2014-10-11 23:36:47 (edited by Orin 2014-10-12 00:18:35)

Hi all,
So, I've got a bunch of sound effects now, but I'm trying to make footstep sounds for games where it's just a single step. I haven't really touched sound editing in a while, the last time was with Goldwave and was the basics, and I've forgotten a lot of them.
I'm trying to use Audacity, and the idea is to cut a single step out of the walking sound so that when the player moves one step, one step is all they'll hear. I made my selection, however Audacity does not seem to let me make a new track from selection so that I can copy my selection into the new track and export it and that'll be that sound.

What audio editors do you recommend for doing this? I know pretty much every audio editor out there can do what I want, but if there's a more efficient way of doing this that may possibly make my time easier so I can begin coding, which will obviously take the longest apart from design, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'd like this game out by Halloween, but if I can't do that it'll be done when it's done. It more than likely won't be out by that time.

Thanks.
Edit: Well, first try was not a success. Everything seemed good at selection when I played it back, but when I exported it the audio file appears blank. Hmph.

2014-10-12 01:52:41

The technique for this is to select, copy, make the new track, and paste.
Alternatively, file->export selection will let you save it directly.
The following key sequence should destructively keep only what you have selected at the time of execution.  The action can be undone, but only until Audacity is next closed and reopened: ctrl+c, ctrl+a, delete, ctrl+v.  I believe this is unsafe for multi-track files.
And it also looks like edit->duplicate may do what you want.

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2014-10-12 03:08:34

Hi Orin.
Well in goldwave you can open a file put brackets around the one footstep you want and press control c to copy the spacific step than open the file menu select new file than press control v to paste the step you want. Play it back see if it copied correctly then save as whatever format you want. Sorry I never got the hang of audacity to strange but goldwave makes this kind of stuff easy. Good luck.

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2014-10-12 05:51:40

Audacity and Goldwave are very, very different.  Audacity is generally more powerful, but Goldwave is probably much simpler.
I have upwards of 100 effects, filters, and similar in my effects menu via plugins, a couple different nonstandard generators, etc. in Audacity.  I can do things with multiple files together, chop things up, and all sorts of crazy stuff.  Audacity is a multi-track editor and goldwave is a single-track editor; multi-track editors typically do everything single-track editors can but give a lot of additional power.  In Audacity's case, if you know Nyquist (Lisp dialect), you can do just about anything you want to your audio.
Short of purchasing one of the big sound editors--soundforge comes to mind--Audacity is probably your best long-term bet.  But goldwave may be able to do what you want more simply for the time being.  The key is knowing when Goldwave is going to get in the way.

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2014-10-12 07:57:14

Thanks. I'll probably end up getting Goldwave again.

2014-10-13 02:46:12

I will say this for goldwave, the preview function is a godsend to me because I have 250000 + sound files. But Audacity is far more powerful than any other single track  editor I've used.

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