LSA Annual Meeting Albuquerque 2006

[Heidi Johnson]

Jeff wrote:
> Though it's further from my heart, I tend to think an audio/video tutorial
> may be more needed than a text tutorial. On a completely impressionistic
> level, I think the average documentary linguist's awareness of issues in
> managing texts is much higher than managing audio and video.
I don't know about that: I've had people ask me with considerable doubt
whether plain ascii text was ok for archiving! I think the tools that
are recommended these days: - Transcriber, ELAN, Shoebox 5.0, etc. - are
hard enough to use that people need some help. But maybe less than
recording, as you say:

> was doing recordings recently, I realized that, while I knew a lot about
> recording formats and media, I didn't know much about physically setting
> up the recording space.
We get too many poorly made recordings at AILLA. They're intelligible, which
is of course the main thing, but often the volume is too low, or the
speaker keeps moving towards and away from the mic, or there's a rushing
sound in the background (probably wind.)

> Nor did I know if there were recommendations for
> recording oral metadata with the recording. (I can imagine this could be
> as valuable as good labelling in the long run.)
This is fabulous labelling!!! And yes, we do have strong recommendations
for this!! I'll bet the PARADISEC guys will say the same thing. Often
the labels on the old tapes are worn off or too cryptic, but then we'll
listen to the thing and here's the researcher, speaking in clear tones,
giving the speaker's name, the title of the story, the language, the place,
the date.... Perfect! Of course, it needs to be in a language we understand.
>
> And, for video, I was in a similar situation: Are there recommendations
> for physically setting up the recording space? Should we _always_ get
> video, even for vocabulary elicitation? Are there any video formats whose
> accompanying audio formats are best practice or should there always be a
> separate DAT (or whatever) audio recording?
There has to be somebody in OLAC who knows how to make a good film. We
need to find that person and recruit them!

> So, I guess, what I suggest, as an initial proposal is a tutorial on audio
> and video covering topics like:
>
> 1. Audio and video formats (pros/cons of format X over format Y, being
> open-minded to the fact that some people love their minidiscs and won't
> part with them gladly)
In which case we need to tell them very firmly that they have to get those
recordings OFF the minidisc and into wav format asap, and here's how.
>
> 2. Technical recording techniques (what microphones to use, where
> to position them, minimizing background noise, unplugging refrigerators
> before recording [a problem I had recently], when to have separate audio
> and video records, etc.)
>
> 3. Archival recording techniques (labelling media, recording
> metadata with the recording, informed consent and recording)
>
> 4. What do I do with all these tapes? (this one is crucial--we need
> someone to say, (i) give them to an archive and (ii) if you're working on
> language X, go to archive Y, and (iii) if you don't have an archive for
> your part of the world do Z--this has to be ultra-concrete with no
> possibility for someone to leave thinking: I'll just leave the tapes at
> home for now)
Also, how do I keep them from rotting in the humidity before I get home
from the field? Daffyd Gibbon has good advice about this.
>
> Also, in writing this, I realize that we might want to think "big" and try
> to have an information "packet" accompanying the tutorial summarizing all
> this information. (Perhaps just as a .pdf on a web site.)
YES!!! A pdf on a web site would be perfect, it would lead them to
the site. We could put it up at the School of Best Practice.

OK, I'm sold. Let's do a real hands-on, "actionable", nitty-gritty recording
tutorial. Maybe we could get Chilin Shih to start off with that great little
intro to sound conversion that she did at EMELD in 2003. She has a demo with
sound snippets digitized at different sample rates that really pretty much
says it all about quality and why it's important. Plus then people get the
background on what's a wave form anyway, so the format stuff makes more
sense. Just a thought.

Heidi