Editing Audio

To edit your audio, you'll need to go into the folder where you're storing your audio files, and then double-click the .aup file to open your narration in Audacity for editing. After you have your audio recorded or imported in Audacity, you can enhance it by editing out mistakes, shortening long silences, even chopping it into several sections to make multiple shorter episodes rather than one long one. With this audio file, I’d like to get rid of this long silence at the beginning of the file. In time you’ll learn how to “read” the waveforms, which can really speed up your editing process. Just like you would remove a section from a text document, click the I-beam tool, select the area you want to remove, and then press the Delete key. Now here’s where I made a mistake. I knew that I made the mistake while I was recording, so I simply paused, and started the sentence again, because I knew that I could edit it out. Here’s the mistake, and then here’s the retake. Just select the mistake and then press the Delete key. Leave the "natural" pauses between sentences and words -- so be careful when you edit. Don't go overboard. When you have a selection, you can press the Space bar to hear just the audio you've got selected. And, I recommend that you Save often. You just don't want to loose any work that you've put some time into. After you've finished editing, listen through your audio so you know that you haven't accidentally edited out too much and that it still makes sense. I like to listen back to the edited audio while reading my printed out scripts.