Losing applied offset again
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Losing applied offset again
At the moment I work with video-files that have not been recorded with a proper video-camera but with a digital consumer-photo-camera that can also capture short video-clips.
Everything worked well so far and I have successfully synchronised two of such videos together with the converted soundfile out of one of these video files. The problem only occurs when I close the project and open it up the other day. Then the synchronisation is lost again and I have to redo the whole -applying offset- phase and move all annotations accordingly which takes me lots of time over and over again for the same project. Is there anything that can be done about it?
Thanks for answering or forwarding to a thread where this issue has been discussed before, Kornelia
Re: Losing applied offset again
I'm not able to reproduce the problem; if I apply an offset it seems to be restored correctly after re-opening the file. Which version of ELAN is this and which operating system?
Could it be there is actually an other problem, maybe with saving the file? If you open the .eaf file in a text editor can you verify that the "MEDIA_DESCRIPTOR" elements have a "TIME_ORIGIN" attribute?
-Han
Re: Re: Losing applied offset again
Dear Han,
I work with PC (Windows XP) and the 3.9.0. Version of ELAN.
After I opened the file in the editor, I have three MEDIA_DESCRIPTOR MEDIA_URL's according to the three media files I use (videoA.AVI, videoB.AVI, soundA.wav).
One of them has such an attribute: TIME_ORIGIN="312"/>, it is the videoB.AVI
Does that seem to look right? Thanks, Kornelia
Re: Re: Re: Losing applied offset again
Something else I discovered just now, which might give a hint:
When I look at the two videos via scrolling through them (without sound), they seem to perfectly synchronise. Only when I push one of the play/play selection buttons, the dissynchrony-problem appears. Then, one ot the videosstreams (videoB) produces little dropouts and starts to run ahead. Might this after all be a RAM or CPU-Problem (my laptop is not the fastest)?
But isn't it funny, that such a problem can be solved by redoing the offset-application after re-opening the file? Does it then take less RAM or whatever to run the files?
Kornelia
Re: Re: Re: Re: Losing applied offset again
One last thought:
my laptop does meet the system requirements mentioned on the webpage (2 x 1,66 GHz; 2GB RAM). But what about the graphic board? I do have a Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Familiy?
Is that suitable for playing two videos at the same time?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Losing applied offset again
Just another Elan user here with a temporary suggestion until you get the bug fixed. The next time you synch up your files, after you get it the way you like, go to "Edit->Linked Files" and make a note of the offset applied to the relevant file (in the example below, my offset was "3035"). Then if the offset gets lost again you should be able to change it back quickly by simply editing the .eaf file, instead of using media synchronization, which is messier.
Note--the way to do this is to open the .eaf file in a text editor like WordPad. Near the top should be a line that looks like this:
<MEDIA_DESCRIPTOR MEDIA_URL="yourfilenamehere" MIME_TYPE="video/quicktime" RELATIVE_MEDIA_URL="yourfilenamehere"/>
To add an offset, just add it to the end of that line like so:
<MEDIA_DESCRIPTOR MEDIA_URL="yourfilenamehere" MIME_TYPE="video/quicktime" RELATIVE_MEDIA_URL="yourfilenamehere" TIME_ORIGIN="3035"/>
Note the placement of the slash after the last bit of info before the close angle bracket. Then save and open in Elan. If you're concerned about messing anything up, save it with a new file name so the old file is unchanged.
(For some reason I can't seem to just edit the offset using "Edit->Linked Files" which would be more intuitive).
TG
Release of ELAN 4.3.0
