User talk:Billw58/Read Me First

Here are a few very important concepts for the new Audacity user to become familiar with. This page is not designed to to teach you everything I need to know about a presented topic just to present enough information to help eliminate the more common frustrations of the new user. Sections include links to more in-depth information but the reader is encouraged to read all of this sort page before exploring the manual further.

What is an Audacity Project?

Imagine for a moment that you have created and saved an Audacity project called "MyProject". This project consists of two main parts:

• MyProject.aup: This document does not contain any audio. It is a "roadmap" of the project. It tells Audacity where to find the audio that is in the project and how to arrange that audio within the project.
• MyProject_data: This folder contains all the audio that has either been recorded directly into the project or copied into the project. Audacity breaks up all the audio in the project into small chunks and saves those chunks in files within this folder. This makes audio editing very fast. These small files are private to Audacity and cannot be played in a media player such as iTunes®.

The "MyProject.aup" document and "MyProject_data" folder must remain in the same folder. If you move one you must move the other with it or Audacity will lose track of where the audio in your project is.

You must not rename these files from your desktop environment (Mac Finder, Windows Explorer, etc.). If you do, Audacity will lose the connection between the .aup file and the _data folder. If you need to rename a project, do so using the File > Save Project As command.

Importing audio into an Audacity Project

-- Ed 13 December 2009 should we make a reference to Audacity's inability to open Windows 7 links? Are other operating systems affected?

When you import an uncompressed audio file (such as an AIFF or WAV file) into an Audacity project, and the option "Read uncompressed files directly from the original (faster)" is checked in Import / Export Preferences Audacity does not copy that audio into the project. Instead it maintains a reference to that file, thus saving disk space and making the import much faster. This is called a dependency. At any time you can check to see if your project depends on external files by clicking on File > Check Dependencies.

When you save a project that depends on external files Audacity will give you the option of copying those files into the project.

If your projects depends on external files you must not move, rename or edit those files in another program.

You can choose to have Audacity always copy imported files into your project by going to Import / Export Preferences and checking "Make a copy of uncompressed audio files before editing (safer)".

-- Ed 13 December 2009 should we have a link (as we do below for export) to supported input formats ?

Save versus Export

When you save an Audacity project you are doing just that - saving an AUP file and its associated _data folder. Nothing you have created at this point can be played in a media player, uploaded to the web for others to hear nor burned to an audio CD.

In order to hear the result of your work outside of Audacity you need to export your project. When you export your project Audacity creates a file that contains exactly what you hear when you play your project. Other audio editing software may call this "Bounce to Disc" or "Mix to Disc".

The format you need will depend on how you plan to use the audio, for an MP3 player you will want MP3 format, for burning to a CD you will want WAV format. See the File Export Dialog page for a complete list of the formats supported by Audacity.

Dealing with Audio CDs

Audacity cannot burn audio CDs directly, nor can it read files directly from an Audio CD. See Audio CDs for more information.