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Frequently Asked Questions
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Troubleshooting
I
would prefer to zoom in and out and slide instead of slicing up the sound file.
That
is perfectly feasable. Sectioning was used at the begining as a simple
solution for RAM limitations and navigation speed during the analyses.
Since it is not great but it works, this matter did not make it to the top of
the priority list yet. It should not take long, however.
What
is that black screen that comes up when I am opening Sound Ruler?
That screen displays code warnings and errors.
When things do not work as they should, please paste the contents of the black
screen into your bug report.
How
do I erase the green bars when I make a wrong click?
There
is no "erase" button. Click on the number of the current section or
call in the Sections or Calls list. The graph will the reset, erasing all the
green bars.
Is
it possible to make the program plot the oscillogram of the call with a constant
duration (for graphs and CCA)?
Why
does the program exceed the green bars that I define when I perform manual recognition
in the section?
SoundRuler
provides control over the amount of sound that is added around the call that
is recognized in the section. The area "Plot: time displayed around the
call" in the menu Options, Section defines how much sound is incorporated
in the next graph.
To make the program follow your manual "green
bar" selections exactly, select "centered","percentage"
and 100 %.
To make it select a constant total duration, select
"centered","milliseconds" and specify a duration. The program
will select the desired duration, centering it among the green bars in manual
selection or the blue gate in automatic recognition.
Why
doesn't Sound Ruler measure variable xyz?
Please let me know if variable xyz is important
in your work. The implementation of measuring it may be very simple and it might
just not have occurred to me to incorporate it.
I
want to edit my figures by dragging and dropping with the mouse.
Yes, me too. But the matlab libraries that the
stand-alone versions use do not support drag-and-drop yet. The libraries included
in Matlab itself, however, do support drag-and-drop, so if you have Matlab you
can drag-and-drop in the script versions of SoundRuler.
Why
doesn't Sound Ruler save my spectrograms as Adobe Illustrator or Windows metafiles?
(It
looks like it is saving now, or at least copying and pasting, but we still need
to test more systems).
Those formats are vectorial, meaning that the
image is defined as a series of geometric objects on a coordinates map.
Spectrograms are generated as bitmaps, where the pixel darkness is specified
point by point. It is strait-forward to convert from vectorial images to bitmaps
but the opposite is complicated, especially when the image presents complex
gradients of gray.
What
releases of Sound Ruler are available?
Sound Ruler is released as stand alone binaries
or as Matlab scripts. The binary versions are quicker and lighter than the scripts
and do not require Matlab. The scripts are easier to modify and for now they
have some extra plot editing features. Both script and binary versions are available
for Windows and Linux. The Mac version is not out yet.
soundruler-x.x.x.windows.zip: Windows stand
alone binaries.
soundruler-x.x.x.windows.scripts.zip:
This is the source M-file
script version for use within Matlab 6.x. They should not take much adjustment
to run on older Matlab versions or other operational systems.
soundruler-x.x.x.linux.rpm: Linux
stand alone binaries.
soundruler-x.x.x.linux.tar.gz:
Linux generic installation source file.
soundruler-x.x.x.linux.scripts.tar.gz:
This is the source M-file
script version for use within Matlab 6.x.
Where
are the source files? What language is used to write Sound Ruler?
Sound Ruler is developed in M-file scripts. These
are implemented by Octave (open, free) and
Matlab (proprietary). The source files
are in the script releases.
Where
are the Mac OS X binaries?
They are not out yet. If you have Matlab for OS
X and Matlab, you can use the M-file script version (smaller adjustments migh
be needed).
Some
features in the help file seem to be missing from my version of SoundRuler.
We are dealing with four types of releases that
all run on different libraries. It is not currently possible to have all features
present and identical in all releases.
Does
Sound Ruler run in Octave?
The graphical interface that Sound Ruler uses
is not yet available in Octave. But you can adapt its functionality to the console,
and use GnuPlot to generate the graphs.
Take a look at how I did it in Listener,
an automated acoustic monitoring system.
Can
Sound Ruler coexist with Matlab installations?
If the Matlab version is the same as the libraries
that ship with SoundRuler, you do not need to install the libraries. If they
are not the same version, you just have to make sure that the call to SoundRuler's
folder in your path appears before the call to Matlab's folder and both should
work fine.
"A
required .dll file, libmmfile.dll, was not found".
"Sorry, the configuration of the path failed".
For
some reason the installer failed to setup the path. All we need to do is to
inform Windows where the mathematical libraries are.
In Windows98 or Windows95: Find the file c:\autoexec.bat. If it does not exist, create it. Edit or add the line that starts with "SET PATH=" and include the call C:\MyFolder\soundruler\bin\win32; replacing C and MyFolder with the drive and folder where you installed SoundRuler. (see bottom - FOR ALL).
In Windows2000/NT: Go to Start - Settings - Control_Panel - System. A window will open with several tabs on top. Choose Advanced and at the bottom, click on "Environmental Variables". A screen will open with two boxes. The lower one, "System variables" , has an item called "Path". All that needs to be done is to click on "Path" and click the Edit button to add the path to the mathematical libraries. However, the Edit button might not be available, if your username does not have administrative power. If that is the case, log off Windows and log back on as Administrator. When you click the Edit button, a little window will open with two fieds. The lower one "Variable value" is where you want to add c:\program files\soundruler\bin\win32; You might have to change "c:\program files\soundruler" to point to the folder where you installed SoundRuler if you did not use the default.
FOR
ALL: if you have Matlab installed, place the new call into your path BEFORE
the call for Matlab's folder. This should not affect Matlab. Now reboot the
computer and SoundRuler should work fine. In case it doesn't, there might be
a typo in the path. You can easily check on in by opening a DOS prompt (Start-Run
and enter "command" or "cmd") and entering "path". It will display something
like:
PATH=C:\Windows\system32;c:\program
files\soundruler\bin\win32;
My
settings files stoped working.
Settings files are sensitive to sampling rate.
To use them with a new sampling rate, you might have to change all the settings
that are based on sample number. I might come up with some automatic converter....
"The
ordinal #### could not be located in the dynamic-link library dforrt.dll".
This is a problem with the installation of Matlab's
libraries. Here is the solution from the Mathworks: locate dforrt.dll or deformd.dll
in your Windows system directory and replace them with the corresponding files
in the <soundruler>\bin\win32 directory, where <soundruler> is the
name of your SoundRuler installation directory.
Sound
is poor or absent in the Linux versions.
The implementation of sound in the Linux libraries
is still precarious. The result seems to depend both on hardware and software
so it might be worth trying another machine.