6. Edit Menu

In VFEdit, the EditMenu is what really makes the program an audio word processor. VFEdit uses visual graphs of the loudness of the sounds versus time, to show you, with a voice print, right up there on the screen, exactly where a certain sound starts and stops, instead of the blind hit and miss method of editing magnetic tape.

You can do the usual word processing stuff, like Cut, Copy and Paste, plus Delete and Erase, and work with Silences, either tirimming or inserting.

[ from editmenu.clp which has the whole screen ]

[Screen captures can look funny without the frame around them.

When I try to do the <Alt>PrtScrn, the unfolded menu disappears. ]

[ insert some text from VF061395.rtf ??? ]

Selecting Audio Segments

Selecting audio segments is how we can focus the editor's attention on the sound bite we want to edit next, like shining a flashlight or a spotlight on it. VFEdit gives us several ways to do this selecting.

1. Using Edit,SelectAll <Alt>ES <Ctrl>A

2. Using Edit,SelectExtents <Alt>EX

3. Using the mouse in drawing pen mode, to create a dashed-line selection window around the voice print

When we have a sound bite "selected", ie., "highlighted", now we can do Copy, Cut or Paste, and also Crop. We can also do a Delete, or an Erase, all within the Edit Menu, or we can use features in the Special Effects Menu, or control buttons on the toolbar. For more detailed description on how to use all these modes, see page .................

What would I use Edit for?

As an example, suppose that I am working on a new outgoing message for my answering machine, the one I never answer, but only take messages or screen callers first. I might want to change the message from time to time, without having to totally rerecord it. This lets callers know that we are still alive and checking the machine, if we change the outgoing message often.

Now, with VFEdit, I can add the power of the computerized tape recorder and build up a collection of outgoing answering machine messages for different occasions. I might want to have a set of these messages like on a computer voicemail machine. Even though I still have to transfer the message onto a magnetic tape in the answering machine, I can maintain the message collection on my personal computer.

During business hours, I might want to have it sound more formal, like a business, and then after hours, have it sound more like a residential phone.

As an example, I am working on a new outgoing message for my answering machine. On this machine, the message can be any length, up to 45 seconds. Just when I was recording the new outgoing message, the doorbell rang, or my roommate started up the vacuum cleaner, or the baby woke up, or the doggie barked, or any number of noisy interruptions.

When the commotion is all over with, and I am settled down again to finish making the outgoing message, I listen to it one last time, and discover that it sounded especially wonderful, all except that last 30 seconds.

Instead of completely starting over, and re-recording it, from scratch, with VFEdit sound file editing, I can now select just the noisy part, and record that itsy bitsy part that went wrong, over again, and if necessary, again and again, fine-tuning it until it sounds perfect. Having a sound file editor gives us whole new capabilities that we never had with plain old tape recorders.

If I was doing something more creative with audio sound bites, like putting together a radio news story, or a commercial, I might use some of the Edit modes to Copy something from one sound file and Paste it into a different sound file. With an Indexed File, I could organize a scrapbook of audio segments, and then use Copy and Paste to insert them into another file.

Why do we need so many Edit modes?

Because we can. We are not limited to a few buttons on a plastic box. We can make as many menu choices and onscreen virtual buttons as we want to. With a programmable tape recorder, any habitual practice that we can think of automating can be made into a new virtual button. Just send in your requests to the software developer.

Edit,Cut <Alt>ET <Ctrl>X

Edit,Cut removes the selected segment from the sound file we are editing, and places this segment into temporary storage, like the Windows clipboard.

Edit,Copy <Alt>EC <Ctrl>C

Edit,Copy places a copy of the highlighted\selected segment into temporary storage, like the Windows clipboard, but it does not remove the segment from where it originally is.

Edit,Paste <Alt>EP <Ctrl>V

After we already have either Copied or Cut a sound segment onto the temporary file, we can then Paste that same sound segment, into another place in the same file, or into a different file. Just select the new insertion point with the mouse, and do a <Ctrl>V.

Edit,Crop <Alt>EO

Edit,Crop is different from Edit,Cut. It is good to use to fix unwanted leading or trailing sound, either noise or those inevitable "uh's" or silences while we collect our thoughts. Crop can make it sound like we had Voice-Activated Recording, except it all sounds normal, not some funny-sounding sounds when the player starts up. If we want the sound file to sound professional, we need to edit out the human oral mis-statements and mis-spokens, our mstakes. Edit,Crop is different from Edit,Delete or Edit,Erase, in that .......... [ The same letter that is underlined on the menu should be underlined in all references to the same thing, for instance, Insert should be Insert.

Edit,Delete <Alt>EA <Del>

Edit,Delete actually removes the selected audio segment, and squeezes the empty space out---something that you could never do with streaming magnetic tape---while Edit,Erase overwrites the entire segment with silence, mimicing the normal magnetic tape recorder. Erase is better for when you really want to be able to Re-Record that sound or word. It saves a place for it.

Edit,Erase <Alt>EC

Edit,Erase overwrites the selected sound segment in the dashed selection window, with silence, leaving a normal length of time space for the re-recording you will want to make to fill in the sentence.

Edit,TrimSilence <Alt>EI

Edit,TrimSilence looks at the selected sound segment and squeezes out

the quiet seconds, automatically, without accidentally erasing the last syllable of the good words.

[ it appears to be erasing the rest of the message file. It did not do what I expected it to do here. it seems to work if I select the good part, and let it delete the leading silence, and if I select the good part and the leading silence, but it did not delete the trailing silence.

Edit,InsertSilence <Alt>EE

Edit,InsertSilence inserts a sound segment containing silence, when you want something to sound more normal, or with gaps to make it more understandable.

Edit,SelectAll <Alt>ES <Ctrl>A

Edit,SelectAll selects or highlights the whole sound file, for editing. This is just a quicker way of doing it, a shortcut.

Edit,SelectExtents <Alt>EX

Edit,SelectExtents selects a specified voice print window, with a From and a To seconds marker.

And last but not least

Edit,Undo<LastAction>

While the specific last action will vary the text displayed, VFEdit internally remembers for you, what the situation was just before your last change, so if you try something and it doesn't do what you expected, you can still fall back to the way it was before your mistake. Feel free to use this often. In fact, it stores a series of fallback positions for you, so that you can go thru a multi-level Undo.

Edit,Redo<LastAction>

The Edit,Redo is basically like a Repeat button, and saves keystrokes on repetitive actions.

These are the bitmap file names for the buttons, captured with HelpMagicianPro.

filenew.bmp

fileopen.bmp

filesave.bmp

editcut.bmp

editcopy.bmp

magnet.bmp

volup.bmp

voldown.bmp

rewind.bmp

rewind2.bmp

stopsqur.bmp

pausebtn.bmp

playbtn.bmp

playloop.bmp

fastfrwd.bmp

junk.bmp

normal.bmp

toolbar.bmp

these are all separate *.bmp files, but captured on the black and white VGA monitor

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