ELAN - Linguistic Annotator

version 6.2

This manual was last updated on 2021-06-22.

The latest version can be downloaded from: https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan.

Original Author: Birgit Hellwig

Updates for version 2 and higher: Dieter Van Uytvanck

Updates for version 3.2.0 and higher: Micha Hulsbosch

Updates for version 4.0.0: Aarthy Somasundaram and Micha Hulsbosch

Updates for version 4.1.0: Maddalena Tacchetti and Aarthy Somasundaram

Updates for version 4.1.1 and higher: Aarthy Somasundaram

Updates for version 4.4.0 and higher: Jeroen Geerts

Updates for version 5.0 and higher: Han Sloetjes


Table of Contents

Introduction
Notation Conventions
Recent changes to this manual
I. USER'S GUIDE
1. ELAN documents
Basic Information
Media Files and Annotation Files
Special ELAN data folder
How to start and manage documents
Selecting a user interface language
Creating a new document
Set the author and license information of a document
Synchronizing video files
Opening an existing document
Opening a remote ELAN file (*.eaf
Re-open recently accessed files
Switching between multiple files
Saving a document
Saving a selection as .eaf file
Validating an EAF file
Merging transcriptions
Saving a template
Changing the links to media files
Creating automatic backups
Printing
Configuring the page settings (page setup)
Previewing the printed pages
Opening a wave file in Praat
Exporting a selection to a wave file with Praat
Closing a file
Exiting ELAN
Editing preferences
Import and Export options
Export as
Import from
Screen display and navigation through a document
Basic Information: The ELAN window
The Video Viewer
The Annotation Density Viewer
The Waveform Viewer
The Subtitle Viewer
The Grid Viewer
The Text Viewer
The Lexicon Viewer
The Comments Viewer
The Metadata Viewer
Audio And Video Recognizers
The Timeline Viewer and the Interlinear Viewer
The Tier Name panel
The Timeseries Viewer
The Menu options
The Media Player options
The color coding
Increasing/decreasing the size of the ELAN window
Switching Viewers on/off
Show / Hide Specific Viewers
Increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers
Switching tiers on/off
Rearranging the order of tiers
View tiers by Type/Participant/Annotator
Sorting tiers
Creating and applying tier sets
Changing the time zoom
Changing the vertical (intensity) zoom
Changing the font size
Font Browser
Importing and exporting preferences
Editing shortcuts
How to copy current time of the media
How to navigate through a document
Accessing points in time
Going to the borders of a selection
Jumping step by step through a document
Viewing a list of annotations within one tier (Grid Viewer)
Jumping from annotation to annotation (Interlinear Viewer)
How to play a document
Playing a document
Playing a selection
Playing around a selection
Playing in slow motion
Changing playback rate and volume via the keyboard
Adding comments to .eaf files
Comments setup and settings
Adding, deleting & changing comments
Viewing comments & display options
Filter comments
Other functions
Multiple File Operations
How to select multiple files
Editing multiple files and analysis of multiple files
Multiple file export options
Multiple file import options
2. Annotations
Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and tier types
Defining languages for your content
How to define a tier type
Adding new tier types
Changing tier types
Deleting tier types
Importing tier types
Associating a tier type with a Data Category
How to define a tier and its attributes
Adding new tiers
Importing tiers
Creating a tier using the Silence Recognizer
Changing tier attributes
Deleting tiers
Merging tiers
Merging tiers (Classic)
Merging tier groups
Changing the parent of a tier
Add New Participant
Data categories
Controlled Vocabularies
The creation of a CV
Setting language(s) for a CV
Associating a CV entry with a Data Category
Importing an existing CV
Using an External CV
Exporting a CV
Associating a tier type with Controlled Vocabularies
Using CV's
Consulting a Lexicon
Setting up a Lexicon Service
Set the Lexicon Service and entry field information for a Tier Type
Perform a Lexicon Lookup
Signbank lexicon service
Media Displayer
How to make a selection
Making a selection on an independent tier
Selecting multiple annotations
Using the selection controls
Creating annotation units without gaps
Making and saving a selection on a referring tier
Deselecting a selection
Changing the boundaries of an existing selection and annotation
Shifting annotations
Activating and deactivating the Bulldozer mode or Shift mode
How to enter and edit annotations
Entering annotations (into the Inline Edit box)
Entering annotations (into the Edit Annotation box)
Entering annotations from a Controlled Vocabulary
Entering annotations before/after other annotations
Creating depending annotations for a active annotation
Creating annotations on dependent tiers
Creating annotations from gaps
Creating regular annotations
Duplicating annotation values
Snap Annotations
Automatic labelling and numbering
Modifying the content of annotations
Modifying the boundaries of annotations
Moving annotations to another tier
Changing the case of Annotations
Deleting annotation values
Deleting annotations
Deleting annotations and annotation values on multiple tiers
Split Annotations
Merging annotations
Entering annotations in different character sets
Associating an annotation with a Data Category
Spell checking
Setting up a spell checking service
Spell checking
How to undo an action
Tokenize a tier
How to filter and copy tiers
Filtering tiers
Copying tiers
Copying annotations from one tier to another tier
How to detect annotation overlaps
Creating annotations from overlaps
Comparing annotators
Create annotation by subtraction
Copy and paste annotations
Copy annotation
Paste annotation
Paste annotation here
Copy and paste annotation groups
Duplicate annotation
Copy all annotations from one tier to another.
Synopsis
Web Services
WebLicht
Information about annotations
Annotations Spreadsheet
Annotations Statistics
Annotation Density Plot
3. Working modes
Annotation mode
Synchronization mode
Transcription mode
Selecting the tier types for transcription
Selecting tiers for transcription
Show or Hide tiers
Change color of tiers
Change color of tiers
Making tiers non-editable
Entering text for a annotation
Merging annotations
Modifying annotations
Shortcut keys used in this mode
Segmentation mode
Configuring the behavior of the segmentation keystroke
Editing annotations
Merging annotations and splitting annotations
Step-and-Repeat playback mode
Keyboard shortcuts
Interlinearization mode
Analyzer setup and configuration
Types of analyzers and their settings
Lexicons
The interlinearization panel
The Suggestion View
4. Searching
Searching in a single annotation file
Advanced searching: an example
Displaying search results
Jumping from the search results to annotations
Searching through multiple annotation files
FASTSearch
Find & replace in multiple files
Structured search through multiple annotation files
Substring Search Tab
Single Layer Search tab
Multiple Layer Search tab
5. Help
6. Reference guide
The mouse options
Resizing Viewers
Rearranging the order of tiers
Make a tier the active tier
Accessing points in time
Playing a document
Making a selection
Adding/modifying an annotation
The shortcut keys
File options
Playing a document & making selections
Working with annotations
Copy and paste
Working with selections
Searching
General
Key concepts of ELAN
Annotation file (*.eaf)
Media file (*.mpg, *.mov, *.wav etc.)
Annotation
Tier
A. REGULAR EXPRESSION SEARCH
Character Classes
Line terminators
Groups and capturing
Comparison to Perl 5

List of Figures

1.1. File menu
1.2. The New Transcription dialog window: media
1.3. The New Transcription dialog window: templates
1.4. Document properties window
1.5. Synchronizing video files: Enter offset in 'Linked Files'
1.6. Synchronizing video files: Offset of player 1
1.7. Synchronizing video files: Offset of player 2
1.8. Shift all annotations
1.9. Open dialog window
1.10. Error message: no eaf file
1.11. Locate media file
1.12. Open remote file
1.13. Windows dropdown menu
1.14. Save selection as .eaf file
1.15. Save As Dialog
1.16. Validation report window
1.17. Merge transcriptions dialog window
1.18. Merge transcriptions dialog window
1.19. Open new transcription
1.20. Linked files dialog window
1.21. Automatic backup
1.22. Printing
1.23. Page setup
1.24. Print preview
1.25. Font sizes
1.26. Print preview after changes
1.27. Opening a wave pattern in Praat
1.28. Save on exit
1.29. Edit preferences
1.30. Edit preferences
1.31. Edit preferences
1.32. Tier Selection panel in most of the dialogs
1.33. Toolbox Export dialog window
1.34. ELAN file and exported Toolbox file
1.35. Export FLEx file step 1
1.36. Export FLEx file step 2
1.37. Export FLEx file step 3
1.38. Export Chat file
1.39. Export as tab-delimited text dialog window
1.40. Tab-delimited text
1.41. Maximum line width
1.42. Export as HTML
1.43. Export Transcript Text
1.44. Export settings
1.45. Different export settings
1.46. Export settings and JSON preview
1.47. Export SMIL Real Player
1.48. Change subtitle text settings
1.49. Export as Subtitles text
1.50. Tiers for AVATech recognizers
1.51. An exported filmstrip image
1.52. Exporting to a filmstrip image
1.53. Shoebox Export dialog window
1.54. Name and directory of exported file
1.55. File Exists
1.56. ELAN file and exported file
1.57. Database type properties dialog window
1.58. Import Toolbox file
1.59. Set Shoebox/Toolbox field markers
1.60. Store markers
1.61. Toolbox field markers and ELAN tiers
1.62. Multiple speakers in ELAN
1.63. Time Subdivision
1.64. Fixed time intervals
1.65. Time alignment
1.66. Import FLEx file
1.67. FLEx to ELAN structure
1.68. Tab-delimited Text
1.69. Import CSV / Tab-delimited Text
1.70. Tab-delimited text, different orientation
1.71. Import CSV / Tab-delimited Text
1.72. The ELAN window
1.73. The video viewer
1.74. Video information dialog window
1.75. Annotation density viewer
1.76. The waveform viewer
1.77. Waveform viewer modes
1.78. Waveform context menu
1.79. Waveform visualisation switching
1.80. The subtitle viewer
1.81. Display multiple tiers as a subtitle
1.82. The grid viewer
1.83. Multiple tiers with symbolic association in the grid viewer
1.84. Export from the grid viewer
1.85. The text viewer
1.86. The metadata viewer displaying a CMDI file
1.87. The Recognizer Tab
1.88. The timeline viewer
1.89. The ELAN window with timeline/interlinear viewer
1.90. The tier name panel
1.91. Linking timeseries data files
1.92. Timeseries Viewer popup menu
1.93. Timeseries Viewer: Configure tracks
1.94. Timeseries viewer in the main window
1.95. The Extract Track Data window
1.96. The media player options
1.97. Timecode formats
1.98. Color coding
1.99. Changing size of the timeline viewer
1.100. Changing the size of the tier label panel
1.101. Switching tiers on/off
1.102. Rearranging the order of tiers
1.103. Visible Tiers
1.104. Work with tier sets
1.105. Creating and editing tier sets
1.106. The Tier Set context menu item before and after enabling tier sets in the preferences.
1.107. Changing time zoom
1.108. Changing vertical (intensity) zoom
1.109. Changing the font size
1.110. Font Finder-Explorer
1.111. Edit Keyboard Shortcuts
1.112. Click the timecode box
1.113. Use the crosshair
1.114. Set Frame Length menu
1.115. The grid viewer
1.116. Structure of the grid viewer
1.117. Grid viewer with context menu
1.118. Grid viewer with selected annotations
1.119. Interlinear viewer
1.120. Play/pause button
1.121. Play around selection
1.122. Playback rate
1.123. Comments-tab in ELAN
1.124. Comments settings dialog
1.125. User password dialog
1.126. Directory settings
1.127. Conflicting comments dialog
1.128. Adding comments
1.129. A comment added by another user.
1.130. Changing a comment.
1.131. The comments display overview
1.132. Changing a comment.
1.133. Other functions
1.134. E-mail a comment
1.135. Multiple file selection dialog
1.136. Create transcription files for multiple media files Dialog
1.137. Multiple File Editor
1.138. Transcription Scrubber
1.139. 1. Method selection
1.140. a. Customize compare method for modified Cohen's kappa
1.141. b. Customize compare method for modified Fleiss' kappa
1.142. Six raters, two possible clusters of four and six matching annotations, the overlap in light blue
1.143. Six raters, four of the possible clusters of matching annotations are marked in blue and green
1.144. c. Customize compare method for Staccato
1.145. 3. Document and tier configuration
1.146. 4. Select files & matching
1.147. 5. Tier selection (current document / manual selection)
1.148. Tier selection (in the same file / based on suffix)
1.149. N-Gram Analysis dialog
1.150. N-Gram Analysis dialog 2
1.151. N-Gram Analysis process report
1.152. N-Gram Analysis dialog 3
1.153. Merge Tiers Multiple Files 1
1.154. Merge Tiers Multiple Files 2
1.155. Merge Tiers Multiple Files 3
1.156. Merge Tiers Multiple Files 4
1.157. Update transcriptions based on ECV's
1.158. Update transcriptions with a template
1.159. Export as Toolbox file step 1
1.160. Export as Toolbox file step 2
1.161. Save as Settings
1.162. Export as FLEx file step 1
1.163. Export as FLEx file step 2
1.164. Element-item type and language attribute.
1.165. Save as Settings
1.166. File name & path options for Multiple Tab-delimited text export.
1.167. Exporting by selecting tiers
1.168. File selection
1.169. Save as Settings
1.170. Import Settings
1.171. Save as Settings
1.172. Import Settings
1.173. Save as Settings
2.1. Annotation basics
2.2. Tier dependencies
2.3. Tier dependencies in the timeline viewer
2.4. Examples of (four of) the stereotypes
2.5. Add a language for Multilingual content
2.6. Add a tier type
2.7. Change a tier type
2.8. Delete a tier type
2.9. Tier type is used
2.10. Local Data Category Selection
2.11. Tier attributes
2.12. Change Tier Attributes Settings for Multiple Tiers
2.13. Import tiers
2.14. Silence Recognizer
2.15. Audio Recognizer detached
2.16. Audio Recognizer results
2.17. Tier menu
2.18. Change tier attributes
2.19. Delete tier
2.20. Deleting tier confirmation
2.21. Dependent to independent tier
2.22. Add New Participant
2.23. Warning dialog box
2.24. Add New Participant Example 1
2.25. Add New Participant Example 2
2.26. Add New Participant tooltip result
2.27. Local Data Category Selection
2.28. Remote DCR
2.29. Remote Data Category Selection: Result
2.30. Local Data Category Selection: Result
2.31. Edit controlled vocabulary
2.32. Edit CV Languages
2.33. Edit CV Languages 2
2.34. Edit CV Languages 3
2.35. Edit CV Languages 4
2.36. Local Data Category Selection
2.37. Controlled vocabulary already exists warning
2.38. Export Controlled Vocabulary
2.39. Change tier type
2.40. Controlled vocabulary drop down box
2.41. Select language for multi-lingual CV
2.42. Edit Lexicon Services
2.43. Name and Lexicon Service Info
2.44. Lexicon Selection
2.45. Previously defined services
2.46. Select a Lexicon Service and Entry Field
2.47. The Lexicon Entry tab
2.48. Show in Signbank
2.49. Hovering over annotation while pressing CTRL
2.50. ECVentry hovering
2.51. Lexicon entry link
2.52. Hovering over annotation while pressing CTRL
2.53. ECVentry hovering
2.54. Making a selection
2.55. Change selection
2.56. Crosshair on begin of selection
2.57. Selection mode
2.58. Back one second
2.59. Selection mode off
2.60. Annotation without gaps (steps 1-3)
2.61. Annotation without gaps (step 4)
2.62. Annotation without gaps (step 5)
2.63. A selection on referring tier
2.64. Select annotation unit
2.65. Region for modified annotation
2.66. Modify annotation time
2.67. Annotation length changed
2.68. Changing selection boundaries with the mouse
2.69. Modify annotation boundaries by typing
2.70. Shift annotations
2.71. Normal mode
2.72. Bulldozer mode
2.73. Shift mode
2.74. Inline Edit box
2.75. Select character set
2.76. Edit annotation
2.77. Select language
2.78. The suggest panel
2.79. Subdividing annotation
2.80. New annotation after
2.81. Create annotations on dependent tiers
2.82. Regular Annotations
2.83. Label and Numbering annotations
2.84. Delete annotations or annotations values
2.85. Merge annotations
2.86. ipa-96 keyboard map
2.87. Arabic keyboard map
2.88. Roman typographic root
2.89. Non-letter symbols
2.90. Diacritics
2.91. Chinese characters
2.92. Keyman
2.93. Ukelele
2.94. Local Data Category Selection: Annotation
2.95. Spell Checking menu
2.96. Hunspell setup
2.97. Gecco setup
2.98. Spell checking
2.99. Tokenize tier
2.100. Tokenization
2.101. Source and destination tier
2.102. Filter tier
2.103. Copy tier
2.104. Copy annotations from one to another tier
2.105. Create annotations from overlaps
2.106. Overlaps Computation Criteria
2.107. Annotation Value Constraint
2.108. Destination Tier Name Specification
2.109. Destination Tier Value Specification
2.110. Subtract Computation Criteria
2.111. Destination Tier Value Specification
2.112. Copying a annotation group
2.113. Synopsis copy and paste annotations
2.114. WebLicht service: upload plain text or the contents of a tier
2.115. WebLicht service: text input
2.116. WebLicht service: select a tokenizer
2.117. WebLicht service: select a tier to upload
2.118. WebLicht service: select a service
2.119. WebLicht service: result of the processing
2.120. Annotations Statistics
2.121. Tiers statistics
2.122. Sort order statistics
2.123. An annotation density plot
2.124. The effect of unticking the Fill checkbox
3.1. Synchronization of video, audio and timeseries files
3.2. Settings Dialog
3.3. Tier Structure
3.4. Select Tiers Dialog
3.5. Context Menu
3.6. Context Menu
3.7. Context Menu Tier
3.8. Context Menu Color
3.9. Context Menu Apply
3.10. Context Menu
3.11. Context Menu Tier
3.12. Context Menu Color
3.13. Context Menu Apply
3.14. Transcription Window
3.15. Transcription Window without showing the tier names
3.16. Context Menu for a Annotation
3.17. Segmentation mode
3.18. The mouse over an annotation
3.19. The context menu
3.20. Step and Repeat configuration
3.21. Select Interlinearization Mode
3.22. Interlinearization mode main view
3.23. Analyzer and source-target configuration dialog
3.24. The configuration dialog with resolved tier mappings visible
3.25. Analyzer - Tier Type configuration screen, choosing an analyzer
3.26. Choosing the source tier type
3.27. Choosing the target tier type(s)
3.28. A warning concerning a missing link to a lexicon field or the absence of suitable tiers
3.29. The choice to edit global or specific settings
3.30. Analyzer settings configuration panel
3.31. Lexicon Analyzer settings configuration window
3.32. Gloss Analyzer settings configuration window
3.33. Whitespace analyzer configuration panel
3.34. The list of available lexicons
3.35. Lexicon overview
3.36. Lexicon context-menu
3.37. The Lexicon Actions
3.38. Create New Lexicon dialog
3.39. The Edit Lexicon Properties window
3.40. The Custom Fields tab
3.41. The Sort Order tab
3.42. Import Toolbox dictionary
3.43. Import Toolbox dictionary showing "raw" field names
3.44. Add a Lexical Entry
3.45. Edit a lexical entry
3.46. The Lexicon Editor window
3.47. The Lexicon View menu
3.48. A new lexical entry
3.49. Filtering the lexical entries
3.50. Interlinearization Panel
3.51. Interlinear editor configuration window
3.52. Customized Interlinearization Panel
3.53. Visible tiers context-menu
3.54. Interlinearization context-menu with Analyze option
3.55. Context-menu with Add to Lexicon option
3.56. Suggestion View
3.57. Tooltip showing some fields of the originating lexical entry (for suggestion S6)
3.58. Keyboard shortcuts in the Suggestion View
3.59. Incremental, step-by-step selection of suggestions, left to right
3.60. The context menu of a suggestion
4.1. Search dialog
4.2. Find with constraints
4.3. Find sequences
4.4. Advanced searching example
4.5. Search results
4.6. Search history
4.7. Refining a search
4.8. Saving a query
4.9. Exported search results
4.10. Export search results
4.11. Search and replace
4.12. From search results to annotations
4.13. Searching through multiple annotation files
4.14. Searching through multiple annotation files: result
4.15. Find & replace in multiple files dialog
4.16. Tier selection dialog
4.17. Process report dialog
4.18. Search eaf files
4.19. Substring Search Results
4.20. Hit in transcription
4.21. Frequency View
4.22. Single Layer Search
4.23. Variable Match
4.24. Multiple Variable Match
4.25. Minimal Duration
4.26. Multiple Layer query
4.27. Alignment View

List of Tables

1.1. Media Controls
1.2. Selection Controls
1.3. Annotation Controls
1.4. Selection Mode
1.5. Sort tier options
2.1. Nested tier dependencies
2.2. Tier type stereotypes
2.3. Change parent of tier wizard
2.4. Diacritics
4.1. Annotation example
A.1. Characters
A.2. Character classes
A.3. Predefined character classes
A.4. POSIX character classes (US-ASCII only)
A.5. Classes for Unicode blocks and categories
A.6. Boundary matchers
A.7. Greedy quantifiers
A.8. Reluctant quantifiers
A.9. Possessive quantifiers
A.10. Logical operators
A.11. Back references
A.12. Quotation
A.13. Special constructs (non-capturing)