• I have a hundred spoken word audio tracks — lectures — that need to be transcribed.
• Transcription costs by the hour of audio. The lecturer leaves lots of space between thoughts, even at times between words. This will be very $$$ costly.
• Highlighting/deleting sections between sentences/thoughts could save hundreds of dollars.

The way I did the first one was "Lord have mercy!" torturous. I dragged my cursor over blank sections to highlight and delete, then I would drag/slide the recorded voice together. RESULT: An 81 minute lecture edited down to 33 minutes and a saving of 60% of the cost. This is a labor of love for an elderly friend with great wisdom, but I need to survive this process too. :)
 
Not concerned about the flow of the sentences. Awkward is fine. Just want all the voice sections compacted to reduce transcription costs.
 
What would be the most efficient way to remove the dead air time between the sentences/thoughts?

Edit > Cut Special > check "Delete Hole." It's basically SONAR's version of ripple editing.

YES!!!! Oh thank you, Craig. So much better...
 
Now...is there a way to make a key shortcut for that? I will literally have to do this operation, seriously, a few thousand times.

Okay, I went into Preferences and assigned "Cut Special" to the letter "O".
 
Is there a way to get it to complete the cut special edit without the popup prompt requiring me to hit enter for each occurrence?

NEVER MIND I see you found it, I think pressing O and then enter will be as easy as you're going to get this.  You should be able to do the O enter sequence so fast that the dialog just blinks.(unless there is an unknown hinderance, forgive me if it is.) 
 
 

frankjccNEVER MIND I see you found it, I think pressing O and then enter will be as easy as you're going to get this.  You should be able to do the O enter sequence so fast that the dialog just blinks.(unless there is an unknown hinderance, forgive me if it is.) 

Yeah, thanks, it's becoming one step now, after a few dozen occurrences. This is the beauty of neuroplasticity --- how we can program our brains through repetition --- conditioning done purposefully!

FWIW I've used Audacity's "truncate silence" feature to do this in one step (after some trial and error to get settings right)
http://manual.audacitytea...title=Truncate_Silence

+1 to a batch process that you can adjust threshold for. Then you can simply review tracks for content and ease the process.

As an aside, you mentioned track length, implying cost is based only on time and not word count? If so, another thing you can do is bounce the track so it is one clip then stretch-edit to shorten it (ctrl-drag the right edge, and bounce again). In general, people can understand 3 times as quickly as they speak, but don't go overboard with such if you choose this (can probably save 10-20% right there).

mettelus
In general, people can understand 3 times as quickly as they speak, but don't go overboard with such if you choose this (can probably save 10-20% right there).

But can they transcribe three times faster ?
 

Brando
FWIW I've used Audacity's "truncate silence" feature to do this in one step (after some trial and error to get settings right)
http://manual.audacitytea...title=Truncate_Silence

That's a very cool option as well. A better option, in fact, if I can get it to process how I need it to. Would save a LOT of time. Worth playing with, thanks!