This is the Transformer site for the 2007 Multimodal Annotation Tools Workshop

at the Third International Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies

 

Aim of the Transformer

The Transformer is a tool that has been desinged to convert between the file formats of different annotation tools. The user may load various annotation files into a database and then export them again to different formats. Although annotations may be modified within the Transfromer it is not an annotation tool. Please visit the Transformer homepage for more details.

 

Supported File formats

Currently the Transformer reads and writes the following file formats:

• ELAN *.eaf
• Praat *.TextGrid
• EXMARaLDA *xml
• the proposed exchange format (Annotation Graph) *.xml

 

Annotation Exchange Format

• The tier information is encoded as attribute in each annotation (Rather than as feature).
• Tier metainformation is located in the AGSet (rather than in the AG).
• Underscores "_" are used as delimiter in IDs (rather than colons ":" or "-") to have a valid XML
• Spaces " " in tier names are replaced by "-".

 

Constraints

There is the general constraint that unset time anchors are not supported. This means for EXMARALDA users that you have to interpolate the timeline before you can use the file in the Transformer. For ELAN users this means, that annotations that refer to a unset time anchor will be not be read.

Currently the Transformer does not read tier meta data from exchange files. This option will be developed as soon as there is a consensus which meta information is stored how.

 

Beta Version

Please note:

• The current version 6 does not yet offer all functions of the former version 4. All functions will be implemented soon.
• Do not redistribute the tool. For extensive use please wait for the next official release.
• Please report errors to oliverehmer@web.de .

 

Installation

The Transformer only runs on Microsoft Windows. It should run on all Windows versions, but until now it has only been tested on Windows XP.

You need to have the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher installed on your computer to run the Transformer. If you haven't installed it on your computer yet, it will be downloaded during the installation after asking you. In case this shouldn't work, you can download the .NET Framework manually here.

1. download the file below, which is a self-extracting zip-file
2. unpack the files by executing the file
3. run "Setup.exe"

Sorry, for tecnical reasonst there is no public beta version at the moment. Please contact Oliver Ehmer if you are interested in trying an inofficial beta. Mail to: oliverehmer AT web.de (replace AT by @)