Copy to New

Many police officers regularly record interactions with the public on small digital audio recorders. Some, like traffic officers, even use small video recorders. A question came in from the following scenario.

During a traffic stop, an officer was approached by a citizen who wasn't involved in the traffic stop. A series of questions/answers were exchanged by the officer and the citizen. Then, the officer resumed handling the traffic stop.

Months later, the officer was approached by his agency's internal investigators looking into his handling of the citizen's questions. He had recorded the interaction on his personal audio recorder, but only needed the small section dealing with the citizen, not the entire traffic stop. His question - how best to redact the section of audio from the entire file?

It's actually a simple process. In Adobe's Audition, load the audio file. Then scrub to the section containing the relevant audio to be redacted. Select the section and choose Edit>Copy to New. This will create a new file from the selection. Next, just save the file with an appropriate name.

Other programs have the same feature. In those, you may need to copy the selection first - then select Paste to New.

Either way, it's helpful to know what the software calls the action you'd like to perform. Once you know that, you're on your way.