Screen display and navigation through a document

Whenever you open, create or import a document, the ELAN window appears. This section introduces you to the setup of the ELAN window (Basic Information: The ELAN window), and explains the navigation through it (How to navigate through a document and How to play a document).

Basic Information: The ELAN window

The ELAN window displays the Menu bar, the Media Player options, and a number of Viewers, e.g.:

Figure 1.72. The ELAN window

The ELAN window


All Viewers are synchronized and thus display the same point(s) in time. I.e., whenever you access a point in time in one of the Viewers, all the other Viewers will immediately jump to the corresponding point in time.

In all Viewers, color coding is used to facilitate the orientation in the document.

This section introduces the setup of the Viewers, the Menu bar, the Media Player options and the color coding. Detailed information about how to navigate through the ELAN window follows in the subsequent sections.

The Video Viewer

The Video Viewer displays up to four video images (of the *.mpg, *.mov or other files). However it is possible to link more than four video files. To make videos (in)visible click View > Media Player > in the ELAN menu and (un)check a video file name. A video file will not be unlinked when it is made invisible in this way.

Figure 1.73. The video viewer

The video viewer


Note that you can right click on the video viewer to detach it, i.e. create a separate window for the video. To re-attach the video window, right click on it and select attach.

To change the size of the video viewer you don't need to detach the video viewer. Instead, you can drag the vertical divider on the right side of the window up and down to make the video viewer respectively smaller and bigger (see also Figure 1.73, “The video viewer”).

Note

If you encounter problems while playing video files, change the media framework via Edit > Preferences > Edit Preferences.... Select Platform/OS and toggle Media Framework appropriate for your operating system.

Right clicking[4] in the video window and selecting Player Info… will display a dialog with information about the video file, e.g.:

Figure 1.74. Video information dialog window

Video information dialog window


A static picture containing the currently displayed frame can be stored using the context menu of the video window (right click > Save Current Frame as Image…)

Note

Saving a static picture may sometimes cause a freeze of the program on MacOS X.

Clicking anywhere in the video viewer copies the coordinates of the mouse cursor relative to the upper left corner of the video to the clipboard. The coordinates can have different formats depending on the modifier key used:

  • no modifier key: x,y [original width, original height], where x and y are coordinates in the original coordinate system.
  • with ALT key: x,y where x and y are between 0 and 1 (0.000, 1.000) identifying a relative position in the (0,0,width,height) image space.
  • with SHIFT key: x,y where x and y are coordinates in the original coordinate system (not bothering about original dimension or aspect ratio)
  • with ALT+SHIFTx,y [current width, current height]where x and y are coordinates based on the current width and height of the video viewer.

Normally the aspect ratio of the video as detected by the media framework is correct, but sometimes it is not. In those cases the aspect ratio of the video viewer can be set by right clicking the video, selecting Use Aspect Ratio... and choosing one of the aspect ratios offered in the sub menu.

You can zoom in on the video by right-clicking the viewer and selecting Zoom. You can choose from a number of zoom percentages.

To copy the Non-adjusted media time, right-click the video and select Copy Non-adjusted Media Time This function will disregard any offset that may be applied to sync the video with another video and will copy the actual timecode to the clipboard.

To place the video viewer in the center, see Editing preferences - Media option

The Annotation Density Viewer

The Annotation Density Viewer is a kind of a timeline which allows you to:

  • Navigate through the whole media file. The length of this viewer always corresponds to the whole media file, so e.g. by clicking in the middle you will always go to the middle of the media file. The selection is represented as a small grey bar.
  • See how many annotations are concentrated at a particular moment of the time (the Annotation Density). The more annotations available for a particular moment, the more the Annotation Density bar is filled. This can be useful to track places in the media file that still have to be annotated.

By default the Annotation Density Viewer shows the annotation density of all tiers. It is also possible to view the annotation density of a selection of either tiers, types, participants or annotators. To do so, right click the Annotation Density Viewer and select one or more tiers, types, participants or annotators.

Figure 1.75. Annotation density viewer

Annotation density viewer


The Waveform Viewer

The Waveform Viewer displays the waveform of the audio file(*.wav) or of the audio track of a video file.

Note

Different resolutions of *.wav files are supported: 8 bits (mono and stereo), 16 bits (mono and stereo) and 24 bits (mono and stereo). Both PCM and A-law encoded wave files can be loaded. There is basic support for RF64 wav files (which can exceed the file size of 4GB). Supported video files for waveform visualisation depend on the framework of the operating system (Windows or macOS)

Above the waveform, time code information is displayed. This time code information can be hidden by right clicking in the Waveform Viewer and clicking on Time Ruler Visible in the context menu. In the same manner it can be made visible again.

While listening to the sound, a red vertical bar, the crosshair, moves through the waveform and indicates which part of the waveform corresponds to the current point in time. Furthermore, whenever you have selected a time interval, the corresponding part of the waveform will be highlighted in light blue color.

At any time, you can press ALT and drag the time axis for a panning effect (i.e. go to the left to go back in the time or to the right to go further). In the case of video files, the waveform is only displayed if there exists an additional *.wav file (see Basic Information). If this is not the case, the Waveform Viewer will not be available.

Note

On slower machines, the Waveform Viewer may not always update properly when moving to the next page.

Figure 1.76. The waveform viewer

The waveform viewer

The Waveform Viewer supports 3 modes. You can select the active mode by a right click on the Waveform Viewer. In the menu Stereo Channels, the following options are available:

  1. Separate. 2 Waveforms are shown, one for each channel.
  2. Merged. The 2 channels are merged and the result, one waveform is displayed.
  3. Blended. Both channels are displayed on 1 waveform, differences are designated with colors.

Another option in the context-menu (right click) of the Waveform Viewer is connected. If this option is checked, the time scale of the Waveform Viewer and the Timeline Viewer are connected:

Figure 1.77. Waveform viewer modes

Waveform viewer modes


The context menu also contains options for to open the file or the selection in Praat or to clip the selection with Praat (see Opening a wave file in Praat and Exporting a selection to a wave file with Praat) or with Java Sound (built-in).

Figure 1.78. Waveform context menu

Waveform context menu


You can load multiple waveforms into your project. Only one will be visible. There are 2 ways to switch between waveforms: from the View>Waveform option in the main menu, or from the drop-down menu on the left side of the waveform viewer. The chosen waveform will be displayed in the waveform viewer:

Figure 1.79. Waveform visualisation switching

Waveform visualisation switching

The Subtitle Viewer

Figure 1.80. The subtitle viewer

The subtitle viewer


You can turn on the subtitle viewer for a tier by selecting that tier from the pull down menu in the tab Subtitle Viewer. During playback, the Subtitle Viewer displays the annotations of the selected tiers at the current media time, both during playback and in static situations.

By default, the Subtitle Viewer can display up to four tiers as a subtitle:

  1. Select the Subtitle Viewer tab in the right upper corner of the ELAN window
  2. In the pull-down menu, click on the tier you want to be displayed.

    Figure 1.81. Display multiple tiers as a subtitle

    Display multiple tiers as a subtitle

The number of tiers to display as subtitle can be between 1 and 8. To set this number, click Edit > Preferences > Edit Preferences... from the main menu and select Viewers in the Preferences dialog. Change the number of viewers to the desired value in the pull down menu and click Apply.

The Grid Viewer

The Grid Viewer displays the content as well as the begin time, end time and duration of all annotations from a single tier. You have to activate this Viewer through selecting the Grid tab next to the video window.

Figure 1.82. The grid viewer

The grid viewer


It is possible to select annotations within the Grid Viewer (by clicking on them), or to edit them (by double-clicking on them).

The time format of the begin time, end time and duration can be changed. Right click on the Grid Viewer, select Time Format and select one of the available formats: hh:mm:ss:ms (hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds), PAL (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), NTSC (drop frame) (hours:minutes:seconds.frames) and msec (milliseconds).

By default the Grid Viewer works in single tier mode. To switch to other multi tier modes with symbolic association tiers or with symbolic subdivision tiers, click on this dropdown menu button which is indicated in the figure that is above. In that case all the annotations of the selected tier will be shown in the grid, together with all symbolic associated/symbolic subdivision tiers (see Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and tier types). Empty cells of dependent tiers can also be filled in this way.

Figure 1.83. Multiple tiers with symbolic association in the grid viewer

Multiple tiers with symbolic association in the grid viewer


Exporting from the Grid Viewer

The results as shown in the Grid Viewer can be exported to a (tab-separated) text file, for later manipulation with e.g. a spreadsheet. Follow these steps:

  1. First make a selection of the tiers you want to be displayed (and thus exported)
  2. Right click on the Grid Viewer and select Export Table as tab-delimited text…
  3. Enter the name of the file to be created and choose Save

Figure 1.84. Export from the grid viewer

Export from the grid viewer


The Text Viewer

The text viewer shows all values of all annotations on a selected tier as ongoing text. Within this viewer, there are 3 kinds of highlighting shown:

  • Text inside a red box: the value of the annotation on the selected annotation tier that matches the current point of time.
  • Text inside a dark blue box: the active annotation (see also The Timeline Viewer and the Interlinear Viewer)
  • Text with a light blue background: the selected time interval.

Optionally, you can make the annotation boundaries visible in the text viewer. Right click in the text viewer and select Toggle visualization to enable this. The boundaries are marked by a dot.

A selection of the text in the Text Viewer can be copied to the clipboard. To do so, first select (part of) the text using your mouse. The selection you make in the Text Viewer is enlarged to include the whole of each annotation your selection spans. However, only your exact selection will be copied. Right click in the Text Viewer and select Copy.

Figure 1.85. The text viewer

The text viewer


The Lexicon Viewer

See Figure 2.47, “The Lexicon Entry tab”

The Comments Viewer

See Adding comments to .eaf files

The Metadata Viewer

On the Metadata tab in the main window the IMDI or CMDI metadata that belong to the media can be displayed. Click Select Metadata Source..., select an IMDI or CMDI file and click Select. See also Changing the links to media files

The default metadata keys are now displayed (see also Editing preferences) in either a table (for IMDI )or tree (for CMDI/IMDI). To change the view, right click the table and select Tree View. Right click and select Table View to return to the table view. If you want to change which keys are displayed, click Configure... and (de)select the keys. For CMDI metadata, you can collapse or expand all nodes, or just the top-nodes.

Figure 1.86. The metadata viewer displaying a CMDI file

The metadata viewer displaying a CMDI file

Audio And Video Recognizers

The Recognizers tab provides a user interface to recognizer components that have been installed as extensions. These recognizer components generally apply pattern recognition algorithms to automatically detect events of interest (pauses, speaker turns, utterances, gesture phases etc.) in an audio or a video file. Each recognizer has it's own icon representing the kind of recognizer.

There is one audio recognizer included in the ELAN distribution, the Silence Recognizer (seeCreating a tier using the Silence Recognizer). The screenshot below displays all AVATecH available recognizers installed.

Figure 1.87. The Recognizer Tab

The Recognizer Tab

The AVATecH project page (https://tla.mpi.nl/projects_info/avatech/) can be consulted for more information (including an interface specification) and how to install more recognizers. More information on how to interact with the recognizers will be included in this manual at a later stage.

The Timeline Viewer and the Interlinear Viewer

All annotations can be displayed in the Timeline Viewer or the Interlinear Viewer. Only one of the two Viewers can be switched on at a time.

The Timeline Viewer is always shown when a document is opened in ELAN. It displays the tiers and their annotations, whereby each annotation corresponds to a specific time interval. Because the display of an annotation is limited to this time interval, an annotation does not always fit in the annotation frame. A small grey square is the bottom right corner of the upper part of a annotation frame indicates that an annotation is truncated.

The height of the tiers can be reduced to make more tiers visible. To do so, open Edit > Preference..., select Viewers, check Reduced Tier Height and click OK. Above the tiers, a time scale is displayed. This time-scale can be hidden by right clicking in the Timeline Viewer and clicking on Time Ruler Visible in the context menu. In the same manner it can be made visible again.

During playback, a red vertical bar, the crosshair, moves through the annotations and indicates the current point in time. Normally the crosshair will start from the left if it reaches the right side of the viewer. If you right click in the Timeline Viewer and select Ticker Mode, the crosshair will stop when it reaches the center of the viewer, while the viewer itself scrolls to the left.

Whenever you have selected a time interval, it will be highlighted in light blue; and whenever you have selected an annotation, this becomes the active annotation and will be highlighted in a dark blue frame.

If desired the latter can also be indicated with a bold line. To activate this, right click on an annotation somewhere in the timeline viewer and check the Active Annotation Bold box in the context menu.

Figure 1.88. The timeline viewer

The timeline viewer


In the Timeline Viewer you can (a) select and modify time intervals (see How to make a selection) and (b) enter annotations (see How to enter and edit annotations).

The Interlinear Viewer offers an alternative perspective on the tiers and their annotations. It shows parent-child relations between annotations using vertical text alignment (interlinearization). You can enable it selecting the Show Interlinear Viewer radio button when you right-click on the tier name’s panel and select Viewer. Switching it on, will automatically switch off the Timeline Viewer.

The following screenshots compare how information is displayed in the two Viewers.

Figure 1.89. The ELAN window with timeline/interlinear viewer

The ELAN window with timeline/interlinear viewer


Whenever the Interlinear Viewer is switched on, it displays an annotation block (i.e., an independent, time-alignable parent annotation together with its referring annotations, see Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and tier types). To move forward/backward to the next block, click on the arrow icons at the top of the Viewer. During playback, the Viewer automatically moves forward to the next annotation block.

The Interlinear Viewer differs from the Timeline Viewer in that it does not allow to modify the time interval or to enter new annotations. It is similar to the Timeline Viewer in that it allows to edit existing annotations.

The Tier Name panel

The Tier Name Panel gives an overview of the different existent tiers. Both tier names (see also Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and tier types and How to define a tier and its attributes ) and tier types are defined by the user (see also How to define a tier type ). One of the tiers in the Tier Name Panel is the active tier (indicated by its underlining and red color), which means that new annotations will be added to this tier (when pressing ALT+ N). Hovering over a tier name will show more information about the tier. (see screenshot below)

Figure 1.90. The tier name panel

The tier name panel

To make a tier the active tier, choose one of the following actions:

  • Double click on a tier label.
  • Right click on the desired tier in the Tier Name Panel and check Activate (tiername)
  • Select the active tier with the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ARROW UP/DOWN

To deactivate a tier, either do one of the following actions:

  • Hold Shift and double click on a tier label.
  • Right click tie active tier in the Tier Name Panel and uncheck Activate (tiername)
  • Select the active tier with the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ARROW UP/DOWN

To select the tiers to display (and their order) see Switching tiers on/off and Sorting tiers

It is possible for ELAN to show the number of annotations per tier. Right click on the Tier Name Panel and select Show Number of Annotations.

The Timeseries Viewer

The Timeseries Viewer can display time series data as line graphs. Like the Timeline and Waveform viewer, it has a horizontal time-scale bar, a red vertical crosshair indicating the media time and a light blue rectangle to highlight the selected time interval. It has also the same zoom and pan options.

It can display multiple “track panels” and each track panel can display multiple “tracks”. Track panels and tracks can be added and removed via a popup menu. Each track panel derives its value range (vertical axis) from one of the tracks. The viewer has a facility to transfer data from a track to annotation values. Based on the time intervals of the annotations on a chosen (time-alignable) tier, the minimum, maximum or average of the data within these intervals of the selected track will be copied to annotations on a dependent, symbolically associated tier.

The Timeseries Viewer will be created after at least one supported timeseries data file[5] has been associated to the transcription via menu Edit > Linked Files and then the tab “Linked Secondary Files”. These data files can be synchronized to the media files in the “Media Synchronization Mode”.

Figure 1.91. Linking timeseries data files

Linking timeseries data files


Displaying data from an already linked CSV/Tab delimited text file in the Timeseries Viewer is done as follows:

  1. Right click in the Timeseries Viewer and select Configure Tracks....

    Figure 1.92. Timeseries Viewer popup menu

    Timeseries Viewer popup menu

  2. If you have more than one file linked as secondary file, choose the file you wish to use from the pull down menu that is now displayed and click OK.
  3. In the next window you see a sample table with several lines and columns of the chosen file. At least one of the columns must contain time data. Select that column by selecting the appropriate column number at Time Column Index. If the time codes have a fixed interval, you can check the option Continuous Rate. Its underlying purpose is to speed up the calculations for displaying a data track.

    Figure 1.93. Timeseries Viewer: Configure tracks

    Timeseries Viewer: Configure tracks

  4. After you have selected a column as the time column, you can begin creating tracks. On the Add tab, enter a Track Name and optionally a Track Description. Select the number of the column in the data that you want to use for this track and specify the range for the vertical axis. This can be automatically calculated by selecting Calculate Range From Data or it can be set manually by selecting Manual Setting and entering the Minimum Value and Maximum Value.

    The Derivative option allows you to display the first, second or third derivative of your data. Derivatives are useful if we are, for example, dealing with data that represent the position of an object, but we wish to see the velocity of that object. Because velocity is the first derivative of position, we would select 1. In this example, 2 would represent the acceleration and 3 the rate of change of acceleration, also called jerk or jolt.

    Enter the units of your data, for instance meters for position or Pascal (Pa) for pressure at the Units (String) option. Select a color by clicking the colored box at Track Color.

    Finally click the Add button. The track is now added to the list of Current Tracks which is above the Add tab. Continue adding tracks for each column of data you wish to display. After adding tracks, click on the Close button.

  5. To display the track right click on the Timeseries Viewer again. Select Add TrackPanel to add a new track panel. Right click the new track panel and select TrackPanel > Add Track. A list of not yet displayed tracks is displayed. Click one to add it to the track panel.

The other options from the popup menu are:

  • Zoom: zoom in and out horizontally.
  • Time Ruler Visible: hides or shows the time scale bar.
  • Connected:
  • Fit Vertically: fit the track panel(s) vertically to the Timeseries Viewer window.
  • Attach: attaches of detaches the Timeseries Viewer to the main window.

    Figure 1.94. Timeseries viewer in the main window

    Timeseries viewer in the main window


  • Add TrackPanel: create a track panel
  • Remove TrackPanel: remove current track panel.
  • Add TrackPanel For Each Track: create a track panel for each of the existing tracks.
  • Remove All TrackPanels: remove all track panels form the Timeseries Viewer window.
  • TrackPanel > Set Range For Panel: set the vertical range to the range specified for a track.
  • TrackPanel > Remove Track: remove a track from the current track panel.
  • TrackPanel > Add All Tracks: add all tracks to the current track panel.
  • TrackPanel > Remove All Tracks: remove all tracks from the current track panel.
  • Extract Track Data: Extract data from a track and add it to a tier. This process consists of two steps:
    1. Selection of a source and a destination tier. The annotations of the source tier provide the segments for which to extract data from a track. The destination tier should be a (Symbolic Association) dependent tier of the source tier. The numerical values that have been extracted per segment will be stored in dependent annotations on the destination tier.
    2. Selection of the track to extract data from. There are a number of options for what has to be extracted (calculated):

      Figure 1.95. The Extract Track Data window

      The Extract Track Data window


      • Minimum - the smallest value found in the interval
      • Maximum - the largest value in the interval
      • Range - the maximum minus the minimum value in the interval
      • Average (arithmetic mean) - the average of all values in the interval
      • Sum - the total of all values in the interval
      • Median - the median of all values in the interval
      • The value at the begin of the segment
      • The value at the end of the segment

      The Allow existing values to be overwritten checkbox allows to determine whether existing annotations on the destination tier may be overwritten or not.

The Menu options

The following Menu options are available at the top of the ELAN window:

The Media Player options

With the Media Player options, you can control the playback of the file. The following options are available at the bottom and at the left side of the ELAN window:

Figure 1.96. The media player options

The media player options


Table 1.1. Media Controls

Icon Meaning Shortcut
Go to the beginning of the video/audio fragment CTRL+B
Go to the previous scroll view (make the beginning point of the current timeline view the end point) CTRL+PAGE UP
Go back one second SHIFT+LEFT
Go back one frame ( = 40 ms for PAL, 33.4 ms for NTSC) CTRL+LEFT
Go back one “pixel” on the timeline viewer (smallest unit, depends on the zoom factor of the timeline viewer, default value 10 ms) CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT
Start / Pause the playback CTRL+SPACE
Go to the next “pixel” on the timeline viewer (smallest unit) CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT
Go to the next frame CTRL+RIGHT
Go to the next second SHIFT+RIGHT
Go to the next scroll view CTRL+PAGE DOWN
Go to the end of the media fragment CTRL+B

Table 1.2. Selection Controls

Icon Meaning Shortcut
Play the selected interval. SHIFT+SPACE
Clear the selection. CTRL+C
Move the crosshair to the begin / end of selection CTRL+/ or CTRL+SHIFT+K

Table 1.3. Annotation Controls

Icon Meaning Shortcut
Go to the previous annotation on the active annotation tier ALT+LEFT
Go to the next annotation on the active annotation tier ALT+RIGHT
Go to the annotation above. ALT+UP
Go to the annotation below. ALT+DOWN

Table 1.4. Selection Mode

Icon Meaning Shortcut
While playing, select an interval automatically CTRL+K
Keep playing the selected interval (if used together with play selection ) CTRL+L

  • The time code can be displayed in the following formats:hh:mm:ss:ms (hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds), PAL (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), NTSC (drop frame) (hours:minutes:seconds.frames) and msec (milliseconds). It can be used to access points in time (by clicking on it and entering a value in "hh:mm:ss:ms" format). To change the display format, right click on it and select a format from the menu. The SMPTE time code formats PAL and NTSC only indicate the way time values are converted to frame numbers; this is independent of the actual video standard of the associated video(s).

    Figure 1.97. Timecode formats

    Timecode formats


  • The sliders available when the Controls tab is selected allow you to control the playback rate and the volume.

The color coding

In all its displays, ELAN makes use of recurring colors in order to facilitate the orientation in the document. The following colors are used:

  • Red: Position of the crosshair (i.e., current point in time);
  • Light Blue: Selected time interval;
  • Dark Blue: Active annotation.
  • Black with long segment boundaries: Annotations that can be aligned to the time axis.
  • Yellow with short segment boundaries: Annotations that cannot be aligned to the time axis.

For example:

Figure 1.98. Color coding

Color coding


How to change the display of the ELAN window

The ELAN window setup as described and illustrated in Basic Information: The ELAN window above is the default display. But you can easily change the display according to your needs. The following options are available:

Increasing/decreasing the size of the ELAN window

The size of the ELAN window can be increased or decreased. Do one of the following:

  1. Go with the mouse to the borders of the ELAN window. The mouse will turn into a double-headed arrow. Click and move it to increase/decrease the size of the window.
  2. In the top right corner of the ELAN window, click on the Maximize icon to activate the full-screen modus; click on the Restore Down icon to return to the previous size.

Switching Viewers on/off

Depending on the type of media file, ELAN automatically displays three Viewers (Video, Waveform and Timeline Viewer). Furthermore one can choose an additional viewer in the tabs on the right /left(For more info on how to choose the viewers in left / right of video see Figure 1.31, “Edit preferences”) of the video Viewer: a text viewer, a grid viewer, a subtitle viewer, a lexicon viewer , a audio recognizer, a video recognizer or a metadata viewer. Note that it is not possible to activate both the Timeline and the Interlinear Viewer at the same time. To select which viewers you want and which viewers should be visible see Show / Hide Specific Viewers.

Note

If a media file is not available (e.g., the *.mpg/*.mov file in case of audio data, or the *.wav file in case of some video data), the corresponding Viewer is not available either.

Show / Hide Specific Viewers

To show or hide the specific viewers like grid viewer, text viewer, subtitle viewer or lexicon viewer and the audio and video recognizer, select View > Viewer. A list of the viewers and recognizers that can be shown or hidden is displayed. Now select or deselect the viewers by clicking them. Only the selected viewers are displayed in the pane next to the video. If the video in the center, to choose which viewers are to be shown in the left and right pane of the video, and to sort the order of the viewers and recognizers see Figure 1.31, “Edit preferences” .

Increasing/decreasing the size of Viewers

The size of all Viewers (except for the Video Viewer) can be increased and decreased relative to the size of other Viewers. Do one of the following:

  1. Use the up/down-arrows of the split-pane.

    Click on the up/down-arrow to increase/decrease the size of the corresponding Viewer.

  2. Use the mouse.

    Go with the mouse to the split-pane. The mouse will turn into a double-headed arrow. Click and move it up/down to increase/decrease the size of the corresponding Viewer.

Figure 1.99. Changing size of the timeline viewer

Changing size of the timeline viewer

The width of the tier label panel left of the timeline viewer can also be changed. Put your mouse cursor on the arrows in the top right corner of this panel. When the appearance of the mouse cursor changes you can drag the right border to the left or to the right and by doing so decrease or increase the size of the tier label panel.

Figure 1.100. Changing the size of the tier label panel

Changing the size of the tier label panel


Switching tiers on/off

By default, ELAN automatically displays all available tiers, but each tier can be switched on or off manually, allowing you to focus only on the tiers of interest for the task at hand.

To switch tiers on/off, do the following:

  1. In the Timeline Viewer, right-click in the tier name panel.
  2. In the pull-down menu select the sub menu Visible Tiers and (un)check the tier name

Switching off a tier can be done directly by right clicking on its name and selecting hide <tier name> from the pull down menu. Alternatively you can open a window containing all tier names by selecting Show/Hide More…(see Figure 1.103, “Visible Tiers”) in the popup menu.

Figure 1.101. Switching tiers on/off

Switching tiers on/off


If you switch a tier on, it will be put on the place where you clicked.

Rearranging the order of tiers

Within the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer, you can rearrange the order in which the tiers are displayed. Just drag the tier label to its new location. The tiers will be displayed in the new order.

Figure 1.102. Rearranging the order of tiers

Rearranging the order of tiers


If you exit the document, ELAN will save the order of tiers in the following way: first, all activated tiers (in the order as they appear in the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer), followed by all non-activated tiers in alphabetical order.

View tiers by Type/Participant/Annotator

The tiers can also be viewed by its tier type or by participant or by annotator. In order to do that, right click in the tier name panel and select Show / Hide More.... This dialog window appears:

Figure 1.103. Visible Tiers

Visible Tiers


  • Show Tier(s)

    Displays a list of all tiers in the transcription and the selected tiers are the visible tiers

  • Show Tier Type(s)

    This shows a list of all the tier types in the transcription. Select the all the types you want to view. The tiers of the selected types are selected automatically in the Show Tier(s) list.

  • Show Participant(s)

    This shows a list of all the participants in the transcription. Select the all the participants you want to view. The tiers of the selected participants are selected automatically in the Show Tier(s) list.

  • Show Annotator(s)

    This shows a list of all the annotators in the transcription. Select the all the annotators you want to view. The tiers of the selected annotators are selected automatically in the Show Tier(s) list.

  • A-Z

    This button is used for sorting the list of tiers shown alphabetically.

  • Undo Sort

    This is to undo the sort and restore the order back.

Sorting tiers

The order of the visible tiers in the timeline and interlinear viewer can be altered. To achieve this, right click in the tier name panel and select the sub menu Sort Tiers. Then choose one of the following options:

Table 1.5. Sort tier options

Unsorted: no specific order.
Sort by Hierarchy: display a tree with the hierarchical structure of the tiers
Sort by Tier Type: group tiers by their tier type
Sort by Participant: group tiers with annotations of a single participant


It also possibly to sort the tiers alphabetically along with the anyone of the sorting options before. To do this, right click on the tier name panel and select Sort Tiers > Sort Alphabetically.

Creating and applying tier sets

In some projects the number of tiers per transcription can amount to several dozens, depending on the number of phenomena that are studied, the number of levels of the analysis, the number of participants and/or the number of annotators contributing to the document. The space available for the Timeline Viewer is not large enough to display all tiers and even if it was, it would be very difficult to have a good overview of all tiers and to discern annotations and the tiers they belong to. The sections on how to show or hide tiers (see Switching tiers on/off and View tiers by Type/Participant/Annotator) demonstrate how to hide tiers from the view , either individually or as a group based on a common attribute (type, participant etc.). But even with the Show/Hide More option it can take several or many clicks to assemble a custom group of tiers to be visible. Moreover, after switching to a different set of tiers and then back again, the same selection steps have to be performed again.

To make switching between groups of tiers and combining groups of tiers easier and more reliable Tier Sets have been introduced. A Tier Set is a custom group of tiers that can combine tiers independent of hierarchical relations and independent of tier attributes (like Type or Participant etc.). A tier set is identified by a unique name by which the whole set can be made visible or hidden. The user can define multiple tier sets, the configuration of these sets is stored in a preference file. This file can be shared with colleagues so that they have the same setup available. Making a set visible in the Timeline Viewer also makes those tiers available in the tier list for e.g. the Grid Viewer, while hiding a set removes its tiers from that tier list. The main advantage of tier sets is in working with a corpus with consistent tier names.

A screencast is available on Vimeo to help you setting up a tierset: https://vimeo.com/183124013

The tier set feature has to be activated explicitly in the Preferences (see Preferences)or by clicking Tier Sets > Work with Tier Sets... in the context menu of the tier list in the timeline viewer.

Figure 1.104. Work with tier sets

Work with tier sets

A side-effect of activating this feature can namely be that no tiers are visible at all or that some tiers are missing after opening a file that adheres to a different tier naming convention. Therefore this should be used with care.

Tier sets can be managed via the menu Edit > Edit Tier Sets.... No document needs to be open for this, tier sets can be managed on the basis of files in a domain or a set of files selected from the file system.

Figure 1.105. Creating and editing tier sets

Creating and editing tier sets


The left side of the window shows the list of currently defined tier sets.

  • The Visible checkbox determines whether the tiers in that set are visible or hidden, whether the set is selected in the list of tier sets.
  • The list can be sorted alphabetically by the A-Z button or in custom order using the Up and Down buttons.
  • The - button deletes the selected tier set(s) (without warning!), the + button produces the Create new tier set dialog that allows to specify the name and contents of a new set.

The right side of the window shows the attributes and contents of the set selected in the list of tier sets to the left.

  • Each set has to have a unique name and can have a description.
  • The tiers that belong to this set are listed below the description. Each tier can individually be marked as Visible or hidden.
  • The Edit button creates the Edit tier set dialog which is essentially the same window as the one in which to create a tier set. The name and description can be edited and the list of tiers can be updated and re-ordered. Adding tiers is done in the usual extended tier selection panel.

The Apply button stores the tier sets and closes the window. By default the tier set configurations are stored in a file TierSet.xml in the ELAN data folder. This file can be shared with colleagues so that they have the same sets available.

Even if tier sets have been defined they cannot be applied immediately. As shown in the screenshot below the Tier Set is greyed out initially in the context menu of the tier name panel. This feature can be enabled in the Preferences tab of Edit > Preferences > Edit Preferences. After enabling it here the Tier Set menu will be enabled and the available sets are shown and can be selected or deselected. The choices made here also update the list of tiers that can be selected in e.g. the Grid Viewer.

Figure 1.106. The Tier Set context menu item before and after enabling tier sets in the preferences.

The Tier Set context menu item before and after enabling tier sets in the preferences.


Changing the time zoom

The default zoom for the Waveform and the Timeline Viewer is 100%, corresponding to 10 milliseconds per pixel. The zoom can be changed simultaneously for both Viewers. Do either of the following:

    1. Use the keyboard combinations CTRL+= to zoom in (Ctrl +), CTRL+- to zoom out (Ctrl -) or CTRL+0 to zoom to the default level (Ctrl 0)
    2. Click with the right mouse button on either the Waveform Viewer or the Timeline Viewer.
    3. Go to Zoom. The following menu appears:

      Figure 1.107. Changing time zoom

      Changing time zoom


    4. Click on a zoom rate to select it. A check mark appears next to the selected zoom rate.
      • Click on a lower percentage to get a finer zoom.
      • Click on a higher percentage to get a wider zoom.

    1. Place mouse cursor on the Waveform Viewer or the Timeline Viewer.
    2. Press the CTRL key and keep it pressed.
    3. Move the scroll wheel of your mouse. Moving down is zooming out and moving up is zooming in.

There is another zoom option called Zoom to Selection (see Figure 1.107, “Changing time zoom”). To use it, first make a selection (see Making a selection). Then right click on the Waveform Viewer or Timeline Viewer and select Zoom > Zoom to Selection. The selection is now displayed almost as wide as the Waveform and Timeline Viewer. In the context menu beneath Zoom to Selection the option Custom is selected and the zoom factor is displayed.

Changing the vertical (intensity) zoom

Sometimes it can be handy to zoom in on the intensity of the signal displayed in the waveform viewer. This way you can more easily make the distinction between parts where someone is speaking and those where there is a silence. Such a visual amplification is available through the right-click context menu in the waveform viewer:

Figure 1.108. Changing vertical (intensity) zoom

Changing vertical (intensity) zoom


Please note that this vertical zoom does not change the audio characteristics in any way.

Changing the font size

The default font size is 12 pt., but it can be changed separately for the different annotation viewers in ELAN. Do the following:

  1. Right click on one of the viewers (Grid, Subtitle, Text, Timeline, Interlinear Viewer).
  2. Go to Font size. The following menu appears:

    Figure 1.109. Changing the font size

    Changing the font size


  3. Click on a font size to select it. A check mark appears next to the selected font size.

Font Browser

If you are not sure that the font you want to use can display all the (special) characters of an annotation (for instance IPA characters), you can check this by using the Font Browser utility ELAN offers. Click on View > Font Browser... to open the Unicode Font Finder-Explorer (see Figure 1.110, “Font Finder-Explorer”). In the first list of the explorer you can select a system font for which you want to know what Unicode subsets it can display. These subsets are displayed in the list below the list of system fonts. If you click on a Unicode subset, this subset is displayed in a new window (Font Browser for Codepage).

Another way of checking whether your special characters can be displayed in the desired font, is to enter text in the bottom text box of the Font Finder-Explorer and click on Check. Now the lists on the right of the Font Finder-Explorer will display the fonts and Unicode subsets that can display the text in the text box. Clicking on a Unicode subset will display that subset in the Font Browser for Codepage-window.

Clicking the Clear button will clear the lists, except for the list of system fonts.

Figure 1.110. Font Finder-Explorer

Font Finder-Explorer

Importing and exporting preferences

The following display preferences can be imported and exported:

  • Font
  • Font size
  • Tier name color
  • Selected tier per viewer
  • Visible/hidden tiers

Importing and exporting these preferences make it possible to apply preferences to another document. To export preferences click Edit > Export Preferences..., select a destination folder, enter a file name and click on Save. To import preferences click Edit > Import Preferences..., look up the preference file and click on Select.

Editing shortcuts

ELAN has shortcuts for many of it's functions. The default shortcuts, which are mentioned throughout this manual (for an overview see The shortcut keys), can be changed via Edit > Preferences > Edit Shortcuts.... This dialog window appears.

Figure 1.111. Edit Keyboard Shortcuts

Edit Keyboard Shortcuts


  • The shortcuts in the table can be sorted by clicking a column header (e.g. Description or Category); the items will be sorted alphabetically, ascending or descending.
  • To change a shortcut, select it and click on Edit Shortcut. Press the desired shortcut on your keyboard and click OK
    • click Apply to change the shortcut only in the selected mode.
    • click Apply in all modes to change the shortcut for this action in all the other modes if applicable.

      If the shortcut was already assigned to a function, you are asked whether the shortcut should be reassigned.

  • After changing one or more shortcuts click Save to save the changes
  • To restore the default shortcuts
    • click Reload Default to restore the shortcuts in the currently selected mode in this dialog.
    • click Reload All Default to restore the shortcuts in all the modes.

    Clicking those buttons will only update default shortcuts for the current instance of ELAN. Click Save to override the current shortcuts with the default shortcuts.

  • Click Cancel to discard the changes

How to copy current time of the media

To copy the current time from the media, go to the Edit menu and select Copy Current Time or use the shortcutkey Ctrl+Alt+G



[4] For users of a one button mouse on Apple computers: hold the CTRL button and click

[5] Currently supported file formats are a proprietary .log file produced by MPI CyberGlove software, a special kind of plain text (.txt) file, containing a time-value pair on each line, Praat .PitchTier and .IntensityTier files and CSV/Tab delimited text files. Software developers can add support for other formats by implementing a Service Provider Interface (more information can be found in the source code release notes).