Edit Menu: Remove Special

• Peter 3Jun14: ToDo-2 With the restructuring of the Edit Menu (WIP) we need to consider if this page needs restructuring to focus on the items that are in the "Remove Special" submenu. It would mean moving the Cut and Delete material elsewhere (TBD). Note that this page is primarily linked to from the Edit Menu page where the relevant H2 now says "Remove Special" which may be seen as confusing by readers.
  • Gale 19Jun14: I removed the link from "Remove Special".
• Peter 18Jun14: I downgraded the P1 to a P2 as Vaughan has indicated that there are unlikely to be any major structural changes to the Edit menu prior to 2.0.6 release.

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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