Whenever you open, create or import a document, the ELAN window appears. This section introduces you to the setup of the ELAN window (the section called “Basic Information: The ELAN window”), and explains the navigation through it (the section called “How to navigate through a document” and the section called “How to play a document”).
The ELAN window displays the Menu bar, the Media Player options, and up to six Viewers, e.g.:
All Viewers are synchronized and thus display the same
point(s) in time. I.e., whenever you access a point in time in one
of the Viewers, all the other Viewers will immediately jump to the
corresponding point in time.
In all Viewers, color coding is used to facilitate the orientation in the document.
This section introduces the setup of the Viewers, the Menu bar, the Media Player options and the color coding. Detailed information about how to navigate through the ELAN window follows in the subsequent sections.
The Video Viewer displays up to four video images (of the
*.mpg
, *.mov
or other
files). However it is possible to link more than four video files.
To make videos (in)visible click in the Elan menu and (un)check a video file name.
A video file will not be unlinked when it is made invisible in this
way.
Note that you can right click on the video viewer to
detach it, i.e. create a separate window for
the video. To re-attach the video window, right click on it and
select attach.
To change the size of the video viewer you don't need to detach the video viewer. Instead, you can drag the vertical divider on the right side of the window up and down to make the video viewer respectively smaller and bigger (see also Figure 4.58, “The video viewer”).
If you encounter problems while playing video files, change the media framework via Platform/OS and toggle Media Framework appropriate for your operating system.
. SelectRight clicking[7] in the video window and selecting will display a dialog with information about the video file, e.g.:
A static picture containing the currently displayed frame
can be stored using the context menu of the video window (right
click )
Saving a static picture might sometimes cause a freeze of the program on MacOS X. This issue is being investigated.
Clicking on a video copies the coordinates of the mouse cursor relative to the upper left corner of the video to the clipboard. The coordinates can have different formats depending on the modifier key used:
no modifier key: x,y [original width,
original height]
, where x and y are
coordinates in the original coordinate system.
with ALT key:
x,y
where x and y are between
0 and 1 (0.000, 1.000) identifying a relative position in the
(0,0,width,height) image space.
with SHIFT key:
x,y
where x and y are
coordinates in the original coordinate system (not bothering
about original dimension or aspect ratio)
Normally the aspect ratio of the video as detected by the media framework is correct, but sometimes it is not. In those cases the aspect ratio of the video viewer can be set by right clicking the video, selecting
and choosing one of the aspect ratios offered in the submenu.The Annotation Density Viewer is a kind of a timeline which allows you to:
Navigate through the whole media file. The length of this viewer always corresponds to the whole media file, so e.g. by clicking in the middle you will always go to the middle of the media file. The selection is represented as a small grey bar.
See how many annotations are concentrated at a particular moment of the time (the Annotation Density). The more annotations available for a particular moment, the more the Annotation Density bar is filled. This can be useful to track places in the media file that still have to be annotated.
By default the Annotation Density Viewer shows the annotation density of all tiers. It is also possible to view the annotation density of a selection of either tiers, types, participants or annotators. To do so, right click the Annotation Density Viewer and select one or more tiers, types, participants or annotators.
The Waveform Viewer displays the waveform of the audio
file[8] (*.wav
). Above the waveform,
timecode information is displayed. This timecode information can be
hidden by right clicking in the Waveform Viewer and clicking on
in the context menu.
In the same manner it can be made visible again.
While listening to the sound, a red vertical bar, the crosshair, moves through the waveform and indicates which part of the waveform corresponds to the current point in time. Furthermore, whenever you have selected a time interval, the corresponding part of the waveform will be highlighted in light blue color.
At any time, you can press ALT and drag the
time axis for a panning effect (i.e. go to the left to go back in
the time or to the right to go further). In the case of video files,
the waveform is only displayed if there exists an additional
*.wav
file (see the section called “Basic Information: Media Files and Annotation Files”). If this is not the case, the
Waveform Viewer will not be available.
On slower machines, the Waveform Viewer may not always update properly when moving to the next page.
The Waveform Viewer supports 3 modes. You can select the active mode by a right click on the Waveform Viewer. In the menu
, the following options are available:Separate. 2 Waveforms are showed, one for each channel.
Merged. The 2 channels are merged and the result, one waveform is displayed.
Blended. Both channels are displayed on 1 waveform, differences are designated with colors.
Another option in the context-menu (right click) of the Waveform Viewer is connected. If this option is checked, the timescale of the Waveform Viewer and the Timeline Viewer are connected:
You can turn on the subtitle viewer for a tier by
selecting that tier from the pulldown menu in the tab
. During playback, the
Subtitle Viewer displays the annotations of the selected tiers at
the current media time, both during playback and in static
situations.
By default, the Subtitle Viewer can display up to four tiers as a subtitle:
Select the
tab in the right upper corner of the ELAN windowIn the pull-down menu, click on the tier you want to be displayed.
The number of tiers to display as subtitle can be between 1 and 8. To set this number, click Viewers in the Preferences dialog. Change the number of viewers to the desired value in the pull down menu and click .
from the main menu and selectThe Grid Viewer displays the content as well as the begin time, end time and duration of all annotations from a single tier. You have to activate this Viewer through selecting the
tab next to the video window.
It is possible to select annotations within the Grid
Viewer (by clicking on them), or to edit them (by double-clicking on
them).
The time format of the begin time, end time and duration can be changed. Right click on the Grid Viewer, select
and select one of the available formats: (hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds), (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), (hours:minutes:seconds.frames) and (milliseconds).By default the Grid Viewer works in single tier mode. If you check the checkbox on the left of the tiers dropdown menu you can switch to multi tier mode. In that case all the annotations of the selected tier will be shown in the grid, together with all symbolic associated tiers (see the section called “Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and linguistic types”). Empty cells of symbolic associated tiers can also be filled in this way.
The results as shown in the Grid Viewer can be exported to a (tab-separated) text file, for later manipulation with e.g. a spreadsheet. Follow these steps:
First make a selection of the tiers you want to be displayed (and thus exported)
Right click on the Grid Viewer and select
Enter the name of the file to be created and choose Save
The text viewer shows all values of all annotations on a selected tier as ongoing text. Within this viewer, there are 3 kinds of highlighting shown:
Text inside a red box: the value of the annotation on the selected annotation tier that matches the current point of time.
Text inside a dark blue box: the active annotation (see also the section called “The Timeline Viewer and the Interlinear Viewer”)
Text with a light blue background: the selected time interval.
Optionally, you can make the annotation boundaries visible in the text viewer. Right click in the text viewer and select
to enable this. The boundaries are marked by a dot.A selection of the text in the Text Viewer can be copied to the clipboard. To do so, first select (part of) the text using your mouse. The selection you make in the Text Viewer is enlarged to include the whole of each annotation your selection spans. However, only your exact selection will be copied. Right click in the Text Viewer and select
.On the Metadata tab in the main window the IMDI metadata that belong to the media can be displayed. Click
, select an IMDI file and click .The default metadata keys are now displayed (see also the section called “Editing preferences”) in a table. If you want to change which keys are displayed, click and (de)select the keys.
The metadata can also be displayed in a tree structure instead of a table. Right click the table and select
. Right click and select to return to the table view.All annotations can be displayed in the Timeline Viewer or the Interlinear Viewer. Only one of the two Viewers can be switched on at a time.
The Timeline Viewer is always shown when a document is opened in ELAN. It displays the tiers and their annotations, whereby each annotation corresponds to a specific time interval. Because the display of an annotation is limited to this time interval, an annotation does not always fit in the annotation frame. A small grey square is the bottom right corner of the upper part of a annotation frame indicates that an annotation is truncated.
The height of the tiers can be reduced to make more tiers
visible. To do so, open Viewers, check Reduced Tier
Height
and click . Above the
tiers, a timescale is displayed. This timescale can be hidden by
right clicking in the Timeline Viewer and clicking on
in the context menu.
In the same manner it can be made visible again.
During playback, a red vertical bar, the crosshair, moves through the annotations and indicates the current point in time. Normally the crosshair will start from the left if it reaches the right side of the viewer. If you right click in the Timeline Viewer and select Ticker Mode, the crosshair will stop when it reaches the center of the viewer, while the viewer itself scrolls to the left.
Whenever you have selected a time interval, it will be highlighted in light blue; and whenever you have selected an annotation, this becomes the active annotation and will be highlighted in a dark blue frame.
If desired the latter can also be indicated with a bold line. To activate this, right click on an annotation somewhere in the timeline viewer and check the
box in the context menu.In the Timeline Viewer you can (a) select and modify time intervals (see the section called “How to make a selection”) and (b) enter annotations (see the section called “How to enter annotations”).
The Interlinear Viewer offers an alternative perspective on the tiers and their annotations. It shows parent-child relations between annotations using vertical text alignment (interlinearization). You can enable it selecting the
radio button when you right-click on the tier name’s panel and select . Switching it on, will automatically switch off the Timeline Viewer.The following screenshots compare how information is displayed in the two Viewers.
Whenever the Interlinear Viewer is switched on, it displays an annotation block (i.e., an independent, time-alignable parent annotation together with its referring annotations, see the section called “Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and linguistic types”). To move forward/backward to the next block, click on the icons at the top of the Viewer. During playback, the Viewer automatically moves forward to the next annotation block.
The Interlinear Viewer differs from the Timeline Viewer in that it does not allow to modify the time interval or to enter new annotations. It is similar to the Timeline Viewer in that it allows to edit existing annotations.
The Tier Name Panel gives an overview of the different existent tiers. Both tier names (see also the section called “Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and linguistic types” and the section called “How to define a tier and its attributes”) and tier types are defined by the user (see also the section called “How to define a linguistic type”). One of the tiers in the Tier Name Panel is the active tier (indicated by its underlining and red color), which means that new annotations will be added to this tier (when pressing ALT+ N).
To make a tier the active tier, choose one of the following actions:
Double click on a tier label.
Right click in the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer and choose Active Tier.
Select the active tier with the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ARROW UP/DOWN
To select the tiers to display (and their order) see the section called “Switching tiers on/off” and the section called “Sorting tiers”.
It is possible for ELAN to show the number of annotations per tier. Right click on the Tier Name Panel and select
.The Timeseries Viewer can display time series data as line graphs. Like the Timeline and Waveform viewer, it has a horizontal timescale bar, a red vertical crosshair indicating the media time and a light blue rectangle to highlight the selected time interval. It has also the same zoom and pan options.
It can display multiple “trackpanels” and each trackpanel can display multiple “tracks”. Trackpanels and tracks can be added and removed via a popup menu. Each trackpanel derives its value range (vertical axis) from one of the tracks. The viewer has a facility to transfer data from a track to annotation values. Based on the time intervals of the annotations on a chosen (time-alignable) tier, the minimum, maximum or average of the data within these intervals of the selected track will be copied to annotations on a dependent, symbolically associated tier.
The Timeseries Viewer will be created after at least one supported timeseries data file[9] has been associated to the transcription via menu and then the tab “Linked Secondary Files”. These data files can be synchronized to the media files in the “Media Synchronization Mode”.
Displaying data from an already linked CSV/Tab delimited text file in the Timeseries Viewer is done as follows:
Right click in the Timeseries Viewer and select
.If you have more than one file linked as secondary file, choose the file you wish to use from the pull down menu that is now displayed and click
.In the next window you see a sample table with several
lines and columns of the chosen file. At least one of the
columns must contain time data. Select that column by
selecting the appropriate column number at Time Column
Index
. If the time codes have a fixed interval, you
can check the option Continuous Rate
. Its
underlying purpose is to speed up the calculations for
displaying a data track.
After you have selected a column as the time column, you
can begin creating tracks. On the Add tab, enter a
Track Name
and optionally a Track
Description
. Select the number of the column in the
data that you want to use for this track and specify the range
for the vertical axis. This can be automatically calculated by
selecting Calculate Range From Data
or it can
be set manually by selecting Manual Setting
and entering the Minimum Value
and
Maximum Value
.
The Derivative option allows you to display the first,
second or third derivative of your data. Derivatives are
useful if we are, for example, dealing with data that
represent the position of an object, but we wish to see the
velocity of that object. Because velocity is the first
derivative of position, we would select 1
. In
this example, 2 would represent the acceleration and 3 the
rate of change of acceleration, also called
jerk or jolt.
Enter the units of your data, for instance
meters for position or Pascal
(Pa) for pressure at the Units
(String)
option. Select a color by clicking the
colored box at Track Color
.
Finally click the
button. The track is now added to the list of Current Tracks which is above the Add tab. Continue adding tracks for each column of data you wish to display. After adding tracks, click on the button.To display the track right click on the Timeseries Viewer again. Select
to add a new trackpanel. Right click the new trackpanel and select . A list of not yet displayed tracks is displayed. Click one to add it to the trackpanel.The other options from the popup menu are:
Zoom: zoom in and out horizontally.
Time Ruler Visible: hides or shows the timescale bar.
Connected:
Fit Vertically: fit the trackpanel(s) vertically to the Timeseries Viewer window.
Attach: attaches of detaches the Timeseries Viewer to the main window.
Add TrackPanel: create a trackpanel
Remove TrackPanel: remove current trackpanel.
Add TrackPanel For Each Track: create a trackpanel for each of the existing tracks.
Remove All TrackPanels: remove all trackpanels form the Timeseries Viewer window.
TrackPanel > Set Range For Panel: set the vertical range to the range specified for a track.
TrackPanel > Remove Track: remove a track from the current trackpanel.
TrackPanel > Add All Tracks: add all tracks to the current trackpanel.
TrackPanel > Remove All Tracks: remove all tracks from the current trackpanel.
Extract Track Data: Extract data from a track and add it to a tier.
The following Menu options are available at the top of the ELAN window:
the section called “Screen display and navigation through a document”) and to configure automatic backups.
: use this menu to open, create, save, im-/export or exit a document (seethe section called “How to create annotation units on dependent tiers”).
: use this menu to search for text (seethe section called “Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and linguistic types”) and the shortcut keys.
: use this menu to get an overview of the tier dependencies (seethe section called “Activating and deactivating the Bulldozer mode or Shift mode”), to choose between annotation mode and synchronization mode and to select a language and video standard.
: use this menu to (de)activate the Bulldozer mode (see: use this menu to read information about ELAN.
With the Media Player options, you can control the playback of the file. The following options are available at the bottom and at the left side of the ELAN window:
Table 4.1. Media Controls
Icon | Meaning | Shortcut |
---|---|---|
![]() | Go to the beginning of the video/audio fragment | CTRL+B |
![]() | Go to the previous scroll view (make the beginning point of the current timeline view the end point) | CTRL+PAGE UP |
![]() | Go back one second | SHIFT+LEFT |
![]() | Go back one frame ( = 40 ms for PAL, 33.4 ms for NTSC) | CTRL+LEFT |
![]() | Go back one “pixel” on the timeline viewer (smallest unit, depends on the zoom factor of the timeline viewer, default value 10 ms) | CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT |
![]() | Start / Pause the playback | CTRL+SPACE |
![]() | Go to the next “pixel” on the timeline viewer (smallest unit) | CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT |
![]() | Go to the next frame | CTRL+RIGHT |
![]() | Go to the next second | SHIFT+RIGHT |
![]() | Go to the next scroll view | CTRL+PAGE DOWN |
![]() | Go to the end of the media fragment | CTRL+B |
Table 4.2. Selection Controls
Icon | Meaning | Shortcut |
---|---|---|
![]() | Play the selected interval. | SHIFT+SPACE |
![]() | Clear the selection. | CTRL+C |
![]() ![]() | Move the crosshair to the begin / end of selection | CTRL+/ or CTRL+SHIFT+K |
Table 4.3. Annotation Controls
Icon | Meaning | Shortcut |
---|---|---|
![]() | Go to the previous annotation on the active annotation tier | ALT+LEFT |
![]() | Go to the next annotation on the active annotation tier | ALT+RIGHT |
![]() | Go to the annotation above. | ALT+UP |
![]() | Go to the annotation below. | ALT+DOWN |
Table 4.4. Selection Mode
Icon | Meaning | Shortcut |
---|---|---|
![]() | While playing, select an interval automatically | CTRL+K |
![]() | Keep playing the selected interval (if used together
with ![]() |
CTRL+L |
The timecode can be displayed in the following formats:
(hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds), (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), (hours:minutes:seconds.frames) and (milliseconds). It can be used to access points in time (by clicking on it and entering a value in "hh:mm:ss:ms" format). To change the display format, right click on it and select a format from the menu. The SMPTE timecode formats PAL and NTSC only indicate the way time values are converted to frame numbers; this is independent of the actual video standard of the associated video(s).The sliders available when the
tab is selected allow you to control the playback rate and the volume.In all its displays, ELAN makes use of recurring colors in order to facilitate the orientation in the document. The following colors are used:
Red: Position of the crosshair (i.e., current point in time);
Light Blue: Selected time interval;
Dark Blue: Active annotation.
Black with long segment boundaries: Annotations that can be aligned to the time axis.
Yellow with short segment boundaries: Annotations that cannot be aligned to the time axis.
For example:
The ELAN window setup as described and illustrated in the section called “Basic Information: The ELAN window” above is the default display. But you can easily change the display according to your needs. The following options are available:
increasing/decreasing the size of the ELAN window (the section called “Increasing/decreasing the size of the ELAN window”);
switching Viewers on/off (the section called “Switching Viewers on/off”);
increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers (the section called “Increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers”);
switching tiers on/off (the section called “Switching tiers on/off”);
rearranging the order of tiers (the section called “Rearranging the order of tiers” and the section called “Sorting tiers”);
displaying a tier in the any of the tab pane’s viewers (the section called “The Subtitle Viewer” and further);
changing the time resolution (the section called “Changing the time zoom”);
changing the font size (the section called “Changing the vertical (intensity) zoom”);
de-attach/re-attach the video window (the section called “The Video Viewer”).
The size of the ELAN window can be increased or decreased. Do one of the following:
Go with the mouse to the borders of the ELAN window. The mouse will turn into a double-headed arrow. Click and move it to increase/decrease the size of the window.
In the top right corner of the ELAN window, click on the
icon to activate the full-screen modus; click on the icon to return to the previous size.Depending on the type of media file, ELAN automatically displays three Viewers (Video, Waveform and Timeline Viewer). Furthermore one can choose an additional viewer in the tabs on the right of the video Viewer: a text viewer, a grid viewer or subtitle viewer. Note that it is not possible to activate both the Timeline and the Interlinear Viewer at the same time.
If a media file is not available (e.g., the
*.mpg
/*.mov
file in case
of audio data, or the *.wav
file in case of
some video data), the corresponding Viewer is not available
either.
The size of all Viewers (except for the Video Viewer) can be increased and decreased relative to the size of other Viewers. Do one of the following:
Use the up/down-arrows of the split-pane.
Click on the up/down-arrow to increase/decrease the size of the corresponding Viewer.
Use the mouse.
Go with the mouse to the split-pane. The mouse will turn into a double-headed arrow. Click and move it up/down to increase/decrease the size of the corresponding Viewer.
The width of the tier label panel left of the timeline viewer can also be changed. Put your mouse cursor on the arrows in the top right corner of this panel. When the appearance of the mouse cursor changes you can drag the right border to the left or to the right and by doing so decrease or increase the size of the tier label panel.
By default, ELAN automatically displays all available tiers, but each tier can be switched on or off manually, allowing you to focus only on the tiers of interest for the task at hand.
To switch tiers on/off, do the following:
In the Timeline Viewer, right-click in the tier name panel.
In the pull-down menu select the submenu
and (un)check the tiernameSwitching off a tier can be done directly by right clicking on its name and selecting
from the pull down menu. Alternatively you can open a window containing all tier names by selecting in the popup menu.
If you switch a tier on, it will be put on the place
where you clicked.
Within the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer, you can rearrange the order in which the tiers are displayed. Just drag the tier label to its new location. The tiers will be displayed in the new order.
If you exit the document, ELAN will save the order of
tiers in the following way: first, all activated tiers (in the order
as they appear in the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer), followed by
all non-activated tiers in alphabetical order.
The order of the visible tiers in the timeline and interlinear viewer can be altered. To achieve this, right click in the tier name panel and select the submenu
. Then choose one of the following options:Table 4.5. Sort tier options
: no specific order. | ![]() |
: display a tree with the hierarchical structure of the tiers | ![]() |
: group tiers by their linguistic type | ![]() |
: group tiers with annotations of a single participant | ![]() |
The default zoom for the Waveform and the Timeline Viewer is 100%, corresponding to 10 milliseconds per pixel. The zoom can be changed simultaneously for both Viewers. Do either of the following:
Click with the right mouse button on either the Waveform Viewer or the Timeline Viewer.
Go to
. The following menu appears:Click on a zoom rate to select it. A checkmark appears next to the selected zoom rate.
Click on a lower percentage to get a finer zoom.
Click on a higher percentage to get a wider zoom.
Place mouse cursor on the Waveform Viewer or the Timeline Viewer.
Press the CTRL key and keep it pressed.
Move the scroll wheel of your mouse. Moving down is zooming out and moving up is zooming in.
There is another zoom option called Zoom to Selection (see Figure 4.83, “Changing time zoom”). To use it, first make a selection (see the section called “Making a selection”). Then right click on the Waveform Viewer or Timeline Viewer and select . The selection is now displayed almost as wide as the Waveform and Timeline Viewer. In the context menu beneath the option is selected and the zoom factor is displayed.
Sometimes it can be handy to zoom in on the intensity of the signal displayed in the waveform viewer. This way you can more easily make the distinction between parts where someone is speaking and those where there is a silence. Such a visual amplification is available through the right-click context menu in the waveform viewer:
Please note that this vertical zoom does not change the
audio characteristics in any way.
The default font size is 12 pt., but it can be changed separately for the different annotation viewers in ELAN. Do the following:
If you are not sure that the font you want to use can display all the (special) characters of an annotation (for instance IPA characters), you can check this by using the Font Browser utility ELAN offers. Click on Figure 4.86, “Font Finder-Explorer”). In the first list of the explorer you can select a system font for which you want to know what Unicode subsets it can display. These subsets are displayed in the list below the list of system fonts. If you click on a Unicode subset, this subset is displayed in a new window (Font Browser for Codepage).
to open the Unicode Font Finder-Explorer (seeAnother way of checking whether your special characters can be displayed in the desired font, is to enter text in the bottom textbox of the Font Finder-Explorer and click on
. Now the lists on the right of the Font Finder-Explorer will display the fonts and Unicode subsets that can display the text in the textbox. Clicking on a Unicode subset will display that subset in the Font Browser for Codepage-window.Clicking the
button will clear the lists, except for the list of system fonts.Some preferences can be changed in a dedicated dialog window. Click
. Select a category in the list to the left of the dialog window. The categories and their preferences are:Editing
Deselecting the inline text edit box
commits changes
:
If this option is not checked (default) changes made to an inline edit box are discarded if you leave the edit box without explicitly committing the changes. This happens for instance if you click outside the current edit box.
If this option is checked changes are committed if you leave the current inline edit box.
Enter key commits changes in the inline
edit box
:
If this option is not checked (default) pressing ENTER will insert a line break (a.k.a. newline) in an inline edit box. To commit the changes you should hit CTRL+ENTER.
If this option is checked ENTER will not insert a line break. It commits the changes as if you pressed CTRL+ENTER.
Clear Selection after creating or editing
an annotation
This option makes ELAN clear the selection after creating or editing an annotation
Media
Media navigation: Frame forward and frame
backward jump to begin of next or previous
frame
:
If this option is not checked (default) clicking the frame forward button (see the section called “The Media Player options”) will put the crosshair forward by the amount of ms in one frame. So if the crosshair is in the middle of a frame, clicking frame forward will put the crosshair in the middle of the next frame. The same goes for frame backward.
If this option is checked the crosshair is put at the beginning of the next (or previous) frame no matter where it is in the current frame.
Video display: All video's the same size,
in a single row
:
When there are three or four video's linked, only one of them is displayed big; the others are small. Check this option If you want all video's to be displayed in the same size and in a single row.
Media location: Set default directory for media files
Click
to set a default directory. ELAN searches this directory for a media file if it fails to find it using the absolute or relative path the .eaf file refers to or the same directory the .eaf file is in.Check The document's Changed flag is set
when the media location has changed
if
Metadata
Check the metadata keys you want to display in the Metadata tab in the main window by default. (See also the section called “The Metadata Viewer”.)
Platform/OS
Mac OS X:
Use screen menu bar
: if checked
ELAN will use the screen menu bar in Mac OS
Use Mac Look and Feel
: if checked
ELAN will use the Mac OS Look and Feel. Otherwise a
platform independent (i.e. Java) look and feel is used.
Note that if the option Use screen menu
bar
is checked, ELAN will use the Mac Look and
Feel, even if you have Use Mac Look and
Feel
unchecked.
Media Framework: Select either Cocoa
QT
or Quicktime for
Java
Use detached media window
: if
checked ELAN will show the media in a separate window by
default.
Windows:
Media Framework: Select either Native
Windows Media Player (WMP)
, QuickTime
for Java
or Java Media
Framework
Preferences
Click on
to browse to and select the directory where ELAN should look for preference files by default.User Interface
Number of recent items
: select
the number of recent edited item ELAN should
remember.
Tooltips
: if checked ELAN will
show tooltips with information about the data or about
the functionality of ELAN, depending on the position of
the mouse cursor.
Viewers
Subtitles
: select the number of
Subtitle Viewers you wish to display in the Subtitle
tab.
Timeline
:
Active Annotation Bold
: if
checked the blue frame of the active annotation has
a bold line.
Reduced Tier Height
: if
checked the the height of the tiers displayed in the
timeline viewer is reduced. The results is that more
tiers are visible.
The following display preferences can be imported and exported:
Font
Fontsize
Tier name color
Selected tier per viewer
Visible/hidden tiers
Importing and exporting these preferences make it possible to apply preferences to another document. To export preferences click
, select a destination folder, enter a filename and click on . To import preferences click , look up the preference file and click on .ELAN has shortcuts for many of it's functions. The default shortcuts, which are mentioned throughout this manual (for an overview see the section called “The shortcut keys”), can be changed via . In the dialog window a list of shortcuts is displayed. To change a shortcut, select it and click on . Press the desired shortcut on your keyboard and click . If the shortcut was already assigned to a function, you are asked whether the shortcut should be reassigned. After changing one or more shortcuts click to save the changes. Click to discard the changes. To restore the default shortcuts click and .
The changes take effect after (re)opening an annotation file.
[7] For users of a one button mouse on Apple computers: hold the CTRL button and click
[8] Different resolutions are supported: 8 bits (mono and stereo), 16 bits (mono and stereo) and 24 bits (stereo). Both PCM and A-law encoded wave files can be loaded.
[9] Currently supported file formats are a proprietary .log file produced by MPI CyberGlove software, a special kind of plain text (.txt) file, containing a time-value pair on each line, Praat .PitchTier and .IntensityTier files and CSV/Tab delimited text files. Software developers can add support for other formats by implementing a Service Provider Interface (more information can be found in the source code release notes).