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 <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 ><mailto:c...@cornell.edu>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.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 --
