How do I use the new Remove Gaps functionality?

I notice there is now a Remove Gaps menu item in Ardour 6.8. I’ve tried it various ways and I can’t get it to do what I think is supposed to happen. It’s not removing any gaps for me.

I edit my podcast, mix it, and I export it as a FLAC file. Then I open a new Ardour project, import that flac file so it’s only 1 track, select the track and apply the Remove gaps item then export it again, but it doesn’t look like any gaps are removed. If I bring it into Audacity after, and do a Truncate Silence, there is still plenty of silence that gets removed. What is Remove Gaps for?

I assume that I have to 1st mix it down so that it’s all on one track, then it can remove any gaps.

Essentially what I want is for any silence of .5 seconds or larger, cut the gap to exactly .5 seconds. I don’t do ripple deletes when I’m editing bc the podcast has 4-7 guests. I just edit out the mistakes and use Audacity to remove the silences that are longer than .5 seconds.

I used to try using Region > Edit > Strip Silence but now it hangs and crashes every time. It used to process, but it never removed the silences, now it crashes every single time.

I’m on Ardour 6.8.

My final step in editing my podcast has been bring the exported version into Audacity and use the Truncate Silence feature and it works perfectly, but I’d prefer to do all the editing in Ardour if possible, especially given all the disappointing announcements of Audacity lately.

The remove gaps feature (and the similar close gaps feature) don’t work on the audio data in the regions. They remove the gaps between regions.

OK, at least I’m not crazy, it’s not supposed to work like that.

I’m all self taught, so perhaps to other more experienced audio producers, it’s obvious, but to me it’s not. Is a feature like Audacity’s Truncate Silence feature never coming to Ardour or so far outside how most people use Ardour that no one else asks about it?

If I did a ripple delete while editing a podcast with 7 guests at once, the conversation would go out of sync almost immediately. I leave in the silences after cutting the mistakes out. After I export in Ardour, I bring that exported FLAC into Audacity to do a Truncate Silence. It seems like it would be a great feature in Ardour, I’m curious why it doesn’t exist?

Maybe I need to learn a better workflow for editing the podcast.

Wasn’t obvious to me either, I just had a hunch and I tested it :slight_smile: I assume it’s also in the user manual but I haven’t checked.

Is a feature like Audacity’s Truncate Silence feature never coming to Ardour

If it isn’t implemented in the main program it could be done with scripting.

If I did a ripple delete while editing a podcast with 7 guests at once,

Import your 7 files to a single track. Ardour will merge them into a pseudo multi-channel region.

image

This is what I use for sample editing (I posted a video about this recently) and it keeps everything in sync.

You will see a dramatic overhaul of ripple mode land in git sometime in the next 10 days.

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