This should be a really simple thing, but I can't do it

Report · Aug 10, 2017

Every time I google this, I must be using the wrong terminology, because I can't find the answers, so I will explain this in long form here:

I'm working on a project with a team member that's using Audacity, but I'm using Audition. He's doing the foley, while I'm doing dialogue and music.

To make life easier for me, he works in multiple tracks so that two sound effects aren't ever fused together. That way, I can move them separately, adjust the volume separately, and so on. However, to get this many tracks, there is a lot of complete silence in between. When I say "silence", I don't mean "microphone is recording but nothing is happening" silence (as my google searching seems to keep defining the word) but total zeros in the wav form silence. No sound at all. (Please, someone tell me the correct professional term for that. Complete silence? Utter silence? Absolute silence? Air break? Dead air? Silence that is actually silent? Negative infinity decibels? No idea.)

So, what I should do, now that I've dragged and dropped the foley tracks into place, is get the blade tool and mark every point where the silence starts or stops. Then, manually click and delete every silent clip, so that the only clips which remain are clips with noise in them. From there I can adjust the timing, volume, and other properties of each individual clip without adjusting the track as a whole. I can also glance at a section of silence and know with absolute certainty that there is no sound in that section, because instead of being in a bright purple rectangle, it's the dark grey of there being absolutely no clip in the multitrack editor at all.

Doing this manually would take forever, and I might delete an actual sound by accident because I didn't zoom in far enough to see the subtle wave form.

What is the automated way of doing this?

Report · Aug 28, 2017

If you want to demonstrate to yourself what the issue is here, then generate 30 seconds of tone or noise, and put a series of marker ranges in it. Observe what happens to the start times of all of them when you remove the first half a second of the file... they're all timed from the start time reference - there is no absolute embedded reference at all, so all the start times shift. Even if you batched out all of the ranges as separate files, each file would start from zero time, so that won't help either. The only easy solution I can think of would be to arrange to have the offset time registered as the start time for each exported file - then they'd import at the correct times.

Report · Aug 28, 2017

SteveG(AudioMasters) wrote
The only easy solution I can think of would be to arrange to have the offset time registered as the start time for each exported file - then they'd import at the correct times.

Thanks Steve that was what I was trying to explain. You have managed much more succinctly.

Report · Aug 18, 2017

You might find the diagnostics tool “mark audio” to be helpful (in the waveform editor). You can set thresholds for what qualifies as “audio” vs “silence”. The tool can create markers—indicating the duration of the silence—that would likely get you close to what you’re looking for.

Report · Aug 18, 2017

griggsymedia wrote
You might find the diagnostics tool “mark audio” to be helpful (in the waveform editor). You can set thresholds for what qualifies as “audio” vs “silence”. The tool can create markers—indicating the duration of the silence—that would likely get you close to what you’re looking for.

So you didn't look at the screen grab just above your post, then?