Today we’ve launched the ability to “crop” audio/video in our syncpoint editor.

This is best explained by example. Let’s say you’re transcribing a nine-second lick that appears somewhere in the middle of a six-minute YouTube video — like this Adrien Moignard lick I recently posted to my own channel. Naturally, you’ll want your slice to last only nine seconds, not six minutes. That’s where cropping comes in.

When you create syncpoints for your slice, you’ll now see a “Crop” button. Click that, and you’ll see draggable edges at either side of the waveform. Drag the edges to crop the audio. When you publish the slice, only the cropped area will be included.

Sometimes it makes sense to start the crop right at your first syncpoint. But in other situations you might want to give a few seconds of introductory audio/video to provide context. You now have the ability to customize it as needed.

Longtime Soundslice users will remember our old “Play audio before first syncpoint” and “Play audio after last syncpoint” checkboxes. Those enabled cropping in a limited way — only to the first/last syncpoints. Our new cropping interface replaces that feature. All recordings on our site that were cropped in the old way have been upgraded to use the new cropping.

Enjoy your new cropping powers!