Navigation Tips

Contents

 * 1) Navigation
 * 2) Finding the audio you want to edit
 * 3) Marking edit regions or points

Navigation


Changing playback position
Audacity does not currently have a drag bar like most media players with which you can drag the audio position as it is playing. There is a however a button to left of the green play button which skips to the start of the project, and a  button to right of the stop button which skips to the end of the project. You can also skip to to the start of the track with the key on your keyboard and to the end of it with the  key.

Audacity always plays from where the cursor position is, or where a selected area is, when you press or use the green Play button. Hit the yellow Stop button or again to stop playback. Hitting Play or a further time resumes playback from the original cursor position or the start of the original selection.

You can move the cursor position backwards or forwards anywhere on the visible screen by:
 * moving the cursor with the arrow or  arrow keys on your keyboard
 * (quicker) by clicking in the track at the desired point with your mouse.

To start playback from the new point, press once. If you are already playing the track at another position, press twice and playback will resume from your newly chosen cursor position.

Zooming
To move to different positions in the track with the mouse, it is easier if you are fully zoomed out with the command, or the "Fit Project in Window" button on the extreme right of Edit Toolbar.

If the track is zoomed in, you can drag the horizontal scroll bar near the bottom of the screen to find a new position to play from, but you cannot do this while the track is playing, unless you go to the Tracks section of Preferences and uncheck "Update display while playing". If that feature is unchecked, once the green playback cursor moves past the right edge of the window, you will always need to drag the horizontal scrollbar in order to see the current playback position, or fit the whole Project in the window so you can see the whole track again without scrolling.

Go to Selection Start/End
(shortcut ) and (shortcut ) let you move quickly to the start or end of your currently selected audio, centered on the screen, without changing the zoom level. These commands are useful if you are zoomed far in at one edge of the selection and then wish to view the other edge which may be currently off screen, or if you have lost sight of the selection entirely by scrolling too far.

Using either command after zooming in or out provides a keyboard method to zoom in or out on a selection edge. This is otherwise possible only by CONTROL and mouse wheel scroll while the mouse pointer is positioned at either selection edge.

Navigating multiple tracks
If you have multiple tracks on screen you can fit them on screen without the need to scroll up and down by dragging the bottom edge of each track upwards at any point along the waveform. Or you can use the command to fit all the tracks in the screen.

You can move tracks up and down by clicking on the Track Control Panel with the mouse and dragging up or down. Alternatively, click the downward pointing arrow at the top of the Track Dropdown Menu and choose "Move Track Up" or "Move Track Down".

Audacity can manipulate tracks and selected areas entirely with the keyboard. Use the or  key on the keyboard to give focus to a track, as shown by the colored border around the track. Then press to select or deselect the track.

There is an additional "roll-up" button (the upward pointing arrow) at the base of each Track Control Panel:
 * [[Image:Rolldown.png|link=]]

If you click this, the track will be rolled up so that only the name of the track is visible in the Track Control Panel, so allowing many tracks to be fitted on screen without scrolling:
 * [[Image:Rollup.png|link=]]

To roll-down the track again, click the downward pointing arrow.

Also there is an option on the Tracks tab of Preferences: "Automatically fit tracks vertically zoomed". Checking this will automatically fit all tracks to the vertical screen height as they are added or removed.

Finding the audio you want to edit

 * Seek function during playback: Seek by pre-determined amounts of time during playback by using the arrow keys of your keyboard. The default commands are:
 * Seek left (short period) during playback -
 * Seek right (short period) during playback -
 * Seek left (long period) during playback -
 * Seek right (long period) during playback -.

The length of the seek period can be set on the Playback tab of Preferences. The shortcuts used for the seek commands can be changed on the Keyboard tab of Preferences.


 * "Play/Stop and Set Cursor" shortcut : This acts like Space except that when stopping playback, the cursor is set to the place where it stopped, so resumes from there. If you wanted that to be normal behavior, you could go to the Keyboard tab of Preferences and change the shortcuts for "Play", "Stop" and "Play/Stop" to something other than Space, then change "Play/Stop and Set Cursor" from SHIFT + A to Space.


 * Quick-Play: Another way to change the playback position is to click on the Timeline above the waveform. Playback will start from that point at once. Or click on the Timeline and drag a region (shown by arrowheads with a line connecting them). Release the mouse to play the region once. Neither an already selected region or the cursor is affected by Quick-Play.


 * Selection Toolbar:
 * [[Image:Selbar with new snap to.png|link=]]

 You can move the cursor, or define a selection region, by entering time position values in a "Selection Toolbar" at the bottom of the screen. Values may be typed in, or incremented with the up and down arrow keys of the keyboard. 


 * "Cut Preview" shortcut: Press to hear the audio just before and after a selection region so as to preview how it would sound if you cut that region out. You can change the length of the audio preview before and after the cut on the Playback tab of Audacity Preferences.

If you like the selection region you heard, you can then use with the appropriate  or  key to contract the selection to the area you played with the B shortcut. If you need to expand the selection before using, you can use or .
 * "Play To Selection" shortcut: Press to listen to part of the selection region, or to the audio before or after the selection. This helps you ensure the selection is exactly where you want it.
 * Move the mouse pointer somewhere inside the left half of the selection, and this shortcut will play from the start of the selection to the pointer. Move the pointer somewhere inside the right half of the selection, and this shortcut will play from the pointer to the end of the selection.
 * Move the pointer to left of the selection and this shortcut will play from the pointer to the start of the selection. Move the pointer after the end of the selection and this shortcut will play from the end of the selection to the pointer.

 This is a special playback button with attached speed slider
 * Transcription Toolbar:


 * [[Image:transtool.jpg|link=]]

which allows you to play back at faster or slower speeds (affecting both tempo and pitch). If this is not visible, enable it at .

Creating and modifying selections
To create a selected area in the track, click in the track and drag to left or right with your mouse, or with the left or right arrow keys. When you press Space once, the whole of the selected area will start to play. You can similarly create a selected area in the track whilst already playing the track, in which case you press Space twice to move from the current playback position to playing the selected area.

Another way to create a selected area in the track is to click in the track where you want to start your selection and hold SHIFT while clicking in the track at the point where you want to end your selection. Again, this also works while playing a track, so the selection region is drawn from the point where playback started to the point where you shift-clicked.

You can adjust the edges of the selection region with your mouse (hover over an edge then drag when the mouse pointer changes to a hand). Alternatively, adjust the selection edges with the left and right arrow keys. Holding down while using  or  will expand the left or right selection edge respectively. Holding down while using  or  will contract the right or left selection edge respectively.

You can also mark regions during playback with the  (Select Left at Playback Position) and   (Select Right at Playback Position) shortcuts. To use these, start playing then use  to move the cursor to the current playback position. When you hear the end of the audio you want to mark as a region, use  to draw a region from the cursor to the current playback position. You could then stop and place a label at the region with (see below).

Selected regions can be saved and recalled. One selected area at a time can be saved with the command and recalled at any time with.

Labels
Multiple selected regions and cursor points can also be marked with labels using the command. Labels can be helpful as reference points for editing. The region or point can be recalled at any time by clicking in the label. The labels appear in a new Label Track underneath the audio track.

You can also add a label at the current playback position while the track is playing, or at the current recording position while recording. To do this, click. It can also be useful to drag out and a label a region while the track is playing or recording. To label that region, use as you would if the track was stopped.

Once you have clicked in a label to open it, you can use to navigate to the next label and hold  while pressing  to navigate back to the previous label.

If you want to label while still playing, use then  after typing the label to close the label and return focus to the track. You can now use  and   as above to mark another region between desired points.

If you miss something you wanted to mark, you can't currently use seek to jump the playback position behind the cursor, but as always you can click in the track with the key depressed to restart playback anywhere, or simply click in the Timeline. If you click in the Timeline to left of the cursor, the shortcut will draw a region from the playback cursor forwards to the cursor, which may not always be what you want. When the playback cursor is to left of the cursor, you can move the cursor to a desired point during playback and draw a region from there to the current playback position using  for both actions.

Clips
The  command (shortcut ) splits the audio into different clips at the cursor or selection region, marking the split points with a black vertical line in the waveform. You can use these lines to quickly find or cut regions. A quick workflow to find and cut regions using split lines works like this:
 * 1) Zoom in as far as you like and play
 * 2) When you hear the starting point of the audio you want to delete,  to stop playback at that point, then
 * 3) Press Play to resume from where you stopped, and when you reach the end of the intended cut,  then  again
 * 4) Double-click to left of the split line you just placed to select the region between the two split lines
 * 5) Adjust the edges of the region as needed using the mouse (or use  or  to expand the region or  or  to contract it).

Split lines disappear when you click on them to merge clips together, but you can use current Audacity's Cut Lines feature to place a vertical line at which audio was cut out. Click on the line at any time to restore the cut audio. Cut Lines can be enabled on the Tracks tab of Preferences.