Too Many Options for Saving

[robinxbaker]

Your idea

The issue I found was not a bug, but an issue regarding usability. The options for saving the audio are too lingually specific, meaning if someone is familiar with audio software, they will know what they’re looking at, but if they are beginners, which much of Audacity’s users are, it takes trial and error, and potential loss of the first few projects, to discover. Specifically, to save the audio for use as an audio file, one must go to file, where they will see “import audio”, “export audio”, “export audio as”, “save project”, and “save project as”.

Problem to be solved

These are too many options for a beginner and can cause the user to select the wrong option, close Audacity under the pretense that they successfully saved the project and come to realize later that they lost everything they worked on because they selected “import audio” instead of “export audio as”. I want to simplify the process by having a “save audio (beginner)” and “save audio (advanced options)”, as having “beginner” and “advanced” options is a widely used practice currently that allows for a greater heuristic of users.

Prior art

No response

Additional context

No response

[petersampsonaudacity]

@robinxbaker

The options for saving the audio are too lingually specific

The Save/Open and Export/Import are deliberately differentiated and "specific".

With Save and Open you never save or open an audio file - they only act on Audacity Projects (which in current Audacity happen to be SQLite databases). They most certainly are not audio files, you cannot play an Audacity project in any player or application other than Audacity.

In contrast Export and Import do work on audio files, files that can be plated in audio players and other apps, that is their designed function.
a) and what Import does is to take the audio from the audio fuile and convert it inti its own internal project format
b) Export takes the Audacity project or selection and convets that to your specified audio format for storing as an audio file where you specify.

A long while ago some confusion was allowed to creep into Audacity whereby the Open command can be used on an audio file. But this does not actully open the audio file, rather it Opens an Audacity project and the silently/hiddenly Imports the audio file into that project. It also leads to the confusion of some users thinking thay are actually opening an audio file and working directly on it, which they are not. Many years ago I campaigned strongly to remove this irregularity, but I was over-ruled.

[LWinterberg]

The save vs export question is tricky, as half of the userbase only ever deals with audio files (so, import MP3, do some edit, export MP3) while the other half thinks in terms of projects. A "beginner" vs "expert" pattern likely isn't helpful here - both beginners and experts may save projects and both may export audio.

they lost everything they worked on because they selected “import audio” instead of “export audio as”.

This however is not an issue I ever have seen. If you import a file, it will do so to a new track, leaving you at a minimum confused what happened, but definitely leaving you certain that you didn't save properly.

Specifically, to save the audio for use as an audio file, one must go to file, where they will see “import audio”, “export audio”, “export audio as”, “save project”, and “save project as”.

This is not quite true. In the current version, they see this:

The "Save Project" specific options and Import options are slightly hidden away into a submenu, and the Export Audio and Share Audio are top level entries you can see immediately.