Adding info to audio files

I use DevonThink (DTPO) for collecting and organizing research materials. Most of the material I have used is text, but I’m starting to add audio clips and I’m looking for advice on how best to work with audio inside DT.

For text, I can easily capture quotes from my sources and add text to the quotes that gives details, analysis, or keywords that I want to be able to search. I’m not sure how best to combine text and audio to do the same effect.

To give a specific example, if I had a book excerpt I would have a text document with the quote and then a new paragraph that included my notes about that quote. If I just import the audio clip, I can’t figure out how to add text. What I can do is create a new rich text document and embed the audio clip, but I can’t figure out how to extract just the audio clip if I want to use that in the future. (In other words, I can’t figure out the equivalent of highlighting the quote part of the text document and then copy-pasting into another destination, like a PowerPoint slide.)

I’d appreciate any advice for how to best work with audio clips. I’m just starting to experiment with how to use audio, so I’m open to suggestions for other use cases and not just this narrow scenario.

If you have an RTFD document that contains rich text and media – such as an .m4a audio file, or something else – then you can select the media, copy it to the clipboard with ⌘C, and use DEVONthink’s Data > New > With Clipboard command ⌘N to make a new .m4a file in the current selected group. “Select the media” can be tricky with audio, but if you put the cursor just before the media, hold shift, and click just after the media you should have the right selection. A little practice will help you nail this.

Another, sort of odd and kludgy way to do this is to right click somewhere on the background of the RTFD document away from any text and media, and choose “Quick Look Attachment” from the contextual menu. In the upper right corner of the Quick Look preview you’ll see the Share icon. Click that and “share” to Mail. A new mail message will be composed – you don’t have to send it, just use Mail to save he attachment.

What’s not available – but should be (hint, DEVONtechnologies) is a simple way to drag the audio file out of the RTFD.