moved independently.

Can also be used to remove one or more adjacent labels without affecting any labels to right of the split delete. Select only in the label track over all the labels to be removed.

Silence Audio

Replaces the selected audio with silence. It does not remove labels in any label tracks included in the selection.

Trim

Removes all audio from the current clip except the selected part, creating its own clip from the remaining audio. Does not affect or move other clips in the same track (note the audio in the clip to the right is unaffected).

Clip Boundaries

Split

Splits the current clip into up to three clips at the selection boundaries. The audio before, within, and after the selection can now all be shifted independently

Split New

Does a Split Cut on the current selection in the current track, then creates a new track and pastes the selection into the new track.

Join

If you select an area that overlaps one or more clips, they are all joined into one large clip. Regions in-between clips become silence.

Detach at Silences

In a selection area that includes absolute silences, creates individual non-silent clips between the regions of silence. The silence becomes blank space between the clips.

Copy

Copies the selected audio data to the Audacity clipboard without removing it from the project.

Paste

Pastes audio which has been cut or copied to the Audacity clipboard, either inserting it into the selected track(s) at the cursor point, or replacing the current selection region(s).

The behavior of the paste command changes depending on the setting of "Editing clips can move other clips" in Tracks Preferences. If the option is checked pasting is always possible and following audio is shifted to make room. If this option is not checked there must be room for the pasted audio.

Pasting inside a clip, with "Editing clips can move other clips" checked:

When you select Paste and the cursor is outside a clip, and there is enough room for the audio that is on the clipboard, the audio on the clipboard can be inserted without any other clips being shifted over if "Editing clips can move other clips" is not checked. If "Editing clips can move other clips" is checked, the following audio will always be moved.

Pasting outside a clip, with "Editing clips can move other clips" checked:

Pasting outside a clip, with "Editing clips can move other clips" not checked:

Paste Text to New Label

Pastes the text on the system clipboard (or text from a label stored in the Audacity clipboard) at the cursor position in the currently selected label track. If there is no selection in the label track a point label is created. If a range is selected in the label track a range label is created.

The most recent text cut or copied to either clipboard is pasted. If you have copied or cut a label to the Audacity clipboard, the text of that label will be pasted. If you have cut or copied text to the system clipboard from an application other than Audacity, that text will be pasted.

If no label track is selected one is created, and a new label is created.

In the example below, the text "Question 1" was copied from a word processing document then the "Paste Text to New Label" command was executed.

Duplicate

Creates a new track containing only the current selection as a new clip. The new clip is at the same position on the Timeline as the original audio. This is essentially a shortcut method of performing copy, add new track and paste, except that the duplicated audio is not copied to the Audacity clipboard, so cannot be pasted anywhere else.

One benefit of Duplicate is the ability to experiment with effects. You can do that with the original track too, but you can't change the volume of your effect and the original audio separately, only lower the volume of the processed audio later on. If you duplicate the audio then use a reverb on that (with 100% reverb and 0% original signal), you can freely change the volume for both the original and reverb signal using the gain slider on each track.

• You can do interesting things to your duplicates to create special effects. With two versions of the track to work with, you can silence a section, reverb another section, phase a third, filter another (in one track or the other) and see how that sounds.

Labeled Regions

• ToDo-2 Gale 16Sep12: The special case of "Split" when labels are joined or overlapped is not mentioned (currently, split lines are only placed at the borders of the single concatenated region, but Steve suggests the split lines should be placed for all labels).
• ToDo Ideally the images should show multiple regions being affected.

A labeled region is a region in an audio track that spans a region label, so that the region touches both edges of a region label or extends outside the label. The labeled region commands are made available by selecting in a label track that spans one or more labels. This feature is useful if you want to apply certain editing operations to the audio of a group of labels, even if the labels are not touching or overlapped.

The Labeled Region commands apply the following commands to any labeled regions in the current selection area.

Cut, Split Cut, Copy
Delete, Split Delete, Silence Audio
Split, Join, Disjoin

The selection shown above was created by dragging in the label track then shift-clicking in the audio track. Applying the Edit > Labeled Regions > Split Cut command results in this:

Result: audio has been cut only in the region spanned by the label.

When Sync-Locked Tracks is on, the menu commands Labeled Regions > Cut and Labeled Regions > Delete are disabled.

Select

The items in this cascading menu provide quick ways of selecting ranges of audio.

All

Selects all of the audio in all of the tracks.

None

Deselects all of the audio in all of the tracks.

Left at Playback Position

When Audacity is playing or recording, sets the left boundary of a potential selection by moving the cursor to the current position of the green playback cursor (or red recording cursor). The selection can then be drawn by using "Right at Playback Position" (below).

Right at Playback Position

When Audacity is playing or recording, sets the right boundary of the selection, thus drawing the selection from the cursor position to the current position of the green playback cursor (or red recording cursor). This is a quick way to mark a selection for future editing while playing or recording.

It will usually be more convenient while playing or recording to use keyboard shortcuts ( by default,  [  and  ]   ) to set the left and right boundary respectively.

Track Start to Cursor

Selects a region in the selected track(s) from the start of the track to the cursor position.

Cursor to Track End

Selects a region in the selected track(s) from the cursor position to the end of the track.

In All Tracks

Extends the current selection up and/or down into all tracks in the project.

In All Sync-Locked Tracks

Extends the current selection up and/or down into all sync-locked tracks in the currently selected track group.

Find Zero Crossings

Moves the edges of a selection region (or the cursor position) slightly so they are at a rising zero crossing point. This is a point where a line joining the audio samples rises from left to right and crosses the zero horizontal line. Cutting and pasting at a zero crossing helps avoid clicks by matching the height of the waveform at the join. Note: this feature does not necessarily find the nearest zero crossing to the current position. It aims to find the crossing where the average amplitude of samples in the vicinity is lowest.

Move Cursor

The items in this cascading menu provide quick ways to move the cursor.

To Selection Start

When there is a selection, moves the cursor to the start of the selection and removes the selection.

To Selection End

When there is a selection, moves the cursor to the end of the selection and removes the selection.

To Track Start

Moves the cursor to the start of the selected track.

To Track End

Moves the cursor to the end of the selected track.

Region Save

Saves the current selection region or cursor position as observed on the Timeline. Note this function does not save any actual audio data currently inside selection boundaries.

Region Restore

Restores the selection region or cursor position to the project at its saved Timeline position. If a region is restored, this is only explicitly placed inside those tracks which are currently selected.

Play Region

The items in this sub-menu allow you to lock and unlock the play region in the Timeline. See Play Regions in Playing and Recording.

Preferences...

Displays the Preferences dialog.