You can break your audio recordings into sections to highlight an important point or a change in topic. Sections are displayed with an alternating background shade. The base colour for the two shades is set in App Menu → System → Settings → Themes. Here you can also alter the shading differential i.e. make the contrast between sections larger or smaller, and specify whether a line is shown between sections.
 

Section breaks are equivalent to index marks used by digital recorders. Audio Notetaker will recognise index marks from some digital recorders on import (see Index Marks)

The main section button and it’s drop-down menu allow you to add and remove sections, insert new sections above and below as well as push any remaining text or audio in the section.

The behavior of some of these functions will depend on what you are doing in Audio Notetaker (playing back, recording, or editing) and which Pane currently has focus (focus is indicated by the Pane Header being blue).

Main Section Button

Shortcuts: ENTER (from audio pane), CTRL ENTER or F12

While playing back or recording audio the main section button will always add a section break at the audio cursor position (regardless of which pane has focus).

• If there is a section, without audio already below, then your chunks will be pushed into that section, otherwise a new section will be created.
• If you are not playing or recording audio then the main section button will add a section break wherever you are currently working, Image, Reference, Text or Audio Pane.
• If there is an empty section below (Pane with focus only) then any content after the cursor will be pushed into the next section otherwise a new section will be created.

You can also move the audio cursor to the section boundary cursor  by clicking at the very start of the sections audio or pressing HOME; adding a section now, inserts one above.

Dropdown Menu

All drop-down menu items are applied to the active cursor in whichever pane you are currently working in (even when playing or recording audio).

• Insert Section Break Above and below always create new sections without moving any content or your cursor.

Remove Section

Shortcut: CTRL + F12 or Backspace (from the audio pane).

You can remove a section break from any pane. Normally this will merge the contents of the two sections. However as there can only be one image per section you will see an error message if there are two images.

While recording and with focus in the Audio Pane, remove section will not remove the break but will push the audio back to the previous section. This leaves all section breaks in place along with any text and images; you can then edit these after recording.

Push Audio / Text

You can push any audio or text after the current active cursor into the section below with Push Audio or Push Text. Everything is pushed to the beginning of the next section.

Sections without Audio

You can have sections without any audio in; this allows you to setup your sections before recording. This is particularly useful if you have access to PowerPoint slides beforehand (see Importing Slides). When the speaker changes slides during recording, you can use Section Button to move the audio into the next section, as Audio Notetaker won’t create a new section if an empty (of audio) one already exists.

If necessary, you can manually add an empty section above or below; Use the Section Dropdown menu, or position the cursor at the very start of the section (press HOME), so that you get a Section Boundary Cursor,  in the audio pane. Then, Inserting a section break will add an empty section above the current section.

Adjusting Audio around Section Boundaries

You may want to adjust exactly where a section boundary falls in the audio, as it can be hard to get the section break in the right place when recording live or using the Indexing on your recorder. All you need to do is highlight the audio chunks you want to move and drag them around the audio pane.