Remove space between clips

[JC3]

Your idea

Please add a "remove space between clips" menu item that removes gaps between clips.

Dragging the clips together is a no-go if there's more than a handful of them. The go-to workaround of using "Truncate Silence" doesn't actually work if your clips contain silence, or they contain sound < -100dB (an unnecessary lower limit in the Truncate Silence dialog), or they are closer than 0.1 seconds (another unnecessary lower limit in the Truncate Silence dialog). Plus it's slow since it scans the audio, which is not necessary for this use since Audacity already knows where clip boundaries are.

This is a very basic feature.

Generally speaking, Audacity fails in use cases that involve labelling areas to keep rather than labelling areas to cut during editing (there is for example "Split Delete" but no direct "Split Trim" or whatever you'd call it).

Problem to be solved

Removing gaps between clips.

Prior art

Literally every application (audio or not) that works with clips of anything has the ability to remove the space between them.

Additional context

No response

[JC3]

Related: #3933

[JC3]

Related: #3934

[SteveDaulton]

Please add a "remove space between clips" menu item that removes gaps between clips.

That's been available for years. Use "Truncate Silence" (set to "Truncate" rather than "Compress"). See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/truncate_silence.html

Note that in Audacity 3.1.0 it is necessary to enable:
"Preferences > Track Behaviors -> Editing a clip can move other clips".

[JC3]

@SteveDaulton wrote:

That's been available for years. Use "Truncate Silence" (set to "Truncate" rather than "Compress"). See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/truncate_silence.html

As I stated already:

The go-to workaround of using "Truncate Silence" doesn't actually work if your clips contain silence, or they contain sound < -100dB (an unnecessary lower limit in the Truncate Silence dialog), or they are closer than 0.1 seconds (another unnecessary lower limit in the Truncate Silence dialog). Plus it's slow since it scans the audio, which is not necessary for this use since Audacity already knows where clip boundaries are.

[JohnColket]

FYI: Forum user el_gallo also requested this feature here: https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?p=464263#p464263

[tondeaf]

This isn't about removing silence FROM clips, it's about removing EMPTY SPACE BETWEEN clips.

[djhend]

I could really use this feature at the moment. I've received the 14x32 track wav files from a concert recording and lining them all up is proving very time consuming. Any magic ideas? Running version 3.3.2 Build from May 5, 2023