Dear ELAN team,
We recently experienced a similar problem to that described previously on this forum regarding ELAN getting stuck on the “Initializing screen” on an Apple Silicon Mac, although not with a wav but with a mov file. After trying some troubleshooting on our own, it seems to have to do with the setting for extracting the wave form from the video. When the preference for extracting the wave form from a movie file is selected in the preferences (no matter if AV foundation or FFmpeg) ELAN gets stuck on initializing upon opening a file (or creating a new file).
The computer is an Apple M3 MacBook and the macOS version is Sonoma 14.6.1. The ELAN version is 6.8-M1. The video was filmed with an iPhone. We did try the same video on the computer of a friend (also a Mac but an M2, not M3), it worked without problem, including displaying the wave form. A third person with a M1 mac also experienced this problem.
When the checkbox for extracting the wave form is not selected then ELAN opens fine and the video also plays fine. But when it is selected, it won’t open.
We copied 2 log files from the ELAN preference folder (one was while ELAN was stuck on “initializing,” the other after force-quitting). The forum doesn’t allow us to attach files, nor does it allow for links in posts, but you can replace the DOT’s back in the link below and it should allow you to download:
drive DOT google DOT com/drive/folders/127qtvABA97sGjse0mgDDjsLWQ1RtDeq0
Thank you for looking into this!
Hi Jan David,
Thank you for the log files.
From the error logs it is found that there is an error while loading the ffmpeg because it doesn’t find some library in the system.
Apparently, the ffmpeg needs some libraries to be installed. The intention was to create the ffmpeg library independent of any installed libraries but it looks like it fetches few libraries from the system.
That’s why I think it works on the machine you mentioned ( which probably have all dependent libraries ).
If you really need to open the wave form via ffmpeg in ELAN then you will have install the libX11.6.dylib via homebrew to see if it helps.
The best way and recommended way to add the wav form displayed in ELAN is to create the .WAV file outside ELAN and add that as linked file under Edit → Linked File.
Best,
Divya
Hi Divya,
Thanks so much for your feedback.
Just to clarify: So you’re saying that ELAN tries to create an ffmpeg library independently from any installed libraries to display the waveform?
Even if we select AV foundation? Because in the preferences we had AV foundation selected and on most Macs (whether Intel or Apple Silicon) that works flawlessly – just a few get stuck on initializing.
So I’m confused if AV foundation has the capability of creating a waveform display, why would it need any ffmpeg libraries at all? Or am I misunderstanding something?
Best wishes,
Jan
Hi Jan,
Sorry if I missed some points in the explanation.
Below, I will list the order of waveform visualisation preferences on macOS.
-
If a .wav file is linked via Edit → Linked files, then that will be used for the waveform
visualisation.( preferred way)
-
If not, then the AVFoundation is the preferred framework. If that works,
that’s fine and no other libraries are used. But from the start there
have been issue with freezing on some macs (see e.g. the release notes
of ELAN 6.2 at https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan/rel-history-25), not sure if the current “stuck on initializing” problem has the same root cause.
-
As a fall back option FFmpeg option can be tried for waveform
visualization (but we got to know from your logs that this apparently only works if certain X11 libraries are pre-installed, this was not supposed to be the case).
If AVFoundation is selected, then no FFmpeg libraries are invoked. (I mentioned the FFmpeg because there were errors of those libraries in your logs.)
Best,
Divya
Dear Divya,
Thanks so much for clarifications. And thanks for pointing to the older release notes, it’s good to know this is a known issue and may be an issue with M… macs more generally.
I’m still a bit confused though about the logs, because those were in fact generated with AVFoundation selected. But you wrote, if AVFoundation is selected, no FFmpeg libraries are invoked. How come that shows up in the logs? Perhaps ELAN is trying something it shouldn’t?
The context is that I’m using ELAN in a class I am teaching at UCLA, and several of my students brought this issue up to me (you might have gotten email from some of them) – and I was hoping not to have them go through the hassle of installing extra libraries etc.
In any case, I’ll advise the ones who are still having trouble to extract a wave file and use that approach for now.
If there’s any other troubleshooting we can do to give you more data to help figure out what’s wrong on these machines, please let us know.
All best,
Jan
Dear Jan David,
I looked at the log files one more time.
From the logs I can say that indeed the AVFoundation audio extractor is used multiple times after which I see elan getting stuck on initialising.
But I also see one time FFmpeg audio extractor being written, where it mentions the missing libraries.
It can be that someone might have tried the FFmpeg option in between ?
Otherwise I do not see any mixup of AVFoundation and FFmpeg messages in a single flow.
Best,
Divya
Hi Divya,
Thanks so much for your reply. Yes, that makes sense. The student might have tried the FFmpeg version as well once – but did not have ffmpeg installed.
Unfortunately, we’ve run into more problems.
Now even some students who use Intel Macs have experienced issues with ELAN initially working fine and at some point slowing down and freezing. It might have to do with zooming in/out of the timeline viewer and scrolling – at least that’s when some of the issues showed up.
Here’s a link to one log file from an Intel mac:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3ofrp8gcixu8mxj5o4zg6/elan0-1.log?rlkey=vderln37smnu0t1svrnpddm8a&dl=0
If you could have a look and see if there’s anything you can see from that.
And any suggestions what I might do to help the student troubleshoot?
For the previous issue, fortunately the workaround with attaching a separate wave file solved it for all of the ones on M-series Macs. But that doesn’t seem to make a difference on Intel Macs that experience problems. Your help is much appreciated!
All best,
Jan
Hi Jan,
Thank you for the log files.
In the logs I still see AVFoundation being used for audio extraction from the video. It would be good to set this as “None” and link the .wav file for waveform
visualisation ( preferred way)
Because in the logs there is no mention of .wav files. I see m4a files are being used as audio files. For the waveform visualisation, we recommend to link the .wav files.
Once they link the .wav file and carry on with operations and still notice the freezing then you can share those logs, it will help us differentiate and troubleshoot the issue better.
Best,
Divya
