Some comments below regarding use of Raven for review of detections/selections. Also, to answer Chris T-H's question about the BirdCast transient detector and the energy detector in Raven, the detector in Raven is a port of the old BirdCast detector to Java. They should function similarly if you use the same parameters.
- Tim On 8/22/09 10:06 AM, e kent wrote: > Erik Johnson wrote: "What's also frustrating is that I get a TON of > trash clips - many more than birds clips." > > To be clear, I'm a hobbyist with limited time, so I use detectors > *assuming* it will give acceptable results more quickly than > viewing/listening to sound files directly. > > Unfortunately, as Mike Lanzone points out, Trash-versus-Bird is one > trade-off when using detectors. However, this trade-off can be > mitigated by an efficient tool to sift through the trash. For > the this discussion, I'll say the software detection process has two > major phases: the software detection itself, and then the human > classification phase (trash versus bird). > > Not sure if others agree, but as others work to improve the detectors, > I think a quick win is an improved tool for the 2nd phase, > wheat-vs-chaff classification. > > For example, last night I ran a file through a Raven detector > graciously forwarded by Mike Powers. Examining the results with > Glass-of-Fire, I labelled one sound out of 200+ detections as a bird > (same as when I used Tseep/Thrush against the file). This was quick > and painless. > > However, individual review of Raven detections revealed I > *incorrectly* labelled 7 bird calls as Noise in Glass-of-Fire. This > is because Glass-of-Fire stretches spectrograms to a pre-defined size, > rendering the bird calls visually unrecognizable. So, the detector > found birds, but the efficient classifier was inaccurate. > > Manual review of each Raven detection was accurate, but highly > inefficient: viewing hundreds of selections one-at-a-time is slow and > tedious. The bounding boxes effectively hide short sounds. Keeping > or deleting good/bad selections from the selection list is error prone. TK> You can hide the bounding boxes in Raven using the Layout side panel. When doing this, you can increase the opacity of the selection fill to be able to see the selections, thereby allowing you to see the entire selection without the bounds getting in the way. You can also show the selection number using the View > Configure Selection Labels dialog. This is what Anne K. has done effectively. We've recently received requests to be able to advance through selections automatically without any keystrokes or button presses. In Raven Pro 1.4 build 24 (currently in test), we have such a feature. You can advance through each selection with a delay time in between, and you can optionally play the selections as you advance through them. Perhaps this is still not as efficient as MxN selections displayed in a grid, but it does save on RSI for those people who have to scan their selections. Rather than deleting selections from a table, it might make sense to add a particular annotation to them (x, d for delete, b for bad), then sort by that annotation column, then move all of the matching annotations to a new table. We'll open a new feature request for the clip viewer. > > Glass-of-Fire is a great format: view page-fulls of spectograms, and > quickly classify them with key combos. A great improvement would be > to present spectrograms without stretching. To use Raven detections > with a Glass-of-Fire style viewer, it would be helpful to see more > sound around the Raven detection. For example, in the case of a > longer bird call it successfully detected part of the call, without > selecting the whole sound. In the case of a short call, it's > difficult to understand what you're looking at without seeing more > context around the sound. TK> When you export clips from Raven (File > Save All Selections...), you can specify a pad size so that Raven saves extra time around the selection as part of the exported file. This will not get you identical file sizes unless you first alter the size of the selections in Raven. You can also save the Raven table, then edit it in Excel so that all of the selection time widths are identical. > > Regardless, I think increased efficiency during human > classification should allow current detectors to flag even more > sounds, catching more bird calls along with the trash. > > > Thanks, > Eric > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Chris Tessaglia-Hymes <c...@cornell.edu> > *To:* nfc-l@cornell.edu > *Sent:* Friday, August 21, 2009 2:09:37 PM > *Subject:* [nfc-l] NFC Detectors and Equipment? > > Hi everyone, > > In the past, I have not used any detectors when going through my night > recordings at home (Etna, NY). I have collected my sound data from the > roof-top microphone (Evans-style, with a Knowles microphone element) > piped into my home computer running Raven Pro, recording a continuous > file sequence from start to finish with each file duration equal to 1 > minute. The following day, I would browse through the sound file > sequence by hand, again using Raven Pro, looking for sounds of > interest. Once a sound of interest was worth saving, as an example of > a good flight note for species x, or an interesting unidentified > species flight call, I would cut-and-paste that sound file into a new > window and save it with a time-stamped label, uniquely pairing it to > the file/time it was copied from. > > Now, this is all fine when you are a single person, operating your own > home station, only recording on those nights which appear to have good > night flights. But, when you begin operating to capture every night > from multiple stations, or you want to really quantify most or all of > the calls that night, the question of data storage and data processing > becomes the big issues. > > How do some of you out there collect your sound data? > > What tools do you use for browsing sounds? > > Do you only use detectors? > > Here's a question for probably three people on this list: > > What is the difference between the current Raven Pro detector that > Mike Powers provided settings for and the old BirdCast transient > detector? Is there a difference? > > Getting back to an earlier posting from Tom Fowler (prior to the bloom > in membership...140+ now!), what kind of equipment do you each use for > recording or listening to your sounds? > > I mentioned that I use a variation on the Bill Evans-style flowerpot > microphone. I know that Andrew Farnsworth and Mike Powers use a > microphone, pre-amp, and housing designed by engineers at Bioacoustics > at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, storing their night sounds on flash > memory inside a SoundCache for analysis later, but what do others use? > > What are your personal home recording setups like? > > What obstacles or limitations have you encountered with your equipment > setups or recordings? > > I realize these are a lot of questions, but I wanted to pose these to > the list in order to help initiate discussion along these lines. > > Information about Bill Evans's flowerpot design can be found here: > http://www.oldbird.org/ (click on Microphone Design in the left panel) > > Information about the Raven software can be found here: > http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/raven/RavenOverview.html > > Another sound analysis software tool, Syrinx, can be found here: > http://syrinxpc.com/ > > Thanks and good night listening! > > Sincerely, > Chris T-H > > -- Chris Tessaglia-Hymes > Listowner, NFC-L > Ithaca, New York > c...@cornell.edu <mailto:c...@cornell.edu> > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES > > > -- > NFC-L List Info: > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME > <http://www.northeastbirding.com/NFC_WELCOME> > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES > <http://www.northeastbirding.com/NFC_RULES> > > http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html > -- > -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
