Need help splitting a recording

[William Lake]

I recently (finally) acquired a sound card that will let me record to my PC.
I have a lot of casette tapes that I want to put on my harddrive.
I downloaded Audacity and it works great...except...the recoding is one long file.
I would like to split this recording into individual songs.
Audacity has a "cut" button but it does not do anything.
Help please.

[Pete Nicholls]

It can be done in Audacity as I recall having done it before. While I don't remember specifically how to do it, I thought I would suggest mp3DirectCut as an alternative. In mp3DirectCut, you highlight the audio you want to save and then Save Selection from the File menu. I think it is quite similar in Audacity, but just don't remember the specifics.

Check it out here: http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html

[Jim Cohen]

I've used a program for years called PolderbitS that detects the spaces between songs and makes it a separate file automatically. It's not a free program but I've found it worth paying for.

[William Lake]

Thanks Jim. I downloaded their free trail (7 days). Have not installed it yet. It's late here. Tomorrow I'll give it a try but it looks good. $32 is not too expensive.

[Jim Cohen]

I'm glad that you got a free trial first, as I haven't had occasion to use that specific function in several years (I only used it when digitizing LPs). Good luck and please let us know how it goes for you.

[William Lake]

All is well with the programme, Jim. thank you. Took a few trys to get it right, but not a steep learning curve.
Much appreciated.

[Riley Hart]

In Audacity, the way i usually isolate certain portions of audio is by dragging thru and making selections, cutting or copying, and then pasting into a new blank file.

Whatever program u r using, do be careful that when you save ur work not to use mp3 format until u r completely thru with the editing process. If you export a piece of audio as mp3(a compressed format) u will lose the ability to work with a pristine copy and wind up with unacceptable results if it gets recompressed. Save the export as mp3 for ur final product.

The program mentioned earlier, mp3directcut is extremely useful to edit and split files that are already in mp3 format without losing generational quality. Find it to be invaluable.

[Peter den Hartogh]

CoolEdit has a facility called "SAVE SELECTION".

All you do is record the whole LP, then highlight (select) the part you want and save it with the correct name.

[Jerry Pack]

Polderbits is great software.

[Walter Killam]

You can use the Label function to mark the songs, and then Export Multiple to split the tracks out:

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Split ... ate_tracks

good luck!