Hi All, Even though we use Raven and XBAT to analyze our recordings, we also still use GlassOFire to sort the clips as is a quicker and more efficient than sorting within Raven. You will find with any program using settings for export you will have files of slightly different lengths as you usually export the selection with a user selected buffer (or fixed in the case of tseep), and since the detected part of the call (often detectors do not detect the whole call, just a small piece), or even whole calls are different lengths the sizes will all be different. It is possible to get files of uniform length in Raven, but I do that by editing the selection table.
Best, Mike Michael Lanzone Biotechnology and Biomonitoring Lab Supervisor Carnegie Museum of Natural History Powdermill Avian Research Center 1847 Route 381 Rector, PA 15677 724.593.5521 Office [email protected] On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 9:27 AM, David Martin <[email protected]> wrote: > I agree with Eric that work flow is a major consideration, and GlassOFire > is also a key tool for me. I set it up so that I see 36 sonograms on the > screen at a time (2400 x 1600 twps). At these settings I can easily > separate the obvious noise and the calls, and I can clear out the katydids > and rain pretty fast. Some calls are clearly recognizable, but many are too > indistinct to identify. I use Raven to verify the id's. > > One problem is that the sound files produced by Tseep-x are not all the > same length. GlassOFire works well with the majority of images. But, if > the file is long, GlassOFire compresses the image to fit the frame size, and > the calls are hard to recognize. If the call also is faint, it looks like a > smudge in the sonogram. If the file is short, GlassOFire stretches the > image. For me stretching has usually not been a problem. There are > occasional cases where the file is greatly stretched and it is obvious that > it has no useful content. > > In my view, it would help if detectors like Tseep-x and Thrush-x produced > files of uniform length. Then the image size in GlassOFire could be matched > to the file length. > > I still have to work on using the detector in Raven. > > David Martin > > > > At 10:06 AM 8/22/2009, you 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. > > 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. > > 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 <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *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 > [email protected] > > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME<http://www.northeastbirding.com/NFC_WELCOME> > > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES<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/[email protected]/maillist.html > -- > > -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html --
