Edit Menu: Remove Special

Peter 14May13: This page has no images with label tracks or example of removing selections from an Audio Track, it would benefit from upgrading to deal with this. The section on "Split Delete" would be a good place to add a note about the "cute trick" for single or multi label deletion.

• Bill 10Jun13: Peter, how many label examples do you think would be useful? I could certainly whip up some new images, but if we include examples for each command for "select in audio track only". "select in label track only" and "select in audio and label tracks" the page will get much too long. We could shorten the page considerably by removing the example images for Delete and Split Delete, as these are identical to Cut and Split Cut. We could give a couple of general examples as per Edit Menu: Labeled Audio to show the effect on label tracks, then have simple, audio-only examples for the commands.
  I'm thinking it might be worth showing that selecting only in the audio track will cause the labels to get out of sync with the audio, whereas selecting in the audio and label track keeps them in sync. Then we could point out that the easiest way to keep your audio and labels in sync is to enable Sync-lock Tracks.
  What to you mean by "example of removing selections from an Audio Track" and by "cute trick for single or multi label deletion"?
  • Peter 10Jun13: Probably only a couple - I agree that t0 do so for every image would lead to TLDR. The "cute trick" is something that Gale recently taught me for removing a label or a contiguous labels without affecting the timeline position of any succeeding labels. Select in the label track only around the labels to be removed and use Ctrl+Alt+K (which is the shortcut for Edit>Delete Audio or Labels>Split Delete. Prior to learning this "cute trick" I had always overlooked the Split Delete for this and instead relied on the tedious and cack-handed method of deleting each character in the label and then a final backspace to remove the empty label. I think it would be very good to show an example of this "cute trick" operating on multiple labels on this page. I am very grateful to Gale for teaching me this as it saves me a lot of time and a lot of tedious repetive clicking.

• Bill 11Jun13: added 3 examples, and suggest removing 4 images. Perhaps the examples would be better at the end of the page?
  • Peter 11Jun13: I think the examples would be better at the end too. That is our normal practice on other pages. I'm minded to place each of the three examples in their own separate note div boxes - Gale did this in a page we "improved" a couple of months ago.
  • Bill 11Jun13: moved examples to the end. I think they look weird inside note divs, so I didn't do that. Removed unnecessary images as noted.

The items in this cascading menu remove audio or labels (or audio with labels if both are selected) by cutting or deleting. You can also silence or trim audio only.

You may hear a click at the edit points when you remove or paste audio. This can be caused by DC offset in the waveform or by poor selection of the edit points. See this Editing Frequently Asked Question for how to deal with this.

Cut  CTRL + X

Removes the selected audio data and/or labels and places these on the Audacity clipboard. Any audio data or labels to the right of the selection are shifted to the left. Only one item can be on the clipboard at a time, but it may include multiple audio or label tracks and multiple audio clips.

Delete  CTRL + K

Similar to Cut, but removes the audio data and/or label that is currently selected without copying it to the Audacity clipboard. See the audio example and the label example below.

Split Cut  CTRL + ALT + X

Same as Cut, but none of the audio data or labels to right of the selection are shifted. This is therefore a useful command to remove one label of a group of labels without affecting the other labels (be sure to select only in the label track unless you want to cut the audio as well as the label).

A gap is thus left behind in the audio track which splits the existing audio clip into two clips that can be moved independently using Time Shift Tool.

Split Delete  CTRL + ALT + K

Removes the selected audio and/or labels without placing these on the Audacity clipboard, but like Split Cut does not shift the following audio or labels.

This is therefore a useful command to remove one label of a group of labels without affecting the other labels (be sure to select only in the label track unless you want to delete the audio as well as the label) - see Example 3 below.

As with Split Cut the preceding and following audio are now separate clips that can be moved independently.

The following two commands affect the audio in the selection but do not affect any labels that are in the selection.

Silence Audio  CTRL + L

Replaces the selected audio with silence.

Trim Audio  CTRL + T

Removes all audio from the current clip except the selected part, creating its own clip from the remaining audio. If there are other separate clips in the same track these are not removed or shifted unless trimming the entire length of a clip or clips (note in the "After" image below that the audio in the clip to the right is unaffected).

Examples of removing labels

1) Remove audio and label using Delete  CTRL + K

Result: both the audio and labels following the deleted section move to the left. The labels still correspond to the same audio regions.

2) Remove label using Delete  CTRL + K

Result: the labels following the deleted section move to the left. The labels no longer correspond to the same audio regions.

3) Remove label using Split Delete  CTRL + ALT + K

Result: the labels following the deleted section do not move to the left. The labels still correspond to the same audio regions. This is a quick way to delete a label without affecting any other labels on the Label Track.

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