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ELAN - Linguistic Annotator
version 4.6.2
This manual was last updated on 2013-11-04.
The latest version can be downloaded
from: http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/.
Original Author: Birgit Hellwig
Updates for version 2 and higher: Dieter Van Uytvanck
Updates for version 3.2.0 and higher: Micha Hulsbosch
Updates for version 4.0.0: Aarthy Somasundaram and Micha Hulsbosch
Updates for version 4.1.0: Maddalena Tacchetti and Aarthy Somasundaram
Updates for version 4.1.1 and higher: Aarthy Somasundaram
Updates for version 4.4.0 and higher: Jeroen Geerts
The Language Archive, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
ELAN - Linguistic Annotator: version 4.6.2
version 4.6.2
This manual was last updated on 2013-11-04.
The latest version can be downloaded from: http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/.
Original Author: Birgit Hellwig
Updates for version 2 and higher: Dieter Van Uytvanck
Updates for version 3.2.0 and higher: Micha Hulsbosch
Updates for version 4.0.0: Aarthy Somasundaram and Micha Hulsbosch
Updates for version 4.1.0: Maddalena Tacchetti and Aarthy Somasundaram
Updates for version 4.1.1 and higher: Aarthy Somasundaram
Updates for version 4.4.0 and higher: Jeroen Geerts
iii
Table of Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vii
1. Notation Conventions ............................................................................................... vii
2. Recent changes to this manual .................................................................................. viii
I. Getting started ................................................................................................................... 9
1. Installation .............................................................................................................. 11
2. Selecting a user interface language ............................................................................. 12
3. Consulting the manual and website ............................................................................. 13
II. USER'S GUIDE .............................................................................................................. 14
4. ELAN documents .................................................................................................... 15
4.1. Basic Information - Media Files and Annotation Files .......................................... 15
4.2. How to manage documents ............................................................................. 16
4.2.1. Creating a new document ..................................................................... 18
4.2.2. Set the author of a document ................................................................ 19
4.2.3. Synchronizing video files ..................................................................... 19
4.2.4. Opening an existing document .............................................................. 22
4.2.5. Re-open recently accessed files ............................................................. 23
4.2.6. Switching between multiple files ........................................................... 24
4.2.7. Saving a document .............................................................................. 24
4.2.8. Saving a selection as .eaf file ................................................................ 24
4.2.9. Merging transcriptions ......................................................................... 26
4.2.10. Saving a template .............................................................................. 28
4.2.11. Changing the links to media files ......................................................... 29
4.2.12. Creating automatic backups ................................................................. 30
4.2.13. Printing ........................................................................................... 32
4.2.14. Configuring the page settings (page setup) ............................................. 32
4.2.15. Previewing the printed pages ............................................................... 33
4.2.16. Opening a wave file in Praat ............................................................... 38
4.2.17. Exporting a selection to a wave file with Praat ........................................ 39
4.2.18. Closing a file ................................................................................... 39
4.2.19. Exiting ELAN .................................................................................. 39
4.3. Import and Export options .............................................................................. 40
4.3.1. Import from ....................................................................................... 40
4.3.2. Export as ........................................................................................... 53
4.4. Screen display and navigation through a document .............................................. 80
4.4.1. Basic Information: The ELAN window ................................................... 81
4.4.2. The Video Viewer .............................................................................. 81
4.4.3. The Annotation Density Viewer ............................................................ 83
4.4.4. The Waveform Viewer ........................................................................ 84
4.4.5. The Subtitle Viewer ............................................................................ 86
4.4.6. The Grid Viewer ................................................................................ 87
4.4.7. The Text Viewer ................................................................................ 89
4.4.8. The Lexicon Viewer ............................................................................ 90
4.4.9. The Metadata Viewer .......................................................................... 90
4.4.10. Audio And Video Recognizer .............................................................. 90
4.4.11. The Timeline Viewer and the Interlinear Viewer ..................................... 90
4.4.12. The Timeseries Viewer ...................................................................... 93
4.4.13. The Menu options ............................................................................. 98
4.4.14. The Media Player options ................................................................... 99
4.4.15. The color coding ............................................................................. 101
4.4.16. Increasing/decreasing the size of the ELAN window ............................... 102
4.4.17. Switching Viewers on/off .................................................................. 102
4.4.18. Show / Hide Specific Viewers ........................................................... 103
4.4.19. Increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers ............................................. 103
4.4.20. Switching tiers on/off ....................................................................... 104
4.4.21. Rearranging the order of tiers ............................................................ 105
ELAN - Linguistic Annotator
iv
4.4.22. View tiers by Type/Participant/Annotator ............................................. 106
4.4.23. Sorting tiers .................................................................................... 107
4.4.24. Changing the time zoom ................................................................... 107
4.4.25. Changing the vertical (intensity) zoom ................................................. 108
4.4.26. Changing the font size ...................................................................... 109
4.4.27. Font Browser .................................................................................. 110
4.4.28. Editing preferences .......................................................................... 111
4.4.29. Importing and exporting preferences ................................................... 117
4.4.30. Editing shortcuts ............................................................................. 117
4.4.31. How to copy current time of the media ................................................ 118
4.5. How to navigate through a document .............................................................. 118
4.5.1. Accessing points in time ..................................................................... 119
4.5.2. Going to the borders of a selection ....................................................... 121
4.5.3. Jumping step by step through a document .............................................. 121
4.5.4. Viewing a list of annotations within one tier (Grid Viewer) ....................... 121
4.5.5. Jumping from annotation to annotation (Interlinear Viewer) ....................... 124
4.6. How to play a document ............................................................................... 125
4.6.1. Playing a document ........................................................................... 125
4.6.2. Playing a selection ............................................................................ 125
4.6.3. Playing around a selection .................................................................. 126
4.6.4. Playing in slow motion ...................................................................... 126
4.6.5. Changing playback rate and volume via the keyboard ............................... 127
4.7. Multiple File Operations ............................................................................... 127
4.7.1. How to select multiple files ................................................................ 127
4.7.2. Multiple file import options ................................................................ 129
4.7.3. Multiple file export options ................................................................. 135
4.7.4. Editing multiple files ......................................................................... 146
5. Annotations ........................................................................................................... 150
5.1. Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and linguistic types .................................... 150
5.2. Data categories ............................................................................................ 154
5.3. How to define a linguistic type ...................................................................... 156
5.3.1. Adding new linguistic types ................................................................ 156
5.3.2. Creating linguistic types ..................................................................... 157
5.3.3. Changing linguistic types .................................................................... 159
5.3.4. Deleting linguistic types ..................................................................... 159
5.3.5. Importing linguistic types ................................................................... 161
5.3.6. Associating a linguistic type with a Data Category ................................... 161
5.4. How to define a tier and its attributes .............................................................. 162
5.4.1. Adding new tiers .............................................................................. 162
5.4.2. Importing tiers .................................................................................. 164
5.4.3. Creating a tier using the Audio Recognizer ............................................ 165
5.4.4. Changing tier attributes ...................................................................... 167
5.4.5. Deleting tiers .................................................................................... 171
5.4.6. Merging tiers .................................................................................... 175
5.4.7. Merging tier groups ........................................................................... 176
5.4.8. Changing the parent of a tier ............................................................... 176
5.4.9. Add New Participant ......................................................................... 178
5.5. Controlled Vocabularies ................................................................................ 182
5.5.1. The creation of a CV ......................................................................... 182
5.5.2. Associating a CV entry with a Data Category ......................................... 184
5.5.3. Importing an existing CV ................................................................... 185
5.5.4. Using an External CV ........................................................................ 185
5.5.5. Exporting a CV ................................................................................ 186
5.5.6. Using CV's ...................................................................................... 186
5.5.7. Associating a linguistic type with Controlled Vocabularies ........................ 187
5.6. Consulting a Lexicon ................................................................................... 188
5.6.1. Setting up a Lexicon Service ............................................................... 188
5.6.2. Set the Lexicon Service and entry field information for a Linguistic Type ..... 192
ELAN - Linguistic Annotator
v
5.6.3. Perform a Lexicon Lookup ................................................................. 193
5.7. How to make a selection ............................................................................... 194
5.7.1. Making a selection on an independent tier .............................................. 194
5.7.2. Selecting multiple annotations ............................................................. 196
5.7.3. Using the selection controls ................................................................ 196
5.7.4. Creating annotation units without gaps .................................................. 198
5.7.5. Making and saving a selection on a referring tier ..................................... 201
5.7.6. Deselecting a selection ....................................................................... 202
5.7.7. Changing the boundaries of an existing selection and annotation ................. 202
5.7.8. Shifting annotations ........................................................................... 204
5.7.9. Activating and deactivating the Bulldozer mode or Shift mode ................... 205
5.8. How to enter annotations .............................................................................. 207
5.8.1. Entering annotations (into the Inline Edit box) ........................................ 207
5.8.2. Entering annotations (into the Edit Annotation box) ................................. 209
5.8.3. Entering annotations from a Controlled Vocabulary ................................. 212
5.8.4. Entering annotations before/after other annotations .................................. 212
5.8.5. Creating depending annotations for a active annotation ............................. 214
5.8.6. Creating annotations on dependent tiers ................................................. 214
5.8.7. Creating annotations from gaps ............................................................ 214
5.8.8. Creating regular annotations ................................................................ 215
5.8.9. Duplicating annotation values .............................................................. 216
5.8.10. Snap Annotations ............................................................................ 216
5.8.11. Automatic labelling and numbering ..................................................... 216
5.8.12. Modifying the content of annotations .................................................. 218
5.8.13. Moving annotations to another tier ...................................................... 218
5.8.14. Changing the case of Annotations ....................................................... 218
5.8.15. Deleting annotation values ................................................................ 218
5.8.16. Deleting annotations ........................................................................ 219
5.8.17. Deleting annotations and annotation values on multiple tiers .................... 219
5.8.18. Split Annotations ............................................................................. 220
5.8.19. Merging annotations ........................................................................ 221
5.8.20. Entering annotations in different character sets ...................................... 223
5.8.21. Associating an annotation with a Data Category .................................... 228
5.9. How to create annotation units on dependent tiers .............................................. 229
5.10. How to filter and copy tiers ......................................................................... 231
5.10.1. Filtering tiers .................................................................................. 231
5.10.2. Copying tiers .................................................................................. 232
5.11. How to detect annotation overlaps ................................................................ 233
5.11.1. Creating annotations from overlaps ..................................................... 233
5.11.2. Comparing annotators ...................................................................... 238
5.12. Create Annotation By subtraction .................................................................. 238
5.13. Copy and paste annotations ......................................................................... 240
5.13.1. Copy annotation .............................................................................. 240
5.13.2. Paste annotation .............................................................................. 240
5.13.3. Paste annotation here ....................................................................... 241
5.13.4. Copy and paste annotation groups ...................................................... 241
5.13.5. Duplicate annotation ........................................................................ 242
5.13.6. Synopsis ........................................................................................ 243
5.14. How to undo an action ............................................................................... 243
5.15. Information about annotations ...................................................................... 244
5.15.1. Annotations Spreadsheet ................................................................... 244
5.15.2. Annotations Statistics ....................................................................... 244
6. Working modes .................................................................................................... 248
6.1. Annotation mode ......................................................................................... 248
6.2. Synchronization mode .................................................................................. 248
6.3. Transcription mode ...................................................................................... 248
6.3.1. Selecting the tier types for transcription ................................................. 249
6.3.2. Selecting tiers for transcription ............................................................ 251
ELAN - Linguistic Annotator
vi
6.3.3. Show or Hide tiers ........................................................................... 252
6.3.4. Change color of tiers ......................................................................... 253
6.3.5. Change color of tiers ......................................................................... 256
6.3.6. Making tiers non-editable .................................................................. 259
6.3.7. Entering text for a annotation .............................................................. 259
6.3.8. Merging annotations .......................................................................... 264
6.3.9. Modifying annotations ....................................................................... 264
6.3.10. Shortcut keys used in this mode ......................................................... 264
6.4. Segmentation mode ...................................................................................... 264
6.4.1. Configuring the behavior of the segmentation keystroke ........................... 266
6.4.2. Editing annotations ............................................................................ 266
6.4.3. Merging annotations and splitting annotations ......................................... 267
6.4.4. Step-and-Repeat playback mode ........................................................... 267
6.4.5. Keyboard shortcuts ............................................................................ 267
7. Searching .............................................................................................................. 268
7.1. Searching in a single annotation file ................................................................ 268
7.1.1. Advanced searching: an example .......................................................... 272
7.2. Displaying search results ............................................................................... 273
7.2.1. The search history ............................................................................. 274
7.2.2. Refining a search .............................................................................. 275
7.2.3. Saving and loading queries ................................................................. 276
7.2.4. Exporting the search results ................................................................ 277
7.2.5. Search and replace ............................................................................ 279
7.3. Jumping from the search results to annotations .................................................. 280
7.4. Searching through multiple annotation files ...................................................... 281
7.5. Structured search through multiple annotation files ............................................ 284
7.5.1. Substring Search Tab ......................................................................... 286
7.5.2. Single Layer Search tab ..................................................................... 289
7.5.3. Multiple Layer Search tab ................................................................... 291
7.6. Search and replace in multiple annotation files .................................................. 297
8. Help .................................................................................................................... 299
9. Reference guide ..................................................................................................... 300
9.1. The mouse options ....................................................................................... 300
9.1.1. Resizing Viewers .............................................................................. 300
9.1.2. Rearranging the order of tiers .............................................................. 300
9.1.3. Make a tier the active tier ................................................................... 300
9.1.4. Accessing points in time ..................................................................... 300
9.1.5. Playing a document ........................................................................... 300
9.1.6. Making a selection ............................................................................ 300
9.1.7. Adding/modifying an annotation .......................................................... 300
9.2. The shortcut keys ........................................................................................ 301
9.2.1. File options ...................................................................................... 301
9.2.2. Playing a document & making selections ............................................... 301
9.2.3. Working with annotations ................................................................... 301
9.2.4. Copy and paste ................................................................................. 302
9.2.5. Working with selections ..................................................................... 302
9.2.6. Searching ......................................................................................... 303
9.2.7. General ........................................................................................... 303
9.3. Key concepts of ELAN ................................................................................ 303
9.3.1. Annotation file (*.eaf) ........................................................................ 303
9.3.2. Media file (*.mpg, *.mov, *.wav etc.) ................................................... 303
9.3.3. Annotation ....................................................................................... 303
9.3.4. Tier ................................................................................................ 303
A. REGULAR EXPRESSION SEARCH ............................................................................... 305
A.1. Character Classes ................................................................................................ 308
A.2. Line terminators ................................................................................................. 309
A.3. Groups and capturing .......................................................................................... 309
A.4. Comparison to Perl 5 .......................................................................................... 310
vii
Introduction
ELAN (EUDICO Linguistic Annotator) is an annotation tool that allows you to create, edit, visualize
and search annotations for video and audio data. It was developed at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with the aim to provide a sound technological basis for the
annotation and exploitation of multi-media recordings. ELAN is specifically designed for the analysis of
languages, sign languages, and gestures, but it can also be used by anyone who works with media corpora,
i.e., with video and/or audio data, for purposes of annotation, analysis and documentation.
ELAN supports:
• the display of speech and/or video signals, together with their annotations;
• the time linking of annotations to media streams;
• the linking of annotations to other annotations;
• an unlimited number of annotation tiers as defined by the users;
• different character sets;
• the export as tab-delimited text files;
• the import and export between ELAN and Shoebox;
• search options.
This manual helps you to understand and use the features of ELAN.
Part I explains the installation process.
Part II is the user' guide. It is organized around the following five topics:
• ELAN documents
• the screen display and the navigation through a document
• annotations
• working Modes
• search options
For each topic, basic information is given. Following that, the use of features is explained in a step-by-step
way. It is recommended that you read relevant chapters before starting to work with your own data.
Part III is the reference guide, i.e., it provides brief information on the following topics:
• mouse options
• menu items
• shortcut keys
• key concepts of ELAN
An overview of the differences between the succeeding versions of ELAN can be found online via: http://
tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/release-notes.html.
1. Notation Conventions
The following notation conventions are used:
Introduction
viii
•Menu items, icons and screen displays are written in the font sans-serif.
• (Shortcut) keys are written in SMALL CAPS.
Note
Information on troubleshooting is printed within such grey boxes like this.
2. Recent changes to this manual
2013-11-04: general update for version 4.6.2
2013-05-13: update for version 4.6.0, added multiple annotation selection, new alignment-view in multiple
file search, FLEx import & export added
2013-01-07: minor fixes to text
2012-12-10: general update for version 4.5.0
2012-07-12: general update for version 4.4.0
2011-08-15: general update for version 4.1.2
2011-04-23: general update for version 4.1.0, introducing the transcription mode
2010-12-23: general update for version 4.0.0
2010-03-12: general update for version 3.8.1
2009-08-20: general update for version 3.8.0, among others the possibility to change shortcuts
2009-04-02: general update for version 3.7.2.
2009-02-03: general update for version 3.7.0, a viewer for integrated display of metadata and a find-and-
replace function for multiple files
2008-08-19: general update for version 3.6.0, an extensible Audio Recognizer framework for semi-automatic
segmentation and annotation
2008-05-19: general update for version 3.5.0, preliminary support for ISO Data Categories and simplified
creation and application of a translation for ELAN's user interface
2008-03-06: general update for version 3.4.0, new customization options and support for timeseries data in
csv/tab-delimited text files
2007-12-10: general update for version 3.3.0, among others the options for exporting ELAN data are
expanded
2007-10-04: general update for version 3.2.0, among others the structured search through multiple annotation
files (This version of the manual is the first to be made from Docbook source to enable an easy generation
of PDF and HTML.)
2007-03-27: some cross-references have been corrected
2007-02-22: removal of obsolete section "menu items" in the reference guide
2007-02-20: references to sections are corrected, new screenshots, keyboard shortcuts updated, a lot of small
corrections
2007-02-08: general update for version 3.0, among others the new search facilities were added
Part I. Getting started
10
Table of Contents
1. Installation ..................................................................................................................... 11
2. Selecting a user interface language ..................................................................................... 12
3. Consulting the manual and website ..................................................................................... 13
12
Chapter 2. Selecting a user interface
language
Once ELAN has been started, you can change the language of the user interface. You can also do that later,
at any time. To achieve this, choose Options > Language and select one of the available languages.
Note
The selected Language does not influence the content of the produced or edited *.eaf files
in any way.
At present Catalan, Dutch, English, French ,German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish 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.
13
Chapter 3. Consulting the manual and
website
This manual is available in three different formats:
• HTML: http://www.mpi.nl/corpus/html/elan/index.html
• PDF: http://www.mpi.nl/corpus/manuals/manual-elan.pdf
•Java Help: in the ELAN window click Help -> Help Contents... . The help files are searchable.
Alongside the manual, the website (http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/) contains a Release History and
Forum. You can reach both via Help > Visit the ELAN website >. This menu gives you also the option to
Download Page if you wanted to download a new version and it let's you Subscribe to the mailing list.
Part II. USER'S GUIDE
This part of the manual contains the user’s guide. It is organized as follows:
• ELAN documents (see Chapter 4)
– Screen display and navigation through a document (see Section 4.4)
• Working Modes (see Chapter 6)
• Annotations (see Chapter 5)
• Search Options (see Chapter 7)
It is recommended that you read the for you relevant chapters before starting to work with your own data.
15
Chapter 4. ELAN documents
4.1. Basic Information - Media Files and
Annotation Files
Every ELAN project consists of at least two files: one (or more) media file(s), and one annotation file.
1. One (or more) media file(s):
• 0 or more video file(s) (*.mpg, *.mov etc.)
• and/or one audio file (*.wav)
The video file allows you to view the video and listen to the sound. If you want to view the waveform as
well, you need to create an additional *.wav file through a conversion program that converts the audio
data from one *.mp(e)g file into a *.wav format. In the case of multiple video files, the audio of the
first selected video file is played. The kind and number of supported video formats depend upon the media
framework you are using. If your media framework supports a format, the same goes for ELAN.
The following media frameworks are known to work:
• Windows (in order of preference, DirectX being the best solution):
– JDS (Java Direct Show)
—Java - Microsoft Media Foundation (.mp4, .m4a,. m4v(win &only), .wmv, .wma, .asf)
– DirectX/DirectShow (Windows Media Player)
– QuickTime
– JMF (Java Media Framework)
• MacOS (in order of preference):
– QuickTime using the Cocoa Framework (QTKit)
– QuickTime using QuickTime for Java
• Linux: JMF (Java Media Framework)
Note
• For *.mov files (i.e., Cinepak-Quicktime-Movies) it is important that these are self-
contained files, i.e., the video information needs to be contained within the *.mov file itself.
If this is not the case, ELAN will not be able to display the file.
• Unlike other media files, the playback rate of Windows Media Audio (WMA) files cannot
be altered.
2. One annotation file:
• an annotation file created by ELAN (*.eaf, “EUDICO Annotation Format”)
• or an imported annotation file. The following formats can be imported: Shoebox/ Toolbox files (with
the extension *.txt)
ELAN documents
16
• CHAT files (*.cha)
• Transcriber files (*.trs)
All information (e.g., the tier setup, the time alignment, the annotations) is saved to the annotation file only
– never to the media file(s).
Note
Take care when editing a media file. Afterwards you probably will want to resynchronize its
alignment with the corresponding the annotations, as described in Section 4.2.3.
Although it's not compulsory it is a good practice to use a common name for media files and the annotation
file. So, it is recommended to use a.eaf next to a.mpg and a.wav.
Imported Shoebox files (*.txt) also do not need to have the same name as their media files, and they can
be located in different directories. All imported files can alternatively be saved as ELAN files (*.eaf).
All annotation files (*.eaf) can be exported as text, Shoebox/Toolbox and CHAT files.
4.2. How to manage documents
To start ELAN, do the following:
1. 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.
2. Click on the File menu (see Figure 4.1).
The main options in the File menu are:
•New (Section 4.2.1)
•Open (Section 4.2.4)
•Import (Section 4.3.1.4, Section 4.3.1.3, Section 4.3.1.8, Section 4.3.1.1, Section 4.3.1.2,
Section 4.3.1.5 and Section 4.3.1.6)
•Exit (Section 4.2.19)
ELAN documents
17
Figure 4.1. File menu
3. Click on:
•Open... in case you want to open an ELAN file (*.eaf) (Section 4.2.4)
•New... in case you want to open a media file in ELAN (e.g. *.mpg, *.wav), but this is not for
opening an annotation file (*.eaf, *.txt) (Section 4.2.1).
•Import > Shoebox File... (Section 4.3.1.8)
•Import > Toolbox File... (Section 4.3.1.1)
•Import > FLEx File... (Section 4.3.1.2)
ELAN documents
18
•Import > CHAT File... (Section 4.3.1.3)
•Import > Transcriber File... (Section 4.3.1.4)
•Import > CSV / Tab-delimited Text File... (Section 4.3.1.5)
•Import > Praat TextGrid File... (Section 4.3.1.6)
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.
Once you have started ELAN and opened a document, use the File menu to open, create or import a second
document.
4.2.1. Creating a new document
In case you have a media file but no annotation file (*.eaf, *.txt, *.trs), click on New in the File
menu. The New Transcription dialog window (see Figure 4.2) will be displayed, e.g.:
Figure 4.2. The New Transcription dialog window: media
Do the following:
1. Click on the Look in pull down box and browse to the directory that contains the media files
2. If you want to use media files of another type (e.g. QuickTime *.mov) then select All Files in the Files
of type dropdown menu. If a media type is supported depends on your software configuration.
3. Double-click on the media file (*.mpg, *.mov, *.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.
ELAN documents
19
4. 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:
Figure 4.3. The New Transcription dialog window: templates
5. Beside media files on disk you can also add a streaming file of Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP).
Click on Add Streaming File... and enter the URL of the streaming media. Click on OK.
6. Click OK to open the new annotation document; otherwise click Cancel to exit the dialog window
without creating a new file.
An ELAN window containing the new document appears.
4.2.2. Set the author of a document
An ELAN document can have an author. To set the author, click Edit > Set Author.... Enter the name of
the author and click OK.
4.2.3. Synchronizing video files
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:
1. Open the new document with the 2 (or more) video files by selecting the both files in the New
Transcription dialog window (as seen above).
2. Select the pull down menu Options > Media Synchronization Mode.
3. Make a choice about how the time codes should be displayed:
a. Absolute offsets: for every video its own timing is being shown.
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b. 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.
4. Select the radio button player 1. 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,
see Section 4.5.
Figure 4.4. Synchronizing video files: Offset of player 1
5. Now select player 2 and go to the same calibration point.
Note
See Section 4.2.11 for changing the order of the videos, i.e. the order of appearing in Player
1, Player 2, etc.
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Figure 4.5. Synchronizing video files: Offset of player 2
6. Finally, choose Apply current offset. 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.
7. Leave the synchronization mode by selecting Options > Annotation Mode. Now you are ready to start
entering annotations.
8. 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).
Note
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 Section 5.7.9):
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Figure 4.6. 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.
4.2.4. Opening an existing document
In case you have an ELAN file (*.eaf) of a media file (*.mpg, *.mov, *.wav etc.), click Open in the
File menu.
The Open dialog window will be displayed:
Figure 4.7. Open dialog window
Do the following:
1. Browse to the directory that contains the ELAN file (*.eaf).
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2. Double-click on the annotation file to open it.
An ELAN window containing the document will appear.
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 will appear:
Figure 4.8. Error message: no eaf file
Note
If ELAN cannot find the associated media files (*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.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 4.9. Locate media file
4.2.5. Re-open recently accessed files
A convenient way to open a file that you have previously been working on is the File > Open Recent
File dropdown menu.
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4.2.6. Switching between multiple files
If you open up several annotation files, you can get an overview of the currently opened documents under
the Window dropdown menu:
Figure 4.10. Windows dropdown menu
Click on one of the files to select it.
4.2.7. Saving a document
All documents can be saved as ELAN files (*.eaf, EUDICO Annotation Format). This includes documents
that were created by ELAN itself (see Section 4.2.1) as well as documents that were imported into ELAN
from Shoebox/Toolbox, CHAT or Transcriber (see Section 4.3.1.8, Section 4.3.1.3 or Section 4.3.1.4). To
save a document as an ELAN file:
1. Either use the menu options:
a. Click on File menu.
b. Click on Save or Save as.
2. Or use the shortcut key CTRL+S.
Note
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.
4.2.8. Saving a selection as .eaf file
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:
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Figure 4.11. Save selection as .eaf file
Note
If annotation units overlap with the selection, they will be shrunk until they fit within the
selected interval.
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Figure 4.12. Save As Dialog
1. Enter a filename for the new .eaf
2. Check Clip media for the selection using the script to also 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 Section 4.3.2.17 .)
3. Click on save to create a new .eaf file.
4.2.9. Merging transcriptions
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:
1. Choose File > Merge Transcriptions
2. A dialog window appears:
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Figure 4.13. Merge transcriptions dialog window
3. If one of the files to be merged is currently opened, select Use current transcription. Otherwise choose
Browse… and select the first .eaf-file
4. Choose the second file by clicking the Browse... button.
5. Check Append Annotations to choose one of the below options to append. Otherwise the annotations
are appended to the start of the first .eaf-file.
• Select after the media in first source file to append the annotation after the media duration in the first
.eaf-file.
•Select after the last annotation in the first source file to append after the end time of the last
annotation in the first .eaf-file.
•Select after the given time position to append the annotation from the give time frame.
6. Check Add linked media and secondary files if you would like to add the media files from the second
source to the list of linked files from the first source. This is helpful if you are merging two different
projects which contain different media files.
7. Enter a file name for the result of the merge operation.
8. Click on Next. This dialog will appear:
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Figure 4.14. Merge transcriptions dialog window
9. Select the tiers of the second source file that you want to merge with the first file.
10. If there are common tiers in both files and you want those of the second file to overwrite those of the
first, make sure Allow existing annotations to be overwritten is checked.
11. Click on Finish to start merging.
12. When the merge procedure has been finished you can choose whether to open the result immediately
in a new ELAN window:
Figure 4.15. Open new transcription
4.2.10. Saving a template
A template offers the possibility to reuse the same document setup for more than one media file. This
includes:
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• linguistic types (see Section 5.3)
• controlled vocabulary (see Section 5.5.7)
• tiers (see Section 5.4)
Saving a template is done as follows:
1. Click on File menu.
2. Click on Save as Template…
3. Choose a file name ending in .etf
4. Click on Save
See Section 4.2.1 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.
4.2.11. Changing the links to media files
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 Edit > Linked files…) will get you the following screen:
Figure 4.16. Linked files dialog window
The following options are available on the Linked Media Files tab:
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•Add… : add a link to a new media file to the current *.eaf file
•Remove: remove the selected media file
•Update… : specify a new location of the selected file. Especially useful if the checkbox Status 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).
•Set Master Media: make the selected media file the Master Media
•Set Extracted from… : 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 Section 4.4.12) is found here, but other files may be
linked as well. The following options are available:
•Add… : add a link to a new file to the current *.eaf file
•Remove: remove the selected file
•Update… : specify a new location of the selected file. Especially useful if the checkbox Status 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).
•Set Associated With... : associate the file with another linked file.
4.2.12. Creating automatic backups
ELAN allows you to create automatic backup copies. To create backups, do the following:
1. Click on File menu.
2. Go to Automatic backup.
3. Click on the time interval after which ELAN should create the backup, e.g., after every 10 minutes.
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Figure 4.17. Automatic backup
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
Note
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.
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4.2.13. Printing
1. Printing from within ELAN can be achieved by selecting the File > Print menu.
2. Then a standard print dialog is shown, choose OK to start printing.
Figure 4.18. Printing
4.2.14. Configuring the page settings (page setup)
Through File > Page setup you can alter the paper size and other settings of the pages to be printed.
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Figure 4.19. Page setup
4.2.15. Previewing the printed pages
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.
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Figure 4.20. Print preview
Tiers settings
• Put a checkmark in front of all the tiers that should be printed.
•
Arrange the order of the tiers with the buttons.
•advanced selection options : click this button to get a advanced selection dialog(see Section 4.3.2.1 ) .
•The font size of the tiers can be adapted by clicking on the Font Sizes button. A new window will appear:
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Figure 4.21. Font sizes
After choosing the desired font size, click on the Apply Changes button in the Print Preview window. After
that, the changes will appear:
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Figure 4.22. Print preview after changes
• Width: specify the width of the printed area (in pixels). This value can only be changed by selecting a
paper format in the Page setup dialog (see Section 4.2.14).
• Height: enter the height of the printed area (in pixels). If you leave this empty, the default height will
depend upon the selected paper size.
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• 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
Section 4.4.23).
• Line spacing: amount of white space between the lines (default: 0 pixels)
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• Block spacing: amount of white space between the blocks (default: 20 pixels)
4.2.16. Opening a wave file in Praat
ELAN offers the possibility to open wave files (or a part of them) in Praat1. To achieve this, follow the
steps below:
1. If desired, make a selection first (See Section 5.7)
2. Right click in the waveform viewer
3. Choose Open file in Praat or Open selection in Praat
4. If you haven’t specified the location of the Praat and Sendpraat2 program yet, you will have to locate
them now in the file dialog
5. The Praat program containing the wave file appears
Figure 4.23. Opening a wave pattern in Praat
Note
Make sure you are using a recent version of Praat (higher than 4.0.5), otherwise this feature
will not work.
See http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
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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
4.2.17. Exporting a selection to a wave file with Praat
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 Section 5.7) 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.
4.2.18. Closing a file
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.
4.2.19. Exiting ELAN
To quit ELAN wand to close all opened windows, press CTRL+Q or do the following:
1. Click on File menu.
2. Click on Exit.
If you exit ELAN without having saved the changes (see Section 4.2.5), the Saving transcription dialog
window appears, e.g.:
Figure 4.24. Save on exit
Checkmark the files for which you want the changes to be saved. Click OK to save the changes or click
Cancel to return to ELAN.
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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 OK.
Figure 4.25. Exit behavior
4.3. Import and Export options
4.3.1. Import from
Elan supports importing file from :
• Toolbox file (Section 4.3.1.1)
• Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) file (Section 4.3.1.2)
• CHAT file (Section 4.3.1.3)
• Transcriber file (Section 4.3.1.4)
• CSV / Tab-delimited Text Files (Section 4.3.1.5)
• Praat TextGrid file (Section 4.3.1.6)
• Tiers from recognizer (Section 4.3.1.7)
• Shoebox file (Section 4.3.1.8)
4.3.1.1. Toolbox file
Importing a document form Toolbox is very much the same as importing a document from Shoebox (see
Section 4.3.1.8). The Toolbox import assumes that all markers in the file are Unicode (although it still
allows to import files in which all markers are in ISO-Latin if you uncheck All markers are Unicode).
This alternative to the Shoebox import attempts to allow more flexibility in terms of tier relations and tries
to prevent that words are cut up in case of misalignment. As with the Shoebox import, information about
the tier relations can be provided by means of a .typ file or by using a marker file.
When reconstructing the vertical alignment of words on interlinearized markers, the position is recalculated
based on the number of bytes per character. But in some files this leads to incorrect alignment, therefore
this recalculation can be turned off by unchecking Correct alignment based on the number of bytes per
character. This import also tries to take non-spacing characters into account.
4.3.1.2. Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) file
ELAN can import documents from the SIL Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx). This involves a few
steps:
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1. Click File > Import > FLEx File.... Select the flextext file and relevant media files by clicking the
...-buttons.
2. In the import window select the .flextext file exported from FLEx. Optionally also add media files here
(if not already in your .flextext file). There are options to exclude the interlinear- text and paragraph
elements from the import, as well as the option to import participant information. When smallest time-
alignable element the “word“ element is selected, the time-alignment for that level will be lost when
exported again to FLEx.
3. It is possible to have linguistic types created simply for all major elements (phrase, word, morph etc.)
or, more fine-grained, for each combination of major element plus “item type” up to a combination of
major element, the type and the language.
4. Finally, set a duration per phrase element in miliseconds. This has to be set as FLEx export files do not
contain it. When importing a flexfile that was edited in ELAN before and exported as a .flextext file,
time duration information has already been stored in the file.
Figure 4.26. Import FLEx file
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Figure 4.27. FLEx to ELAN structure
The tier structure created after import in ELAN is roughly like in the example above. The mapping of the
FLEx structure onto ELAN tiers follows the schema: <Speaker>_<element>-<item-type>-<language>
Where the Speaker prefix is a generic label (A, B, C, ...).
FLEx tiers and their representation in .flextext:
Word <word> <item type=”txt”>
Morphemes <morph> <item type=”txt”>
Lex. Entries <morph> <item type=”cf”>
<morph> <item type=”hn”>
Lex. Gloss <morph> <item type=”gls”>
Lex. Gram. <morph> <item type=”msa”>
Word Gloss <word> <item type="gls">
Word Cat. <word> <item type=”pos”>
4.3.1.3. CHAT file
It is possible to import CHAT files (used in e.g. the Childes project) in ELAN:
1. Select File > Import > CHAT File …
2. Select the Chat file
3. Click on Open
Some remarks about this import feature:
• supported are old CHAT files and CHAT-UTF8, not XML CHAT
• existing media alignment in %snd tiers is maintained in ELAN:
– when no media alignment is present at all, each CHAT utterance gets a default interval of 1 second
assigned
– when partial media alignment is present, the time interval is equally distributed over preceding
unaligned utterances
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– overlapping utterances of the same participant are corrected as good as possible
– CHAT dependent tier names are mapped to ELAN Linguistic Types
– ELAN tier names are either CHAT participant labels or CHAT tier names, followed by
'@participantName'
Remaining issues:
• '<' and '>' characters in CHAT cause parsing errors when the imported file is saved as EAF file
4.3.1.4. Transcriber files
The feature to import Transcriber annotation files into ELAN works as follows:
1. Choose File > Import > Transcriber File …
2. Select the transcriber file (*.trs) and click on Open
3. If the associated sound file cannot be found, a dialog will be shown asking you to locate it. When this
request is cancelled, one can choose to open the annotation file without the sound, or to stop the whole
import process.
The transcriber tiers will be mapped on the ELAN equivalents:
•Section becomes a independent tier and turn becomes a referring tier of section (see also Section 5.1).
• Events are embedded into the annotation text.
4.3.1.5. CSV / Tab-delimited Text Files
A CSV (Comma Separated Values) or Tab-delimited Text file is a text file in which one can identify rows
and columns. Rows are represented by the lines in the file and the columns are created by separating the
values on each line by a specific character, like a comma or a tab. CSV or Tab-delimited Text files can be
compared to spreadsheets like the ones in Microsoft Excel in that they also have rows and columns. Note
that .csv files can be created by Excel.
Take a look at Figure 4.28. The first row represents the event of a person saying 'so from here'. The first
value (as well as the first column of the complete file) represents the tier name, the second and third represent
begin time in different formats, the fourth and fifth represent the end time, the sixth an seventh represent
the duration and the last value represents the annotation.
Figure 4.28. Tab-delimited Text
You are able to import CSV or Tab-delimited Text files in ELAN: File > Import > CSV / Tab-delimited
Text File.... In the dialog window browse to and select a file that contains CSV or Tab-delimited data and
click Open.
The second dialog window contains two sections (see Figure 4.29). The upper section shows a sample table
containing data from the selected file. Both rows and columns are numbered. The lower section enables
you to specify which columns to include and what data type they represent. This means that the format of
the files is flexible: it is not prescribed what data is expected nor how it is formatted. The numbers of the
columns in the Import Options section correspond to the numbers of the columns in the sample table. The
data types you can select are:
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• Annotation
• Tier
• Begin time
• End time
• Duration
Select at least one column with data type 'Annotation'. If you select a column for begin time, end time and
duration, the latter will be ignored in the import process.
Figure 4.29. Import CSV / Tab-delimited Text
The option Specify first row of data enables you to exclude a header by excluding the first few lines.
The option Specify delimiter lets you specify the delimiter if Elan did not guess the correct delimiter. The
delimiters supported by Elan are comma, tab, colon and semi-colon.
If you enable the option Default annotation duration Elan creates all annotations from the selected file
with durations equal to the number of milliseconds specified. This option works only if there is no time data
or only the begin or end times.
Finally click OK to import the data. A new transcription document is created with the imported annotations
as its contents.
Another example
To demonstrate that the format of the imported file can be flexible, take a look at the following tab-delimited
text:
Figure 4.30. Tab-delimited text, different orientation
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In this example each column represents a tier with the tier names in the first row and the annotation in the
other rows. This file can be imported by selecting the following import options:
Figure 4.31. Import CSV / Tab-delimited Text
Note that the Specify first row of data option is set to 2. As a consequence Elan starts importing annotations
from row 2 instead of row 1. Furthermore, Elan tries to extract tier names from the first line of the file if the
column they part of is specified as 'annotation'. This results in this example in two tiers: K-Spch and W-Spch.
For information on merging a CSV file with an existing *.eaf file, please visit www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/
testforum/copy_of_post200912071380212456/view []
4.3.1.6. Praat TextGrid file
ELAN offers the possibility to import a Praat TextGrid file: click on File > Import > Praat TextGrid File....
In the dialog window that now appears, you can browse to the file you wish to import. You are also able to
include Praat PointTiers. When selecting this option, specify the default PointTiers annotation duration in
milliseconds. Finally, check Skip empty intervals / annotations if you want to do so.
If there is already a annotation document opened in ELAN, the imported TextGrid is added to the document
in one or more new tiers. If there is no annotation document opened, a new document consisting of the
TextGrid data is generated.
In addition to TextGrid files in the default encoding for the operating system, ELAN supports Praat TextGrid
files with UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoding.
4.3.1.7. Tiers from recognizer
Importing Tiers from recognizers will import the tiers in a new file if there is no file currently open in elan.
But if a file is open, the tiers will be in the currently open file. To import the tiers from recognizers, go to
File > Import > Tiers from Recognizer.... Selecting this option, first will prompt for the import file. If there
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is no file is open, the tiers are directly imported to the new file. But if a file is already open, then a 'Create
tiers from segments' dialog appears. For more information about this dialog see Figure 5.15.
4.3.1.8. Shoebox file3
ELAN supports the import of documents from Shoebox, thereby allowing you to link transcribed and/or
interlinearized documents to the time axis of media files. In order to import from Shoebox, you need at least
the following two files:
• the Shoebox file (*.txt, *.sht, *.tbt);
• the media file(s) (*.mpg, *.mov, *.wav etc.);
Optionally you can use the corresponding Shoebox database type file (*.typ). If this is not available, one
has to provide a list with field markers (= tier names).
Note
If you do not know the Shoebox database type file, do the following:
1. Open the Shoebox *.txt |*.sht |*.tbt file in Shoebox. Make sure it is the active
window (click on it to activate it).
2. Click on Database menu.
3. Click on Properties …. The Database Type Properties dialog box appears. The name
of the database type is displayed in the header, e.g.:
Figure 4.32. Database type properties dialog window
From here on, every appearance of Shoebox can also be read as Toolbox, i.e. the newer version of what was formerly known as Shoebox.
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4. Locate the directory of the database type file (e.g., “texts.typ” in the above illustration). It
is probably located in the directory “My Shoebox Settings”.
Importing Shoebox files with a TYP file
To import a Shoebox file into ELAN, do the following:
1. Click on File > Import > Shoebox File. The Import Shoebox dialog box appears.
2. Specify the name and directory of the two files, e.g.:
Figure 4.33. Import Shoebox file
3. Like *.eaf documents, the Shoebox file and the media file(s) do not necessarily need to have the same
name, and they do not need to be in the same directory (see Section 4.1).
If the Shoebox file contains both aligned (i.e. containing time information) and non-aligned records, the
aligned ones will maintain the timing, whereas the location of the non-aligned records will be interpolated
automatically.
4. Click OK to import the file; otherwise click Cancel to exit the dialog box without importing the file.
An ELAN window containing the imported Shoebox file appears.
Importing Shoebox files without a TYP file
Instead of using a Shoebox *.txt|*.sht |*.tbt file, there is also an option in ELAN to define the
field markers yourself when importing a Shoebox file.
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1. select the Set field markers and click on the button in the import dialog. The following window appears:
Figure 4.34. Set Shoebox/Toolbox field markers
2. Now fill in a field marker as used in the Shoebox *.txt|*.sht |*.tbt file
3. Optionally select a parent marker (see Section 5.1)
4. Optionally select a stereotype (symbolic subdivision or association, see Section 5.1)
5. Choose a character set (Latin-1, SIL IPA or UTF-8) for the tier
6. Click on Add.
7. Repeat step 2-6 for all field markers.
8. If the selected marker designates a participant, check the Participant Marker checkbox. If you don’t
want the selected marker to be imported, tick Exclude from import.
9. finally choose Close and click on OK in the import Shoebox file dialog
Loading and storing Markers
Once you have manually created a set of field makers, you might want to reuse them later on. ELAN provides
support for this:
•To save a set of field markers, select the Store Markers… button. This will display a save dialog. Enter
a filename, and press save.
•The same way you can open a stored field marker set by clicking on Load Markers…
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Figure 4.35. Store markers
Connecting the transcription to a media file
Once the import has succeeded, you can add a reference to a media file via the Edit > Linked Files… menu,
as described in Section 4.2.11. If the imported Shoebox file was exported from ELAN before, you won’t
need to establish the link to the media file(s) again, as in that case the location information is stored in the file.
About the import process
ELAN imports Shoebox files according to the following conventions:
1. The Shoebox field markers are imported as ELAN tiers. The tier label is identical to that of the field
marker, except for the added extension @‘Speaker-ID’.
This addition is necessary because ELAN and Shoebox differ in how they code information about
multiple speakers:
• In ELAN, each speaker is coded on a separate tier.
• In Shoebox, all speakers are coded using the same field, and their identity is specified in a separate
field.
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Figure 4.36. Shoebox field markers and ELAN tiers
When importing texts by multiple speakers, ELAN splits each Shoebox field into several ELAN tiers
(one for each speaker) and adds the speaker-ID to the tier label.
If speaker information is not specified in the Shoebox file, the extension @unknown is added.
The following screenshot illustrates how ELAN treats texts by multiple speakers:
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Figure 4.37. Multiple speakers in ELAN
Note that ELAN can only read speaker information if:
• A marker is defined as a Participant marker in the Set field marker dialog (see Importing Shoebox files
without a TYP file above), or if:
• It is coded in a Shoebox field labelled \EUDICOp or \ELANParticipant (see illustration above). If this
field is not present, or if speaker information is coded in a different field, ELAN will assume that there
is only one speaker. I.e., if you have multiple speakers and if you want ELAN to assign them to separate
tiers, do the following:
1. For every Shoebox record, add the field marker \EUDICOp.
2. For every Shoebox record, enter the relevant speaker-ID into this field.
Note
When the file is exported back to Shoebox (see Section 4.3.2.20), the extension @‘Speaker-ID’
is automatically dropped from the field marker, and the Shoebox records are sorted according
to their record marker (e.g., in the above illustration, “test 001” is sorted before “test 002” etc.)
3. Based on the information contained in the Shoebox database type file, the tiers are brought into a
hierarchical relationship and are assigned to linguistic types (see Section 5.1 for details of tier hierarchies
and linguistic types). For every tier name a corresponding linguistic type with the same name is created.
All of these linguistic types are connected with a stereotype in such a way that it fits with the original
Shoebox structure.
• The Shoebox record marker is assigned to the stereotype None, i.e., it is an independent, time-alignable
parent tier.
• The transcription and parsing fields of Shoebox are assigned to the stereotype Symbolic Subdivision,
i.e., they are referring tiers that can be subdivided into smaller units.
• All other fields are assigned to the stereotype Symbolic Association, i.e., they are referring tiers that
cannot be subdivided into smaller units.
If you define the markers yourself, then there also is the possibility to choose the Time Subdivision
stereotype. For example:
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Figure 4.38. Time Subdivision
4. All SIL IPA characters are converted into Unicode characters during import. If you export the file
back into Shoebox (see Section 4.3.2.20), the Unicode characters will be converted back into SIL IPA
characters.
5. Initially, unless it had the time code information, the imported Shoebox file does not contain information
about timing. Instead, ELAN automatically assigns each Shoebox record to a three second time interval,
as in the following illustration:
Figure 4.39. Fixed time intervals
The time alignment has to be done manually for each Shoebox record. Do the following:
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1. Activate the Bulldozer mode: Click on Options > Propagate Time Changes > Bulldozer Mode (see
Section 5.7.9 for the three available modes).
Note
If you do not activate the Bulldozer mode, you will inadvertently overwrite and thereby
delete existing annotations. Make sure that Bulldozer Mode is enabled in the Options >
Propagate Time Changes menu.
2. Click on the first annotation on the parent tier (i.e., the first Shoebox record). It appears in a dark blue
frame.
3. Modify the boundaries of that annotation, so that they are aligned with the correct time interval (see
Section 5.7.7 for ways of modifying boundaries).
4. Press CTRL+ENTER to apply the new time interval.
The parent annotation (together with all its referring annotations) is assigned to the new time interval.
All other parent annotations are moved to the right.
5. Repeat steps 2 to 4 for each parent annotation.
The following screenshot illustrates steps 1 to 4:
Figure 4.40. Time alignment
After you have done the time-alignment, you can export the file back to Shoebox – in this case, the time
code information will be kept (see Section 4.3.2.20). If you then re-import the file back into ELAN, ELAN
automatically assigns the Shoebox records to their correct time intervals.
An imported Shoebox file can be saved as an ELAN file (see Section 4.2.5), exported back into Shoebox
(see Section 4.3.2.20), or exported as a tab-delimited text (see Section 4.3.2.5).
4.3.2. Export as
ELAN offers various export options. To export, click on File > Export As and one of the options.
• Toolbox file (Section 4.3.2.2)
• FLEx file (Section 4.3.2.3)
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• CHAT file (Section 4.3.2.4)
• Tab-delimited text file (Section 4.3.2.5)
• Tiger XML (Section 4.3.2.6)
• Interlinear text file (Section 4.3.2.7)
• HTML file (Section 4.3.2.8)
• Traditional transcript file (Section 4.3.2.9)
• Praat TextGrid file (Section 4.3.2.10)
• Alphabetical list of words (Section 4.3.2.11)
• SMIL clip (Section 4.3.2.12)
• Clip of video file (Section 4.3.2.16)
• QuickTime text (Section 4.3.2.13)
• Subtitle text (Section 4.3.2.14)
• Tiers for recognizers (Section 4.3.2.15)
• Media clip using script (Section 4.3.2.17)
• Image from ELAN Window (Section 4.3.2.18)
• Filmstrip Image (Section 4.3.2.19)
• Shoebox file (Section 4.3.2.20)
4.3.2.1. How to select tiers
Figure 4.41. Tier Selection panel in most of the dialogs
Different ways to select tiers :
•By Tier Names
Select the tiers by checking the boxes before each tier name.
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•By Type
This tab shows a list of the linguistic types available in the current transcription. Select the types by
checking the boxes before each type name. Selecting the types will select all the tiers of the each selected
types. To modify the selected tiers switch back to By Tier Names.
•By Participant
This tab has a list of all the participants in the transcription. Select the participants by checking the boxes
before each type name. Selecting the participants will select all the tiers of the each selected participants.
To modify the selected participant switch back to By Tier Names.
•By Annotators
This tab has a list of all the annotators in the transcription. Select the participants by checking the boxes
before each annotator name. Selecting the annotators will select all the tiers of the each selected annotators.
To modify the selected tiers switch back to By Tier Names.
Note
To select multiple tiers, press Shift and click on the successive tiers or click and drag the mouse
along the tiers to select them
Other options :
•To sort the selected order of tiers use the and buttons to move the tiers up and down in the table.
•Show only root tiers : Check this option to show only the root tiers in the transcription.
•Select All : click this button to select all the boxes in the current tab.
•Select None : click this button to de-select all the boxes in the current tab.
•Ok : click on Ok to select the tiers
•Close : click to close the dialog or cancel the changes
4.3.2.2. Toolbox file(UTF-8)
Similar to exporting a document to Shoebox (see Section 4.3.2.20) ELAN data can be exported to a Toolbox
document with an UTF-8 encoding. This export provides more options for output customization.
To export a file into Toolbox, do the following:
1. Click on File menu.
2. Click on Export as > Toolbox File (UTF-8)...
The Toolbox Export dialog box appears:
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Figure 4.42. Toolbox Export dialog window
Only the left part of ELAN tier names containing an @ are identified as tier markers for Toolbox.
These markers form a block in the exported file. The right part of the ELAN tier names are identified as
participant names. These are exported with the marker ELANParticipant see the figure below:
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Figure 4.43. ELAN file and exported Toolbox file
If you use a Shoebox *.typ file to specify the Toolbox database type ELAN extracts the database type
name from the first line of the type file (e.g. the database type name Text in \+DatabaseType Text)
and puts is in the first line of the exported file (e.g. \_sh v3.0 400 Text).
When there is only one root tier (tier without a parent tier) in the transcription (e.g. ref) this will be
used as the record marker by default. When there are multiple root tiers "\block" will be added as record
marker. In both cases it is possible to specify a custom record marker instead.
Some options not touched up in Figure 4.42:
•By first selecting a tier(Section 4.3.2.1) and then selecting Insert blank line after this marker you
insert a blank line after the selected marker every time the marker is printed in the exported file. The
tier name is colored blue in the dialog box.
•By selecting Wrap block you can let ELAN wrap a whole block if one of the lines in a block is longer
than a specified number of characters (default is 80 characters). A block in this context refers to the
markers that are part of the interlinearization.
•When Wrap blocks is selected it is also possible to select Wrap lines. This applies to long marker
lines that are not part of the interlinearization. There are 2 variants: when Wrap to next line is selected
the line is split into 2 or more lines that immediately follow each other, regardless of their position in
the record. When Wrap to end of block is selected everything beyond the first wrap is placed at the
end of the record. Note that wrapped interlinearization blocks are grouped as much as possible.
•When Include empty markers is selected all markers will be printed in each record, whether there
is content or not. When this option is not selected a marker will not be printed in a record when it
has no content.
•By selecting Add master media time offset to annotation times you can add to the annotation
times the time offset from the master media that originated from the synchronization of media files
(see Section 4.2.3).
Make a choice and click on OK to continue.
3. Specify the name and directory of the exported file.
4. Click Save to export the file; otherwise click Cancel to exit the dialog box without exporting the file.
The file is exported as a *.txt | *.sht | *.tbt file.
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If there already exists a file of the same name, ELAN will ask you whether or not it should overwrite
the existing file.
5. Open the exported file in Toolbox.
It contains the following information:
a. All tiers and annotations.
Each ELAN parent annotation (including all its referring annotations) corresponds to one Toolbox
record. E.g., in the illustration below, the ELAN parent annotation “CLLDCh3R02S01.001”
corresponds to the Toolbox record “CLLDCh3R02S01.001”.
b. The time code information for each parent annotation.
Each ELAN parent annotation (i.e., each Toolbox record) contains the additional field markers
\ELANBegin and \ELANEnd (i.e., the begin and end time of the parent annotation).
This time code information allows you to import the Toolbox file back into ELAN, without having
to manually re-align the file (see Section 4.3.1.8).
4.3.2.3. FLEx files
ELAN allows you to export your project to the SiL Fieldwork Language Explorer software, also referred
to as FLEx.
Note
If your .eaf file contains multiple participants, make sure you have given each participant a
name value. You can set a participant value under Tier > Change Tier Attributes....
Choosing File > Export as > FLEx file … will give you the following screen:
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Figure 4.44. Export FLEx file step 1
In this screen, you can map which linguistic type corresponds to which FLEx element, and you can select
which tiers should be exported.
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Figure 4.45. Export FLEx file step 2
The second screen allows you to map the items to the correct element, and what tiers should be exported
as that item.
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Figure 4.46. Export FLEx file step 3
In the third screen, you can set the language and type attributes for either the tiers or the linguistic types. You
can also add or remove values if needed. For more information on the structure of FLEx, see Figure 4.27.
The final screen allows you to save the file as a flextext file, so it can be used in FLEx.
4.3.2.4. CHAT files
1. Choosing File > Export as > CHAT file … will give you the following screen:
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Figure 4.47. Export Chat file
2. Fill in the necessary fields.
Note
Chat labels must be preceded by * (for root tiers) or % (for dependent tiers). While root
tiers have to contain exactly 3 characters, dependent tier names can have up to 7 characters.
3. Click on Export…
4. Fill in a chat file name and choose Save.
4.3.2.5. Tab-delimited text file
All documents can be exported into a tabular format for purposes of further analysis and/or printing. This
includes documents that were created by ELAN itself (see Section 4.2.1 and Section 4.2.4) as well as
documents that were imported into ELAN from Shoebox (see Section 4.3.1.8) Do the following:
1. Click on File menu.
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2. Click on Export as > Tab-delimited Text ….
The Export as tab-delimited text dialog window is displayed, e.g.:
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Figure 4.48. Export as tab-delimited text dialog window
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1. Select the tiers to be exported. ( Section 4.3.2.1)
2. Select to export a selected time interval only.
3. Add time offset from the master media to the annotation times.
4. Select to exclude the tier and/or participant names from the output file
5. Annotations sharing the same begin and end time are exported in the same row.
6. Select to include the description of the controlled vocabulary.
7. Select time information and format.
8. Add extra time format expressed in hours, minutes, seconds and frame.
3. By default, ELAN exports all annotations, but it is possible to restrict the export process to selected
annotations. The following three options are available:
a. Export only those annotations that correspond to a selected time interval. Do the following:
i. In the ELAN window, select the desired time interval (see Section 5.7.1).
ii. In the Export as tab-delimited text dialog window, click in the box to the left of Restrict to
selected time interval. A checkmark appears indicating that this option has been selected.
b. Export only those annotations that are contained on particular tiers. Do the following:
In the Export as tab-delimited text dialog window, select those tiers that you want to export. A
checkmark appears next to any selected tier.
c. Export only those annotations that (a) correspond to a particular time interval and (b) are contained
on particular tiers. To do this, combine the two steps under (a) and (b) above.
4. By selecting Add master media time offset to annotation times you can add to the annotation
times the time offset from the master media that originated from the synchronization of media files (see
Section 4.2.3).
5. The option Separate column for each tier gives each tier its own column in the export file. Annotations
that have the same begin time and the same end time are exported to the same row i.e. the same tab-
delimited line.
•If you check Repeat values of annotations spanning other annotations the spanning annotation
is put in each row containing an annotation it spans. The spanning annotation is not in a row by itself.
•The option Only repeat within annotation hierarchies limits the previous option. An annotation is
only repeated if it is on one of the ancestor tiers in the annotation hierarchy.
6. Select the time markers you want to export (begin time, end time and/or duration of every annotation
unit).
7. Choose the time format (hh:mm:ss.ms, ss.msec, milliseconds and/or SMPTE time code)
Note
If you choose the SMPTE (hh:mm:ss.ff) format, the selected video standard (PAL or
NTSC) just indicates the way seconds and milliseconds are converted to frame numbers.
This is independent of the actual video standard of the associated video(s).
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8. Click OK to start the export process; otherwise click Cancel to exit the dialog box without exporting
the annotations.
9. Finally you will see a save dialog window. In the Encoding drop down box a text encoding can be
selected (either iso-latin, UTF-8 or UTF-16). Make an appropriate choice and click on Save.
Note
Some Mac applications, like TextEdit, have difficulties to load UTF-8 encoded files. This
is most noticeable for “special” characters, e.g. IPA. Using UTF-16 is recommended in
that case.
A message appears to inform you that the file has been exported. The exported file has the extension
*.txt.
The exported file contains the following information: participant, begin time of each annotation, end
time, total length, content, and tier. It can be opened with any program that can handle tab-delimited
texts, e.g., Microsoft Excel.
Figure 4.49. Tab-delimited text
Note
Some versions of Excel seem to have problems importing tab-separated files (white
rectangles are shown instead of the column borders). As a workaround you can open the
text file first in a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and copy and paste the content into Excel.
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4.3.2.6. Tiger XML
If your ELAN annotations contain syntactic elements, it is possible to export these to Synpathy4 (see http:/
/tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/older-tools/synpathy/). This function is available via File > Export as > Tiger-
xml…
First select out of the candidate tiers the one you want to be exported. Afterwards, map the tiers onto the
correct description ("word" or "pos"). Finally enter the name of the file (*.tig).
4.3.2.7. Interlinear text file
This function (File > Export as > Interlinearized Text...) is very similar to ELAN’s printing system.
Therefore more information can be found in Section 4.2.15. The main difference is that the width of the
exported text depends in this case on the number of characters that fits on one line.
Figure 4.50. Maximum line width
After selecting an appropriate layout click on Save as and choose a location and file name. These files can
afterwards easily be edited with any text editor (preferably using a fixed-with font). Optionally tick the
Insert tabs between annotations box if you prefer to have the whitespace between annotations to be filled
with tabs instead of spaces (especially useful when importing a text file into Word). If Insert tabs between
annotations is selected, you could also have single tab instead of multiple whitespaces. To do that tick
Tabs Instead of Spaces box if you prefer to have tabs instead of multiple white spaces.
4.3.2.8. HTML file
Similarly to the export to interlinear text (see Section 4.3.2.7) you can also export annotations to a HTML
file, through the File > Export as > HTML... menu.
Synpathy is a tool for annotating, analyzing, and graphically editing the syntactical structure of sentences (e.g. Linguistically annotated text
corpora), developed at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. The application is based on the SyntaxViewer from the TIGER search
project developed by the IMS (Institute für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, University of Stuttgart).
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Figure 4.51. Export as HTML
The only extra option for the HTML export is
•Play media : Check this option to play the media file in the exported html file.
Note
To play the media HTML 5 is required. It is necessary to place the exported html in the same
location as the media file in order to play the file from the html export.
4.3.2.9. Traditional transcript files
In some situations a straight-forward list of the annotation units, one after another, can be handy. For that
cause an export option to a “traditional transcript text” has been added to ELAN. In its simplest form it
just will create a text file containing the successive annotations of several tiers, in chronological order. This
feature can be found under File > Export as > Traditional Transcript Text....
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Figure 4.52. Export Transcript Text
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As can be seen in one of the options enables you to include silences with a minimal duration. In the figure
there is a silence of 0.2 seconds between 'yeah' on the tier K-Spch and 'and the you go the other ...' on the tier
W-Spch. The first annotation end at 00:00:04.400 seconds and the second begin at 00:00:04.600 seconds,
resulting in a silence of 0.2 seconds. If this silence was shorter than the minimal silence duration entered
in the export dialog window (20 ms in the figure), the silence will not be included in the exported file. The
silence duration indication can have 1, 2 or 3 numbers of digits after the decimal.
Another option makes it possible to merge annotations on the same tier if the gap in between these
annotations is less than a certain amount of milliseconds.
Empty lines after each annotation (block) can also be included or excluded in the generated output file.
Lastly, you can set a fixed width (in number of characters) for the tier labels.
4.3.2.10. Praat TextGrid file
When you wish to work with your annotations in Praat, ELAN enables you to export your annotation to a
Praat TextGrid. To do this, click File > Export as > Praat TextGrid.... In the dialog window that appears
you can select the tiers you wish to export(Section 4.3.2.1) and specify whether you want to restrict the
output to the selected interval.
After clicking OK, you can enter a filename and select an encoding. In addition to TextGrid files in the
default encoding for the operating system, ELAN supports Praat TextGrid files with UTF-8 and UTF-16
encoding. Finally click on Save.
4.3.2.11. Alphabetical list of words
Sometimes it can be very useful to have a alphabetical list of (unique) words from one or more tiers. ELAN
offers a way to generate such lists. Go to File > Export as > List of Words ... and select the tiers(see
Section 4.3.2.1) from which you want to extract the words. The annotations of the selected tiers will be
tokenized (split into words) using either a default set of delimiters or a user definable set. Check Count
occurrences if you want the list to include the number of occurrences for each token. After selecting tiers
(or better, deselecting unwanted tiers) you can click OK and choose a filename. Clicking Save will save
the word list.
4.3.2.12. SMIL clip
ELAN supports export to SMIL5-compliant clips. With a suitable player this enables you to view media files
and the associated annotations as a subtitled movie.
4.3.2.12.1. Export SMIL for Real Player
1. Select the File > Export As > SMIL > Real Player... menu. This will bring up this dialog box:
For a description of this standard and players see http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
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Figure 4.53. Export SMIL Real Player
2. Select the tiers you want to export (see Section 4.3.2.1).
3. Check Restrict to selected time interval if you only want to export the current selection. Otherwise
the whole media file and associated annotations will be exported.
•Check Recalculate the begin time of the selected annotations to start from zero if you only
want the current selection start time to start from zero.
4. Check Add master media time offset to annotation times to add the annotation times the time offset
from the master media that originated from the synchronization of media files (see Section 4.2.3).
5. Check Minimal duration per subtitle (in ms.) to specify the minimal display duration of a subtitle. For
instance, if a annotation is only 0.3 seconds long, but you want to display a subtitle at least 0.5 seconds,
enter 500 (ms).
6. Click on Edit Font and Display settings... button. This will bring up this dialog box:
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Figure 4.54. Change subtitle text settings
•Click on the respective Browse.. button and select the color from the dialog displayed to set the
background color and text color of the subtitle text.
•To set the font of the Text, click on the respective Browse... button and select a font from the font list.
• Font size and the alignment of the subtitle text can be selected from their respective list.
•Click Default button to set the default setting.
•Click on the Apply button to apply the new setting
7. Choose OK to export the clip.
8. Click on the suggested filename to change the location where the SMIL clip will be saved.
4.3.2.12.2. Export SMIL for Quick Time
Exporting SMIL for Quick time is very much the same as exporting SMIL for real player (see
Section 4.3.2.12.1). To export SMIL for Quick time, go to File > Export As > QuickTime.... This will
bring up a dialog box very similar to export SMIL for Real player . The only extra option which is not
available for real player is Merge tiers into one QuickTime text file.If selected, all tiers are merged into
one file and if not selected a separate text file will be generated for each tier. It is also possible to set a
transparent background for the subtitles. This is done by selecting Transparent background in the dialog
(see Figure 4.54) which pops up by clicking the Edit Font and Display Settings... button. Finally click
on OK to export.
4.3.2.13. QuickTime Text
Another format you can export to from ELAN is QuickTime subtitle Text. To do this, go to File > Export
As > QuickTime Text.... Select the tiers(see Section 4.3.2.1 ) you want to be included in the subtitles.
Optionally specify the following options:
•Restrict to selected time interval: restrict the subtitles to the current selection.
–Recalculate the begin time of the selected annotations to start from zero: recalculates the time
of current selection to start from zero
•Add master media time offset to annotation times: add to the annotation times the time offset from
the master media that originated from the synchronization of media files (see Section 4.2.3).
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•Minimal duration per subtitle (in ms.): specify the minimal display duration of a subtitle. For instance, if
a annotation is only 0.3 seconds long, but you want to display a subtitle at least 0.5 seconds, enter 500 (ms).
•Merge tiers into one QuickTime text file: If not selected a separate text file will be generated for each
tier.
•Edit Font and Display Settings... : (see Figure 4.54)
Finally click on OK.
4.3.2.14. Subtitle Text
Besides the QuickTime subtitle Text (see Section 4.3.2.13) ELAN can export annotations to there are few
other subtitle formats: SubRip (.srt), Spruce (.stl), Timed Text Marlup Language(ttml) (.xml) and
LRC (.lrc) . Click on File > Export As > Subtitle Text... and select the tiers(see Section 4.3.2.1 ) you
want to include in the subtitle file. Specify whether the subtitles should be restricted to annotations in the
selected time interval, whether the time of the selected interval should be recalculated form zero and if the
master media time offset should be added to the annotations times. The third option lets you specify the
minimal display duration of a subtitle. For instance, if a annotation is only 0.3 seconds long, but you want
to display a subtitle at least 0.5 seconds, enter 500 (ms).
Figure 4.55. Export as Subtitles text
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After you have selected tiers and specified the options, click on OK. Enter a filename in the next window
and click on Save.
4.3.2.15. Tiers for recognizers
Tiers for the recognizers are exported in the AVATech tier format. For more information on the AVATech
tier format see http://tla.mpi.nl/projects_info/avatech/. Files can be exported as .txt, .csv and xml.
1. Select File > Export As > Tiers for Recognizer... menu. This will bring up this dialog box:
Figure 4.56. Tiers for AVATech recognizers
2. Check Show only root tiers to show only the top level tiers.
3. Select the tiers you want to export. Keep CTRL pressed and click to select multiple tiers, press Shift and
click to select multiple successive tiers.
4. Check Restrict to selected time interval if you want to export the current selection. Otherwise the
whole media file and associated annotations will be exported.
5. Check new format to output the tiers to a new, more extensive xml format that supports a seperate
output scheme of overlapping tiers.
6. Click OK to export the tiers and give a filename, where the tiers can be exported. Also choose the format
you want, e.g. txt, csv or xml.
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4.3.2.16. Clip of video file
When a command line tool for extracting clips from video files is installed Elan is able to use that tool. At
this moment only M2-edit-cl6 from Mediaware Solutions is supported. If the edit tool is in the user path
and a selection is made, there is a menu item to export a video clip of the current selection for each linked
video. In that case, follow these steps:
1. Select the part of the video(s) you want to export as (a) clip(s)
2. Choose File > Export As > Media Clip...
3. Enter a filename and press Save
4.3.2.17. Media clip using script
Elan now supports any command line tool to extract clips from the video file. Elan uses a script file named
"clip-media.txt" which can be found in the Elan folder where Elan is installed. To clip a video file,
first the script have to be modified according to specifications of the command line tool used.
For example, the syntax for M2-edit-cl : M2-edit-cl/ in:$begin(fr) / out:$end(fr) $in_file $out_file
M2-edit-cl : the path of the application
in:$begin(fr) : specifies the begin time frame of the clip in frames.
out:$end(fr) : specifies the end time frame of the clip
$in_file : input file
$out_file : output file
Few examples for command line tools are
M2-edit-cl -: windows : M2-edit-cl/ in:$begin(fr) / out:$end(fr) $in_file $out_file
ffmpeX - mac n windows : /Applications/ffmpegX/ffmpeg -sameg -ss $begin(sec.ms) -t -$duration(sec.ms)
-i $in_file $out_file
These syntax depends on the command line tool you are using. Look in the script file for more explanation
and examples. To clip the video file first make a selection of the video file and select File > Export As >
Media Clip using Script.... A dialog will appear in which you can set the file name and the location to save
the clipped file to. You can specify more options for clipping in the Preferences dialog, see Section 4.4.28.
Note
If you have more media files to be clipped, typing a file name with a extension in the 'Save as'
dialog will use the same extension for all the files that will be clipped. If you want to use the
same extension from the original media file for the clipped files, then donot type an extension
with the file name in the 'Save as' dialog which prompts you to set the file name and location
for the clipped media files.
4.3.2.18. Image from ELAN Window
To export an image from the ELAN window (i.e. to make a screenshot):
See http://www.mediaware.com.au/
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1. choose File > Export As > Image from Elan Window...
2. Enter a filename and an extension (*.jpg, *.jpeg, *.png or *.bmp)
3. click on Save.
Note
If you are using Windows, it sometimes happens that ELAN’s video window is black on the
picture created using this function. This can be solved by temporary disabling the hardware
video acceleration:
a. Right-click on the desktop
b. choose properties
c. select the Settings tab
d. Click on the advanced… button
e. Select the Troubleshooting tab
f. move the Hardware Acceleration slider tot None
Don’t forget to re-enable the hardware acceleration afterwards, because this has a strong
effect on the system’s graphical performance.
4.3.2.19. Filmstrip Image
Figure 4.57. An exported filmstrip image
To export a Filmstrip Image first select the time segment you want the filmstrip of. Then click File > Export
As > Filmstrip Image.... In the dialog window (see Figure 4.58) you can define the width of each video
frame, which frames to include and whether ELAN must add a time code in each frame. Moreover, ELAN
can add the waveform, with or without a ruler, and specify the height. You can also specify whether the
stereo channel should be displayed separately or merged or blended. Click on OK to generate the image.
Finally select a destination folder, enter a filename and click on Save.
An example or an exported filmstrip image can be seen in Figure 4.57.
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Figure 4.58. Exporting to a filmstrip image
4.3.2.20. Shoebox file
All Shoebox files that were imported into ELAN (see Section 4.3.1.8) can be exported back into Shoebox.
In this case, the time code information is kept.
To export a file into Shoebox, do the following:
1. Click on File menu.
2. Click on Export as > Shoebox file ….
The Shoebox Export dialog box appears. Make a choice and click on OK to continue.
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Figure 4.59. Shoebox Export dialog window
•By selecting Wrap block you can let ELAN wrap a whole block if one of the line in a block is longer
than a specified number of character (default is 80 characters).
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•By selecting Add master media time offset to annotation times you can add to the annotation
times the time offset from the master media that originated from the synchronization of media files
(see Section 4.2.3).
3. Specify the name and directory of the exported file, e.g.:
Figure 4.60. Name and directory of exported file
4. Click Save to export the file; otherwise click Cancel to exit the dialog box without exporting the file.
The file is exported as a *.txt | *.sht | *.tbt file.
If there already exists a file of the same name, ELAN will ask you whether or not it should overwrite
the existing file, e.g.:
Figure 4.61. File Exists
5. Open the exported file in Shoebox.
It contains the following information:
a. All tiers and annotations.
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Each ELAN parent annotation (including all its referring annotations) corresponds to one Shoebox
record. E.g., in the illustration below, the ELAN parent annotation “Ligya-001” corresponds to the
Shoebox record “Ligya-001”.
b. The time code information for each parent annotation.
Each ELAN parent annotation (i.e., each Shoebox record) contains the additional field markers
\ELANBegin and \ELANEnd (i.e., the begin and end time of the parent annotation).
This time code information allows you to import the Shoebox file back into ELAN, without having
to manually re-align the file (see Section 4.3.1.8).
Figure 4.62. ELAN file and exported file
4.4. Screen display and navigation through a
document
Whenever you open, create or import a document, the ELAN window appears. This section introduces you
to the setup of the ELAN window (Section 4.4.1), and explains the navigation through it (Section 4.5 and
Section 4.6).
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4.4.1. Basic Information: The ELAN window
The ELAN window displays the Menu bar, the Media Player options, and a number of Viewers, e.g.:
Figure 4.63. The ELAN window
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.
4.4.2. The Video Viewer
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 View > Media Player > 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.
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Figure 4.64. The video viewer
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 4.64).
Note
If you encounter problems while playing video files, change the media framework via Edit
> Preferences > Edit Preferences.... Select Platform/OS and toggle Media Framework
appropriate for your operating system.
Right clicking7 in the video window and selecting Player Info… will display a dialog with information
about the video file, e.g.:
Figure 4.65. Video information dialog window
A static picture containing the currently displayed frame can be stored using the context menu of the video
window (right click > Save Current Frame as Image…)
For users of a one button mouse on Apple computers: hold the CTRL button and click
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Note
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 Use
Aspect Ratio... and choosing one of the aspect ratios offered in the sub menu.
You can zoom in on the video by right-clicking the viewer and selecting Zoom. You can choose from a
number of zoom percentages.
To copy the Non-adjusted media time, right-click the video and select Copy Non-ajusted Media Time
This function will disregard any offset that may be applied to sync the video with another video and will
copy the actual timecode to the clipboard.
To place the video viewer in the center, see Section 4.4.28 - Media option
4.4.3. The Annotation Density Viewer
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.
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Figure 4.66. Annotation density viewer
4.4.4. The Waveform Viewer
The Waveform Viewer displays the waveform of the audio file8 (*.wav). Above the waveform, time code
information is displayed. This time code information can be hidden by right clicking in the Waveform Viewer
and clicking on Time Ruler Visible 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 Section 4.1). If this is not the case, the Waveform Viewer will not be available.
Note
On slower machines, the Waveform Viewer may not always update properly when moving
to the next page.
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.
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Figure 4.67. The waveform viewer
The Waveform Viewer supports 3 modes. You can select the active mode by a right click on the Waveform
Viewer. In the menu Stereo Channels, the following options are available:
1. Separate. 2 Waveforms are showed, one for each channel.
2. Merged. The 2 channels are merged and the result, one waveform is displayed.
3. 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 time scale of the Waveform Viewer and the Timeline Viewer are connected:
Figure 4.68. Waveformviewer modes
From the View>Waveform option in the main menu, you can switch between waveforms that are connected
to the project. The chosen waveform will be displayed in the waveform viewer:
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Figure 4.69. Waveform visualisation switching
4.4.5. The Subtitle Viewer
Figure 4.70. The subtitle viewer
You can turn on the subtitle viewer for a tier by selecting that tier from the pull down menu in the tab Subtitle
Viewer. 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:
1. Select the Subtitle Viewer tab in the right upper corner of the ELAN window
2. In the pull-down menu, click on the tier you want to be displayed.
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Figure 4.71. Display multiple tiers as a subtitle
The number of tiers to display as subtitle can be between 1 and 8. To set this number, click Edit >
Preferences > Edit Preferences... from the main menu and select Viewers in the Preferences dialog.
Change the number of viewers to the desired value in the pull down menu and click Apply.
4.4.6. The Grid Viewer
The 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 Grid tab next to the video window.
Figure 4.72. The grid viewer
It is possible to select annotations within the Grid Viewer (by clicking on them), or to edit them (by double-
clicking on them).
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The time format of the begin time, end time and duration can be changed. Right click on
the Grid Viewer, select Time Format and select one of the available formats: hh:mm:ss:ms
(hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds), PAL (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), NTSC (drop frame)
(hours:minutes:seconds.frames) and msec (milliseconds).
By default the Grid Viewer works in single tier mode. To switch to other multi tier modes with symbolic
association tiers or with symbolic subdivision tiers, click on this dropdown menu button which is indicated
in the figure that is above. In that case all the annotations of the selected tier will be shown in the grid,
together with all symbolic associated/symbolic subdivision tiers (see Section 5.1). Empty cells of dependent
tiers can also be filled in this way.
Figure 4.73. Multiple tiers with symbolic association in the grid viewer
Exporting from the Grid Viewer
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:
1. First make a selection of the tiers you want to be displayed (and thus exported)
2. Right click on the Grid Viewer and select Export Table as tab-delimited text…
3. Enter the name of the file to be created and choose Save
Figure 4.74. Export from the grid viewer
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4.4.7. The Text Viewer
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 Section 4.4.11)
• 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 Toggle visualization 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 Copy.
Figure 4.75. The text viewer
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4.4.8. The Lexicon Viewer
See Figure 5.41
4.4.9. The Metadata Viewer
On the Metadata tab in the main window the IMDI metadata that belong to the media can be displayed. Click
Select Metadata Source..., select an IMDI file and click Select.
The default metadata keys are now displayed (see also Section 4.4.28) in a table. If you want to change
which keys are displayed, click Configure... 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 Tree
View. Right click and select Table View to return to the table view.
4.4.10. Audio And Video Recognizer
The Audio Recognizer and Video Recognizer tabs provide a user interface to recognizer components
that have been installed as extensions. These recognizer components generally apply pattern recognition
algorithms to automatically detect events of interest (pauses, speaker turns, utterances, gesture phases etc.)
in an audio or a video file. There is one audio recognizer included in the ELAN distribution, the Silence
Recognizer (seeSection 5.4.3). More information on how to interact with the recognizers will be included
in this manual at a later stage. The AVATecH project page (http://tla.mpi.nl/projects_info/avatech/) can be
consulted for more information (including an interface specification).
4.4.11. The Timeline Viewer and the Interlinear Viewer
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 Edit > Preference...,
select Viewers, check Reduced Tier Height and click OK. Above the tiers, a time scale is displayed. This
time-scale can be hidden by right clicking in the Timeline Viewer and clicking on Time Ruler Visible 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 Active Annotation Bold box in the context menu.
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Figure 4.76. The timeline viewer
In the Timeline Viewer you can (a) select and modify time intervals (see Section 5.7) and (b) enter
annotations (see Section 5.8).
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 Show Interlinear Viewer radio button when you right-click on the tier name’s panel and select
Viewer. Switching it on, will automatically switch off the Timeline Viewer.
The following screenshots compare how information is displayed in the two Viewers.
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backward to the next block, click on the arrow 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
The Tier Name Panel gives an overview of the different existent tiers. Both tier names (see also Section 5.1
and Section 5.4) and tier types are defined by the user (see also Section 5.3). 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).
Figure 4.78. The tier name panel
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 Section 4.4.20 and Section 4.4.23.
It is possible for ELAN to show the number of annotations per tier. Right click on the Tier Name Panel and
select Show Number of Annotations.
4.4.12. The Timeseries Viewer
The Timeseries Viewer can display time series data as line graphs. Like the Timeline and Waveform viewer,
it has a horizontal time-scale 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.
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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 file9 has been associated
to the transcription via menu Edit > Linked Files and then the tab “Linked Secondary Files”. These data
files can be synchronized to the media files in the “Media Synchronization Mode”.
Figure 4.79. Linking timeseries data files
Displaying data from an already linked CSV/Tab delimited text file in the Timeseries Viewer is done as
follows:
1. Right click in the Timeseries Viewer and select Configure Tracks....
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).
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Figure 4.80. Timeseries Viewer popup menu
2. 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 OK.
3. 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.
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Figure 4.81. Timeseries Viewer: Configure tracks
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4. 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 Add 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 Close button.
5. To display the track right click on the Timeseries Viewer again. Select Add TrackPanel to add a
new trackpanel. Right click the new trackpanel and select TrackPanel > Add Track. 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 time scale 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.
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Figure 4.82. Timeseries viewer in 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.
4.4.13. The Menu options
The following Menu options are available at the top of the ELAN window:
•File: use this menu to open, create, save, im-/export or exit a document (see Section 4.4) and to configure
automatic backups.
•Edit: use this menu to define, modify and delete annotations, tiers and linguistic types (see Chapter 5).
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•Annotation: use this menu to define, modify, copy, paste and delete annotations (see Chapter 5).
•Tier: use this menu to define, modify and delete tiers. You can also create tiers based on annotations (see
Chapter 5).
•Type: use this menu to define, modify, delete and import linguistic types (see Chapter 5).
•Search: use this menu to search for text (see Section 5.9).
•View: use this menu to get an overview of the tier dependencies (see Section 5.1), the videos (see
Section 4.4.2) and waveforms (see Section 4.4.4) that are active and the shortcut keys.
•Options: use this menu to (de)activate the Bulldozer mode (see Section 5.7.9), to choose between
annotation mode and synchronization mode and to select a language and video standard.
•Window: this menu shows you a list of projects that are currently open and you can switch between these
(see Section 4.2.6).
•Help: use this menu to read information about ELAN.
4.4.14. The Media Player options
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:
Figure 4.83. The media player options
Table 4.1. Media Controls
Icon Meaning Shortcut
Go to the beginning of the video/
audio fragment
CTRL+B
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Icon Meaning Shortcut
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
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Icon Meaning Shortcut
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 play
selection )
CTRL+L
•The time code can be displayed in the following formats:hh:mm:ss:ms
(hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds), PAL (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), NTSC (drop frame)
(hours:minutes:seconds.frames) and msec (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 time code 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).
Figure 4.84. Timecode formats
•The sliders available when the Controls tab is selected allow you to control the playback rate and the
volume.
4.4.15. The color coding
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:
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Figure 4.85. Color coding
How to change the display of the ELAN window
The ELAN window setup as described and illustrated in Section 4.4.1 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 (Section 4.4.16);
• switching Viewers on/off (Section 4.4.17);
• increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers (Section 4.4.19);
• switching tiers on/off (Section 4.4.20);
• rearranging the order of tiers (Section 4.4.21 and Section 4.4.23);
• displaying a tier in the any of the tab panes viewers (Section 4.4.5 and further);
• changing the time resolution (Section 4.4.24);
• changing the font size (Section 4.4.25);
• de-attach/re-attach the video window (Section 4.4.2).
4.4.16. Increasing/decreasing the size of the ELAN
window
The size of the ELAN window can be increased or decreased. Do one of the following:
1. 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.
2. In the top right corner of the ELAN window, click on the Maximize icon to activate the full-screen
modus; click on the Restore Down icon to return to the previous size.
4.4.17. Switching Viewers on/off
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 /left(For more
info on how to choose the viewers in left / right of video see Figure 4.97) of the video Viewer: a text viewer,
a grid viewer, a subtitle viewer, a lexicon viewer , a audio recognizer, a video recognizer or a metadata
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viewer. Note that it is not possible to activate both the Timeline and the Interlinear Viewer at the same time.
To select which viewers you want and which viewers should be visible see Section 4.4.18.
Note
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.
4.4.18. Show / Hide Specific Viewers
To show or hide the specific viewers like grid viewer, text viewer, subtitle viewer or lexicon viewer and the
audio and video recognizer, select View > Viewer. A list of the viewers and recognizers that can be shown
or hidden is displayed. Now select or deselect the viewers by clicking them. Only the selected viewers are
displayed in the pane next to the video. If the video in the center, to choose which viewers are to be shown
in the left and right pane of the video, and to sort the order of the viewers and recognizers see Figure 4.97 .
4.4.19. Increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers
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:
1. Use the up/down-arrows of the split-pane.
Click on the up/down-arrow to increase/decrease the size of the corresponding Viewer.
2. 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.
Figure 4.86. Changing size of the timeline viewer
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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.
Figure 4.87. Changing the size of the tier label panel
4.4.20. Switching tiers on/off
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:
1. In the Timeline Viewer, right-click in the tier name panel.
2. In the pull-down menu select the sub menu Visible Tiers and (un)check the tier name
Switching off a tier can be done directly by right clicking on its name and selecting hide <tier name> from
the pull down menu. Alternatively you can open a window containing all tier names by selecting Show/Hide
More…(see Figure 4.90) in the popup menu.
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Figure 4.88. Switching tiers on/off
If you switch a tier on, it will be put on the place where you clicked.
•Show / Hide More... : (see Figure 4.90)
• Sort Tiers : (see Section 4.4.23)
4.4.21. Rearranging the order of tiers
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.
Figure 4.89. Rearranging the order of tiers
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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.
4.4.22. View tiers by Type/Participant/Annotator
The tiers can also be viewed by its linguistic type or by participant or by annotator. In order to do that, right
click in the tier name panel and select Show / Hide More.... This dialog window appears:
Figure 4.90. Visible Tiers
•Show Tier(s)
Displays a list of all tiers in the transcription and the selected tiers are the visible tiers
•Show Linguistic Type(s)
This shows a list of all the linguistic types in the transcription. Select the all the types you want to view.
The tiers of the selected types are selected automatically in the Show Tier(s) list.
•Show Participant(s)
This shows a list of all the participants in the transcription. Select the all the participants you want to view.
The tiers of the selected participants are selected automatically in the Show Tier(s) list.
•Show Annotator(s)
This shows a list of all the annotators in the transcription. Select the all the annotators you want to view.
The tiers of the selected annotators are selected automatically in the Show Tier(s) list.
•A-Z
This button is used for sorting the list of tiers shown alphabetically.
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•Undo Sort
This is to undo the sort and restore the order back.
4.4.23. Sorting tiers
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 sub menu Sort Tiers. Then choose one of the following options:
Table 4.5. Sort tier options
Unsorted: no specific order.
Sort by Hierarchy: display a tree with the
hierarchical structure of the tiers
Sort by Linguistic Type: group tiers by their
linguistic type
Sort by Participant: group tiers with annotations of
a single participant
It also possibly to sort the tiers alphabetically along with the anyone of the sorting options before. To do
this, right click on the tier name panel and select Sort Tiers > Sort Alphabetically.
4.4.24. Changing the time zoom
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:
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1. a. Click with the right mouse button on either the Waveform Viewer or the Timeline Viewer.
b. Go to Zoom. The following menu appears:
Figure 4.91. Changing time zoom
c. 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.
2. a. Place mouse cursor on the Waveform Viewer or the Timeline Viewer.
b. Press the CTRL key and keep it pressed.
c. 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 4.91). To use it, first make a selection
(see Section 9.1.6). Then right click on the Waveform Viewer or Timeline Viewer and select Zoom > Zoom
to Selection. The selection is now displayed almost as wide as the Waveform and Timeline Viewer. In the
context menu beneath Zoom to Selection the option Custom is selected and the zoom factor is displayed.
4.4.25. Changing the vertical (intensity) zoom
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:
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Figure 4.92. Changing vertical (intensity) zoom
Please note that this vertical zoom does not change the audio characteristics in any way.
4.4.26. Changing the font size
The default font size is 12 pt., but it can be changed separately for the different annotation viewers in ELAN.
Do the following:
1. Right click on one of the viewers (Grid, Subtitle, Text, Timeline, Interlinear Viewer).
2. Go to Font size. The following menu appears:
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Figure 4.93. Changing the font size
3. Click on a font size to select it. A checkmark appears next to the selected font size.
4.4.27. Font Browser
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
View > Font Browser... to open the Unicode Font Finder-Explorer (see Figure 4.94). 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).
Another way of checking whether your special characters can be displayed in the desired font, is to enter
text in the bottom text box of the Font Finder-Explorer and click on Check. 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 text box.
Clicking on a Unicode subset will display that subset in the Font Browser for Codepage-window.
Clicking the Clear button will clear the lists, except for the list of system fonts.
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Figure 4.94. Font Finder-Explorer
4.4.28. Editing preferences
Some preferences can be changed in a dedicated dialog window. Click Edit > Preferences > Edit
Preferences. Select a category in the list to the left of the dialog window. The categories and their
preferences are:
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Figure 4.95. Edit preferences
•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
–Clear Selection on single mouseclick
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With this option checked (default), a selection that has been made in the timeline will be cleared when
you click outside of that selection.
–Create new annotations on the dependent tiers when a new annotation is created
If this option is selected, annotations on dependent tiers are created automatically when a annotation
on a independent(parent) tier is created. By default , this option is not selected.
–Creates annotations aligned with video frames
When annotations are created, they can be aligned with the video frames by selecting this option.
–Snap Annotations
If this option is checked, you can specify the maximum value to snap annotations in (ms).
–Always center the active annotation
This option if checked, always put the active annotation in the center of the viewer in annotation mode.
–When copying an annotation, copy:
When you want to copy an annotation as text to an external document , you can either choose to copy
the annotation + begintime + endtime, or the annotation only. The default is 'copy the annotation +
begintime + endtime'. This will copy the annotation, Tier name, begin and end time.
–Look for CV entries that contain instead of start with the search string
When checked, this option will suggest entries from the CV that contain the given search string. When
unchecked, only entries that start with the search string are suggested.
–Also look in the descriptions of the CV entries
With this option checked, descriptions of the CV entries that contain the search string are also displayed
in the suggest panel.
–Ignore case
– If this option is checked, casing will be ignored when entering a search string in the CV suggest panel.
•Media
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–
Figure 4.96. Edit preferences
–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 Section 4.4.14) 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.
—Place the video / media in the center:
If selected, then the video is placed in the center and the viewers are on the left and right side of the
video. By default the video is the left side of the application.
– Media location: Set default directory for media files
Click Browse... 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.
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–The document's Changed flag is set when the media location has changed With this checked,
you will notice when a media file has changed its location.
–When copying the current time, use the format
Click on the list box to select the format of the time, when the current time of the media is copied.
–Prompt for a clip filename
When this is checked (default), ELAN will prompt for a filename to save your clipped media file. You
can also choose a location to save the file to. More information on using the script for clipping can be
found in Section 4.3.2.17
–Only clip the first media file
This option is unchecked by default. If errors occur clipping multiple videofiles and a wavefile at once,
check this and only the first (or master) mediafile will be clipped.
–Clip multiple media files in parallel
This is checked by default. The script will run in multiple instances next to each other when clipping
the video files and wave files. When this is causing problems, e.g. incorrect output files, uncheck this
option and the script will run each instance after another.
•Metadata
– Check the metadata keys you want to display in the Metadata tab in the main window by default. (See
also Section 4.4.9.)
•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 Feelunchecked.
–Use Mac File Dialog: if checked ELAN will use a dialog which is similar to the native Mac OS file
dialog. Otherwise a platform independent (i.e. Java) file dialog .
–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
—Java -DirectShow Framework
Java -Microsoft Media Foundation (mp4,.m4a,.m4v(win 7 only), .wmv, .wma, .asf)
Correct the video frame when pausing the player This is checked by default. If unchecked, the
crosshair might not jump to correct the frame, but might also be less accurate.
—Native Windows Media Player (WMP)
—QuickTime for Java
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—Java Media Framework
•Preferences
–Click on Browse... to browse to and select the directory where ELAN should look for preference files
by default.
–Selecting this optionAutomatic check for updates will enable the automatic checking for new updates
feature, which will constantly check for updates once a month and intimates you if any updates were
available.
•User Interface
–Number of recent items: select the number of recent edited item ELAN should remember.
–Tooltips: if checked ELAN will show tool tips with information about the data or about the functionality
of ELAN, depending on the position of the mouse cursor.
–Menu Options: Select Show annotation count to show the number of annotations per tier in the menus
and tier list in the viewers.
•Viewers
Figure 4.97. Edit preferences
–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.
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—Reduced Tier Height: if checked the height of the tiers displayed in the timeline viewer is reduced.
The results is that more tiers are visible.
—Horizontal scroll speed : this sets the speed of the horizontal scrolling, which is done with
Shift+scrollwheel or by swiping with two fingers on a laptop.
–Color for symbolic annotations
You can set the color for symbolic annotations, e.g. non time alignable annotations. The default color
is set to orange, you can browse for colors and set them as your favourites.
–Select Viewers
If the video is placed in the center, then it is possible to select which viewers should be shown in the
left and right pane of the video. Select either Left to the video or Right to the video for each viewer.
The order of the viewer in the table also determines their sort order in the tab pane. To sort the viewers
use the buttons Move Up and Move Down to rearrange their sort order.
4.4.29. Importing and exporting preferences
The following display preferences can be imported and exported:
• Font
• Font size
• 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 Edit > Export Preferences..., select a destination folder, enter a filename and
click on Save. To import preferences click Edit > Import Preferences..., look up the preference file and
click on Select.
4.4.30. Editing shortcuts
ELAN has shortcuts for many of it's functions. The default shortcuts, which are mentioned throughout this
manual (for an overview see Section 9.2), can be changed via Edit > Preferences > Edit Shortcuts....
This dialog window appears.
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Figure 4.98. Edit KeyBoard Shortcuts
•To change a shortcut, select it and click on Edit Shortcut. Press the desired shortcut on your keyboard
and click OK
–click Apply to change the shortcut only in the selected mode.
–click Apply in all modes to change the shortcut for this action in all the other modes if applicable.
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 Save to save the changes
• To restore the default shortcuts
–click Reload Default to restore the shortcuts in the currently selected mode in this dialog.
–click Reload All Default to restore the shortcuts in all the modes.
Clicking those buttons will only update default shortcuts for the current instance of Elan. Click Save to
override the current shortcuts with the default shortcuts.
•Click Cancel to discard the changes
4.4.31. How to copy current time of the media
To copy the current time from the media, go to the Edit menu and select Copy Current Time or use the
shortcutkey Ctrl+Alt+G
4.5. How to navigate through a document
ELAN supports the following options for navigating through a document:
• accessing points in time (Section 4.5.1);
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• going to a selection (Section 4.5.2);
• jumping step by step through a document (Section 4.5.3);
• navigating using the Timeline Viewer (Section 4.4.14)
• navigating using the Grid Viewer (Section 4.5.4);
• navigating using the Interlinear Viewer (Section 4.5.5).
All Viewers are synchronized in time, i.e., when you navigate to a specific point or selection in one Viewer,
all other Viewers will immediately jump to the corresponding point or selection:
• The Video Viewer will display the corresponding video frame
• The Waveform Viewer will display a crosshair at the corresponding location in the waveform.
• The Subtitle, Timeline and Interlinear Viewers will display the corresponding annotation(s).
4.5.1. Accessing points in time
To access a point in time, do one of the following:
1. Use the time code box.
a. Click on the time code above the media playback controls (left side of the ELAN window). The
Goto dialog window appears.
Figure 4.99. Click the timecode box
b. Enter the time code in the following format: “hh:mm:ss.sss” (hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds).
The crosshair jumps immediately to the selected time code.
You can omit part of the time code information:
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• If the digits are “00”, you can omit “hours:”, “hours:minutes:”, or “hours:minutes:seconds.”
• It is optional to specify “.milliseconds”.
Note
The character preceding the milliseconds is a dot, not a colon.
2. Use the crosshair
Figure 4.100. Use the crosshair
Click somewhere in the Text, Subtitle, Timeline, Waveform or Grid Viewer. The crosshair will jump
to that point. By holding the ALT button and dragging the time axis to the left or to the right you can
scroll through the annotations.
3. Use the media control buttons
See Section 4.4.14
4. Use the 'Shift' + Scrollwheel function. When pressing and holding 'Shift', you can scroll horizontally
with the scrollwheel on your mouse. On a laptop or macbook, you can use two finger scrolling to achieve
the same effect.
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4.5.2. Going to the borders of a selection
If you have made a selection (see Section 5.7), you can move the crosshair to the begin or end of that selection
from anywhere within the file.
To jump to the begin, click on the button, which is part of the Selection Controls. Then the button
will show an arrow in the other direction , which brings the crosshair to the end of the selection.
4.5.3. Jumping step by step through a document
It is possible to move the crosshair back and forth step by step. To achieve this, use one of the media controls
as described in Section 4.4.14.
If the media framework Elan is using cannot determine the video format, you can alter the step size when
using the next/previous frame control. This is useful in order to work with a “natural” frame duration,
depending on the video format that is used (i.e. 25 frames/second for PAL or +/- 30 frames/second for
NTSC).
Do the following:
1. Click on Options menu.
2. Go to Set Frame Length. The following menu appears:
Figure 4.101. Set Frame Length menu
Select an option from the menu:
•PAL: The 1 frame step size for video data corresponds to one PAL frame (40 ms)
•NTSC: The 1 frame step size for video data corresponds to one NTSC frame (33 ms)
3. Click on a Frame Length mode to select it. A radio bullet appears next to the selected step mode.
4.5.4. Viewing a list of annotations within one tier (Grid
Viewer)
ELAN allows you to list all annotations from a single tier, and then select one annotation and jump to it.
To activate the Grid Viewer, click on the Grid tab:
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Figure 4.102. The grid viewer
The structure of the Grid View window is as follows:
Figure 4.103. Structure of the grid viewer
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You can change the Grid Viewers interface at any moment by right clicking in the Grid Viewer. A context
menu will appear:
Figure 4.104. Grid viewer with context menu
In this context menu, you can choose between the following options:
• choose the columns displayed in the Grid Viewer
• changing the Grid Viewers font size
• toggle between the time code format (hh:mm:ss.mmm) and milliseconds
You can use the Grid Viewer window to navigate to an annotation in the ELAN window. You have the
following two options:
1. Move the crosshair to the begin of an annotation.
Do the following:
a. In the Grid Viewer window, click with the mouse button on an annotation.
A red triangle appears next to the annotation in the Grid Viewer window, and the crosshair moves
to the beginning of that annotation in the ELAN window.
2. Select a time interval.
Do the following:
a. In the Grid Viewer window, click with the mouse button on the first annotation that you want to
select.
b. Keep the mouse button down and drag the mouse to another annotation.
In the Grid Viewer window, all selected annotations are highlighted in light blue color. In all other
windows, the corresponding time interval is selected and highlighted in light blue color (starting with
the beginning of the first annotation and ending with the endpoint of the last).
Note
Selecting a time interval also changes the current time. This happens implicitly by moving the
crosshair to the begin of the annotation.
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Figure 4.105. Grid viewer with selected annotations
4.5.5. Jumping from annotation to annotation
(Interlinear Viewer)
In the Interlinear Viewer, you can jump from one annotation block forward/backward to the next block. Do
one of the following:
1. Click on the left arrow button at the top of the Interlinear Viewer to move to the previous annotation
block.
2. Click on the right arrow button at the top of the Interlinear Viewer to move to the next annotation block.
Figure 4.106. Interlinear viewer
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4.6. How to play a document
ELAN supports the following options for playing a document:
• playing a document (Section 4.6.1);
• playing a selection (Section 4.6.2);
• playing around the crosshair/selection (Section 4.6.3);
• playing in slow motion (Section 4.6.4).
4.6.1. Playing a document
During playback, the red crosshair moves through the Waveform, Timeline, Interlinear, Annotation Density,
Text and Grid Viewers, indicating the point in time that is being replayed. If you stop the playback, the
crosshair will stop at this point in time. The playback will resume from this point and will continue until the
end of the document, or until the playback is paused again.
Make use of either one of the following three options to start/pause the playback:
1. Use the Play/Pause button located under the Video window:
a. Click on the Play icon to start playback. After the playback starts, the Play icon turns into a Pause
icon.
Figure 4.107. Play/pause button
b. Click the Pause icon to pause the playback again.
2. Use the Shortcut key CTRL+SPACE to start the playback. Use it again to pause the playback.
Note
If two or more ELAN documents are open at the same time, the sound may not work properly.
Should this happen, close all documents except for one.
4.6.2. Playing a selection
It is possible to play only a selected part of the document. Do the following:
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1. Make a selection (see Section 5.7), or click on an annotation.
2. To play the selection, do one of the following:
a.
Click on the Play Selection icon.
b. Or use the shortcut key SHIFT + SPACE.
The selected part is played immediately. To listen to the selection again, repeat step 2.
Note
If the crosshair is positioned somewhere within the selection (i.e., if it had been manually
moved forward or backward, see Section 4.5.3), playback will start from that position and stop
at the end of the selection. Otherwise, the whole selection will be played.
If you want to loop over the selection, be sure to check the Loop Mode box (next to the Selection Mode
checkbox).
4.6.3. Playing around a selection
When playing a selection it is possible to extend the playback interval with a context up to a few seconds
before and after the selection. This can e.g. be useful to get an idea about the preparation and the finishing
of a gesture.
1. Click on Options menu.
2. Go to Play around selection. The following dialog appears:
Figure 4.108. Play around selection
3. Choose how many (milli)seconds or frames there should be played before and after the selection. Click