Timeline: The timeline appears above all of the tracks and clips in minutes and second increments. It allows you to see at what second or minute mark a clip starts, ends, or plays during, as well as your final time. A blank recording typically has a timeline showing the time in half-second increments, but as your audio file's play time grows, your timeline will adjust automatically and show larger time increments (for example, it may show 15 second increments when you have a few minutes of audio).
Tracks: A track is like one instrument in a band or one microphone in recording a podcast. You can use one or multiple tracks in your podcast and edit each one independently. Then when you export your audio file, they'll all be mixed together.
Clips: Each track is made up of one or more clips, where each clip is continuous audio, like a recording or song. Clips can be split into smaller clips, deleted, or moved along the timeline so they play at different times.
Selecting a track: To select an entire track, click the Select button at the bottom of the track's box. The whole track will now appear white.
Selecting a clip: Move your mouse over the top of the track until a white hand replaces the arrow, and then click on the clip. The clip will now be white.
Selecting a section in a clip: Place your mouse where you'd like to start selecting in the clip. Click and drag to the right, and release the mouse when you've reached where you want the selection to end. The section you selected should now be white.
Selecting one place in a clip: Place your mouse over the place you'd like to select and click. A thin black line should now appear in the clip where you clicked (in the photo below, it's the thin black line at the three second mark).
Splitting: Select the section or place in a clip where you'd like to split the clip. Right click, and choose Split Clip. If you selected a section, your clip will split into three clips, one for the piece before the section, one for the section, and one of the piece after the section. If you just selected one place in the clip, the clip will split into two clips, one on either side of the place you selected.
Moving: Select a whole clip using the instructions above. Then click on the clip and drag it across the timeline until it plays where you want it.
Deleting: Select a clip or a section of a clip. Then press the Delete key on your keyboard or right click on the clip/section and choose Cut.
To shorten a clip, there are a couple options. You can split the clip where you'd like to shorten it and delete it. You can also shorten a clip at the beginning or end of the clip without having to split and delete the clip. To do this, move your mouse over the end or beginning of the clip, right over the edge of it, until a line with arrows on either end appears. Then click and drag in the direction of the middle of the clip (if you're shortening the beginning, drag to the right; the ending, drag to the left). Let go when you reach the desired place.
Changing a Track's Name: Click on the arrow next to the track's name, and choose Name from the menu. Type in the track's new name and click Okay.
Changing a Clip's Name: Select the whole clip using the instructions above and right click. Choose Rename Clip, then type in your new name and press the Enter key when you're done.
There's a variety of Effects you can add to a clip or track. Some of the common ones are fade in, fade out, and adjust volume. There are also a variety of sounds and noises you can add under the Generate menu, including drums, white noise, and silence.
To add an Effect or one of the sounds from the Generate menu, first select a clip or section of a clip where you'd like to add the Effect or sound. Then click on the Effect or Generate menu at the top of the screen and select the one you'd like to add.
In addition to the Effect menu, there are two effect options on each track you can use. The first option is the gain. Increasing it makes the track louder, while decreasing it makes the track softer (be careful when increasing the gain as the sound quality decreases as it increases). The second is the Pan option. This allows you to pan the sound to the left or the right. This mainly would apply if you're listening to the finished file on a sound player with a left speaker and a right speaker or a pair of earbuds. If you pan the sound slightly to the left, then you'll have more of this track coming out of the left speaker/earbud than the right, while if you panned it all the way to the left, then that track would only play out of the left speaker/earbud and not out of the right one at all. The default option is centered, so the track plays evenly on both the left and the right.
