Audacity 1.3.4 Guide
A guide for Jaws users, but, seems to work fine for Voiceover with the MAC, written by David Bailes at Chorlton Workshop for hsbp. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/jaws-guides/> of the VIP Software Guides website.
Contents
Introduction <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#introduction>.
Main window <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#main-window>.
Opening an audio file <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#opening-audio-file>.
Saving audio <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#saving-audio>.
Playback <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#playback>.
Toolbars <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#toolbars>.
Track table <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#track-table>.
Selection bar <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selection-bar>.
Moving the cursor <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#moving-cursor>.
Selecting audio <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selecting-audio>.
Basic editing <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#basic-editing>.
More advanced editing <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#more-advanced-editing>.
Metadata editor <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#metadata-editor>.
Recording <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#recording>.
Preferences <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#preferences>.
Keystrokes <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#keystrokes>.
Introduction
Audacity is a free multi-track audio editor. You can use it for recording, simple editing of single tracks, or more advanced editing involving multiple tracks.
This guide is for the 1.3.4 beta version of Audacity. The reason for choosing the beta version is that a lot of work has been done since the last stable version (1.2.6) to make Audacity easier to use for users of screen readers. There is still work to be done in this area, but version 1.3.4 is much easier to use than version 1.2.6. Audacity 1.3.4 can be downloaded from audacity.sourceforge.net <http://audacity.sourceforge.net/>.
Audacity is an extremely powerful program, and this is only an introductory guide. For more information see the Audacity website <http://audacity.sourceforge.net/>, and the Audacity 1.3.4 User Manual <http://audacityteam.org/manual/> which is under construction.
Projects
The objects which Audacity edits are known as projects. So projects are equivalent to documents in Microsoft Word, and workbooks in Microsoft Excel.
An Audacity project simply consists of a number of tracks.There are a number of different types of track in Audacity: audio, label, and time. However, the latter two are inaccessible to Jaws users, and so this guide will only describe the use of audio tracks. For many simple tasks you’ll probably only have one track in a project.
You can save an Audacity project using the Audacity project file format, and this preserves all the tracks in the project. However, you only need to save a project in this format if you intend to continue working on the project in the future.
Cursor
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, and this is similar to the cursor in Microsoft Word. The cursor in Audacity is used for defining times such as: the start of playback, the position where you want to start selecting a time range, and the place where audio is pasted from the clipboard.
Welcome message box
When you start Audacity, a Welcome message box opens, and this contains:
An HTML window which contains some introductory information, but which is not accessible to Jaws.
A Don’t show this again at startup checkbox.
To stop the message box appearing in future, just check the checkbox, and press the OK button.
Main window
Main components
Title bar. When the window contains an unnamed project, for example, when you first start Audacity, then the text in the title bar is Audacity. When the window contains a named project, then the text is the name of the project. To read the title bar press INSERT + T.
Menu bar.
Toolbars <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#toolbars>.
Track table <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#track-table>. This contains the tracks which make up the project.
Selection bar <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selection-bar>. This contains controls for reading and setting the cursor position and the start and end/length of any selected time range.
Status bar. When the mouse is over a control in the interface then often the status bar gives help on using the control, though this is of little interest to Jaws users. During a recording, the status bar gives the disk space which remains for recording. When there is no text in the status bar, then if you read the status bar, then Jaws reads the contents of the controls on the selection bar (together with a spurious graphic 60034). To read the status bar, press INSERT + PAGE DOWN.
Moving around the window
As in any window, to move to the menu bar press ALT, and to leave it press ESC.
Pressing CTRL + F6 moves you around the following components: Toolbars, Track table, Selection bar, Toolbars, etc. Pressing CTRL + SHIFT + F6 moves you around in the opposite direction.
Opening an audio file
To open either an audacity project file or a standard audio file, use the Open dialog, which is on the File menu (or CTRL + O).
When you first open Audacity, the window contains an empty project, and so when you open an audio file, it opens in this initial window. If you open any other files, then they each open in a new window. (If you want to deliberately create a new window with an empty project, choose New from the File menu, or press CTRL + N.)
Opening standard audio files
Audacity can open audio files in the following standard formats: WAV, AIFF, AU, MP3, MP2/MPEG, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC. Note that it can’t open files in the Windows Media Audio format (wma). If you want to edit a file in this format, you have to use another program to convert the wma file to one of the formats Audacity can open. There are several audio format conversion programs available, for example, Switch <http://www.nch.com.au/switch/> which is free in its basic version, or dBpoweramp Music Converter <http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm>.
When you open a standard audio file, then the project initially consists of a single track.
If you open a compressed file, such as an MP3 file, then after you press the open button in the Open dialog an Import dialog opens which gives the progress of Audacity decompressing the file.
Saving audio
You can save the audio in a project in either the audacity project format, or one of the standard audio formats, as described in the following sections. The Audacity project format preserves all the tracks in the project. You only need to save a project in the audacity project format if you intend to continue working on the project in the future. In contrast, when you save in one of the standard audio formats, Audacity automatically mixes all the tracks down to a single track.
When you close Audacity, if you haven’t saved your changes to an Audacity project file, then a Save changes? dialog opens asking you whether you want to save changes before closing. The default button is Yes, but unless you want to save the project as an Audacity project file, just TAB to the NO button and press it.
Saving audio in the audacity project format
To save in this format, choose Save Project… from the File menu. The first time you do this, you get a Warning dialog box telling you that only Audacity can read these project files. The dialog box contains a check-box which you can check if you don’t want this warning again. If you press the OK button, you then get a Save Project As dialog.
Saving audio in one of the standard audio formats
Audacity can save audio in the following standard formats: WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and MP2. Due to patent issues, the Audacity installation does not include an MP3 encoder, and so to save in the MP3 format, you need to download an MP3 encoder as described in the MP3 Export <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#mp3-export> section of the Preferences section.
To save audio in one of the standard audio formats:
1. To save all the audio, choose Export from the File menu. Alternatively, to save only the selected audio, choose Export Selection from the File menu.
2. The Export File dialog opens, and its structure is very similar to a standard Save As dialog.
3. To set the file format which you want to use for saving the audio, there’s a Save as type combo box, which is the next control after the File name edit box, which has the initial focus.
4. After choosing the file format, you can set the options for the encoding used by that format by tabbing to the Options button and pressing it. An Options dialog for the encoding opens. Since the MP3 format is often used, the numerous options for MP3 encoding are described in the following section.
5. After you press the Save button, if you haven’t already edited the metadata tags for the current project, then the Metadata editor opens. The title of this dialog depends on the file type: for example, for MP3 files the title is Edit the ID3 tags for the MP3 file. If you don’t want to edit any of the tags, just press ENTER to press the default OK button. The Metadata editor is described in detail in the Metadada editor section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#metadata-editor>.
MP3 options
This section describes the controls in the Specify MP3 options dialog, and then gives some recommendations for setting them. The dialog has the following controls:
Bit Rate Mode, a set of 4 radio buttons: Preset, Variable, Average, and Constant.
Quality combo box.
Variable Speed combo box, which only appears for some of the bit rate modes.
Channel mode, a set of two radio buttons: Joint Stereo, and Stereo. This does not appear if the bit rate mode is set to Preset.
These are some recommended settings:
For music:
? Set the Bit Rate Mode to Variable
? the Quality to either 6, 5, or 4 (the lower the number the higher the quality).
? Variable Speed to Fast
? Channel Mode to Joint Stereo.
For speech, or when there’s a requirement for small file sizes:
? Set the Bit Rate Mode to Average
? The Quality to 64, 80 or 96 kbps (the higher the number the higher the quality).
? Channel Mode to Joint Stereo.
For a full description of the options for the LAME MP3 encoder see the Lame page of the Hydrogen Audio wiki <http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME>.
Playback
Playback depends on whether there is a time range selected (see the Selecting audio section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selecting-audio>): if there is no selection, then playback starts at the cursor position; if there is a selection, then playback starts at the start of the selection, and stops at the end of the selection.
The volume of the playback is controlled by the output volume slider which is on the Mixer toolbar in the Toolbars. Because this volume slider also controls the volume of Jaws (why?), it’s best to adjust this slider to maximum.
Keystrokes for playback:
To start or stop, press SPACEBAR.
Pause or unpause, press P.
Seeking/Jumping. Whilst playing, if the focus is in the Track table, you can jump forward or backward by either a short or long period. To jump backward or forward by a short period press LEFT ARROW or RIGHT ARROW respectively. To jump backward or forward by a long period, press SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW respectively. The size of both the short and long periods can be set in the Preferences dialog, as described in the Seek times section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#seek-times>.
Toolbars
The Toolbars section contains several different toolbars. You can navigate to all the controls in the Toolbars just by using the TAB key.
These are the different toolbars:
Control. Controls for playback and recording which all have keyboard shortcuts.
Device. Allows you to set the soundcard for recording and playback. These controls are also available under the Audio I/O category of the Preferences dialog. By default this toolbar is not shown.
Edit. This contains buttons for Cut, Paste, etc. These commands are also available on either the Edit or View menu, and all have keyboard shortcuts.
Meter. This contains both an input and an output level meter but both of these are inaccessible to Jaws.
Mixer. This contains output and input volume sliders and a combo box to select the input source for recording.
Tools. This contains tools for editing which involve the use of the mouse.
Transcription. This contains a playback button and a playback speed slider.
You can show and hide all these toolbars using the Toolbars sub-menu on the View Menu. Only showing the toolbars you’re likely to use, like the Mixer Toolbar, has the advantage of greatly reducing the number of TABs needed to find a particular control.
Track table
The Track table contains the tracks which make up the project. The table just has one column, and a row for each of the tracks. Each track has a name, and Jaws reads this when you move to the track, or press INSERT + UP ARROW to read the current line.
An audio track is a container for audio data, and this is displayed as a waveform. Often the audio data starts at time zero, but after editing, this is not always the case. At the left hand end of an audio track there is a small area containing various controls, which include a menu, and controls for track gain and pan. Using these controls is described in the More advanced editing section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#more-advanced-editing> of this guide.
The Cursor is displayed in the track table as a vertical line, as is the playback position during playback. The positions of both the cursor and the playback position are available to Jaws users via the Selection Start and Audio Position spinboxes in the the Selection Bar <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selection-bar>.
Track focus
Whenever the focus is within the track table, and the table contains one or more tracks (rows), then one of the tracks has the focus, and you can move between tracks by using the UP and DOWN ARROWS.
Track selection
You need to be able to select tracks:
For operations such as aligning tracks which can be found on the Tracks menu.
As part of the process of selecting some audio, as described in the Selecting audio section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selecting-audio>.
To toggle the selection of a track which has the focus, press ENTER. Also, if you press CTRL + A this selects all the tracks (and all the audio, as described in the Selecting audio section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selecting-audio>).
Jaws tells you whether a track is selected, if you do any of the following:
Move the focus to the track.
Press INSERT + UP ARROW to read the current line.
Toggle the selection of the track, by pressing ENTER.
More precisely, if you do any of the above, then:
If the track is not selected, then Jaws says table the name of the track row
If the track is selected, then Jaws says table the name of the track select on row.
Selection bar
There are six controls on the Selection bar, and as in any toolbar use TAB to move between them:
Project Rate edit-combo box. This is the sampling rate of the project.
Snap To checkbox, which is described below.
Selection Start edit-spinbox. If there is a time range selected then this gives the start of the selection, else it gives the position of the cursor.
Selection End or Selection Length edit-spinbox, depending on the setting of the End/Length radio buttons described below.
Audio Position edit-spinbox. This gives the playback position during playback.
End/Length radio buttons, which determine whether the second edit-spinbox shows the length or end of the selection.
Edit spinboxes
Each of the spinboxes contains a time which can be in a number of different formats. The default format is hh:mm:ss, and the description below assumes that this is the format being used.
If you move to a spinbox by tabbing, then an example of Jaws reading the contents of the spinbox is 00h13m04, that is 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 4 seconds.
In fact, each of the spinboxes is made up of three sub-spinboxes, each containing two digits: h edit-spinbox, m edit-spinbox, and an s edit-spin box.
Within a spinbox, one of the six digits has the focus. You can move this focus by using a number of keystrokes, and whenever the focus moves to a different sub-spinbox Jaws reads out the contents of the sub-spinbox. The keystrokes for moving this focus are:
HOME moves you to the beginning of the spinbox, that is the first digit of the hours.
END moves you to the end of the spinbox, that is the second digit of the seconds.
The LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys move you through the six digits of the spinbox.
To change the value of the time, you can either:
Type in digits.
Use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to increment or decrement the value of the focused digit. After each increment or decrement, Jaws reads out the six digits in the spin box.
Edit-spinbox formats
As mentioned above, the time in a spinbox can have a number of different formats. The shortcut menu of a spinbox gives several options for the format. For example, the hh:mm:ss + milliseconds format is useful for making small changes in the time. If you change the format of one spinbox, then the formats of the other spinboxes are changed as well.
Snap To checkbox
If this checkbox is unchecked, then the positions of the cursor, and start and end of any selection can effectively have any value.
However, if the checkbox is checked, then the positions of the cursor, and the start and end of any selection can only be at times which are exactly specified by the current edit-spinbox format. For example, if format of the edit-spinboxes is set to hh:mm:ss, then the cursor can be at 2 minutes and 10 seconds exactly, but not 2 minutes and 10.1 seconds. In other words, the cursor always snaps to the nearest time that can be exactly specified by the edit-spinbox format.
BUG WARNING: If the Snap To checkbox is checked, then none of the methods for moving the cursor or selecting a time range which involve using the arrow keys work correctly.
Moving the cursor
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, for example, the start of playback, the position where you want to start selecting a time range, or the position where audio is pasted from the clipboard.
There are a number of ways of moving the cursor:
To move the cursor to the start of the tracks (time zero), press HOME.
To move the cursor to the end of the audio, press END.
You can move backward or forward by either a short or long period, as long as the focus is in the Track table. To move backward or forward by a short period, press COMMA or PERIOD respectively. To move backward or forward by a long period, press SHIFT + COMMA or SHIFT + PERIOD respectively. These short and long periods share the same values as the short and long periods used for seeking/jumping during playback, which was described in the Playback section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#playback>. The size of both the short and long periods can be set in the Preferences dialog, as described in the Seek times section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#seek-times>.
The [ key during playback. If during playback you press [ and then SPACEBAR to stop, the cursor is moved to the point in the audio where you pressed the [ key. In practice, the following method is more flexible:
1. During playback, press P to pause when you reach the position where you want to move to cursor to.
2. If you’re unhappy with this position, unpause and using the Seeking/Jumping keys have another attempt to pause in the right place.
3. Press [ to mark the new cursor position.
4. Press SPACEBAR to stop.
The Selection Start spinbox on the Selection bar <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#selection-bar>. Note that when you do this you should first set the End/Length radio buttons to Length, so that the second spinbox gives the Selection Length rather than Selection End. (If it’s set to End, then if you decrement the cursor position the Selection End spinbox remains unchanged and you inadvertently select a time range.)
LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys. If the focus is in the Track table, then pressing the LEFT or RIGHT ARROW keys moves the cursor to the left or right by a small amount respectively. However, without the visual feedback of seeing the cursor in the waveforms of the tracks, this method is of limited use.
Selecting audio
In the case of an audio editor which can only edit a single audio track, then selecting audio simply consists of specifying the start and end times of the audio which you want to select, that is, a time range. For example you might want to select the audio between the times 1 minute 2 seconds and 5 minutes 23 seconds.
However, Audacity is a multi-track editor. If the project consists of a number of tracks, then you may want to select the audio on only some of the tracks for a given time range. So in Audacity, as well as having to select a time range, you also have to specify which tracks are selected. If you’ve selected some audio, tried to edit it, and nothing’s happened, it may well be because none of the tracks are selected. The selection of tracks was described in the track selection <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#track-selection> section above, and selecting a time range is described in the next section.
A quick way of selecting all of the audio in the project is to use the shortcut CTRL + A: this selects all the tracks, and selects a time range which includes all the audio.
Selecting a time range
The general way of selecting a time range consists of two steps:
1. Move the cursor to where you want to start the selection, as described in the Moving the cursor section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#moving-cursor> above.
2. Set the end of the selection.
There are a number of ways of setting the end of the selection:
To set the end of the selection at the end of the audio, press SHIFT + END.
To set the end of the selection at the start of the tracks (time zero), press SHIFT + HOME. Note that the spinboxes in the Selection bar always give the start and end of the selection in chronological order. So in this case the start of the selection will be 00:00:00.
The ] key during playback. If during playback you press ] and then SPACEBAR to stop, the end of the selection is set at the point in the audio where you pressed the ] key. In practice, the following method is more flexible:
1. During playback, press P to pause when you reach the position which you want to be the end of the selection.
2. If you’re unhappy with this position, unpause and using the Seeking/Jumping keys have another attempt to pause in the right place.
3. Press ] to mark the position for the end of the selection.
4. Press SPACEBAR to stop.
Using the spinboxes on the Selection bar:
? If you want to set the end of the selection after the cursor, set the End/Length radio button as desired, and increment the End/Length Selection spinbox.
? If you want to set the end of the selection before the cursor, set the End/Length radio button to End, and decrement the Start Selection spinbox.
If the focus is in the Track table, you can press SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW a number of times to select the time before or after the cursor respectively. However, this is not a particularly useful method without the visual feedback of seeing the waveform and the selected time range.
Adjusting a selected time range
There are a number of ways of making small adjustments to a selected time range:
Find zero crossings. If you choose Find Zero Crossings on the Edit menu, then Audacity adjusts slightly both the start and end of the selection so that they occur when the amplitude of the audio is zero. This can reduce the audible clicks which can be created when cutting and pasting pieces of audio.
Using the Start and End/Length Selection spinboxes on the Selection bar.
If you press SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW this extends the selection by a small amount on either the left or right hand end of the selection respectively. If you press CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW this contracts the selection by a small amount on either the left or right hand end of the selection respectively.
Deselecting a selected time range
If you press any of the keys which move the cursor (HOME, END, LEFT and RIGHT ARROWS), then any selected time range is deselected. After you have pressed the LEFT or RIGHT ARROW keys, then the cursor position is at the start or end of the selection which has just been deselected.
Basic editing
Undo and redo
To undo press CTRL + Z, and to redo press CTRL + Y.
Deleting audio
To delete the selected audio, press the DELETE key.
If you want a preview of the audio after deletion, press C which plays back from a short time before the selected audio to a short time after the selected audio, but omitting the selected audio. The length of the times of playback before and after the selection can be set in the Cut Preview section of the Audio I/O category in the Audacity Preferences dialog.
Cut, Copy, and Paste
To cut the selected audio, press CTRL + X. For a preview of the audio after the cut, press C.
To copy the selected audio, press CTRL + C.
To paste the audio on the clipboard, move the cursor to where you want to insert the audio, and press CTRL + V.
Replace with silence
To replace the selected audio with the same length of silence, choose Silence from the Edit menu, or press CTRL + L.
Insert silence
To insert a period of silence into the selected tracks:
1. Move the cursor to where you want to insert the silence.
2. Choose Silence from the Generate menu.
3. A Silence Generator dialog opens, and the focus is on a spinbox which allows you to specify the length of the silence. The spinbox is identical to the spinboxes used on the Selection bar, though the default format is just seconds. Set the time that you want, and then press ENTER to press the default OK button.
Note that all the commands on the Generate menu have the following behaviour. If no audio is selected, the generated audio is inserted. However is some audio is selected, then the selected audio is replaced with the generated audio.
Effects
Audacity provides a large number of effects which are available on the Effects menu. As a simple example, to either fade in or out over some selected audio, choose either Fade In or Fade Out from the Effects menu.
As of version 1.3.4, there is now a Select all audio in project, if none selected option. This option is on by default, and can be set in the Preferences dialog, as described in the Select all audio <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#select-all-audio> section of the Preferences section.
This option affects what happens if you try to apply an effect when no audio is selected, that is either no tracks are selected or no time range is selected. If this option is off, then the commands on the Effects menu are unavailable, so stopping you from applying an effect.
However, if this option is on, then even though no audio is selected the commands on the Effects menu are available, and the effect is applied to all the audio in the project. In addition, after the effect is applied, all the tracks are selected, and a time range which covers all the audio in the project is selected.
Whether you want this option on or off is a matter of personal preference.
Deleting tracks
To delete the focused track, press SHIFT + C.
To delete the selected track(s), choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu. This provides a quick way of deleting all the tracks if you first press CTRL + A to make sure that all the tracks are selected.
More advanced editing
Adding a new empty track
To add a new empty track, choose an option from the Add New sub-menu which is on the Tracks menu.
Import audio files
You can import one or more audio files, and these become new tracks in the existing project. To import standard audio file(s), open the File menu, and choose Audio from the Import sub-menu. A Select one or more audio files dialog opens, which has the same structure as a standard Open dialog. Select one or more files, and press ENTER to press the OK button.
Note that immediately after the import, the new tracks are selected, and all other tracks are unselected.
Duplicate
To duplicate the selected audio into new track(s), choose Duplicate on the Edit menu. The duplicated audio retains the same timings as the original selected audio, so in the new track(s) the audio data starts at the start of the selected time range.
Time shift one or more tracks
If you record tracks when you already have existing tracks, you may well need to time shift the audio data in the new tracks so that they synchronise with the existing tracks.
To time shift the audio data in one or more tracks:
1. Select one or more tracks that you want to time shift.
2. Go to the Move Cursor sub-menu on the Edit menu, and choose To track End. This moves the cursor to the end of the data in the selected tracks.
3. Move to the Selection Start spin-box, and if necessary, change the format to hh:mm:ss + milliseconds.
4. Depending on whether you want to time shift forward or backward, you now need to increment or decrement this counter. For example, to decrement the counter by 231 ms, use the following keystrokes: END, DOWN ARROW, LEFT ARROW, DOWN ARROW x 3, LEFT ARROW, DOWN ARROW x 2.
5. Go to the Align tracks sub-menu on the Tracks menu, and choose Align end with cursor. This moves the data in the selected so that is now ends at the modified cursor position.
Track menu
You can open the menu of a focused track by pressing either the APPLICATION KEY or SHIFT + M. The options on the menu include renaming the track.
Track gain
To change the gain of the focused track, press SHIFT + G. A Gain dialog opens which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the gain. The initial focus is on the edit box, but note that the current gain is not selected. The range of gain (db) is -36 to +36.
Track pan
To change the pan of the focused track, press SHIFT + P. A Pan dialog opens which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the pan. The initial focus is on the edit box, but note that the current pan is not selected. The range of pan is -1 to 1, corresponding to left and right.
Track Mute and Solo
If one or more tracks are set to Mute, then these tracks don’t contribute to playback. Also if you save audio in one of the standard formats, any muted tracks don’t contribute to the saved audio. To toggle the Mute setting of a focused track, press SHIFT + U.
If a track is set to Solo, then all other tracks are automatically set to mute, and only this track contributes to playback. To toggle the Solo setting of a focused track, press SHIFT + S.
A track cannot be set to both Mute and Solo. Consider the case where you have a number of tracks, and one of them has been set to Solo. If you now set a different track to Solo, then the original track automatically has its Solo setting removed, and is set to Mute.
If, for example, you have a large number of tracks, and only want to listen to two of them, then just set one of these to Solo, and then remove the Mute setting from the other. This is obviously much quicker than having to individually set all but the two tracks to Mute.
BUG WARNING: Jaws does not always correctly say the Solo or Mute state of a track. If you move to a track, then Jaws says the state correctly. For example if a track is set to Solo, then Jaws says solo after the track name. However, if you change the Mute or Solo state of a track, and then press INSERT + UP ARROW to read the current line, then Jaws reads the original state, rather than the updated state. Just move to an adjacent track and back again to hear the correct state.
Metadata editor
Metadata is data which describes other data, and the metadata for audio files consists of a number of tags, where each tag is made up of a tag name and a tag value. The Metadata editor in Audacity allows you both to edit the values of a number of preset tags, and also to create your own custom tags.
You can open the Metadata editor at any time by choosing Open Metadata Editor from the File menu. In addition, if you save audio in one of the standard formats, then if you haven’t already edited the metadata tags for the current project, then the Metadata editor automatically opens, as described in the Saving audio section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#saving-audio> above.
The Metadata editor contains the following controls:
A table panel which contains the names and values of the tags. The table has two columns: Tag Name, and Tag Value, and you can navigate the table using the arrow keys. The first 7 cells in the Tag Name column contain preset tag names such as Artist Name and Track Title. Note that when you first enter the dialog, the focus is the first cell in the table the Artist Name Tag Name. However, Jaws does not initially read this out. Just press DOWN ARROW, then UP ARROW, and it reads the cell correctly.
Add, Remove, and Clear buttons which are used for editing the table panel. Pressing the Clear button deletes all the values of the preset tags, and all names and values of any custom tags. The Add and Remove buttons are described in the creating and editing custom tags <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#creating-and-editing-custom-tags> section.
A genres section, consisting of Edit and Reset buttons which are used for editing the preset list of genres, as described in the Editing the list of genres section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#editing-the-list-of-genres> below.
A template section, which won’t be described in this guide.
Editing tag values
All the tag values except the genre tag value are edited using an edit box, but the genre tag value is edited with an edit-combo box, which allows you to quickly choose from a list of genres.
To edit any tag value, except the genre tag value, there are two options:
To overwrite the current value, simply type in some text, and then either press ENTER to confirm the edit, or ESC to cancel the edit.
To edit the existing value, press F2, which selects the existing text. To unselect the text before editing, press RIGHT ARROW or END which positions the current character immediately after the the existing text, or press HOME which makes the current character the first character in the text. To confirm the edit press ENTER, or to cancel the edit press ESC.
To edit the the genre tag value:
As in the case of other tag values, you can start the edit either by just starting to type, or by pressing F2. However, in the former case Audacity looses the first letter, and you have to type it again.
You can use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to select a genre from the preset list of genres. To quickly find a genre beginning with a given letter, type this letter, and then press DOWN ARROW to move through all the genres beginning with that letter.
To confirm the edit press ENTER, and to cancel the edit press ESC.
Creating and editing custom tags
You can use the rows in the table after the preset tags to create your own custom tags. In these rows you can edit both the tag name and the tag value.
For a new set of metadata, there’s one spare row after the preset tags. You can add and remove rows from the table using the Add and Remove buttons which follow the table panel. The Add button appends a row, and the Remove button removes the current custom row.
Editing the list of genres
To edit the list of genres which is available in the edit-combo box when you edit the genre value:
1. Press the Edit button in the Genres section.
2. An Edit Genres dialog opens. The first control is a multi-line edit box which contains the genres, one genre on each line. Note that when you first open the dialog, all the genres are selected, so unless you type a text navigation keystroke first, for example RIGHT ARROW, you’ll overwrite all the genres. To move to the top or bottom of the list press CTRL + HOME or CTRL + END respectively.
3. When you’ve finished editing, TAB to the OK button and press it.
To reset the list of genres to the default list of genres, press the Reset button in the Genres section. A Reset Genres message box opens, asking you whether you’re sure that you want to reset the list. Press ENTER to press the default OK button.
Recording
Whenever you start to record, a new audio track is added to the project, and the recorded audio is inserted into this new track.
The default name of a new track is Audio Track, but for some reason Jaws reads the name as Track n, where n is replaced by the row number of the track.
The new track is initially not selected.
The recorded audio is inserted starting at the cursor position. (If there are no tracks in the project, then the cursor position is normally 0 seconds.)
Set up
There are a number of settings which may need changing before you make a recording:
Input source. This is set by a combo box which is on the Mixer toolbar in the Toolbars, and is the next control after the input volume slider. The combo box contains options such as microphone.
Input volume slider. This is on the Mixer toolbar, which is in the Toolbars. Adjusting this is described in one of the following sections.
Number of channels. For recording speech, mono is fine. See the Number of channels for recording section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#number-channels-recording> in the Preferences section.
Sampling. For recording speech, a sampling rate of 22050 Hz, and sampling format of 16-bit seems to be considered ok. For music use 44100 Hz, and 32-bit float. Setting the defaults for these for a new project is described in the Default Sampling section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#default-sampling> of the Preferences section.
Recording controls
To start recording, press R.
To pause or unpause recording, press P.
To stop recording, press SPACEBAR.
Adjusting the input volume slider
There is an input level meter provided for helping to set up the input volume, but it isn’t accessible to Jaws users. However, it’s easy to set up the input volume by making some short test recordings and using the dialog box of the Amplify effect to measure the peak level of the recorded sound. Before giving a list of step by step instructions for making the test recordings, there’s a description of how the Amplify dialog can be used to measure the level of the recorded sound.
If you select some audio, and then open the Amplify dialog on the Effects menu, then the initial focus is on an Amplification edit box. The initial value in this edit box is the amount of amplification in decibels needed so that the recording uses the full dynamic range. This value indicates if you need to change the value of the input volume slider:
If the value is 0, then the recording is taking up the full range, or has been clipped to the full range. In this case you should adjust the input volume slider to a lower setting.
If the value is too high, then the recording is only taking up a small fraction of the dynamic range, and you’ll be getting an unnecessary amount of noise in the recording. My uneducated guess is that anything above about 6 db is too high, and you should try adjusting the input volume slider to a higher setting.
To make some short test recordings so that you can adjust the input volume slider, start with an empty project, and move to the input volume slider which is in the Toolbars. Then go round the following loop until you are happy with the setting:
1. You should be focussed on the input volume slider, and so you can adjust its value using the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys. If this is the first time round this loop, set the slider to your best guess. On subsequent times round the loop, adjust the slider on the basis of value in the Amplify dialog the previous time round the loop.
2. Press R to start the recording.
3. Make some representative noises for a short while, and then press SPACEBAR to stop.
4. Press CTRL + A to select all the audio.
5. Choose Amplify from the Effects menu.
6. The Amplify dialog opens, and the initial focus is on the Amplification edit box. On the basis of this value, decide if you need to repeat this loop with a different setting of the input volume slider as discussed above.
7. Press ESC to close the Amplify dialog box.
8. Choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu to delete the test track.
Preferences
The Audacity Preferences dialog allows you to adjust many of the settings in Audacity. After a brief description of the dialog box, the following sections describe some of the more common settings.
Audacity Preferences dialog box
To open this dialog box, choose Preferences on the Edit menu.
On the left hand side of the dialog is a list of categories. To the right of this list are a set of options which correspond to the category which is selected in the list of categories. The dialog’s default button is the OK button.
Seek times
Whilst playing, you can jump (seek) forward or backward by either a short or long period. To set the values of the short and long periods:
1. In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Audio I/O category.
2. Tab to the Seek Time Short period and Long period edit boxes, and enter the desired values in seconds.
Select all audio
The Select all audio option is described in the Effects section <http://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-1.3.4-Guide.html#effects> of the Basic editing section above. To set this option either on or off:
1. In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Interface category.
2. In the Behaviors section, set the Select all audio in project, if none selected checkbox to be either checked or unchecked.
MP3 Export
Due to patent issues, the Audacity installation does not include an MP3 encoder. There are several patents covering MP3 encoding, and these are owned by a number of different companies. Up until very recently, the only company that has asked for royalties has been Thomson, and they are quite happy for people to use the free LAME MP3 encoder for private, non-commercial use. However, other companies are now fighting court battles over MP3 patents, and it remains to be seen how they view the private use of the LAME MP3 encoder.
To install the free LAME MP3 encoder:
1. Download a copy of the LAME encoder. This is available from a number of websites, for example the MP3 page of the Rarewares website, whose address is rarewares.org/mp3.html <http://rarewares.org/mp3.html>. A direct link to the zip file which you need to download is: lame3.97.zip <http://rarewares.org/dancer/dancer.php?f=109>.
2. The only file which you need from this zip file is lame_enc.dll. Note that a zip file is treated as a folder in Windows Explorer. Copy the file lame_enc.dll to another location on the disk: for example, create a LAME folder in either My Documents or C:\Program Files, and copy lame_enc.dll to that folder.
You now need to tell Audacity the location of the file lame_enc.dll, and this is described in the next section.
Location of LAME MP3 encoder library
To tell Audacity where to find the LAME MP3 encoder library:
1. In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Audio Files category.
2. TAB to the MP3 Export Location: Find Library button, and press it.
3. A Locate Lame dialog opens. TAB to the Browse button and press it.
4. A Where is lame_enc.dll? dialog opens which has the structure of a standard Open dialog. Navigate to the file, select it, and press ENTER.
5. You are returned to the Locate Lame dialog. TAB to the OK button and press it.
6. You are returned to the Audacity Preferences dialog. Note that if you now want to press the default OK button, you have to first TAB to move away from the Find Library button, and then then press ENTER to press the default OK button.
Number of channels for recording
To set the number of channels for recording:
1. In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Audio I/O category.
2. TAB to the Recording: Channels combo box, and select either 1 (mono), or 2 (stereo). Mono is fine for speech recordings, and reduces file sizes.
Default sampling
To set the default sampling rate and format for a new project:
1. In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Quality category.
2. TAB to the Sampling: Default Sample Rate combo box. For music, set the rate to 44100 Hz, but for speech 22050 Hz is fine and reduces file sizes.
3. TAB to the next control which is the Sampling: Default Sample Format combo box. Audacity recommend that you leave this on 32-bit float, but for speech 16-bit is fine.
Keyboard shortcuts
You can change the keyboard shortcut for any of the commands in Audacity. To do this, first select the Keyboard category in the Audacity Preferences dialog.
To change a shortcut:
1. TAB to the list of Key Bindings, which is a list of the commands and their corresponding shortcuts. To navigate this list you can use HOME, END, the UP and DOWN ARROW keys, and the first letter of the command.
2. Select the command whose shortcut you want to change.
3. Then either:
? To set a new shortcut: TAB to the edit box, and type the new shortcut; then TAB to the Set button and press it.
? To remove the shortcut: TAB to the Clear button and press it.
To reset all the shortcuts to their default values, TAB to the Defaults button and press it.
Keystrokes
General
Command Keystrokes
Open audio file CTRL + O
New project CTRL + N
Save project CTRL + S
Preferences dialog CTRL + P
Cycle forward through Toolbars, Track table, and Selection bar CTRL + F6
Cycle backward through Toolbars, Track table, and Selection bar CTRL + SHIFT + F6
Playback
Command Keystrokes
Start/Stop SPACEBAR
Pause/unpause P
Seek backward short period during playback LEFT ARROW
Seek forward short period during playback RIGHT ARROW
Seek backward long period during playback SHIFT + LEFT ARROW
Seek forward long period during playback SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW
Play cut/delete preview C
Play looped LTrack table
Command Keystrokes
Move to previous track UP ARROW
Move to next track DOWN ARROW
Toggle selection of focused track ENTER
Select all the tracks (and all the audio) CTRL + A
Open menu of focused track APPLICATION KEY or SHIFT + M
Close (Delete) focused track SHIFT + C
Audio track
Command Keystrokes
Change gain of focused track SHIFT + G
Change pan of focused track SHIFT + P
Mute/Unmute focused track SHIFT + U
Solo/Unsolo focused track SHIFT + S
Moving the cursor
Command Keystrokes
Skip to start of tracks (time zero) HOME
Skip to end of audio END
New cursor position at playback position [
Move backward short period COMMA
Move forward short period PERIOD
Move backward long period SHIFT + COMMA
Move forward long period SHIFT + PERIOD
Cursor left by a very small amount LEFT ARROW
Cursor right by a very small amount RIGHT ARROW
Selecting a time range
Command Keystrokes
Select time range which includes all the audio, and select all tracks CTRL + A
Selection end at start of tracks (time zero) SHIFT + HOME
Selection end at end of audio SHIFT + END
Selection start at playback position [
Selection end at playback position ]
Extend left hand end of selection by a small amount SHIFT + LEFT ARROW
Extend right hand end of selection by a small amount SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW
Contract left hand end of selection by a small amount CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW
Contract right hand end of selection by a small amount CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW
Editing
Command Keystrokes
Undo CTRL + Z
Redo CTRL + Y
Delete selected audio DELETE
Cut selected audio CTRL + X
Copy selected audio CTRL + C
Paste CTRL + V
Replace selected audio with silence CTRL + L
Close (Delete) focused track SHIFT + C
Recording
Command Keystrokes
Record R
Pause/unpause P
Stop SPACEBAR