Is it possible to compare two audio files and find similarities?

[sean_4459]

Hello, I have a multi-hour audio file that contains several commercial breaks. Each commercial break begins with a unique 3-second sound clip. Is there a way to use this distinctive sound to locate all other instances where the commercial break occurs? Are there any tools or methods that can help with this?

Thanks for any help.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I can only think of one possible way, and I don't know how well it would work... make a copy of your 3 second clip and invert it. Now if you mix-paste it to your file, it should cancel out (or at least reduce in volume) each occurance of it. I suspect that in practice though, it will cause other partial cancellations too, so you'd have to find all of the breaks, mark them, and then undo the process to get your clean audio back.

[sean_4459]

Hi,
Thanks for your help. To be honest, I didn’t quite understand what you meant, maybe because I’m not very familiar with Audacity.
Let me explain:
I have about 40 hours of audio files, and there are probably around 100 commercial breaks in them. I'm looking for a way to find these commercial breaks more quickly. I'm not sure if there's a way to do this.
As I mentioned before, at the beginning of each commercial break, there's a specific 3-second sound that's the same throughout the entire audio file.

[sean_4459]

Adobe Audition ofcourse, not Audacity

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

If you didn't understand what I meant, then perhaps you should try working your way through a few basic tutorials about audio processing, because this method would rely on you understanding what you can and can't do with it.

But as I said, I'm not at all sure how well this would work anyway.  Chances are that you would spend more time trying to implement a solution than you'd spend just manually deleting the breaks.