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Gale: Logged out seeing "For Editors" finally fixed.
Bill: Another thing that is confusing is that the page renders differently when I'm editing and hit 'Show Preview' than when I'm just viewing the page logged in.
Gale: I think that issue is in the software.
Bill: That issue is fixed now, as well. Seems it all had to do with the editsection div!
Gale: It's still not quite right even though I've worked on it. I may just replace it with another div that does the same thing.
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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.
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Audacity 1.3.9 User Manual
Printed Manual Only
The following links will not be visible to logged-out online or in the dumped (installed) manual:
Excluded from printed and online Manual
The following old/experimental pages will be excluded from both the printed manual and from the front page of the logged-out online/installed manual. They can still be found online through Search):
- Editing for Beginners - Cut, Copy and Paste
- Editing for Beginners - Introduction
- Editing for Beginners - Silence, Duplicate and Split
- Editing for Beginners - Splitting and Submixes
- Sample rates (may be a candidate for a technical appendix or similar later)
- Theme Preferences
- Transcription Toolbar disabled
- What's New in Audacity 1.3.2
- Batch Preferences - this Preferences tab no longer exists.
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 (fundamental concepts of digital audio and editing in Audacity)
- 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 - contains:
- Index
- Glossary of technical terms used in the Manual
- Frequently Asked Questions
- 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 2.0. 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
Using Audacity
Foundations
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 .
Bill: A small point, perhaps, but I think a more logical ordering of these items would be: Digital Audio / What is an Audacity Project / Audacity Setup and Configuration / Playing and Recording / Audacity Selection / Audacity Tracks and Clips / Zooming / Undo Redo and History. If only for the the convenience of the reader who takes the time to read this entire section - they'd start with the basics to digital audio, then find out about Audacity Projects, how to set up Audacity, and finally how to use Audacity.
- 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
- Accessibility (Audacity for the visually impaired)
- Working with Audio CDs Audacity cannot import or burn to CDs itself, but read how to work with them here
- Batch Processing (converting multiple files at once)
- Customization (keyboard shortcuts, adding plug-ins and more)
- 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///
- Scripting (experimental - driving Audacity from a script over named pipes)
- Simplifying Audacity
- Latency Test
Wanted Topics
- 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
- Detailed help for some of the more complex built-in effects:
- Help with VST effect plug-ins
Toolbars: buttons and controls for playback,
recording and editing
- Extra help with Envelope Tool for controlling amplitude changes smoothly, and Multi-Tool (combining all tools in one)
Project Window:
Preferences:
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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