My team and I have recently been having problems opening .eaf and .wav files together on ELAN. We used to be able to open them together, no problem, but as of late (since the end of last month) we’ve been getting errors. Once I locate both the .eaf file and matching .wav file, ELAN asks again for the .wav file. If I select it, then it displays “Warning: the selected file is already linked” with only an “OK” option to it. If I hit cancel so that I would not be linking the .eaf to the same .wav file twice, then it displays “Incomplete media data: Do you want to start a session with incomplete media data?” with the options “Yes” and “No”. We’ve found that our conversations are not altered in any way when we choose the option “Yes”, but as we work through annotations, glitches occur. Sometimes, data that was a result of hours of work isn’t saved, or, in my case, ELAN isn’t functioning properly. For example, I would move an annotation in a tier around in segmentation mode, and the space I’d move it to would be highlighted, but the annotation would physically appear in its originally space. The same situation occurs when I try to manipulate lengths of annotations, it would appear the original length in the same spot although I had shortened/lengthened it.
I’ve installed and reinstalled ELAN multiple times and have made sure that I meet all of the requirements for download. So, I’m not sure what to do. Any advice? The software is a vital tool for the project we are working on.
Do you have any idea what changed roughly a month ago? Some of the problems you describe are sometimes seen when an annotation file is damaged, but it is unlikely that suddenly all your files are damaged. Probably something else changed (OS update, new software on all machines, upgrade to a new ELAN version etc.)
Apart from that: it is not quite clear to me how you open your annotation files: if you open an .eaf file, the linked .wav file is either automatically found (e.g. if it is still in the same location and not renamed) or you are prompted to tell the application where it is. How do you locate both .eaf and .wav at the same time (at least your description seems to indicate that that is the case)?
I’m not sure what the ELAN update included, but I didn’t think it would be something that would suddenly make our files incompatible. Is there a way to check whether or not an annotation file is damaged?
And the way that I open my annotation files is as follows: File>Open>[Here I select my .eaf file]>[Here I select my .wav file]
This means that I link the .eaf and .wav files initially, but after I save the edited .eaf file then it automatically opens with the intended, original corresponding .wav file.
You could check if an .eaf file is damaged in an XML editor. Some errors are also recorded in the ELAN log (after opening a file View->View Log…).
But it is not very likely that suddenly many files are damaged. The changes per ELAN release are always available on the release notes page (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/release-notes/). But I have no reason to believe that any change in ELAN could cause the sort of behavior that you report (we didn’t get similar reports). It seems that near the end of November something must have changed, whatever it may be, if since then you get errors in more than one file on more than one computer (if I got that right).
So I checked out a file via the View>View Log route you mentioned, and I saw a couple lines that may an indication of what is going on:
WARNING: Preferences file does not exist: C:\Users\Savannah.elan_data\shortcuts.pfsx
Jan 05, 2016 10:32:07 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.commands.ShortcutsUtil readCurrentShortcuts
INFO: Could not load the keyboard shortcut preferences file. The file does not exist or is not valid.
Jan 05, 2016 10:32:17 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesWriter encodeAndSave
INFO: Writing preferences: C:\Users\Savannah.elan_data\elan.pfsx
Jan 05, 2016 10:32:17 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.prefs.PreferencesReader parse
INFO: Reading preferences: C:\Users\Savannah\Desktop\SBC_ELAN\SBC034.pfsx
Consistency problems have been detected in the transcription:
Error: end time before start time. Tier: KAREN; Start time: 03:45:48.020 End time: 00:22:37.988
Jan 05, 2016 10:32:24 AM mpi.eudico.client.annotator.commands.ExportMediaCA <init>
INFO: No version of M2-edit-cl or M2-xcode-cl found
Besides the “WARNING” and “Error” lines, the rest of the log has time stamps and “Info” lines that do not look out of the ordinary. Do the lines mentioned above indicate a damaged .eaf file?
Yes, the Error: message indicates a damaged file. In this case there is an annotation on the tier KAREN that has an end time that is before the start time. That shouldn’t happen and it can lead to unpredictable behavior. I would advise to open the file and e.g. select the tier KAREN in the Grid Viewer, select the annotation that starts at 03:45:48.020 (and which has a negative duration) and delete it (and then recreate it).
I’m not sure if this can explain the strange behavior, but this needs to be corrected anyhow.
I finally got around to making some time to deal with Elan and here is where I’m at as of now:
I followed your instructions to delete Karen’s annotation and then recreate it, but the same problems(unable to manipulate length of or move annotations around) are still present. I looked in the log and found the same error message even after I had deleted/recreated the specific annotation and opened the file up again. I did want to note though that this problem happens with our other files, although I looked on their logs and didn’t see any errors on them.
We’ve gotten through maybe around 20 of these .eaf+.wav combo files before this started happening late November/early December. The whole situation is very odd…
So I also just went through the old files we’ve completed and the problems are arising there also. I’m unable to move annotations around. Is anyone else reporting this problem also since the update?
I don’t think we have other similar problem reports. You ask “since the update”, but what update would that be? 4.9.2 was only released 21st of December, 4.9.1 was released in July. If you updated all your computers to ELAN 4.9.1 late November and the problems started then, you would probably have associated the problem with the update right away?
Could I have a look at one (problem) file (without wav) to see if editing works and to check if I see anything special in the file (han.sloetjes AT mpi.nl)?
[By the way, it is strange that you get the same message after deleting that annotation on the KAREN tier. Maybe saving it and reopening it before recreation of the annotation works?]
