[MUSIC] In this video, I'm going to demonstrate how to do some basic editing with Audacity. And I'm going to start by importing an audio file that I recorded earlier. So I'll go up the file menu. If you have any audio that you've created and exported as a WAV file then you can do this, as well. I'm going to come down to Import and click on Audio. And then I have a WAV file. Go to Edit and I'll click there and click Open and you'll notice that a warning box shows up and it says that you can make a copy of the file before editing, which is safer, or read the file directly from the original, which is faster. So I'm going to recommend that you make a copy of the file before editing. If you're new to Audacity and there's any chance that you might Accidentally override an important file. So if I do that, then now I'm working with a copy instead of with the original. And you can go ahead and save that when you're done. And in case you make a mistake you've still got the original that has not been damaged. So that's a good feature. So, in any case, we have this file that I recorded, and I'm going to play it so you can hear what needs to be edited. What is at the center of the Earth? Why is seawater salty? [COUGH] How is our atmosphere created? Okay, well you could hear that there was a cough in there where, while I was talking, I had to cough. And without turning the recording off or hitting the pause button, I just went ahead and coughed because I knew that I could come back later and edit it. So if you were paying close attention, you will notice that the cough appeared right about here. And I can click and drag over that area and play that again just to isolate it. And that's easy also for me to edit out of my recording. So these wave forms will show you information visually about your audio recording. And I know that the cough was pretty loud, and so the wave forms went all the way to the top of the window there. And again, I can just drag over, click-and-drag and [COUGH] play it again and I can select the part that I want to edit out. And I will just do that and then hit the delete key on my keyboard, and now the cough is magically gone. If I click again over here, what is at the center of the earth and click play? Why is seawater salty? How is our atmosphere-. You'll notice the cough is gone but there's a little bit of an area here where I breathed a little loudly. And so I can take that part out as well. And I can do this fairly precisely. One thing about Audacity is that there is what's called a zoom tool, which looks like a magnifying glass, which if I click on it and then come down here, I can see all sorts of information visually about this waveform that I may not have been able to see so well in the normal view. You can click on the shift key on your keyboard, while the magnifying tool or zoom tool is enabled and that will get you back and let go of the shift key and you can zoom in for a closer look. So, this Tool above it called the Selection Tool allows you to select. So Magnifying Tool, Selection Tool, those are good tools to know about. But if I select this part, [SOUND] I notice that's where my heavy breathing is. So I'm going to delete that, again it's selected, I hit Delete on the keyboard and now it's gone. And I'm going to zoom out again. I have to come down to where I am. Let's see I want to hit the shift key not the control key on the keyboard and get back a little bit. Okay, so that's an easy way to get rid of unwanted noise or various inaccuracies in your recording without having to start over completely. So let's listen again. We can go back and click on the selection tool and go back to the beginning. Why is sea water salty? How is our atmosphere created? Find out the answer to these and many other questions in this fascinating look at our planet, the Earth. [NOISE] And you'll notice that at the end, there's also some noise here. Where I didn't stop the recording before I started moving around with my keyboard and moving the microphone around. So again if I listen to this part. [SOUND] Just extraneous noise. I can click on it with the selection tool, drag and hit delete and now that's completely gone. And now if I click back earlier and listen, and our planet, the Earth. Okay, so I basically like that and you can see there's a slighter control down at the bottom. And this is where the magnifying tool comes in handy. Again, shift, first you have to depress the magnifying and then shift and now you can see my entire recording. So that is a quick way to edit unwanted sounds out of an audacity file. And of course, if I wanted to save this, I would save the project first, and then export the completed sound file. [MUSIC]
