To start ELAN, do the following:
The initially empty window is displayed in which you can open different kinds of documents.
The main options in the File menu for creating or opening a file are:
*.eaf
) (Opening an existing document)*.mp4
, *.mpg
,
*.wav
). This is not for opening an existing annotation
file (*.eaf
) (Creating a new document).Other dialog windows will appear and prompt you to enter the names and locations of the different files. Then the ELAN window appears and displays the selected files.
.eaf
file by drag-and-drop onto an ELAN window or to create a
new document by drag-and-drop of a media file onto an ELAN window.Once you have started ELAN and opened a document, use the File menu to open, create or import a second document. When done with a document use Close (Closing a file) to close it or Exit (Exiting ELAN) to close all files and exit ELAN.
Elan supports various user interface languages. You can set an interface language at any given time. To do so, choose Options > Language and select one of the available languages.
The selected Language does not influence the content of the produced or edited
*.eaf
files in any way.
At present Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, English, French ,German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Korean language modules are available. However, new languages can be easily added. If you want to provide a translation for a different language, please contact the ELAN development team.
Alternatively, you can immediately incorporate a new translation as follows. In the
directory locale
under the directory where ELAN is installed, you
will find the files ElanLanguage.properties
and
SearchLanguage.properties
. These files can be used as a basis for
your translation. Copy the files to the directory .elan_data (Linux and Windows) or
Library/Preferences/ELAN (on Mac OS) in your home directory and simply edit the entries
in the files. To view the result of the translation, click Options >
Language and select Custom.
In case you have a media file but no annotation file (*.eaf
,
*.txt
, *.trs
), click on
File > New. Next, a
New Transcription dialog window (see The New Transcription dialog window: media) will be displayed, e.g.:
Do the following:
*.mp4
, *.mpg
,
*.wav
, etc.) to select it. It now appears in the rightmost
box. Alternatively, you can click on the media file name and click on the
>> button afterwards.*.etf
) to be
used:
HTTP(S)
, RTSP
(Real Time Streaming Protocol ) or
any other protocol a media player framework might support. Click on Add
Remote File... and enter or paste the full URL of the remote media.
Click on OK.An ELAN window containing the new document appears.
The actual appearance of the window(s) shown for starting a new transcription can differ considerably depending on the operating system.
By default the audible sound will be produced by the first media file in the list.
Even if both a video file and a .wav
file have been selected, the
audible sound is from the video, if that file is the first in the list. This can be
changed in the Volume section of the Controls
tab (right top corner of the window).
Alternatively, you can start a new project by simply opening ELAN. Instead of choosing File > New, just browse to the files you wish to work with from within your explorer (e.g. the Finder in macOS, or Windows File Explorer), select them all and then drag n' drop them onto the ELAN main window. A new transcription will be opened containing the selected media-files.
An ELAN document can have an author. To set the author, click Edit > Set Author.... Enter the name of the author and click OK. It is also possible to add information concerning the license policy or policies that apply to the document, click Edit > Document Properties...
A License can consist of a URL, a license text or both. Multiple Licenses can be specified.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. Synchronizing is the process of working out the gap (offset) between the start times. When played together, the start point of the earlier source is shifted forwards to this offset. This can be done in two different ways:
- If you know the amount of offset for a video, you can enter it by activating the Linked Files dialog window (via Edit > Linked files…
Figure 1.5. Synchronizing video files: Enter offset in 'Linked Files'
- If you do not know the offset time, please follow these steps to synchronize your videos:
Figure 1.6. Synchronizing video files: Offset of player 1
See Changing the linked media files for changing the order of the videos, i.e. the order of appearing in Player 1, Player 2, etc.
Figure 1.7. Synchronizing video files: Offset of player 2
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 Annotation > Shift all annotations … menu (see also Activating and deactivating the Bulldozer mode or Shift mode):
Figure 1.8. Shift all annotations
This process won't delete any annotation. If the annotations are shifted to the left, the maximum shift will be restricted by the leftmost annotation unit.
In case you have an ELAN file (*.eaf
) of a media file
(*.mp4
, *.mpg
, *.wav
etc.), click Open in the File
menu.
The Open dialog window will be displayed:
Figure 1.9. Open dialog window
Do the following:
*.eaf
).An ELAN window containing the document will appear.
Alternatively, instead of clicking FileOpen, you can drag and drop an *.eaf
file directly from your file-explorer (E.g. Finder in OSX or Windows explorer) onto
the
ELAN main screen. The document will open and an ELAN window with the document will
appear.
You can only open files of the ELAN annotation format (*.eaf
).
If you try to open a file of a different format, the following error message will
appear:
Figure 1.10. Error message: no eaf file
If ELAN cannot find the associated media files (*.mpg
,
*.mpeg
, *.mp4
, *.mov
,
*.wav
etc.), it will check if these files exist in the
directory of the *.eaf
file. If they are still not found there,
it will ask you where the media files are located.
Figure 1.11. Locate media file
To open an existing ELAN file which is available online, at an accessible remote location, select File > Open Remote File... and enter or paste the address or URL in the box that appears.
Figure 1.12. Open remote file
Click OK to open the file. Due to network latency opening a remote file can take considerably longer than opening a local file.
A convenient way to reopen a file that you have previously been working on is the File > Open Recent File dropdown menu. The maximun number of files shown in the list, can be set in the User Interface panel of the Edit Preferences window (See Editing preferences).
Backup files created by the Automatic Backup system (see: Creating automatic backups) can be opened and restored by selecting
File > Restore Backup File.... This will open a file
dialog which allows to select and open a file with the extension
*.eaf.001
(etc.). If the file successfully opens, it can be saved
via the Save and Save As actions,
both will show a Save As file dialog.
If you open up several annotation files, you can get an overview of the currently opened documents under the Window dropdown menu:
Figure 1.13. Windows dropdown menu
Click on one of the files to select it. Or use the keyboard shortcuts SHIFT+DOWN or SHIFT+UP to activate the next or previous window in the list.
All documents can be saved as ELAN files (*.eaf
, ELAN
Annotation Format). This includes documents that were created by ELAN itself (see
Creating a new document) as well as documents that were imported into
ELAN from Shoebox/Toolbox, CHAT, Transcriber etc.(see Import from). To save a document as an ELAN file:
Apart from the *.eaf
file, a *.pfsx
file
will be written as well. This file contains user- and document- specific settings
like
the font size used to display text. The *.pfsx
file can, however,
be safely removed as it does not contain any annotation data.
You also can save in .eaf version 2.7 This is the old version of .eaf (prior to ELAN 4.7) If you have used the controlled vocabularies for instance in ELAN 4.7, and save to eaf version 2.7, you may lose some information (colors may not be remembered for instance).
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:
Figure 1.14. Save selection as .eaf file
If annotation units overlap with the selection, they will be shrunk until they fit within the selected interval.
Figure 1.15. Save As Dialog
*.eaf
.*.eaf
file. (For more details on clipping the media see Media clip using script
.)*.eaf
file.Sometimes a file won't open or behaves strangly when edited. Although there might
be
messages in the log file, it is often unclear what the problem is. It is possible
to
validate an *.eaf
file and receive a report of errors found. This
process performs an XML validation and additionally checks the file for the most common
other errors encountered in *.eaf
files. To start the
process:
Figure 1.16. Validation report window
Not all possible errors are detected, just the most common ones:
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:
Figure 1.17. Merge transcriptions dialog window
*.eaf
file.*.eaf
file (i.e. as a result the second file's annotations
are followed by the first file's annotations).
*.eaf
file.*.eaf
file
(please note, the last annotation does not always end at the time the video
file ends but can occur before that time).*.eaf
file (hence after a given
time position).Figure 1.18. Merge transcriptions dialog window
The tiers of the first source are shown as a reference; these don't have to be selected because the first source is always copied completely. The sort buttons allow to list the tiers alphabetically, ascending or descending. The second list shows the tiers of the second source. They can be selected individually or all at once through the Select All button. This list of tiers can be sorted as well, independently of the tiers of the first source.
Figure 1.19. Open new transcription
A template offers the possibility to reuse the same document setup for more than one media file. This includes:
Saving a template is done as follows:
.etf
See Creating a new document for 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 list of
media files that are linked from an *.eaf
file. This option can be
handy if, for instance, you have moved media files to another location after the last
time
you edited an ELAN file or renamed one or moreof the linked media files.
Activating the Linked Files dialog window (via Edit > Linked files…) will get you the following screen:
Figure 1.20. Linked files dialog window
The following options are available on the Linked Media Files tab:
*.eaf
file.By default the audible sound will be produced by the first media file in the list.
Even if both video and audio (e.g. .wav
) files have been linked,
the audible sound is from the first file in the list. This can be changed in the
Volume section of the Controls tab (right
top corner of the window).
The Linked Secondary Files tab shows files that are linked as secondary files. In particular, files that contain data that need to be displayed by the Timeseries Viewer (see The Timeseries Viewer) are found here, but other files may be linked as well. The following options are available:
*.eaf
file.ELAN allows you to create automatic backup copies. To create backups, do the following:
On
to switch automatic backup on, application wide (i.e. for all open documents), using the current settings
Off
to switch automatic backup off, application wide
Backup Settings...
to open the Automatic Backup preferences panel, where related settings can be set. For a description of the settings see: Edit Automatic Backup preferences
Figure 1.21. Automatic backup
*.eaf.001
(*.eaf.002
etc.). Such backup files can be opened and restored via
the Restore Backup File... menu option (or by renaming its extension to .eaf by removing
the .00n
suffix on the file system. It is possible and advised to use
a pool of backup files.
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.
In case of a crash or forced quit of the application, it is best to first create a copy of the backup file(s) of the files that were open at the time of the crash, before reopening those files. When the original file is damaged (but can still be opened), the damage can propagate to the automatic backup file(s) once the backup cycle starts again.
Figure 1.22. Printing
Through File > Page Setup, you can alter the paper size and other settings such as orientation, etc. of the pages to be printed.
Figure 1.23. Page setup
The fine tuning of the print result can be done by opening the Print Preview window, which is accessible via the File > Print Preview menu.
Figure 1.24. Print preview
Figure 1.25. Font sizes
Figure 1.26. Print preview after changes
ELAN offers the possibility to open wave files (or a part of them) in Praat (see praat.org). To achieve this, follow the steps below:
Figure 1.27. Opening a wave pattern in Praat
Make sure you are using a recent version of Praat (preferably 6.x or higher), otherwise this feature might not work.
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 How to make a selection) and right-click in the waveform viewer.
Choose Clip Selection With Praat. 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 File > Close menu option. Alternatively you can also close it by clicking on the arrow in the right upper corner or by pressing CTRL+W.
To quit ELAN wand to close all opened windows, press CTRL+Q or do the following:
Figure 1.28. Save on exit