Messages

1

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / Export audio file playback to video

« on: December 18, 2011, 19:28:53 »

Given that Sonic Visualiser is a moving, visual playback of audio data, I've been using it extensively to study and then share my analysis of wildlife recordings.

Unfortunately most people in my user audience are not interested in using Sonic Visualiser to see the spectrograms I create and annotate. So I am forced to capture the playback in a video format and then post it to youtube for their consumption. I do this through a tedious process that involves Sonic Visualiser, RecordMyDesktop, OpenShot video editor, and the annotation features in Youtube. Just producing a 1 minute clip can take hours of work, and the video capture portion is the most tedious part.

I'm sure other SV users would like to share their audio studies with colleagues, and an export to video would be the easiest way to do that (allowing videos to be shared by email, or loaded to the internet).

Would it be possible to create an export capability in Sonic Visualiser, something that would allow the user to capture the complete playback of a file in a video format, maybe MPEG (or an open source format)?

Not sure how simple this would be to implement, but I think it would lead to video-spectrograms proliferating quickly, given the increased visibility they would reserve.

For an example of the video-spectrograms I've been creating, check out my Youtube collection at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SasquatchBioacoustic

Thanks,
Monongahela

2

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / Make Vertical Display Range Easier to Find

« on: December 18, 2011, 19:03:29 »

I'm a big fan of the vertical display range available when the spectrogram layer is selected. But as a new user it took me weeks to find where I had to go to set the vertical display range (I'm not fond of reading user guides). I eventually did find it, and now use it frequently.

But as the official Sonic Visualizer guru among my group of research friends, I'm often asked questions about how to find/use the tool. And guiding people to the vertical display dialogue is a real challenge in email.

I've wondered if it would be possible to put the two settings of the "Enter New Range" vertical display dialogue, onto the spectrogram tab itself. Maybe list it directly below the "Bins" setting, where it would be easy to see and use?

Can we make this a feature modification request for the next point release of SV?

Thanks,
Monongahela

3

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / More Annotation Capabilities

« on: December 18, 2011, 18:43:00 »

Hi Cannam,
After the great implementation you did with the ability to save the user's preferences to reappear at start up, I thought I'd bounce another "need" of you. Hopefully this is one that could be handled nearly as easily.

I do a lot of markup on the my audio files as I analyze them (wildlife studies mainly). And I often need more than just the basic text overlay to capture the information I want to record. The text overlay is a nice feature, but it doesn't provide the user many options for modifying it, so here's the first user need:

Improve the text annotation layer with options to modify the font in use. New features should include basic font manipulation to include font type, font size, and other font characteristics (e.g. bold, italic, underlined, or even strikethrough). Left, right and center justification would be a nice addition as well.

And given the visual nature of SV, it would be a huge improvement if we could add a "shapes" layer as well. This would allow the user to add circles, squares, lines and other shapes to the visualization. For instance, I would create horizontal lines helping identify various vocal regions in a playback (i.e. bass, baritone or soprano, falsetto, etc.). And if such a user defined layer could be produced, it would be nice to have the ability to save and reuse that layer on other audio files (for instance, I'd create an illustration of the modal register and its components, then overlay that on many different audio files that I'd study).

So basically that's two different requests, font improvements and a user definable shapes layer. Hope that's doable in a future release of SV. This is a great tool and it gets better with every new version.

Thanks,
Monongahela

4

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / Re: Saving My Preferences To Appear at Startup

« on: October 21, 2011, 03:52:49 »

Hi Cannam, I downloaded v1.9 the day you posted it and have been using it all week. The session template works GREAT. Very well done and I really appreciate that you took the time to make this improvement. I've already told my friends how nice the feature is (it really saves me a lot of time) and they'll be downloading the new version soon, too.

I also like the sample templates that you set up. Nice touch which helps the user understand what the feature can do.

Keep up the good work
Monongahela

5

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / Re: Saving My Preferences To Appear at Startup

« on: August 11, 2011, 03:02:43 »

Thanks Cannam. I really do hope something can be worked out, without too much effort. I think it would be a huge time saver for the user, and I'll certainly look forward to using it.

Monongahela

6

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / Re: sonic visualiser real time?

« on: April 25, 2011, 17:54:26 »

It might be possible to do something in Audacity. Audacity can record audio from an input source (mic, line-in) and display spectrograms. Although I've never tried to record while in spectrogram view, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

The big issue is how inadequate Audacity's spectrograms are when compared to Sonic Viisualiser's. You'll have to get used to that.

7

Host Forum: Sonic Visualiser / Saving My Preferences To Appear at Startup

« on: April 25, 2011, 17:51:19 »

I'm a big fan of SV and have used it since 1.7.1 to study wildlife audio recordings. I've become very familiar with the tool and how to tune it to get the most out of the sound files I study. But I have one vexing issue that I sorely wish you would help me with.

I have my own preferences for what I need to see when I open a sound file in SV. But when SV starts up with its standard appearance, I am left with several minutes of configuration changes that I must repeatedly walk through, for every new audio file I open. Yes, I do save my settings to a unique session for each audio file before I close. But that doesn't solve the problem for all the new files I've yet to open. Over the course of a day I can open hundreds of new audio files, and have to repeat those "tweaks" repeatedly.

And yes, I have started to drag and drop each new audio file into a standard session that reflects the tuning I desire, but this is still a work around to what we truly need from SV. (Using this approach I have accidentally overwritten existing session files.)

NEEDED: A method to save an individual user's settings as the default view for how SV will open all future audio files, effectively establishing a new "default" setting. In addition to this, there should be a method of reverting to the standard SV settings, should the user desire to do so.

Can we PLEASE get something like this into the next minor release of SV. This is a great tool but that one niggling issue of saving user defaults has been a big pain when I try to convince other researchers of how "user friendly" this tool can be.

Thanks.