The Dummy’s Guide To Adding An Audacity Sound Track

To A Pictures To EXE Slide Show.

By an Ex Audacity Dummy
There has been a lot of talk on the PTE forum about adding sound
manipulation to the programme above & beyond what there is already.

I’m in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” camp because I know how to use
Audacity. As the weather is rubbish at present and outdoor photography
difficult, I though I would spend a little time explaining how I use Audacity.

Assuming you already have your free copy of Audacity & the quirky download
Lame, which causes similar problems to the PTE key. I am still using Audacity
1.2, a beta version of 1.3 is available but you can’t mix the two, so these
instructions refer to 1.2. but are similar to 1.3.

When you open 1.2 this is what you see. Pic 1

If you haven’t seen an audio editor before this can seem a little daunting, but I
can assure you that if I can master it, you can.

The top information bar has the usual File Edit View, then it goes to Project
Generate Effect Analyse & Help.

The first step I take is to click Project, scroll down to import audio.
PTO
Pic 2.

I usually use MP3 files that have been ripped from a CD or downloaded from
any of the various download sites. I know Amazon MP3 works & I set my
audio ripping programme to rip to MP3, I have never had any trouble
importing from these sources.

Pic 3 My Audio Folder within my PTE Main Folder For Hairy Bikers.
So you’ve scrolled down to import audio, and I am assuming you have a
folder within your PTE folder storing your audio tracks? Find the first track you
want to use and click it. See pic 3.
This is a list of the music used in a recent project in a folder within the main
folder for the show which is called “Hairy Bikers”. My first track is a Bach
Organ fuege.

Pic 4 Audacity with first audio track imported.

When you have got this far you will probably want to hear the track? Click the
green arrow head under the word generate, make sure your speakers are on
and you should hear the music. To stop the music click the square stop
button, 3 buttons to the right of the green start arrow.

Next step, import a second track, mine happened to be “Born To Be Wild”.

Use the same proceedure as you used importing the first track.
PTO.
 Pic 5. This is what you see with two tracks imported.
Assuming you want to hear the second track? You will see one track is above
the other so clicking the green arrow will give an ‘orrible sound as both tracks
play together. To hear the second track only you have two options, 1 In the
box on the R/H end of the track you will see two buttons labelled Mute & Solo.
Clicking solo only allows that track to play, clicking mute silences that track. I
don’t think you should need an illustration of that, If you do you are even more
bewildered than I was when I started. Just in case you are, here they are.

Pic 6.
To ensure I don’t create more confusion than you can take in from what I’ve
written, I will stop at 2 tracks.

Now we start on the editing side, so open you PTE project, assuming your
slides are installed and provisional settings done IE, fades effects & times?
Switch to timeline view, then re-open your audacity project, so in effect you
have both PTE & Audacity running.
Now assuming you want the first track to run for 2 minutes, based on the
layout of your slides. Also assuming you want a smooth transition between
the first and second tracks.
First you need to expand the audacity timeline so you can position where you
want the next steps to take place. So go to the top info bar and click view,
scroll down to zoom normal, your page will now look like this.

Pic 7.
You will notice you can only see the first 13 seconds of the tracks, which will
now enable you to position your first action to within at least .5 of a second,
expanding the tracks even more will enable further accuracy, but for the
purpose of this exercise, .5 at 13 seconds will do.

Now grab the button at the bottom of the page next to the L/H arrowhead and
drag it right until you see 2 minutes in the top time line, position the 2min to
the R/H side of the screen.
Now click on the first track waveform at 1m 50 secs, drag to the right to the 2
minute mark on the Audacity timeline.

Your screen should now be as below.

 Pic 8.
The track has been blued out for 10 seconds. Now for the editing bit, click
Effect on the top info bar & scroll down to FADE OUT and click it.
If your screen looks as below, congratulations you’ve made your first edit, a
10 second fade out.

Pic 9.
For the purpose of this exercise, I’ve introduced an error. I start my shows
with a black slide, and for this particular show want the music start as soon as
the show starts. Audacity is very forgiving when you make an error and allows
you to use the EDIT UNDO facility you are probably familiar with in your photo
editing software. The error I’ve introduced is I’ve allowed the natural 1+
second silent lead in on my first track to remain. So assuming you want your
first fade out to remain at 1m 50s to 2m, you might as well use edit undo to
correct the error.

Pic 10.1+ Second Error

So use edit undo to get you back to what you see in Pic 7. Which takes out
your fade, but leaves you with the expanded view.

Now with the drag method used to introduce the fade, click the very beginning
next to the bold 0, then carefully drag right to where the sound begins, then
click delete. The silent lead will be removed, while you are at it do the same
on your second track. You have now removed what I am calling an error, but
in effect it’s just tidying up.

Now re-introduce your fade in using the method described. Now you’ve used
2 minutes of an 8 minute track and still have 6 minutes left which you may
want to finish your show with, in this exercise we do. So going back to Pic 9,
click the waveform at the R/H end of your fade, or dead on two minutes. Now
go back up to the top info bar and click GENERATE and scroll down to
SILENCE and click it. This will open the default silence window which as this
is the first time of use will be set at 30 seconds. From your PTE timeline you
will have determined the approximate length of your show, say 8 minutes for
this exercise, and you want the show to end with your first audio track, change
the default 30 seconds to 6m x 60s = 360 seconds this will put the remainder
of the first audio track towards the end of your shows length, ready for fine
tuning.

Pic 11. Default view of GENERATE SILENCE.

Now we are going to move our second track into a suitable position so we can
fade it in as the first track fades out. So back to the top info bar, below FILE
EDIT VIEW are 6 boxes, for this exercise we need the TIME SHIFT TOOL,
that is the double headed arrow. Click it. You will have also noticed the
Audacity view has reverted back to the condensed original version.

Click on your second track and drag it right until the start is within the 10
second fade area of the first track, you don’t need to be too accurate at this
stage.

Next click on view again on the info bar and scroll down and click ZOOM
NORMAL which again adjusts the view so you can accurately position your
second track.

As this is just an exercise, I will suggest the next stage only as an example,
fine tune it to suit your preference.

Still using the TIME SHIFT TOOL drag your second track to it’s final position,
say an overlap between the top and bottom track of 4 seconds.
To produce a smooth fade out and in, you will need to fade in the second
track again, say 4 seconds using the same method to fade out the first track.
To release the TIME SHIFT TOOL click the SELECTION TOOL the letter I
(eye) in the box of six tools.

PIC 12. Overlapping your fade out and fade in.

By now you may have a raging headache, or may be completely lost, or just
want a rest to carry on later?

To ensure you don’t lose what you have already, you need to follow these
steps.
A) Click FILE on the top info’ bar
B) Scroll down to SAVE PROJECT AS and click
C) This will hopefully bring up a box with your project in.
D) If it doesn’t, find your project folder, open it and save in there.
E) Make a cup of tea or a stiff scotch and get ready for the next stage.
Right, click the small audacity icon created when you saved the project, what
you should have now is a screen looking like this.

Pic 13. Re-opening existing file.

If however it opens in the stretched version, go up to the top info bar, click
view, scroll down to fit in window and you should now have a view similar to
the above but containing your own details, but with a space below the bottom
line to add extra tracks, I’ve just cropped the screen shot so it would take up
less space.
Now, as said previously, we are attempting to create an 8 minute sound track.
If you look at the time bar just above the top wave form we actually have
14.5m or thereabouts. We also said we want the show to finish with the end of
the first track, so we have to decide how much of the remaining two tracks we
want to retain. If you look at the remainder of the top track the wave form
diminishes just before 10 minutes, which is possibly a reasonable place to cut
out some of the remaining track as it is a natural lowering of the sound. We
are also making the assumption that you wish to retain all of track 2?

So to proceed now you need to click on the top track where the natural fade
is, and drag left to approximately the end of the second track.

Pic 14. Deleting unwanted track.

When you have your unwanted track highlighted, click delete, and you should
now have a screen as Pic 15.

Pic 16. Unwanted track removed stage 1.

You will note we still have a total track length 2 minutes over our 8 minutes.
From the time line we can see the top track remainder is about 4.5 minutes,
so we still need to remove 2.5 minutes to achieve our 8 minute finished
article. As the current view is a bit scrunched up, we need to expand it to
achieve an accurate cut point for the remainder of the excess. Instead of
using VIEW ZOOM NORMAL, go to VIEW ZOOM IN and click, this will
expand the view by about 20% at each click instead of the 500% in ZOOM
NORMAL. When you are comfortable with the view you have, two clicks of
ZOOM IN should make a manageable work screen.

Now it’s a case of don’t do as I do, do as I say. This is just to highlight another
useful Audacity feature.

Now from the screen above, we can deduce we have to lose approximately a
further 2 minutes to achieve our final 8 minute sound track. So from here the
interim and final passage meet, click and drag right for 2 minutes which is
from 5m 20s to 7m which leaves 20s to play around with.

PIC 17. Highlight Unwanted track final stage.

Now click delete and you should have the screen below.

PIC 18. ALMOST THERE.

Our track length total is around 8m 10 seconds. You will see both track two
and the beginning of the end of track 1 need to be faded, track two faded out
end of track 1 faded in. We are going to use the excess 10 seconds to
achieve this. You may need to zoom in one more click or so.

At this point I would suggest you listen to your two final sections to check how
they start & finish and trim off any silence attached to the track ends.

I’m now going to introduce a 5 second fade out at the end of the second track
and a 5 second fade in at the start of the end section of the top track, and trim
off the remaining excess to achieve the 8 minute final version. You may want
to adjust these fade times to suit the mood of your show.

PIC 19. Penultimate trim.

While at this point you may want to introduce a little more fade to the final 8
seconds?
Now, you may have noticed from pic 19 that the tracks have switched
position? I did this to bring track two directly under the timeline for accuracy. It
is worth while adding how this is done. There are two methods, with only two
tracks in play, click the drop down arrow in the r/h end box of the track you
want to move up or down.

PIC 20 Illustrating track position change.

Scroll down to MOVE TRACK UP and click. The tracks will now reverse
position to enable accurate positioning at the timeline.

When you are using multiple tracks, (my last show had 34, including music
sound effects & voice over) the quick way instead of using the MOVE TRACK
UP method, is to position the cursor here and click and drag the track to
where you want it.

To all intents and purposes, that completes the manipulation process. Play
your finished effort and ensure you are happy. You can make any changes,
either by the EDIT UNDO method if it something you’ve just done, or by going
into the track and adjusting.

If you have survived until now your track is ready to finalise. I usually, go to
file, save as and use a different name. Once I’ve done that and ensured the
re-named file is in the same folder as the rest of the sound files for the project
are in, I go to FILE. EXPORT AS MP3.
Again, ensure the exported MP3 file is going into the same folder as above,
Audacity has a habit of trying to export it elsewhere.

It will take a few minutes to export an 8 minute MP3 file. When the process is
started you should have a screen as below. However, this is where you may
have trouble if you haven’t installed LAME which is the KEY that allows
Audacity to produce MP3 files, read the official Audacity instructions
reproduced elsewhere on here.
 PIC 21. First screen when FILE SAVE AS is clicked

PIC 22. Screen when FILE SAVE AS MP3.

Your final screen should be as below.

PIC 23. Final Screen with manipulated tracks.

That more or less completes the process of constructing an 8 minute multi
track music sequence. How ever, not wanting to leave the final stage out, I will
confirm the process I use.

Open you PTE project screen-

PIC 24 PTE SCREEN

Next click the PROJECT OPTIONS BUTTON then click the MUSIC tab and
the ADD MUSIC button, find your saved MP3 file and click it and click the add
music button again. Your project is now complete.

This is obviously a long winded explanation to a process that actually takes

minutes once you are conversant and depending on the complexity.

There are also lots of other exciting things to explore & try in Audacity, those
of us who are conversant with it, would use it every time as PTE will never be
able to compete with all the features it can offer.

Once you grasp the basics, you will become an expert in no time at all, I have
only scratched the surface of the features in Audacity, so please instead of
inserting single or multiple tracks in PTE and wishing you could do this and
that, just give it a try.

If you have any queries, just raise them on the forum, or if you are too shy &
think you may get some stick on the open forum, PM me.
Yachtsman1. Ex Audacity Dummy.