Audio questions

[Matt Toulmin]

Andrea, and list,

I'm working in Praat with long segmented sound files. Praat segments by
having a separate text file that is in a particular format, which it lines
up against the audio.
(I'm not experienced in other programs, so don't know if this is standard).

Praat has a neat script writing facility that enables you to write
programming that adds onto the program. I've just in the last couple of days
written a script that Praat is currently using to create lots of little
files at the right place, naming them according to what is in the text file
for that segment (though the script could have been written differently to
make up the name from somewhere else). This means I've left my original
audio file intact but also have also extracted a bunch of little segments as
separate wave files.

I don't know if this is an option worth considering for you, but as a
non-expert in programming, this is what I think you could do:
- massage your xml files (which contain the time references to the audio)
into the format that Praat is expecting to see. (could you do this using a
Word Macro?).
- open the long sound file and massaged time reference file in Praat
- write a script to extract wave files at the segmented places, and give
them appropriate names.

Also, if you were going to do this multiple times, Praat allows you to write
scripts for things like 'open all the files in this directory, then apply
this script to them in this order' etc. So it can be really automated if you
want it to be (after you've made the xml files fit it's categories, and
after you've ironed the bugs out of your programming, which is a drag unless
you know what you're doing :-).

I'm happy to send you my script that I use to extract wave files, but it's
made in a pretty specific way for what I'm doing (and I don't have the
expertise to make it more generally applicable). If you have ideas about
programming, or have someone who can help you, I think this way could also
work for you.

best,
Matt Toulmin
Ph.D. student
ANU
currently on fieldwork in India


----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicholas Thieberger" <thien at unimelb.edu.au>
To: <Resource-Network-Linguistic-Diversity at unimelb.edu.au>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 11:34 PM
Subject: RE: Audio questions


> There is some software called media-cutter, but I haven't used it, does
> anyone know if it will segment audio according to given timecodes as
> Andrea was asking?
>
> Nick
>
> At 12:08 PM -0500 28/1/05, Andrea Berez wrote:
>>Dear David,
>>
>>Thanks for your reply. I'll take a look into your suggestions and let you
>>know what I come up with. I am currently looking into using SMIL, and I'll
>>keep the list posted on my findings as well.
>>
>>Thank you,
>>Andrea Berez
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>***********************
>>Andrea Berez
>>LINGUIST List Editor
>>Wayne State University
>>andrea at linguistlist.org
>>***********************
>>
>>On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, David Nathan wrote:
>>
>>>Hi Andrea
>>>
>>>A short reply to your question - I dont know of any software that will
>>>automatically chop up your sound files, although there should in
>>>principle be something around. For video editing, for example, a method
>>>is to construct an EDL "edit decision list" which contains basically the
>>>time markers (as in ELAN); the software then chops up (and reassembles)
>>>the parts. Perhaps a search for key terms here might turn up something.
>>>
>>>The other (better, perhaps) line of enquiry is leaving the sound file
>>>whole and playing parts of it in synch with the ELAN text stream. You
>>>probably already know that it is not possible to do this with ordinary
>>>web pages. I think the answer is in using some kind of "wrapper format"
>>>that allows some software to control the sound in terms of time codes.
>>>Possibilities include MP3 and Quicktime. For example, you could use MP3
>>>and set up your data within Flash; a simpler solution would be to use
>>>Quicktime - you could convert your ELAN files to Quicktime text format
>>>and also import your sound. Users would then be able to play it from a
>>>web page via a Quicktime plug-in.
>>>
>>>Let us know what you eventually decide.
>>>
>>>David Nathan
>>>Endangered Languages Archive
>>>SOAS London
>
>
> --
>
> ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
> Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
> University of Melbourne
> Parkville, 3010
> Australia
>
> http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/thieberger.html/
>
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