I suppose some of you are way ahead of me on this, but here's what I
have recently learned to do with Window-Eyes and CoolEdit. It isn't a
method that is efficient enough to use in a recording studio under
tight deadlines, but it seems to work.
Cooledit, from Syntrilium Software, is a shareware audio editor and
effects processor for Win 3.1 and 95. I am using a registered
version, so its functions are not crippled as they are in the
demo. Cooledit has good keyboard menus and shortcuts for most of
its functions, but other than entering sample numbers to define a
viewing range, you need to use a mouse or simulated mouse keys to do
interactive editing of a waveform. What I'm describing applies to the
Windows 3.1 version of Cooledit and Window-Eyes 2.0 beta K, but I
expect it to be pretty general.
After you have a file opened for editing, you have play, pause, stop
and record buttons in the lower right, zoom buttons in the lower left,
a menu bar at the top, and a toolbar beneath the menu bar. Win-Eyes
can label some of the graphics on the toolbar, but not all of them.
When you use the W E function to move the mouse pointer by clips, the
mouse pointer jumps over the waveform most of the time. It is
helpful to define hotkeys for moving the mouse pointer up, down, left
and right, to turn "speak all" on and off, and to toggle the left
mouse button. While you are trying to do this, you may discover
that while the mouse pointer is in the toolbar area, the Alt key is
disabled. Even opening a pull-down menu inside the Window-Eyes
control panel will not work until you get your mouse pointer below
the toolbar.
To select a portion of a waveform, move your mouse pointer onto the
waveform (vertical position does not seem to matter for this
purpose). Your left-right or X position determines the time or
sample number. Use of the zoom functions determines whether the
whole waveform is on screen, and therefore how sharp your scissors
are. Turn on "speak all". Toggle your left mouse button (I think the
hotkey method is a whole lot easier than trying to hold the button
down). As you move your mouse pointer to the right, you will hear
announcements of your start and end points, both by time and by
sample number. At any time, hit the spacebar to play the highlighted
section of the waveform. When you have selected what you want,
toggle the left mouse button again. You can Cut or Copy this
section, apply some effect to it, trim all the remainder of the
waveform away, etc. If you Cut it to the clipboard, you can Paste it
somewhere else in CoolEdit.
It's fun to make even a little progress with these graphical
programs. Hope this encourages some of you to try this.
On Mon, 1 Dec 1997 07:29:06 -0700,
Allen <maynarda@concentric.net> wrote:
>Just wondering if there is a way to edit a wave file using speech. Right
>now I have to ask my brother to edit any wave files. He uses the graphical
>representation, straight line indicates silence and jagged spikes denote
>sound. He uses the mouse to cut pieces out of this wave graphic.
>
-- Lloyd Rasmussen
Senior Staff Engineer, Engineering Section
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress 202-707-0535
(work) lras@loc.gov www.loc.gov/nls/
(home) lras@sprynet.com
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