Hi!
I am currently using ELAN 5.9, and in segmentation mode, I am finding that the segments are not consistently capturing the same speech in the audio file. To give an example: If I am playing a whole segment (let’s say it lasts for ten seconds), it will cover only parts of the sentence (e.g. “I have been looking for the ball but I cann-”). But if I click on the last part of the selected sentence to play the last three seconds of the selected segment, it includes the final part of the sentence (“I cannot find it anywhere”). As such, I don’t know which is correct and if the segment actually covers the whole sentence or not.
Has anyone encountered something similar? It happens with all segments, and makes it impossible to segment correctly.
Best,
Silje
Hi,
I’m trying to understand and reproduce the problem. Depending on the contents and quality of the audio, the waveform often gives a rough but fairly good idea of segments boundaries, in your first example, does what you hear seem to correspond with what you see in the waveform and the crosshair? Does the crosshair continue until the end of the segment, or does it also stop before the end of the segment?
If you switch to Annotation Mode, do you observe the same problem? I’m trying to understand whether this is a generic audio playback problem or a Segmentation mode specific problem.
Best,
-Han
Hi,
Thank you so much for your reply.
For this transcription, I do not have the waveform (it is an MP3-file and I cannot convert it because it contains sensitive data and is under strict regulations). So I cannot answer you question regarding waveform.
If I switch to transcription mode, I can hear that the segment has not captured the full sentence (as I also can hear when I play the selected segment in segmentation mode). BUT, when I play the last part of the segment (let’s say the last three seconds), it captures the sentence. It makes it very hard to segment as the information I get is very conflicting, and I often play the last part (often the segments may be long if a person is talking without longer pauses) to make sure I have captured it all. Also, when I press pause (ctrl + space) and click to listen to something again, it just keeps playing from the place I clicked pause (although I have specifically clicked somewhere else in the segment (like I always have done previously, so this is something I have not encountered until this update happened).
Best,
Silje
Thanks for the clarifications.
Now knowing the problem occurs with an MP3 file, I tried again and was able to reproduce this problem on Windows. It seems there is some error in the default player for that file type on Windows, the one based on DirectShow. I haven’t found out yet what actually goes wrong but will try some more.
What you can do, now that you are not allowed to convert the file, is to try one of the other available players, via Edit->Preferences->Edit Preferences... the Platform/OS tab. Try e.g. the JavaFX Media Framework or, if you have the VLC Player installed, the VLC PLayer Library. Changes here apply to the files opened after the change (so you might have to re-open an already open file to see the effect).
-Han
1 Like
Hi,
Sorry for my late response. Thank you for helping me with this issue.
Editing the player to either JavaFX Media Framework or VLC Player Library did not work for this issue, unfortunately. So the problem is still there.
Best,
Silje
Hi,
That’s too bad. I don’t know what the problem could be then, I don’t see the same issue with those two players.
Maybe you already did, but if you, after switching to one of the two mentioned players and reopening the file, go to View->View Log... can you see that the selected player is indeed playing that file? You might find a message line containing .JFXMediaPlayer printMediaInfo or .VLCJ4MediaPlayer checkMediaInfo followed by some output concerning the mp3 file.
Best,
Han
Hi,
Thank you for trying to help.
I could not find info about the player in viwe log, but it says “Preferred media framework ‘VLCJ’ can not handle the file” and also “Using JDS Player for file …”. But it says so no matter which player I am trying to use. I’ll see if there is a way to convert the file to wav using a secure program.
Thanks!
Best,
Silje
Hi,
The message concerning ‘VLCJ’ indicates that VLC Player is not installed or not in one of the expected locations. In such case ELAN falls back to the default player. On my system the JavaFX player seems to work quite well for mp3.
But conversion to .wav would probably be best (maybe the ffmpeg examples from this encoding guide can help.
Best,
Han
