Using Audition to save sections of a long audio file into separate files

As anyone familiar with Audition already knows, its depth of features and functionality can sometimes be overwhelming. Because of this we often hear users explain how they stumble upon a time-saving feature they never realized had always been there in the application. One of these “hidden” features we hear of most often is the ability to batch export marker ranges as individual files.
This feature is most useful for splitting a long recording into several individual assets, but it can also be used to create unique copies of the sections of audio that are most important within any open audio file. Here’s an example of how this works.

  1. Open an audio file into the Edit view of Audition.
  2. Go to Window > Marker List to open the Markers Panel.
  3. Select a section of audio that you would like to export as its own file.
  4. Click the F8 key on your keyboard or click the “Add Marker” button in the Markers Panel.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each section of audio you wish to export as a new file.
  6. When you are done marking each section, go to the Markers Panel and give each marker its own name (Label) or leave them with the default generic marker labels.
  7. Select the marker ranges you wish to export (CTRL or SHIFT + click each marker).
  8. Click the “Batch Export Marker Regions” button which is at the bottom of the Markers Panel with a floppy disk icon. If this button is disabled it means you either do not have any markers selected or you have individual point markers chosen and not ranges (range markers will always have a begin and end time).
  9. When the Batch Process Marker Ranges dialog appears you can choose to either “Save to files”, or add a certain amount of silence to the start and end of each marker. For the purpose of this walk-through, choose “Save to files”.
  10. Next, you can choose if you want to use the Marker label as the filename, or set your own Prefix and Sequence Start number for all exported files.
  11. Once you have the naming convention chosen, choose the destination of where the individual files will be saved and set your export format and options.
  12. Click OK to export your new audio files.
  13. Browse to the folder you exported your new files to and take the next steps to burn them to CD, email them to clients, archive them for later or continue editing each asset in Audition.

This is a feature that has been around since the days of Cool Edit Pro and continues to be a hidden gem for many of our customers. Hopefully this post gets enough exposure to help more of you find and take advantage of this time saving batch export feature in Audition.
Ron Day
Quality Engineering Lead