How to edit an audio clip

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 1:01 am

I can't seem to find this ...... let's say I've recorded a live guitar track but I screwed up. I waited a bit and (while still recording) I played it correctly. Now I want to cut out the bad portion and merge the two good parts.

I can't see how to edit a clip in Session View. Is it possible?

theque · Post by **theque** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 3:05 am

you can drag it to arrange, edit it and drag it back

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:51 am

This doesn't change the original recording. It only edits a clip file. My goal is to conserve disk space by discarding large areas of recording time that aren't used. When you edit a clip, you only change a file of pointers to the AIF recording, not the recorded file itself. There doesn't seem to be any way to edit (trim) the recorded AIF file, where the wasted space is.

defmut · Post by **defmut** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:20 am

get a wave editor. Audacity is free.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:12 am

I have a wave editor. I use Amadeus. But this seems goofy to me, to have to go outside of Live to edit a file in the Live project. And God only knows what will become of the clip files if the AIF they refer to is edited without their knowledge.

I just thought there ought to be a way within Live to trim the original recording. I guess there's not. But then you had better be careful not to leave the record function going for long before or after the "take" that you want.

xxxmorphicxxx · Post by **xxxmorphicxxx** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:29 am

An outside wav editor? That's not necessary...

Drag the guitar part to arrangement view. You need to zoom in and cut, copy, merge, mangle the part together until you are happy with the way it sounds.

Then highlight the "new" clip in its entirety, right click on it and select consolidate. (or ctrl-j). Consolidate makes one solid clip out of multiple merged clips.

Then next time you close your set and it asks you if you want to discard unused clips, you can say yes and the old original clip will be trashed and the new clip will be saved.

Make sense?

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:55 am

It makes sense, and I'm no expert. So I hesitate to tell you that you're wrong, but I think that you are.

It looks to me as though Live is saving clip files that are are small indexes into the original recording, and it never changes the originally recorded file. If you look into a project to see the files that are stored, you'll see that the clip files (type alc) are quite small ... 20 or 30k files. But the original recording is an "aif" file and it's many megabytes. When you edit a clip, it's the small alc file that gets changed. The originally recorded aif file does not change or get smaller.

This has some good aspects. It allows non-destructive editing. But there are times when you might want to consolidate and discard unneeded megabytes. I don't see how you can within Live.

xxxmorphicxxx · Post by **xxxmorphicxxx** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:09 am

Do you have access to the manual, or the pdf of it? Look on page 82.

"When operating on audio clips, Consolidate actually creates a new sample for every track
in the selection...

The new samples can be found in the current Set’s Project folder, under Samples/Processed/
Consolidate. Until the Set is saved, they remain at the location specifed by the Temporary
Folder."

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:49 am

Okay, thanks for pointing that out. I'm not sure it helps yet. I can see that Consolodate creates a new aif file in the edited condition. It doesn't help save disk space though, it doubles the space used by creating a new file without discarding the old one. Really, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass ... it just happens by itself ....

I suppose you could keep track of this stuff and delete the original file if you were sure no other clips referred to it. It's a little tricky. The aif file doesn't have a name that identifies it easily, and Ableton doesn't say you can safely delete these files (as far as I can see).

husker · Post by **husker** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:57 am

Try the "Crop" right-click option )new v6) - that's what you need to get rid of bad bits and save disk space. Consolidate is quite a different thing.

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:16 am

Very good! That seems like just the ticket!

But it only makes the Live set BIGGER still. It adds new files as "cropped" but doesn't remove the original recording.

husker · Post by **husker** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:46 am

oops, yes you are right...in fact everytime you crop it makes another copy, full size (not cropped at all in reality, just a virtual crop). I don't understand...this is crazy

dango · Post by **dango** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:50 am

BRING BACK THE EDIT BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

still have to use an external editor to use it but still,

BRING BACK THE EDIT BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

xxxmorphicxxx · Post by **xxxmorphicxxx** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 6:00 am

That's why I was recommending consolidate... because once you have consolidated the track, there should be no more instances of the original still in the set. Therefore, when you CLOSE the set... it will ask you if you want to delete unused files. Select yes and the old, original one will be deleted.

I'm not sure if this would work for crop, as I haven't even used this feature yet, but I'm glad to know it's there.

Just to reiterate: edit the clip the way you want, consolidate it, close the set and select delete unused tracks. reopen the set.

BeatFeet · Post by **BeatFeet** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 6:13 am

I deleted half a track. Consolidated. Closed the set. Saved the changes. The size of the set (Get Info on the Mac) got bigger.