Multiple File Operations

How to select multiple files

In the dialog window below (which pops up as the first dialog for most of the multiple file operation) do one of the following:

Figure 4.109. Multiple file selection dialog

Multiple file selection dialog


  • Select an existing domain from the list and click Load. (Click Delete if you want to delete the domain.)
  • Create a new domain:
    1. Click New Domain...
    2. Click in the new dialog on the Look in pull down box and browse to the directory that contains the annotation files.
    3. Double-click an annotation file (*.eaf) to select it. It now appears in the rightmost box. Alternatively, you can click on the annotation file name and click the >> button.

      Repeat this for every annotation file you want to include.

      It is also possible to select a complete directory. All .eaf files in a selected directory will be included.

    4. Click OK to continue the exporting process; otherwise click Cancel to exit the dialog window without exporting.
    5. If you clicked OK you can save this domain: enter a name and click OK. If you do not want to save the domain click Cancel.
  • Create a new domain from an IMDI search:
    1. Click New Domain from IMDI Search...
    2. Browse to and select an IMDI file that has been exported from a metadata search in the standalone IMDI Browser.
    3. Click Open.
    4. You can save this domain: enter a name and click OK. If you do not want to save the domain click Cancel.

Multiple file import options

Elan offers the possibility to import multiple files at once and save them as *.eaf files. To do so click on File > Import Multiple Files As... and one of the options.

Toolbox file (UTF-8)

To import multiple toolbox files for conversion to *.eaf, click File > Import Multiple Files As... > Toolbox file(UTF-8).... This operation consists of 3 steps.

Figure 4.110. File selection

File selection


  1. Select the files you would like to import by clicking browse and adding the files to the list.
  2. Next you will have to select what settings to import. Either select a *.typ file or use the 'Set field markers' option. See Shoebox file for working with *.typ files and field markers.
  3. Lastly, you will have to configure the Save as settings.

Figure 4.111. Save as Settings

Save as Settings


When the operation has completed, you will be presented with a process report. The multiple *.eaf files are now ready to be used in ELAN.

Praat TextGrid

Multiple TextGrid files created in Praat can be imported and converted to *.eaf files. This process involves 3 steps.

  1. Choose the *.textgrid files that will be imported for conversion to *.eaf. You can also set the encoding (default, UTF 8, UT 16).
  2. In the next dialog, you can define the settings to be used for importing:

    Figure 4.112. Import Settings

    Import Settings


    In this dialog, you can choose to include Praat PointTiers and if empty annotations or intervals should be skipped or not.

  3. Lastly, you will be asked how the files should be saved and in what location.

Figure 4.113. Save as Settings

Save as Settings


When the operation has completed, you will be presented with a process report. The multiple *.eaf files are now ready to be used in ELAN.

Flex files

To import multiple FLExtext files for conversion to *.eaf, click File > Import Multiple Files As... > FLEx file.... This operation consists of 3 steps.

  1. Select the FLEx files you want to use for conversion to *.eaf. Do so by clicking the Browse... button in the dialog and choose the proper files.
  2. In the next dialog, you can define the settings to be used for importing:

    Figure 4.114. Import Settings

    Import Settings


    You can select wether to use the 'interlinear-text and 'paragraph' element in FLEx, import the participant infromation and what the smallest time-alignable element should be: 'phrase' or 'word'. Choose on what level you want to create linguistic types and set a duration per phrase element (required).

  3. Finally, you can choose how to save the files and in what directory to save them:

    Figure 4.115. Save as Settings

    Save as Settings


    Finally, configure how and where to save your files. You can choose to save with an .XML or .flextext extension, and you can skip files that would result in having no tiers.

Multiple file export options

ELAN offers the possibility to export multiple annotation files as one file. To do so click on File > Export Multiple Files As... and one of the options.

Toolbox file(UTF-8)

To export multiple files as toolbox files, click on File > Export Multiple Files As... > Toolbox file(UTF-8).... This process involves 3 steps.

  1. Step 1/3: File and Tier Selection

    Figure 4.116. Export as Toolbox file step 1

    Export as Toolbox file step 1

    1. First you have to select the files that are to be exported. You can select multiple files you can choose any one of the below options
      • Select files from file browser : This will option a multiple file selection dialog which allows you to select multiple files and you can also choose a directory to export all the files in the directory.
      • Select files from domain : How to select multiple files
    2. Next select the tiers which are to be used for the export process. Using the arrow buttons, you can sort the order of the tiers.
    3. Insert blank line after this marker (see Toolbox file(UTF-8))

    From the drop down list select the tiers to use in the overlaps computation. You can select all the tiers displayed in the list if you click on Select All, or deselect them if you click on Select None. Once you have made your choice for the tiers for which the overlaps should be found, you can select next, this will bring you to the next step.

  2. Step 2/3: Export Settings

    Figure 4.117. Export as Toolbox file step 2

    Export as Toolbox file step 2

    In this step you can define output settings and the Toolbox options. The option are more clearly defined in Toolbox file(UTF-8)

  3. Step 3/3: Save as Settings

    Figure 4.118. Save as Settings

    Save as Settings


FLEx file

To export multiple files as FLEx files, click on File > Export Multiple Files As... > FLEx File.... This process involves 4 steps.

  1. Step 1/4: File selection and element mapping

    Figure 4.119. Export as FLEx file step 1

    Export as FLEx file step 1

    1. First you have to select the files that are to be exported. You can select multiple files, choose any one of the below options
      • Select files from file browser : This will option a multiple file selection dialog which allows you to select multiple files and you can also choose a directory to export all the files in the directory.
      • Select files from domain : How to select multiple files
    2. Next select if you want to export the interlinear-text and paragraph tier. You can set the correct linguistic type to use as element type and paragraph type in de dialog below that.

  2. Step 2/3: Export Settings

    Figure 4.120. Export as FLEx file step 2

    Export as FLEx file step 2

    In this step you can select a linguistic type to use for the 'morph-type' tiers. It's also possible to uncheck this, if not needed. From the dialog, you can also map the linguistic types to the different items, which are listed on top.

  3. Step 3/4: Element-item 'type' and language attribute

    Figure 4.121. Element-item type and language attrib.

    Element-item type and language attrib.


    In the next dialog, you can specify the element-item linguistic type and set a language for it. ELAN can try to extract that from a tier name, (if the box is checked) but it is also possible to add (or remove) a value for a language or type. To do so, enter a value ('en' in this example) and click Add. Then, you can select the added value from the drop-down menu under 'language'. You need to set a type and language for every Linguistic Type Name in order to be able to go to the final step. For more information on the structure of FLEx, see Figure 4.27, “FLEx to ELAN structure”.

  4. Step 4/4: Save as settings

    Figure 4.122. Save as Settings

    Save as Settings


Praat TextGrid

To export multiple files as praat textgrid, click on File > Export Multiple Files As... > Praat TextGrid .... This process involves 2 steps. See Praat TextGrid file for more details.

  1. Step 1/2: File and Tier Selection (see 1)
  2. Step 2/2: Export Settings (see xref3

Tab-delimited Text

To export multiple files as Tab-delimited Text, click File > Export Multiple Files As... > Tab-delimited Text....

  1. A multiple file selection dialog appears(see How to select multiple files . Select or create a domain and click on ok to continue.
  2. Then in the next dialog that appears, select tiers and options as you would do when exporting a single Tab-delimited Text file (see Tab-delimited text file). A column containing the file names is added to the export file.

Note

The following options cannot be checked:

  • Restrict to selected time interval: the selected time interval does not necessarily correspond to an interval in the files selected for export.
  • Add master media time offset to annotation times: the master media (time offset) of the file currently opened in ELAN does not necessarily correspond to the media (time offset) of the files selected for export.

List of annotations

To export multiple files as List of annotations, click File > Export Multiple Files As... > List of annotations....

  1. A multiple file selection dialog appears(see How to select multiple files . Select or create a domain and click on ok to continue.
  2. Then in the next dialog that appears, select the tiers (see How to select tiers ) from which the annotations are to be exported. Note that the annotations are not separated into words. Check Count occurrences if you want the list to include the number of occurrences for each annotation.

List of Words

To export multiple files as Tab-delimited Text, click File > Export Multiple Files As... > List of Words....

  1. A multiple file selection dialog appears(see How to select multiple files . Select or create a domain and click on ok to continue.
  2. Then in the next dialog that appears, select the tiers and other options as you would do when exporting a single Tab-delimited Text file (see Alphabetical list of words).

Export tiers as EAF

There could be situations in which you want to discard or select tiers from multiple .eaf files, for instance if you want to present a third party with a limited number of tiers. To do so, select File > Export Multiple Files As... >Selected Tiers as EAF.... In the first dialog(see How to select multiple files) you can select the files from which you want to export a selection of tiers.

Once you have selected your files, Export Tiers from Multiple Files dialog appears.

Figure 4.123. Exporting by selecting tiers

Exporting by selecting tiers


To export, do the following:

  1. Select tiers (see How to select tiers) for the export.
  2. In the Output Options section you can specify...
    1. whether to Export parent tiers of the selected dependent tiers automatically or to Only export dependent tiers if their parent tiers are selected.
    2. whether to Save files with original names of to Make use of suffixes. In case of the latter, you can specify whether to save the files with their original name followed by a suffix or to save the files with a new base name and followed by a suffix number.
    3. whether the files should be saved in the original directory, in a (possibly new) directory which is local for each files, or together in the same directory.
    4. whether of not ELAN should export files that result in having no tiers.
  3. Finally, click Export to export the .eaf files containing only the selected tiers.

Annotation Overlaps Information

This function is available via menu File->Export Multiple Files As-> Annotation Overlaps Information....

This function allows the user to select one “reference” tier and multiple other tiers that will be compared (sequentially) with the reference tier. The comparison is done on the level of the annotations.  

The following information will be present in the resulting tab-delimited text file:

  1. The Header line with column names

    Column 1- 4:

    Begin time End time Duration Reference Tier Name

    These columns will contain information for all annotations of the reference tier. The annotation values are in the column with the tier name as the header, the time info in the first 3 columns.

    Next for each “comparing” tier there will be 11 columns, the header of which consists of the tier name and a suffix and the column contains the following information:

    1 Name-ov 0 or 1,  whether there is an overlapping annotation or not  (0=no, 1=yes)
    2 Name-same 0 or 1, whether the overlapping annotation has the same value. If there are more than one overlapping annotations the value is 0 (0=no, 1=yes)
    3 Name-ov-dur The duration of the overlap,  the total overlap duration in case of more than one overlapping annotation
    4 Name-no-ann The number of overlapping annotations
    5 Name-value The value of the overlapping annotation, concatenated, comma separated, in case of multiple overlaps
    6 Name-bt-to-bt-After The amount of time from the beginning of the reference annotation to the beginning of the first non
    7 Name-et-to-bt-After The amount of time from the end of the reference annotation to the beginning of  the first non overlapping annotation
    8 Name-et-to-et-After The amount of time from the end of the reference annotation to the end of  the first non overlapping annotation
    9 Name-bt-After The begin time of the annotation on the comparing tier after the reference annotation
    10 Name-et-After The end time of the annotation on the comparing tier after the reference annotation
    11 Name-value-After The value of the first annotation on the comparing tier after the reference annotation
  2. The content per file

    After the header, for each file there will be the following information/data:

    • one line containing the file name
    • a number of rows equal to the number of annotations of the reference tier
    • each cell filled with the information corresponding to the header description (above) 

    All time values are in milliseconds.

Editing multiple files

Normally ELAN allows to edit only a single file at a time. There are situations in which it is convenient to edit multiple files at once. The menu item File > Multiple File Processing gives a number of options to do just this. When selecting either of them, you are warned that you should have copies of the files you are going to work on in case you want to restore the files (there is no Undo for multiple file edits).

Create multiple transcriptions

When you choose this option Create Transcription Files for Multiple Media Files..., you see the following dialog.

Figure 4.124. Create transcription files for multiple media files Dialog

Create transcription files for multiple media files Dialog


Options :

  • Select folder containing media files : click Browse button to select the folder containing media files.
  • check this option process sub-folders as well, recursive to include all the media files in the recursive sub-folders of the selected folder.
  • To apply a template (only if required) for the new transcription files, check this option Use a template for the new transcription files and click on Browse button to select the template file.
  • Next option allows you to select a location for the new transcription files.
    • To put the transcription files in the same folder as the media files, select in the same folder as the media files.
    • To put them in a different folder, select in other folder and click the Browse button to select the destination folder.
  • You could always have more than one media file in a transcription. In order to group the media files for a transcription, check this option Combine videos based on. In order to define how the media should be grouped, select one of the following:
    • different suffix : to combine the media file with a different suffix and has the same file name.
    • different prefix : to combine the media file different preffix value and has the same file name.

    To specify a separator in the filename to identify the suffix or preffix, check this option Specify custom affix separator character ('-' and '_' are built in).

Click on Start to create the transcriptions based on the options set.

Edit Multiple Files

The option Edit Multiple Files... shows, after clicking Yes in the warning dialog mentioned above, the Multi File Editor. The first thing to do here is to load a domain by clicking Load domain. Loading a domain is the same as for the Scrub Transcriptions... option. To be able to load a domain you must of course have created one beforehand(see How to select multiple files). After loading a domain, the data is shown in the table. In this table you can edit tiers on the Tiers tab and linguistic types on the Linguistic Types tab.

To edit a name, annotator or participant of a tier, double click the corresponding table cell or select it and start typing. To change the linguistic type of a tier, select one from the drop down menu. You can add a tier by clicking Add tier and remove one by clicking Remove tier.

Note

If there are hierarchy inconsistencies (e.g. if a tier in one file does have a parent while a tier with the same name in another file does not) removing tiers is not possible. The button Remove tier is therefore greyed out.

Figure 4.125. Multiple File Editor

Multiple File Editor


On the Linguistic Types tab, the name of a linguistic type can be changed by double clicking the corresponding table cell in the Type Name column.

Changes made in the Tiers and Types tabs are applied to all the files in the domain after clicking the Save changes to domain files button.

Scrub Transcriptions

When you choose Scrub Transcriptions..., you first need to specify a new domain or select an existing domain. This option helps you to "clean" the annotation files (*.eaf) of possible tabs or whitespace characters which are often overlooked by the user but are still saved in the file. To select, create or delete a domain see How to select multiple files.

In the next dialog, you can specify what characters to delete, new line characters, tab characters and/or whitespace characters, and in what position these characters have to be. Click Start to start the scrubbing process. The progress of the scrubbing is shown in the progress bar.

Figure 4.126. Transcription Scrubber

Transcription Scrubber


Annotations from overlaps

The option Annotations From Overlaps... for multiple files is the same function as annotations from overlaps in the current open file (see Creating annotations from overlaps ), but applied to a selection of files. The first step allows to select a custom set of files in a file browser or to load a set of files that have been stored as a domain. For loading or creating new domain see How to select multiple files The list of tiers is the sum of all tier names encountered in the selected files. The options in the next steps are the same, clicking the Finish button in the last step the new tier is created and populated with annotations in all files of the domain.

Annotations from subtraction

The option Annotations From Subtraction... for multiple files is the same function as annotations from subtraction in the current open file (see Create Annotation By subtraction ), but applied to a selection of files. The first step allows to select a custom set of files in a file browser or to load a set of files that have been stored as a domain. For loading or creating new domain see How to select multiple files The list of tiers is the sum of all tier names encountered in the selected files. The options in the next steps are the same, clicking the Finish button in the last step the new tier is created and populated with annotations in all files of the domain.

Annotation statistics

This function Statistics for Multiple Files is similar to annotation statistics for the current file (see Annotations Statistics). The main difference after selecting the files in the domain is that it is possible to select which tiers to include in the calculations. The tables in the tabs do not have the column showing the total annotation duration as a percentage of the media duration but most do have a column for the number of files a certain value (tier or type name etc.) has been encountered in. After changes in the selection of files or in the selection of tiers the Update Statistics button needs to be clicked before the new calculations are started.