Transcriber support and clip-making in CLAN

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
  Current versions of CLAN (both Mac and PC) not have better support for
transcription from digitized audio files.  These facilities are linked to
the F5 key.  Transcriber mode is basically a much faster, but less precise, 
variant on sonic mode.  It is intended for two uses.  The first is for
transcribers who wish to link a digitized file to an already existing CHAT
transcript.  The second is for transcribers who wish to produce a new
transcript from a digitized file.  In both cases, you enter the mode by
pressing F5.
   If you are linking to an old transcript, you place your cursor at the
first utterance and then press F5.  You then press the space bar after each 
utterance and a time-mark bullet is entered with the time from the last
utterance to the end of the current utterance.  These marks will be as
accurate as your own fast segmenting judgments.  Dealing with overlaps can
be difficult. It is best not to be too demanding in this mode and clean up
problems later in Sonic Mode.
   The second use is for creating new transcripts from digital audio.  In
this mode, just open a new file, press F5, locate your sound file, begin
playing.  Again, press the space bar after each utterance and lines of this 
shape will be entered:
*:	?
After you are done adding bullets, double-click to stop the process.  Go to 
the top of the file, and insert @Begin and @Participants lines.  Use the
@Participants to generate key shortcuts under the View menu.  Then replay
the first bullet, transcribe it, and use the appropriate command-1 or
command-2 key to enter the speaker ID.  Then go on to the next utterance
and repeat the process.  The result will be a full transcription that is
roughly linked to the audio.
   The other new facility in CLAN is the capacity to create a small
sound-clip file from a segment marked with a bullet.  (Actually, these
appear as small blocks on Windows).  If you have an utterance attached to a 
bullet, you just play it with command-click.  Then you go under the File
menu and select "Save Last Clip As ..." and the clip will be saved as a
sound file in AIFF format.  This function is great for people who wish to
use sound examples as ways of illustrating specific phenomena, as in Ann
Peters' "fillers" page (http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/fillers/index.html) or
other tutorial materials.  It is also now being used by people preparing
analyses of classroom instruction and learning, for example.  It can also
have a role for acoustic analysis.

--Brian MacWhinney