Labelling and metadata (software)

Tue May 4 09:14:43 UTC 2010

I think this is one of the reasons it is a good idea to make the session¹
rather than the recording¹ primary to the code you use. Then you can have
multiple things e.g. video, audio, photos and even the transcriiption etc
all related through the file names. This is what we have done with the
projects I have worked on.

On 4/5/10 6:16 PM, "Alex Francois" <Alexandre.Francois at vjf.cnrs.fr> wrote:

> I agree with Tom, that John's Sponge software looks really promising.
> In fact John's screen capture also reminded me of a related issue which I
> never really tackled:  namely, the relationship between my photos and my sound
> files.  
>  [The same would apply with video, but I personally tend to have more this
> problem with photos]
> 
> What I almost always do during a fieldwork session, is to record sound of
> course, but also take pictures of the storytellers, the situation, etc. As I
> see such photos today, several years later, I often can vividly remember
> (until today at least!) when and were I took it, what was the person's name,
> or which story they were telling when I pressed the button.  Yet I am afraid
> all these connections (between pictures and sound files) are only stored in my
> soft drive, a.k.a. my brain.
> 
> I thought these should all be interconnected somewhere, and in a permanent
> way. Sometimes I add the file-path of both the picture and the sound file,
> say, on the Toolbox entry where the story is transcribed.  But there might be
> other ways, right? Ideally this would be done by displaying the very picture,
> rather than just storing its filename.
> Is there a software which can do that?  Would Sponge do it?  ELAN? Arbil
> <http://www.lat-mpi.eu/latnews/tag/arbil/> ??
>> (Peter, here's another "dirty-laundry confession" of mine!)
> 
> best,
> alex.
> 
> 
> Tom Honeyman wrote:
>> Thank you John, that looks extremely interesting! I look forward to hearing
>> more about it. 
>> 
>>  
>>  
>> -tom
>>  
>> 
>>  
>>  
>> On 04/05/2010, at 12:21 PM, John Hatton wrote:
>>  
>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> On my recording trip, I used some open-source software we¹re developing
>>> which manages all the folders, meta data, etc. for you.   This kind of thing
>>> is how I answer Greg¹s question:
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>> > One thing I'm also interested in is not just what are good methods of
>>>> labeling and adding metadata, but how does it work for you in reality?  How
>>>> well do you stick to your chosen method?
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> I hesitate to mention software you can¹t actually get yet, but ah well, I
>>> think in the future this group may help us ³get it right².  We don¹t have a
>>> good name for it yet, the code name is ³Sponge².  The intent at this time is
>>> to help organize and name files, collect metadata, and help evaluate your
>>> progress towards goals and coverage (e.g. discourse types) so you know where
>>> to concentrate effort.  There are other applications out there doing some of
>>> these things, too: this is just SIL¹s contribution, tuned to the
>>> situations/field workers we are familiar with.
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> I found having this organizing software extremely helpful, not being much of
>>> an organizer/detail person, myself.  One beauty of it for me was that I
>>> could use the inevitable down time in the village to type in everything in
>>> my paper notebook into a low-power netbook running Sponge, sometimes
>>> realizing that I hadn¹t entered important information.  If I had waited
>>> until I returned home, it would have been too late.  Here¹s a screenshot of
>>> how my data looked at the end:
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> <image001.jpg>
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> You¹ll notice the ³files² tab; under there, I have a list of all the files
>>> associated with the current session (event). I can right-click on a file
>>> (e.g. a wav) in order to give it a canonical name like we¹re discussing in
>>> this thread.  I can also add meta data, such as what equipment was used to
>>> make the recordings.  That program stores that meta data in a simple xml
>>> file adjacent to the one being annotated. For example, a video named
>>> ³ETR003_Original.avi² would have get a partner named
>>> ³ETR003.Original.avi.meta².
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> The folder structure managed by Sponge looks like this:
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Edolo Language Documentation Project
>>>  
>>>                 People
>>>  
>>>                                 Agale Tofona
>>>  
>>>                                                 Agale Tofona.jpg
>>>  
>>>                                                 Agale Tofona_consent.jpg
>>>  
>>>                                                 Agale Tofona.person
>>>  
>>>                                 Andaru Maga
>>>  
>>>                                 Awi Heolo
>>>  
>>>                                 Etc.
>>>  
>>>                 Sessions
>>>  
>>>                                 ETR001
>>>  
>>>                                                 ETR001.session
>>>  
>>>                                                 ETR001_Original.MOV
>>>  
>>>                                                 ETR001_MonoExtract.WAV
>>>  
>>>                                                 ETR001_Scene.jpg
>>>  
>>>                                                 ETR001_Transcription.txt
>>>  
>>>                                 ETR002
>>>  
>>>                                 Etc.
>>>  
>>>                                
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Ok, so it is still early days with this software, we¹re not really
>>> advertising for testers yet, and it currently only runs on Windows.  Before
>>> long, we¹ll be adding at least OLAC, maybe IMDI support, probably
>>> spreadsheet import/export.   The current discussion and others are shaping
>>> what we do if anyone is interested in helping to further steer the
>>> development so it meets your needs, please let me know.
>>>  
>>> John Hatton 
>>>  SIL Papua New Guinea <http://pnglanguages.org/> , Palaso
>>> <http://palaso.org> , & SIL International  <http://sil.org> Software
>>> Development
>>>  Chat Google Talk: hattonjohn Skype: hattonjohn Google
>>> Wave: hattonjohn at googlewave.com
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  

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