Tools I use for audio/video downloading, media conversion and audio editing
Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/03
A friend asked me what tools I use for downloading media, converting it to various formats (including audio extraction) and audio editing.
It is a surprisingly short list:
- [WayBack] youtube-dl for downloading
- [WayBack] ffmpeg Documentation for conversion
- [WayBack] ffprobe Documentation for investigation
- [WayBack] GitHub – mps-youtube/mps-youtube: Terminal based YouTube player and downloader
Most of it runs out of the box on Mac OS X/MacOS/OS X, as I’ve moved there form Windows for most of my day to day access to systems (there is a great set of Microsoft Remote Desktop in the app store: [Archive.is] Microsoft Remote Desktop 8.0 on the Mac App Store and [Archive.is] Microsoft Remote Desktop 10 on the Mac App Store; I like the first one better).
Audacity shortcuts
Shortcuts make Audacity life a lot easier. For keyboard shortcuts, Mac users use Command (⌘) instead of Ctrl.
- [WayBack] Vertical Zooming – Audacity Development Manual: Advanced mode vertical zooming with the Vertical Scale magnifiers
- The smallest zoom is from -2.0 to 2.0 which can be really useful when adjusting audio volumes through the the Effect “Amplify…” and the Envelope tool.
- [WayBack] Zooming Overview – Audacity Development Manual
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Zoom action Keyboard shortcut Zoom In Ctrl + 1 Zoom Normal Ctrl + 2 Zoom Out Ctrl + 3 Zoom Toggle Shift + Z Fit Project to Width Ctrl + F Fit Project to Height Ctrl + Shift + F Zoom to Selection Ctrl + E
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- [WayBack] Envelope Tool – Audacity Development Manual
- [WayBack] Playback – Audacity Development Manual: Play short periods around selections (Mac users: Use ⌘ instead of Ctrl)
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Action Shortcut Play short period before selection start Shift + F5 Play short period after selection start Shift + F6 Play short period before selection end Shift + F7 Play short period after selection end Shift + F8 Play short period before and after selection start Ctrl + Shift + F5 Play short period before and after selection end Ctrl + Shift + F7
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- [WayBack] Selecting Audio – Audacity Development Manual: Mouse Selection
- Mouse selection is still the easiest
- [WayBack] Navigating and identifying audio for editing – Audacity Development Manual
- Keyboard shortcuts I use often
- Space starts/resumes playback
- Shift-F7 plays a short fragment starting just before the end of the selection
- Command-B bookmarks a selection using a label
- Command-E zooms into the selection
Earlier related posts:
- 2010: Binary search for finding problematic versions: install a specific version in homebrew and git bisect
- 2019: [APP][MOD]OGYouTube v1.2 Downloader, Popup/Background/ScreenOff Playback
- 2018: Video Conversion done right: Codecs and Software – Super User Blog
- 2018: kentcdodds/issue-template: A way for github projects to make templates for github issues
- 2017: youtube-dl – saving both audio and video without keeping intermediate files seems impossible
- 2017: Arjen Lubach in NTR | College Tour
- 2017: How to Download YouTube 4K Videos with Youtube-dl Script
- 2017: Recursively convert WMA files to MP3 using ffmeg on a Mac OS X bash shell
- 2016: Tools that Isotopp installed on his Mac…
- 2014: Play anything local that is convertible through ffmpeg (via: Mustafa Akın – Google+)
- 2012: Finaly, Audacity 2.0.0 is there (via: Release Notes 2.0.0 – Audacity Wiki)
–jeroen
mps-youtube via [WayBack] Joseph Mitzen commenting on… – Carlos Moreno Gil – Google+
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