When editing some audio in #Audacity, you of course need to delete bits and pieces all over the place. But is there a way to instead of deleting them just hide them, so that there still is no gap there, but that you can un-hide that part again at any time later – without having to undo everything you have done after deleting that part?
Like if the audio file was on a strip of paper, just folding that part of the paper underneath the rest, instead of cutting it out?
Thanks! #AskFedi
@forteller If you use the latest version, you can make cuts in the audio via ctrl+I and trim/untrim the edges near the top of each clip.
@LWinterberg Thanks, but Ctrl+l just mutes the area, so there's a gap there, and I don't understand the trim thing? Sorry
@forteller Ctrl+L mutes the area, Ctrl+I puts a split in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpA138b-J9s shows how it works
@LWinterberg Ah, yes, I see. Thank you, I guess that works. Just too bad that's a lot of work compared to just selecting and pressing delete. I wanted this, but just as easily as deleting: Select and hide, with no gap appearing that you need to spend more time closing. There's so many things I need to remove, so spending more time on each is not really an option for me. But thanks for the tip anyway! It's useful to know about.
@forteller There also is a feature you can enable in the preferences called "enable cut lines", which does pretty much what you'd want it to do. https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/preferences_settings_that_affect_edit_behavior.html#cut_lines
It's a sort of legacy feature though.
@LWinterberg Yes! That's perfect! Why would this extremely useful and logical feature be turned off by default? Thank you!
@forteller Very good question. A quick dig into the archive shows: It was an opt-in feature in 2004 when it was added (because it was buggy, and between then and 2.0 in 2010 there never was a release considered stable) and by the looks of it never was touched again after the feature was completed...
https://sourceforge.net/p/audacity/mailman/message/13982509/
I won't be advocating to enable it by default now though - it is a much more complex feature than it needs to be (supporting recursive cut lines!), and I'd much rather have some actual ripple editing for the new trimming.