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Welcome, Audacity manual editors!

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This manual is a work in progress. It relates to the Beta 1.3.9 program, not 1.2.5/6! Audacity 1.3.9 is the basis for our upcoming 2.0 stable release of Audacity.

There are no translations of this Manual to other languages yet. Try here for help in other languages.

Can you help us complete the Manual, or translate it to other languages? If so, please e-mail Gale (gale_AT_audacityteam_DOT_org)

For ideas on what needs to be done to
move the manual forward, see the ToDo page.

The Audacity Manual (current at time of release) is included in version 1.3.9 if you obtain the Windows .exe or Mac OS X .dmg Audacity installers.

To view the Manual, click Help > Manual (in web browser), or Help > Quick Help (in web browser) to access the "Getting Started" section of the manual. This will load the local Manual files in your web browser, without the need for an internet connection.

If you have obtained the zip version of Audacity or are on Linux, you can download the same Manual here. Instructions:

1. Extract the contents to a folder called "help" (most Windows extraction tools will do this automatically). If your extraction utility produces only a folder called "manual", create a new folder called "help" and place the extracted "manual" folder inside that new "help" folder.
2. On Windows or Mac OS X, place the "help" folder inside the folder containing the Audacity program. In an Audacity installation, this would usually be under "Program Files" on Windows or "Applications" on Mac OS X.
   On Linux, the "help" folder should usually go in /usr/share/audacity if Audacity was installed from a repository package, or /usr/local/share/audacity if you compiled Audacity from our source code.

Audacity 1.3.9 User Manual

The "About this Manual" section is online manual only, and the linked to "Audacity for the Impatient" page is also only available online. To prevent the export of specific text inside pages that are being exported, wrap it in <div class="noexport"> html tags.

About this Manual

The Manual is divided into several sections. If you're in a hurry, try:

• Audacity for the Impatient Schematic diagram of Audacity with quick links to the main parts of the interface.
• Getting Started Quick help to get you recording, importing files, editing and exporting your work in no time.

Otherwise, the Manual contains:

• Tutorials - walk through various common tasks in more detail
• Using Audacity - contains Foundations (fundamentals concepts of digital audio and editing in Audacity) and Help with Advanced Issues (read the ones that apply to you as required)
• Reference - explains every button, tool, menu item and dialog in Audacity
• Miscellaneous - includes an Index, Glossary of technical terms used in the Manual, Frequently Asked Questions and License

This manual has two main parts to it:

• A step by step guide. Organised by tasks (the Tutorials and the Using Audacity sections).
• A reference section. Organised by GUI structure.

The reference section should be naming the parts of the GUI and saying in outline what they do. The reference section needs to be complete for 1.4.0. I think it's OK if we don't finish all the tutorials, and drop the ones which are incomplete from the html help. JC

Follow links from Special:Lonelypages and Old Pages to find remnants of the old manual.

Tutorials

• Tutorial - Editing an Existing File
• Tutorial - Your First Recording
• Tutorial - Mixing a Narration With Background Music
• Tutorial - Copying tapes, LPs or minidiscs to CD (including full description of noise removal more briefly described in Effect Menu or only a link to it Effect Menu ??? and including splitting into multiple tracks)

Using Audacity

Foundations

I've moved things around a bit to make What is an Audacity Project? a reality, but it's still in an almighty mess at the moment. Can't see the way forward clearly yet.--James
I've had a quick glance at it - thanks. Actually I am not very worried about this at the moment. We link to it in appropriate places in the reference and it may or may not require a separate more technical appendix about it as per the current Audacity Project Format. On current content, I don't think a separate page is justified. A placeholder for .aup has been added to Glossary. I think "What is an Audacity Project?" could be a step by step tutorial with images if we have time, through from import, saving a Project a few times then exporting. I don't think that's essential, maybe only that we state that as an example scenario. As moving Audacity Projects under Foundations was my idea, maybe let me work on Audacity Projects and see what I come up with based on the content you've dropped in there - though I'm not necessarily going to do it immediately .

• Digital Audio
• Audacity Tracks and Clips
• Audacity Selection
• Audacity Setup and Configuration
• What is an Audacity Project?
• Playing and Recording
• Zooming
• Undo, Redo and History

Help with Advanced Issues

• Working with Audio CDs Audacity cannot import or burn to CDs itself, but read how to work with them here

Is this the best place for "Audio CDs"??

• Recording Quality (/// this should be expanded or better, incorporated in the recording tutorial///)
• Recovery (if Audacity crashes or if you lose part of an Audacity project)///must include advice on what to do if recovery fails///
• Batch Processing (converting multiple files at once)
• Customization (keyboard shortcuts, adding plug-ins and more)
• Simplifying Audacity
• Accessibility (Audacity for the visually impaired)

Should include the JAWS guide (ready now). Write a short paragraph linking to Audacity Tracks and Clips, the Selection Bar etc.

Wanted Topics

The Wanted Topics are in a 'noexport' section. Suggest we don't start writing them yet. They're not essential for 1.4.0.

• Spectrogram Analysis (or one or more better titles, cover tracking down clicks, square wave as-a-spectrum, beat frequencies).

Reference

Menu Bar: all commands for importing, recording,
manipulating and exporting audio

• Menu Bar overview
• Audacity Mac only
• File

• Metadata Editor for editing information tags in exported files
• On-Demand Loading of uncompressed files
• File Export Dialog including help on which format to export to
• Export options for:

WAV, AIFF and uncompressed types, MP3*, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP2 and Command line export   *MP3 export requires the LAME MP3 encoder

• Custom FFmpeg Export to apply customized codec and format options (development builds only)
• Advanced Mixing Options dialog for exporting multi-channel files

• Edit

• Editing Help: Cut, Paste and More

• View
• Transport
• Tracks
• Generate

• Effect

• Detailed help for some of the more complex built-in effects:

Auto Duck, Compressor, Equalization, Noise Removal, Repair

• Help with VST effect plug-ins

• Analyze
• Window Mac only
• Help

Toolbars: buttons and controls for playback,
recording and editing

• Control
• Device
• Edit
• Meter
• Mixer
• Selection
• Tools

• Extra help with Envelope Tool for controlling amplitude changes smoothly, and Multi-Tool (combining all tools in one)

• Transcription

Project Window:

• Timeline
• Tracks overview
• Audio Tracks

• Track Drop-Down Menu
• Mixing Audio Tracks

• Label Tracks
• Time Tracks

Preferences:

• Preferences overview
• Audio I/O
• Quality
• Import / Export
• Interface
• Spectrograms
• Directories
• Keyboard

• List of all keyboard shortcuts

• Mouse

File Formats section now removed. Pages like MP3 format are now MP3 Export Options and are parked under File Export Dialog in the reference section. MP3 Export Options and similar lose their text telling you what MP3 format is (it is already there in File Export Dialog). A basic description of each format will be in Glossary. We may or may not have extra text for the formats as a "File extensions" appendix including the current content of Audacity Project Format. If we get the level of text right in File Export Dialog and link to the Glossary with links to Wikipedia or our Wiki this might not be needed, except that it's still handy for people importing these formats. - Gale

Miscellaneous

Index, Glossary and Frequently Asked Questions:

• Index
  ToDo This links to a null page - there is no index
• Glossary of Terms with links to Wikipedia and/or main Wiki including audio file formats.
• Frequently Asked Questions

Credits, License and Further Information:

• Credits
• License
• Information for Developers - how to join our developer community

• Background Information for the Media - Audacity and free, open-source software

• Audacity Project Format
  "Audacity Project Format" parked here in case we have an appendix for "file format extensions" - I'm currently unsure - Gale .
  The Audacity project file structure should, I think, be given good prominence - not just parked down here. The reason I say this is because a lot of queries of the forum clearly arise because users have no idea about the Audacity project structure. - Peter
  I agree the project structure is critical which is why we created What is an Audacity Project and put it under "Foundations". See the discussion near the top of the main page. This section at the bottom is possibly a more technical description of the project format which might go in a File Formats appendix to include mainly audio file formats (if we feel we need to say more about those than we do elsewhere). - Gale
• Further Help

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Links: Most links are to other pages in this Manual. Bold italicized  links are to a description in our Glossary. Other italicised  links are to pages external to this Manual, for whose content we are not responsible.

Screenshots: Unless otherwise noted in the hover text of the image, all screenshots of Audacity in the Manual are of Microsoft Windows® operating systems.

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