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Can anything get close to this sample slicing workflow I'm looking for?
What I really want is this: an app that I put spoken word into. It creates a transcript. I then quickly go through that transcript using my keyboard, putting, say, a line break in the text at every place I want a marker in the audio. Then I batch export the whole thing, a folder is created containing all the files, and the title of each file is created based on the text contained in that audio. Even just the first few words would be enough info for a useful title.
This seems, to me, like a great, fast workflow for cutting up long vocal segments into sampler-ready slices.
Is there anything like that on iOS?
Comments
I made a shortcut that listens to the audio of a folder full of short clips, and renames the files to match.
This involves cutting up the audio into clips first, but you could do that with anything that can auto-chop.
Other than that, Descript on the desktop/cloud will transcribe audio and let you edit it by editing the text. Maybe start your search with that?
I may be wrong but I think like quite a bit of us, Gav is iOS only.
That shortcut sounds interesting, want to share it maybe 😝?
I am iOS only yes, but I wouldn't use Descript anyway as it is overpriced and is a subscription.
I have the full version of DaVinci Resolve which does that same text based editing btw, but it still wouldn't chop everything into separate files in the quick and easy way I'm looking for here. I doubt there is a solution actually, but thought it was worth throwing out there. Autochopping also doesn't really do it for me as I want a bit more control over exact start and end points.
@Gavinski sounds like a task for an AI
Definitely
As it is unlikely I will be able to find sth on iOS that does this, I would settle for anything that has a fast and reasonably painless workflow for manually setting marker points and then exporting everything to a folder. I guess I just have to do the renaming part myself too. If I could manage to get Auditor to pause where I want it to, in the Slicer window, it would be perfect, but so far I just can’t manage to get it to pause rather than returning to the previous marker. That is really not ideal for me, so if anyone has suggestions for how to get Auditor to pause, great, otherwise I am open to suggestions of any app that has an ideal workflow. I’m talking fairly long pieces of audio, maybe 10 mins, and potentially manually marking 100+ slices, so speed and smoothness of workflow matters.
@Gavinski is using the auto-sampling mode in Koala using “lazy” mode a viable option? After that use “export all” to get it out of Koala and use Sample Crate for batch renaming. That would be my solution.
Hey, thanks for the reply, but I'm definitely looking to do things manually because I want creative control over my start and end points, and that's just not possible with any tool other that makes those decisions for you!
@Gavinski Maybe a screenshot can better communicate why i thought it was applicable to your proposed workflow. It doesn’t make the decisions for you:
“lazy mode” in auto-chop is manual (i know, a bit confusing, right?) and the start and end points are manually adjustable after inputting them with the marker button (shown in the picture next to the play button) while the audiofile loops as long as play is engaged. Sorry if i’m misunderstanding you but it sounded exactly like the workflow you described.
Ah OK! I get u now, I'll definitely take a look at that and see if it will work for me. Slicing lots of samples from a large audio file and then exporting them is not sth I have had a need for til now, cheers!
I think Koala might be a good solution. You could just record your audio onto individual pads or set marker points similar to what Butterfrog suggests.
I also would throw wavebox out there as an option. You could use the record mic function and press the record button to create seperate stems. I hope this makes sense.
Just tried this and seems quite useful, maybe, but one thing I didn’t understand -
When playing through, everything works fine, I can drop markers wherever. But say I miss my mark and tap somewhere to change the playhead position, to move it back, then the little marker button becomes disabled. It can only be activated again by pressing the play button, but that makes the playhead go back to the start. This doesn’t make sense to me - am I doing something wrong? Thnx
@Gavinski it seems that selecting the marker while play is activated does remove the marker. When play is disengaged i can drag and drop the marker wherever i want and it does not get greyed out (i had one or 2 tries where the selected marker just dissapear, but i am not sure why yet). The playhead always goes to the start after deselecting but i guess this is just a design decision based on common usage for smaller audio files. I would just lay it down quick and dirty, stop play, readjust the markers and then chop but maybe this isn’t ideal for your use case. It’s still the closest thing i can think of to your proposed workflow.
Yes it might be the best I can get. Thnx a lot for your input 🔥
No problem! A lot of the times when i find missing functionality in ios music production the answer seems to be Loopy Pro, mela 4 or Koala sampler
Thanks! Thing is I am not recording, I want to put in long wav files from the internet, it’s not live recorded audio. I took a look t Wavebox earlier, I don’t think it can do what I am looking for but if it can, in a better way than Koala or Auditor, that would be great.
I don’t think that Koala workflow is going to work for me. It’s really maddening not being able to just rewind a bit, and instead, having to go back to the start every time. If you are not familiar with a piece of long audio, you really have no idea where you’re going to want to put your markers in advance. Dropping markers like crazy everywhere and then going back and adjusting them after the fact is time consuming and fiddly. I might send Marek an email explaining this use case of dealing with longer audio files and see if he could add in an option that would make it easier. God, never thought it would be so hard to find something that gives the workflow I’m looking for here! I might go back and try again in Auditor.
Welcome to the wonderful world of iOS where there is an app for 'everything' NOT!!!
@Gavinski : Auditor seems like it fits the bill. What doesn’t it do that you need it to on the slicing front?
Did you know that you can press commit to markers and edit the markets in the main interface and then re-enter the slicer and have it use the markers as edited there?
There also just aren’t enough pads in Koala to create many slices. Of course I could break the 10-min file into smaller parts first, but yeah…
Also, if you zoom in to a fine level of detail in the Lazy chopper, it can be hard to work with, as all scrolling needs to be done manually. But when you’re zoomed in, you have to scroll often, as it doesn’t auto scroll, and when you try to scroll, the simple act of touching the screen sets the playhead back to the last marker. It’s doable, in other words, but definitely far from ideal for what I’m trying to do.
Ferrite is fairly quick in splitting long(!) files manually, smooth detail zoom in/out, too.
Then select a region and export, entering of file name manually.
You may use multiple tracks as scratch areas.
If I had to do the same job, I‘d use SAW Studio which can do basically what you originally requested (in particular batch named export) and Ferrite is the closest thing on IOS to SAW‘s workflow.
(I once did a 1 to 1 comparison with a fake task)
Thanks, but your wording of ‘then select a region and export’ left me a bit confused whether I can just export everything into one folder in one go? I have Hokusai and was hoping it would be able to do this kind of batch export but it doesn’t. Exporting things one by one would be tedious.
You can in fact batch export regions to single files via „share“, but not properly named.
(it‘s track name+section number)
Ok that sounds like it has potential thanks! Is there a limit, do you know, on how many slices can be exported? I think this is a premium feature btw? I checked the appstore description but some of the terminology left me a bit vague, so want to double check
If you ever decide to buy a MacBook Pro, the best tool for what you are asking for is iZotope RX.
I did not, but I will try that for sure, thanks
I hope you don’t mind me asking another question about Ferrite - I have searched the manual to try to find the answer to this but was not successful and don’t want to trudge through the whole thing systematically unless I actually understand that it can do what I want and that won’t be a waste of time, so I appreciate your help, if you have the time.
Yes, splitting is very fast in this app, with even keyboard shortcuts, OMG!!!
But…
You mentioned selecting a region and exporting. I am not sure what counts as a region, but I tried splitting the audio and then selecting everything in the waveform viewer in Ferrite with a view to sharing it. There is no Share option when I do that, so I assume I am misunderstanding. You can see the options I get when I tap on this in Ferrite in the attached photo.
So I then tried exporting the whole thing using the Share menu from the main screen. But if I do that, it is just trying to export one file, the entire file, and ignoring the Splits. Maybe I am misunderstanding what ‘Split’ means in this app, but it looks like slicing. Again, I am also not clear what it defines as a region and a search inside the manual doesn’t enlighten me on that either.
Would you mind clarifying exactly what I have to do to get the slices exported as a bunch of separate files into a Folder. Thanks!
I managed to do it with Wavebox. It took me 12 minutes to slice a 5 minute wave file (recorded directly from YouTube into Wavebox) into 37 seperate clips with the “mark” button in the bottom left toolbar. You can zoom in, place your cursor, then press “mark”, and advance from your marked position.
Then exported them all at once (don’t forget to switch on the “split regions” option) into the “audio gallery” folder of Wavebox via the “share” button on the top right.
There are 2 more items beyond Zoom, the last one being the Share feature.
If I tap Share (with multiple items selected) a box appears and asks Selection or Audio Clips.
Audio Clips is what you want and it sends a zipped file to the destination.
I also don‘t have Select All.
If I tap 1 section, it highlights. Then I have to hold it and tap more with the other hand...
(which is a bit inconvenient, but it allows to skip parts you don‘t want or need).
The Export/Share feature may be a paid item (I have the full version)
ps: sorry, zoomed the pic above and it‘s the same popup as in my version
@Gavinski
A NLE allows for dropping markers in realtime during playback
Ofcourse you are always a few frames late but usually around the same length.
make sure the markers are timeline based and not clip based.
After the first pass you shift the full audio clip to the left to compensate for your initial delay.
Then you have a good starting position.
Dropping markers while playing is pretty essential here and NLE's like FCPX or Davinci always can do this.
It won't take care of the rest of your wishes but perhaps it can be a good starting point
If I needed this workflow, I'd try to find a pythonic speech-to-text library and build it inside Pythonista on iOS.
https://realpython.com/python-speech-recognition/
"Tokenizing" by word or sentence is what you might want here.