Labelling and metadata

Tue May 4 06:27:21 UTC 2010

Hi Gwendolyn,

Stick with the underscore, a period can by certain programs be classed as an illegal character.

Personally I think it makes the file name look messy using the period, because I am examining it in detail looking for the extension which comes after the last period it makes it hard to easily see, but could also cause further complications down the track.

Regards

Daryn

Arwarbukarl Cultural Resource Association Inc. Trading as:
Miromaa Aboriginal Language and Technology Centre

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From: Gwendolyn Hyslop [mailto:glow at uoregon.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, 4 May 2010 3:49 PM
To: 'Resource-Network-Linguistic-Diversity'
Subject: RE: Labelling and metadata

Dear RNLDers,

Thanks so much for this discussion; I have appreciated following it. I'd like to add to it by asking one small question. There has been discussion about not using capital letters or spaces in files names, but I am wondering about the use of periods (.) as a way to separate information in file names, as opposed to an underscore (_) or hyphen (-). In other words,  is there any known problem with doing something like: KS2009.09.19.01.wav, as opposed to KS2009_09_19_01.wav?

Best,
Gwen

=====
Gwendolyn Hyslop
Department of Linguistics
1290 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
+1-541-505-1594 (USA)
+975-1776-2177 (Bhutan)
http://www.uoregon.edu/~glow

From: Peter Austin [mailto:pa2 at soas.ac.uk]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 10:28 PM
To: Alex Francois
Cc: Resource-Network-Linguistic-Diversity; munanga at bigpond.com
Subject: Re: Labelling and metadata

Alex

Here's a possible solution.

In your Excel metadata sheet add a column called 'file' and for each row go to the Insert Menu > Hyperlink and you can insert a hyperlink to the relevant file (with its short unique ID) -- in Windows Control-K is the shortcut for this. Save your Excel file. When you click on this cell now the file will be opened by the software that you have associated with it (eg. 2010-05-04.prj will open with Toolbox etc -- you might get a warning from Excel about the dangers of opening the file but that's just Microsoft being helpful).

So, Excel has a function that does what you said you do manually:  "try and identify the string of digits which I'm looking for, write it down, then try and access the recording among hundreds of files, essentially in a non-automatic way". This is the solution David Nathan was alluding to in his post. (You can also do this in HTML if you prefer that over Excel.)

If you set up your Excel columns with the semantic fields that are useful to you (ie. the ones you listed out for us) then simply sort on whatever column you like. find what you're after and click the hyperlink to open the file. You can easily add new columns, like "Have you transcribed this file yet?" or "Date of last checking of this file" etc. and then use them to sort and access you data files.

As David suggested in his post, this is an information management system solution to the problem. The SIL promise-ware that was mentioned in an earlier post is a packaged application solution.

I think this kind of "dirty laundry confessions" is really useful for us to share experiences and solutions that work for each of us, so thanks Alex. It's the kind of "bottom up" development of good practice ideas that I find valuable from a forum like this one.

Best,
Peter

On 4 May 2010 14:43, Alex Francois <Alexandre.Francois at vjf.cnrs.fr<mailto:Alexandre.Francois at vjf.cnrs.fr>> wrote:
dear Greg, dear all,

Useful thread indeed.
I am especially curious about the contrast suggested in the earlier discussion, between trying to include semantics in filenames, vs using opaque filenames and then search a database.

The reason is, during the last decade, I have experienced the two ends of the spectrum, and I'm not sure where I should stand now.

For many years, I had taken the habit of naming my audio files with maximally informative (and therefore rather long) names, such as:

 *   BD04-24 Veraa Harold ch Jesus mtp-vrs.wav
 *   DD04-13 Lovoko Mamuli leg Laperus2 tnm.wav
 *   ED10-30 Yaqane Edwad-Bilis conv chamanisme hiw.wav
[NB:  At that time I would use spaces in filenames (I'm not doing this anymore), but this can be easily changed to underscore with some file utility.  Sometimes I even used non-Ascii characters, I confess! ]
These file names would begin with a unique alphanumerical ID, so that the chronological order of recordings would be easily retrieved by automatic sorting.  The other reason for starting a long file name with an id, was that, should some software truncate the filename to the first 8 characters, it would still remain unique.
Here is how my (customised) system worked:

 *   first letter is a code for a whole collection = a single fieldtrip [A for my first fieldtrip, B for my second.... F for my 6th];
 *   second letter is a code for the support (D for digital audio recording, P for photo, V for video...)
 *   then 2 digits for a subcollection (in the olden days this was the number of a minidisc);  This subcollection ID is also the name of the folder in the folder-tree.
 *   then hyphen plus 2 digits for item in this subcollection (never more than 99)
and then the Homo Sapiens-friendly stuff came in:

 *   location of recording, spelled out - usually a village in Vanuatu: e.g. Veraa (=Vera'a, a village in Vanua Lava), Yaqane (a hamlet in Hiw);  or in the Solomons (Lovoko, Vanikoro);

 *   name of main speaker, spelled out
("Harold"; "Mamuli"; "Edwad-Bilis" as this was a conversation between two men);
names also uttered in full in the recording itself.

 *   genre of recording, using a limited set of abbreviations:
ch= chant (song), ct='conte' (tale), leg='legend', conv='conversation', etc.

 *   a very short title:
"Jesus" (a church song on someone with a name like this);
"Laperus2" (the legend of Lapérouse's wreckage - second version by same speaker that day);
"chamanisme" (a conversation on shamanism);

 *   a 3-letter id for the language
=> Very useful as several languages can be spoken in the same village, and sometimes the very same person would tell me the same story in 2 different languages.
e.g. tnm=Tanema, hiw=Hiw;  mtp-vrs= Mwotlap and Vurës, because this church song was exceptionally mixing the two languages.
[I'm not using ISO codes because they are opaque, and poorly designed for my area; but the equivalence between the codes I use and ISO codes is made easily accessible in my publications & homepage<http://alex.francois.free.fr/AF-field.htm#Vanuatu> anyway.]
Admittedly some info is missing, e.g. my own name, or the date:  but the date is usually retrievable from the collection & subcollection, and I always uttered it orally in the recording itself. Maybe one day I should hardcode it in the filename.

These (relatively) transparent long names have proven very useful to me as I was working on all these files, whether to transcribe them, compare different versions of similar stories, or whatever.  Because I have 1150 different sound files in my corpus, it proved also convenient to perform automatic search queries on filenames, say, to easily retrieve all recordings with the same storyteller over the years, or to filter all recordings of the same language.  I don't know if I would recommend such a system (maybe not) but at least I found it convenient for myself: the file name says it all. The good thing was also that most of these filenames were easily interpretable to people other than myself, with a minimal amount of abbreviations or codes.  The initial id (BD04-24...) doesn't really need to be interpreted anyway (it's an id), but the village & speaker's names (+title) are explicit, and a simple Txt file can help make sense of language names or genres (and collections).  In parallel I've always used spreadsheet for metadata, with full name of speaker, their age, precise location, date, full name, etc.

And then a few years ago, I wanted to archive these hundreds of files into our open archive (LACITO's Archivage<http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/archivage/presentation_en.htm>).
When they saw these long file names, our IT people were horrified.  They insisted that they should all be shortened to a simple id, as short as possible, getting rid of all the semantics.  They thought it would be much more convenient, or more elegant perhaps, to handle filenames like "AF03-05-02.wav" [AF03=my initials + 3rd field trip, etc.], coupled with some metadata file. Fair enough, they were surely right.  (my earlier use of spaces and occasionally non-Ascii was probably at fault, together with the sheer length of each string).

So I created a copy of my 1150 audio files, and renamed them all (manually) with these elegant numbers, which are now opaque even to myself.  Took me ages (weeks? months?).  In parallel I would fill a metadata sheet for each item, and send it to the IT people for them to encode in Xml/Xsl format onto the server. (I didn't know Xml/Xsl/Php well enough to create the search interface myself.) This was several years ago, and it never became as convenient as I was hoping it would be. In fact a fair part of the metadata is still awaiting to be format-converted & transferred to a new server, which was stopped halfway due to shortage in funding... but this is another story.

In the meantime, I now have my whole audio archives (37 Gb) in two versions: exactly the same sound files, but one set has the old filenames, one has the numbers. This is very silly, and was meant to be temporary, yet has lasted for some reason.
Finally what happens is, every time I want to quickly retrieve a file from my archives, I basically have the choice between accessing the set of files with the long, transparent names which are visually readable, easily searchable, and instantly clickable
-  OR accessing my metadata spreadsheet, try and identify the string of digits which I'm looking for, write it down, then try and access the recording among hundreds of files, essentially in a non-automatic way.  Now guess which solution I end up choosing.  (*grin*)

There's probably something I've done wrong (as always) but I'm still wondering what the ideal combination would be.  It seems that different usages (working on one's own files vs long-term archiving...) may warrant different decisions, but of course this is not a good answer to Greg.
I am especially trying to identify the best procedure in terms of archiving for the future, and making access easy for other prospective users.

regards,
Alex.
________________________________

Margaret Carew wrote:

Useful thread, and I am now looking back at my various drives with one eyebrow raised...

I'm wondering, what is the role of folders in all this?

I have an almost well organised system of audio recordings that is in the main not archived (although carefully backed up!), from various years and places. I have established a folder for each year that has passed since I commenced recording in digital (ie. 2006 2007 etc). Within each of these year folders is a recording session folder with a name that includes the year and month (sometimes day) the place and the event or key topic. Within each of these secondary folders are the recordings that are part of that session, with a date, speaker and other semantic info (eg. 20100209_BP_kurdu_wita.WAV). The metadata files (marked up text files) are stored within each folder, and the name of the folder is entered as a field in the metadata.

Like my erstwhile colleague Greg I'm probably closer to the hodge-podge end of things, doing lots of recordings with students, sometimes in a bit of a random fashion, multi-tasking like crazy, yet trying to keep some order in it. I'm now wondering whether the folder based system is going to be a problem when it comes to archiving - one thing that has popped up is the existence of these lots of folder based metadata files - this might need to be consolidated into one file.

I might also add that I've become fond of using itunes to make playlists of recordings - usually edited ones - and to use as a secondary database (a kind of partial mirror if you like). You can use the file info to point back to the folderised filenames as described. And it's great for making CDs for students of their recordings, to repatriate materials quickly etc. Also good for compiling files that will be used in a resource (eg. a set of clips for a voiceover) Am I committing an archiving crime by using itunes in this way?

Regards

Marg Carew

-----Original Message-----

From: Claire Bowern [mailto:clairebowern at gmail.com]

Sent: Tue 04/05/2010 00:49

To: David Nathan

Cc: Resource-Network-Linguistic-Diversity

Subject: Re: Labelling and metadata

David, that would work at the end of the documentation (in fact I'm

doing something pretty close to that right now for One Arm Point

School for Bardi stories) but while working on the collection, doing

searches, transcribing, etc, I'm constantly using the underlying

files, and I'm not sure that creating another layer of reference would

solve the problem. It would be useful for managing collections where

there are several numbering systems though (e.g. I have tapes that

have 3 references - the AIATSIS archive tape number, the internal

collection number, and the number they'd get if I put them in my

scheme...)

Claire

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 6:58 AM, David Nathan <dn2 at soas.ac.uk><mailto:dn2 at soas.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear all

About the filenames, there are some excellent suggestions in this

thread, but I think that there is a tendency to conflate the function

of filenames as identifers with the functions that enable retrieval

and access to resources. This conflation remains invisible only while

we all keep imagining that documentation materials are merely "data" -

without some genres, granularities, interface considerations etc. that

relate to the presentation and usage of the resources. In that sense,

you might think (even hypothetically) of the interface by which you

might wish people to access them, and it is probably likely to be some

kind of link. As those familiar with HTML and related technologies

know, a link has a target as well as a "display text" (and other

possible attributes in semantic web formalisms). Translating this back

to one's local data management, there seems a good case for separating

out the two functions mentioned above, and thinking about a simple

linking system (that you can implement easily in spreadsheet pages, or

HTML), and then the relevant considerations for what you want the

"display text" to be - for yourself, and, quite possibly differently,

for other users. This might help resolve out the different issues that

are most relevant for each function in your contexts.

best wishes

David

At 18:11 03/05/2010, you wrote:

If you are going to include semantics in the file names can I make a plea that your labels are a little more transparent -- why not use:

fm_2009_session10_audio.wav

fm_2009_session10_video.wav

rather than FM09_v10A ?? v could stand for "version" or "volume" or who knows what else, and, as for "A", well that's anyone's guess. Also, if the "09" is a year then write it as >2009 (one might even argue for "felicity" or "meakins" rather than "FM"). I recommend separators like _ as well, as Bill Poser did in his contribution to this discussion. Note also, >that if you have more than 99 video sessions you'll need the label to be:

fm_2009_session010_audio.wav

I think there are good reasons for being a little more explicit in file names if you want to put in some (useful) semantics like this -- after all YOU know what "FM" "09" "v" "A" mean >but who else could guess? Compare that with:

felicity_2009_session10_video.wav

Best,

Peter

On 3 May 2010 18:19, Felicity Meakins <f.meakins at uq.edu.au><mailto:f.meakins at uq.edu.au> wrote:

This is a good point, particularly if you use two recorders (e.g. audio

recorded plus video camera) to record the same session. I use 'v' and 'a' to

distinguish these. In this respect, it is the recording _session_ that's

primary, not the actual recording.

FM09_v10A

FM=me

09=year (full date is in metadata)

v=video

10=recording session

A=part of recording session

e.g. recording session may have taken place at X place but over two hours we

recorded 3 stories A, B, C.

On 3/5/10 6:13 PM, "Joe Blythe" <blythe.joe at gmail.com><mailto:blythe.joe at gmail.com> wrote:

The only two cents worth I'd like to add to this discussion is that I had to

modify my numbering numbering system to indicate whether the original

recording was made with a video or dedicated audio recorder. I only mark the

video ones as "vid".

Thus video files might be

20100503JBvid01.mov

Because you sometimes need to extract audio files from video files the video

file, such an extracted audio file would be

20100503JBvid01.wav

This ensures that any files recorded on the same date from a dedicated audio

recorder (e.g., 20100503JBv01.wav) don't end up with the same file name.

Joe

--

Prof Peter K. Austin

Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics

Department of Linguistics, SOAS

Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square

London WC1H 0XG

United Kingdom

web: http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/index.php?cd=pa

-------------

David Nathan

Endangered Languages Archive

SOAS

-------------

________________________________

Dr Alex FRANÇOIS

LACITO - CNRS, France

2009-2011:  Visiting Fellow

        Dept of Linguistics

        School of Culture, History and Language

        Australian National University

        ACT 0200, Australia

        http://alex.francois.free.fr

--
Prof Peter K. Austin
Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
Department of Linguistics, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom

web: http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/index.php?cd=pa
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