Punch and Roll Record
Work in Progress...
- You can stop, back up over a mistake, and continue recording, resulting in one track that eliminates the errors and is properly timed, without the use of cutting, pasting, and clip-moving commands, or mixing of multiple tracks.
- You can do rough editing as you go, with minimal interruption of your performance and less work left until afterwards.
Contents
Before you record
It is advisable to tune the latency correction setting for your soundcard so that play-back and recording are synchronized.
You may wish to adjust the pre-roll duration and cross-fade duration in Recording Preferences to suit your personal preferences.
- Pre-roll is the amount of existing audio, in seconds, that will be played before the repair recording starts. The default is five seconds.
- Cross-fade duration is the length of crossfile, in milliseconds, that Audacity will apply at the spice pint. The default is ten milliseconds.
Record as usual, until you make a mistake
Begin recording as usual with, the Transport toolbar Record button 
, the menu command or the keyboard shortcut R key.
If you make a mistake, stop recording with the Transport toolbar Stop button or its shortcut Space.
Choose a splicing point
Select a position in the recording before the error by picking in the recording track. You must select a time within the recorded clip. (If you select a time range, only the left edge is important.)
You may simply estimate the duration of the error, or guess by sight from the waveform (such as to find a pause between spoken words). Or you may find the Scrub Ruler or Timeline Quick-Play useful to find the right place by ear.
Using the Punch and Roll Record command
The command can be used to start Punch and Roll recording, but it is more easily done with the keyboard shortcut Shift+D. You can, if you wish, reassign this shortcut to another key or key combination of your choosing using Keyboard Preferences
The Punch and Roll edit will:
- Delete the portion of the selected track after the splicing point
- Play the pre-roll audio (length as defined by your Pre-roll setting in Recording Preferences, default is five seconds).
- When the playhead reaches the splice point (now the end of the track) Audacity switches to record mode to enable you to make your correction and continue recording.
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Repeat your performance in unison with the playback, and continue as the play head moves beyond the end of the track. This is easier than trying to start just as soon as the recording starts. |
Still not satisfied?
If you are not satisfied with your re-take, simply stop recording and Undo. The track and selection are restored as they were just before the Punch and Roll Record command began.
Alternatively, you can simply press the shortcut Shift + D again to make another take if you are happy that the spice point is correct.
Final results
- To avoid leaving a click at the splice point, Audacity applies a cross-fade (whose length in milliseconds is specified in Recording Preferences). This means the original bad take isn't completely deleted, but a tiny portion of it is blended with the new take, so that the waveform has no discontinuities.
- A clip boundary is left behind at each splice point, so that you can easily find them again and listen. You can merge clips by clicking on the boundary, or select the entire track and use the Join command to remove many boundaries at once.
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The Pinned Play Head may be preferable if you make small corrections frequently. Then you can choose your splicing points with less mouse movement.
The Overdub preference determines whether other tracks are played during recording, and if so their playback continues after the splice point. The track being corrected always plays before the splice point, regardless of this preference. |
