To start ELAN, do the following:
Double-click on the ELAN icon (on your desktop, or contained within the Java Web Start icon on your desktop).
The start window is displayed in which you can open different kinds of documents.
Click on the Figure 4.1, “File menu”)
menu (seeThe main options in the
menu are:the section called “Transcriber files”, the section called “CHAT file”, the section called “Shoebox file”, the section called “Toolbox file”, the section called “Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) file”, the section called “CSV / Tab-delimited Text Files” and the section called “Praat TextGrid file”)
(the section called “Exiting ELAN”)
(Click on:
*.mpg
, *.wav
), but no annotation
file (*.eaf
, *.txt
) (the section called “Creating a new document”).
the section called “Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) file”)
(Different dialog windows appear and prompt you to enter the names and locations of the different files. Then the ELAN window appears and displays the selected files.
Once you have started ELAN and opened a document, use the
menu to open, create or import a second document.In case there is a media file but no annotation file (*.eaf
,
*.txt
, *.trs
), click on
in the menu. The
dialog window (see Figure 4.2, “The New Transcription dialog window: media”) will be displayed, e.g.:
Do the following:
Click on the
pull down box and browse to the directory that contains the media filesIf you want to use media files of another type (e.g. QuickTime
*.mov
) then select in
the dropdown menu. If a media type is
supported depends on your software configuration.
Double-click on the media file (*.mpg
,
*.mov
, *.wav
, etc.) to select it. It
appears now in the rightmost box. Alternatively, you can click on the media file
name and click afterwards on the
button.
If you want to use a predefined set of tiers (a template), select the Template
radio button and choose the template (i.e. *.etf
) to be
used:
Beside media files on disk you can also add a streaming file of Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP). Click on
and enter the URL of the streaming media. Click on .Click
to open the new annotation document; otherwise click to exit the dialog window without creating a new file.An ELAN window containing the new document appears.
An ELAN document can have an author. To set the author, click
. Enter the name of the author and click .Sometimes one has two or more video files of the same recorded scene, e.g. when 2 different cameras were used. In that case it may happen that both recordings don’t start exactly at the same moment. In order to fix this, one should synchronize the videos. This can be done as follows:
Open the new document with the 2 (or more) video files.
Select the pull down menu
Make a choice about how the time codes should be displayed:
Absolute offsets: for every video its own timing is being shown.
Relative offsets: the video of player 1 is appointed to be the “master”, i.e. the time position of the other videos will be expressed as to the starting point of this file, which starts at 00:00:00.000.
Select the radio button the section called “How to navigate through a document”.
. You can now choose a moment in the video which is easy to calibrate (some clear anchor point, in both of the videos). For instructions how to navigate through the video file, seeNow select
and go to the same calibration point.See the section called “Changing the links to media files” for changing the order of the videos, i.e. the order of appearing in Player 1, Player 2, etc.
Finally, choose
. By selecting the play button both videos will be played together now, so you can check if the synchronization between them is correct. If not, please repeat step 3-5 until the result is satisfactory.Leave the synchronization mode by selecting
. Now you are ready to start entering annotations.By double clicking on a video, it will be placed in the leftmost video window (which is also the biggest one in case there are 3 videos).
If you changed the media file synchronization of a file that already is annotated, you might want to move the annotation units all together to the right (later, positive value) or to the left (earlier, negative value) on the time axis. This can be done using the the section called “Activating and deactivating the Bulldozer mode or Shift mode”):
menu (see alsoThis process wont delete any annotation. If the annotations are shifted to the left, the maximum shift will be restricted by the leftmost annotation unit.
In case there is a media file (*.mpg
,
*.mov
, *.wav
etc.) and an ELAN file
(*.eaf
), click in the
menu.
The
dialog window is displayed:Do the following:
Browse to the directory that contains the ELAN file
(*.eaf
).
Double-click on the annotation file to open it.
An ELAN window containing the document appears.
You can only open files of the EUDICO annotation format
(*.eaf
). If you try to open a file of a different format, the
following error message appears:
A convenient way to open a file that you have previously been working with is the
dropdown menu.If you open up several annotation files, you can get an overview of the currently opened documents under the
dropdown menu:Click on one of the files to activate it.
All documents can be saved as ELAN files (*.eaf
, “EUDICO
Annotation Format”). This includes documents that were created by ELAN itself (see the section called “Creating a new document”) as well as documents that were imported into
ELAN from Shoebox/Toolbox, CHAT or Transcriber (see the section called “Shoebox file”, the section called “CHAT file” or the section called “Transcriber files”). To save a document as an ELAN
file:
Either use the menu options:
Click on
menu.Click on
or .Or use the shortcut key CTRL+S.
Apart from the *.eaf
file, a *.pfs
file
will be written as well. This file contains user and document specific settings like
the font size used to display text. The *.pfs
file can however be
safely removed as it does not contain any annotation data.
Apart from saving a whole document you can also store the contents of a certain time span to an .eaf file, using the following steps:
If annotation units overlap with the selection, they will be shrunk until they fit within the selected interval.
Enter a filename for the new .eaf
Check Clip media for the selection using the script also to clip the media for the selection made and link the new clipped media in the new .eaf file. (For more details on clipping the media see the section called “Media clip using script” .)
Click on save to create a new .eaf file.
Under some circumstances it might be useful to combine the contents of two separate transcription files into a single one. To achieve this, follow these steps:
Choose
A dialog window appears:
If one of the files to be merged is currently opened, select
. Otherwise choose and select the first eaf-fileChoose the second file by clicking the Browse... button.
Check Append Annotations to choose one of the below options to append. Otherwise the annotations are append to the start of the first eaf-file.
Select
to append annotation after the media duration in the first eaf-file.Select
to append after end time of the last annotation in the first eaf-file.Select
to append the annotation from the give time frame.Enter a file name for the result of the merge operation.
Click on
. This dialog will appear:Select the tiers of the second source file that you want to merge with the first file.
If there are common tiers in both files and you want those of the second file to overwrite those of the first, make sure
is checked.Click on
to start merging.When the merge procedure has been finished you can choose whether to open the result immediately in new ELAN window:
A template offers the possibility to reuse the same document setup for more than one media file. This includes:
linguistic types (see the section called “How to define a linguistic type”)
controlled vocabulary (see the section called “Associating a linguistic type with Controlled Vocabularies”)
tiers (see the section called “How to define a tier and its attributes”)
Saving a template is done as follows:
Click on
menu.Click on
Choose a file name ending in .etf
Click on
See the section called “Creating a new document” for a instructions on using a template.
When saving a template a preferences file is created alongside of it. This preferences file will be used when a new document is created on the basis of the template.
As from ELAN version 2.4, the possibility exists to explicitly change the links to
media files that are linked from an *.eaf
file. This option can be
handy if e.g. you have moved media files to another location after the last time you
edited an ELAN file.
Activating the Linked Files dialog (via
) will get you the following screen:The following options are available on the Linked Media Files tab:
*.eaf
file
: remove the selected media file
: specify a new location of the selected file. Especially useful if the checkbox is not marked. The latter indicates the media file could not be found while the ELAN file was opened (e.g. because the media files was moved).
: make the selected media file the Master Media
: indicate that a sound file has been extracted from a video file
: moves a file up/down in the linked file list. The file on top
automatically becomes the Master Media file. The audio file on the highest location
is displayed in the Waveform Viewer.
The Linked Secondary Files tab shows files that are linked as secondary files. In particular files that contain data that to be displayed by the Timeseries viewer (see the section called “The Timeseries Viewer”) is found here, but other files may be linked as well. The following options are available:
*.eaf
file
: remove the selected file
: specify a new location of the selected file. Especially useful if the checkbox is not marked. The latter indicates the file could not be found while the ELAN file was opened (e.g. because the media files was moved).
: associate the file with another linked file.
ELAN allows you to create automatic backup copies. To create backups, do the following:
Click on
menu.Go to
.Click on the time interval after which ELAN should create the backup, e.g., after every 10 minutes.
A checkmark appears next to the selected time interval. From now on ELAN will
automatically create a backup copy in the same directory as the original file, saving it
with the extension *.eaf.001
. Before opening such a file, rename
its extension to .eaf instead of .eaf.001
Automatic backups can only be made after a file has been saved! If you did not save your file before, a warning window will be shown when the backup should be made for the first time, urging you to save the file first.
Printing from within ELAN can be achieved by selecting the
menu.Then a standard print dialog is shown, choose
to start printing.
Through
you can alter the paper size and other settings of the pages to be printed.The fine tuning of the print result can be done by opening the Print Preview window, which is accessible via the
menu.
Tiers settings
Put a checkmark in front of all the tiers that should be printed.
Arrange the order of the tiers with the buttons.
The font size of the tiers can be adapted by clicking on the
button. A new window will appear:After choosing the desired font size, click on the
button in the Print Preview window. After that, the changes will appear:Width: specify the width of the printed area (in pixels). This value can only be changed by selecting a paper format in the the section called “Configuring the page settings (page setup)”).
dialog (seeHeight: enter the height of the printed area (in pixels). If you leave this empty, the default height will depend upon the selected paper size.
Wrap Blocks:
No wrapping: use 1 line for each tier, only usable for files that contain a small amount of annotations.
Within block: wrap blocks, and continue with a new block on the same line if there is space left.
At block boundaries: wrap blocks, and continue with a new block on the same line if there is space left and if the new block fits on that line.
Each block: wrap blocks, and start on a new line if a block ends.
Sort: specify in which order the blocks will appear. This is similar to the tier sorting function (see the section called “Sorting tiers”).
Line spacing: amount of white space between the lines (default: 0 pixels)
Block spacing: amount of white space between the blocks (default: 20 pixels)
ELAN offers the possibility to open wave files (or a part of them) in Praat[1]. To achieve this, follow the steps below:
If desired, make a selection first (See the section called “How to make a selection”)
Right click in the waveform viewer
Choose
orIf you haven’t specified the location of the Praat and Sendpraat[2] program yet, you will have to locate them now in the file dialog
The Praat program containing the wave file appears
Make sure you are using a recent version of Praat (higher than 4.0.5), otherwise this feature will not work.
Note for advanced users: compiling SendPraat on Linux
Make sure a C compiler (like gcc) is installed.
You will also need the X11 or Xorg development packages (they can be found in a package called xorg-x11-devel or something likewise)
Replace if0 with if1 in sendpraat.c, as described on http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/sendpraat.html
Link the executable with the X11 libraries when you compile Sendpraat:
cc -o sendpraat sendpraat.c -L /usr/X11R6/lib
-lX11
Similarly to opening a selection with Praat you can also carve out a selection and save it as a separate wave file. Make a selection (see the section called “How to make a selection”) and right-click in the waveform viewer. Choose . The selected part will now be stored in the same folder as the original WAV file, with a suffix like _23718_25110.wav, the numbers represent the begin and end, expressed in milliseconds. The selection will also be opened in a new Praat screen.
To close a file that is being viewed/edited without exiting ELAN use the CTRL+W.
menu option. Alternatively you can also close it by clicking on the arrow in the right upper corner or by pressingTo quit ELAN wand to close all opened windows, press CTRL+Q or do the following:
Click on
menu.Click on
.If you exit ELAN without having saved the changes (see the section called “Re-open recently accessed files”), the Saving transcription dialog window appears, e.g.:
Checkmark the files for which you want the changes to be saved. Click
to save the changes or click
to return to ELAN.
This behaviour differs from earlier ELAN versions. Therefore you will be warned when exiting. If you don't want this warning again the next time, check Don't show this message again and click on .