Sound/Silence Finder enhancements

[steve]

Please vote for all the proposed enhancements that you are in agreement with.

If you disagree with any of the proposed points, please say why.

Ultimately I'd like to propose removing one of these effects and replacing it with a more advanced sound finder but this poll is specifically about improving Silence Finder and Sound Finder as they exist now.

If you would like to try these proposed enhancements before voting, install the attached plug-ins (download and copy into the Audacity plug-ins folder, then restart Audacity.
The plug-ins will appear as "Silence Finder 18-5-2012..." and "Sound Finder 18-5-2012..." respectively.

[poll deleted]

[steve]

When there is a long trailing silence, SilenceFinder adds a label after the final sound.
The position of this final label looks odd to me as all of the other labels are relative to the end of the silence, but this one is relative to the beginning of the silence

Is that label really required or could it be removed?

[steve]

One other change that I have made is to prevent labels extending before the start of the selection.
If the label placement is before the start of the sound then labels may (in the current Audacity version) extend back into "negative time" (before zero) which I don't think is a good behaviour.

Feel free to vote on this feature also (the poll will only accept 10 items so just add your comments/vote for this feature in a reply).

[Gale Andrews]

When there is a long trailing silence, SilenceFinder adds a label after the final sound.
The position of this final label looks odd to me as all of the other labels are relative to the end of the silence, but this one is relative to the beginning of the silence

Yes, but that label is different as the "Label placement" control does not affect it. I think the last label is useful in removing most of the silence that would otherwise come after the last track on an album (at the expense of producing a redundant file if you export multiple). I wouldn't want to remove the last label without an option to keep it.


Gale

[steve]

Regarding peculiar placement of label in trailing silence:

Yes, but that label is different as the "Label placement" control does not affect it.

this "feature" is not currently documented as far as I can see http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/h ... eters.html

I think the last label is useful in removing most of the silence that would otherwise come after the last track on an album

It does so by creating a redundant silent file. The redundant file is not simply a byproduct, it is the mechanism for trimming silence from the end and the way that it does so is contrary to the description in the GUI.

The GUI has a control "Label placement [seconds before silence ends]" but if there is trailing silence longer than "Minimum duration of silence" then a final label is added that is not the set number of seconds before silence ends. In other words, it may do something sensible, but it does not do what it says on the tin, so in one way or another there is a bug here.

I wouldn't want to remove the last label without an option to keep it.

An option to "label trailing silence" would be one solution. The manual could then explain how that final label is placed if enabled.

[steve]

Copied from http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 39&t=62867 :

I agree with what I take as your comment here that we don't need two Sound Finders. I have never liked the similarity of Silence Finder and Sound Finder, and suspect that few novices use Sound Finder given most documentation bundled with turntables and cassette decks will only mention Silence Finder. So I would think we could bring the current "Sound Finder" to the end of the line with your bug fix and see if we can get (Advanced) Sound Finder to replace it in Audacity.

It may be better to "retire" Silence Finder than Sound Finder.
As you say, there is little difference between the two. The main difference is that:

• Silence Finder: Places a point label before the start of the sound.
• Sound Finder: Places a region label around the sound.

If Sound Finder had an option to place point labels then it would do exactly the same as Silence Finder (except for the weird placement of the final label in Silence Finder).

Yes, but I think new users will have much more trouble with marking sounds than silence. They can understand placing a marker to split in silence.

Many will be looking for Silence Finder because hardware documentation has referred to it for years (and probably will do so for many years yet).

Any Sound Finder option to add a point label is likely to be at the bottom (and shouldn't be default). I think that makes Sound Finder unsuitable for beginners.

I have started a new topic about the proposed changes to Sound/Silence Finder so that it can be discussed separately from this "Advanced Sound Finder" topic.

I think the bug fixes should be implemented. They should not be something for users to vote on unless the bug can be viewed as a "feature".

"Yes, but I think new users will have much more trouble with marking sounds than silence. They can understand placing a marker to split in silence."
The current "Silence Finder" is possibly misnamed.
The silences are "marked" (as in the file name "SilenceMarker.ny") but (apart from a label in trailing silence, if present) the labels are not created by finding silence but by finding sounds.

Code: Select all

   ;If this sample is NOT silent and the previous samples were silent
   ;then mark the passage.
   (if (and (> v thres) (> sil-c sil-length))
 	  ;Mark the user-set number of seconds BEFORE this point to avoid clipping the start
 	  ;of the material.
    (add-label (- (/ n s1-srate) labelbeforedur) "S")

After detecting the start of the sound, a label is created at "labelbeforedur" seconds earlier than the onset of the sound.
In most common cases these labels will occur during silences, but this is not necessarily the case, for example:

• Minimum duration of silence = 0.1
• Label placement = 1.0

tracks000.png (9.71 KiB) Viewed 11518 times

The first label is placed within a sound, not within a silence.
The second label is placed within a silence, but the "wrong" silence.
I'm not suggesting that this is a bug (garbage in, garbage out), but it is not actually "marking silences".


This code also provides an explanation of why the default label position is not zero:

As per "proposed enhancement 2" (Bug Fix. Label positions are currently about 0.01 seconds late. (It is not possible to make the label positions exact without making the plug-in much slower, but it is possible to improve accuracy and ensure that the label positions do not trim the sound.), setting the label position 0 seconds "before silence ends" can actually cause the labels to occur after the silence ends, thus clipping the start of the material. A non-zero default is a workaround for this (imo) "bug".

"They can understand placing a marker to split in silence."
but with the current implementation they may be misunderstanding.

If the plug-in is intended to mark silences, then it should "mark silences" - the labels should always occur within the silence to which they relate.
If the plug-in is intended to do what it currently does (mark a point before the start of a sound) then the name "Silence Finder" and the description in the manual are misleading as they imply that the plug-in finds and labels silences, which is not how it works and in some cases not what it does.


"Many will be looking for Silence Finder because hardware documentation has referred to it for years (and probably will do so for many years yet)."
Isn't that a red herring? Obsolete third party documentation has never stopped Audacity from progressing and imho should not do so (otherwise we would still have Audacity 1.2.x). There's plenty of third party documentation still in circulation that refer to "Audio I/O" preferences.


"I think the bug fixes should be implemented. They should not be something for users to vote on unless the bug can be viewed as a "feature"."
I agree that they should be implemented, but I included them in the vote options just in case anyone wanted to argue that they are "features".


Summary:

• Silence Finder is not actually a silence finder but a sound finder that uses point labels before the sound.
• If we want a real "Silence Marker" then the current plug-in does not do that and needs to be replaced with a plug-in that does mark silences.
• If we want to keep the current "Silence Finder" effect then imo it needs the proposed bug fixes and should not be called "Silence Finder" -> If it is not called "silence finder" then it could easily have "region labels" added as an option.

[Gale Andrews]

Summary:

• Silence Finder is not actually a silence finder but a sound finder that uses point labels before the sound.
• If we want a real "Silence Marker" then the current plug-in does not do that and needs to be replaced with a plug-in that does mark silences.
• If we want to keep the current "Silence Finder" effect then imo it needs the proposed bug fixes and should not be called "Silence Finder" -> If it is not called "silence finder" then it could easily have "region labels" added as an option.

Concerning "old manuals", there is probably some analogy between "Audio I/O" and "Devices" in a new user's mind, but not much between a Sound Finder and a Silence Finder which will naïvely be seen as opposites.

I don't think the fact that Silence Finder tries to label silences by detecting sounds is a serious confusion, and I am sure it was named as it was to be more understandable.

Clearly (on a small number of FR votes) a number of people have asked for "minimum distance between labels" in Silence Finder but until yourself I don't recall anyone asking for sound regions to be marked in it. I'm still very sceptical about adding sound regions to Silence Finder.


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

I wouldn't want to remove the last label without an option to keep it.

An option to "label trailing silence" would be one solution. The manual could then explain how that final label is placed if enabled.

I'm kind of surprised the "surplus" file creates little reported confusion, but if I'm correct that it doesn't, it may be better to document it rather than remove the feature or add a new control when we are trying to keep the effect "simple".

This could be done in the plug-in by adding an ;info line statement. It could also be done by adding "except the last" to the text for the existing control, though that would look better as a v3 plug-in.

It could be done (I assume away programming issues) by a single control that (tried to) "retain a minimum amount of silence after the preceding sound". This would then apply to the last label too, although the calculation would be different. This may be hard to get across to users as wording, but I figure it's the unstated aim which is not actually followed through by what the last label does.

I also note that if Export Multiple had a control not to export the final label, the "problem" would be solved. I would rather lobby for that than remove the final label.


Gale

[steve]

Concerning "old manuals", there is probably some analogy between "Audio I/O" and "Devices" in a new user's mind, but not much between a Sound Finder and a Silence Finder which will naïvely be seen as opposites.

I've not seen anything to support the first statement (there's several forum posts asking "where is Audio I/O").
The second point could possibly be resolved by calling the effect "Silence/Sound Marker".

Personally I'm not happy about an effect not doing what it says, even if there is little complaint about it. If it doesn't do what it says then either it should change what it says, or change what it does. Feedback from waxcylinder and Bill suggests that "advanced" users rarely use these effects, which may account from the lack of complaint.

I doubt that naive users really understand what Silence Finder does, but rather blunder through with it until they achieve a result that is close enough. I did not know what was happening with trailing silence until I looked at the code so I doubt that many new users will.

My reasoning for adding sound regions to the (so called) Silence Finder is so that the main (basic) features of both Sound Finder and Silence Finder will be available in one simple effect. The reason that Jeremy R. Brown wrote Sound Finder was to provide "sound region" marking (which had not been available in Audacity 1.2.x) http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/mess ... d=24275188 . It is not surprising that no one has asked for sound region labels in silence finder as that functionality already exists in Sound Finder.

I'm slightly negative about adding "minimum distance between labels" in Silence Finder. I'd rather see an option for point labels and region labels in one effect.

This could be done in the plug-in by adding an ;info line statement.

I thought that you were against documentation in the ;info, preferring an interface that is more consistent with built-in effects. I agreed with you, on the basis that bundled plug-ins are documented in the manual.

I don't like the idea of a control called anything like
Label placement, except for last label (seconds before silence ends):
(it's too long imo).

It could be done (I assume away programming issues) by a single control that (tried to) "retain a minimum amount of silence after the preceding sound".

This is doable. Not only could it "try" to do it, it "could" do it (in all cases).
Label generation is not limited to the selection size so an "End Label", or "Final Label" could always be added. Thus the single control could be as simple as
Add final label:
or
Add end label:

The manual would then explain that:
When selected, this options adds a label after the final sound finishes. The distance after the final sound is the same as the "Minimum duration of silence" that has been selected.

The manual will need to have something similar to this whether or not it is a user option, because this is what Silence Finder currently does.

[steve]

We recently agreed that how complicated a plug-in appears to be is an important consideration, so here's a couple of screenshots.
Does one of these look a lot more complicated than the other?

silencefinder.png (40.44 KiB) Viewed 11508 times

silence-sound-marker.png (27.59 KiB) Viewed 11508 times

For the second interface,

What to label: [Silences or Sounds] default = Silences
Threshold Level: [-100 to 0 dB] default = -30 dB
Minimum duration of silence: [0.1 to 5.0 seconds] default = 1.0 seconds
Label placement adjustment: [0 to 1.0? seconds] default = 0 seconds
Add final label: [No or Yes] default = No


Of these I think that the only real complication is the "Label placement adjustment".
The way that I would like this to work is:

• When marking silences the plug-in would try to adjust the label this far before the end of the silence, but would always put the label within the detected silence. If the silence is not big enough then it would adjust as far as possible without overlapping either the previous sound or the beginning of the selection. This way it actually does mark the silence.

• When marking sounds, the plug-in will use a region label that is centred on the sound. The placement adjustment would try to expand the label by adding this amount of space to each end of the sound provided that there is sufficient space to do so but would not overlap labels or the ends of the selection.

For the "Add final label" option we would need to decide how we want to handle this.
What I would suggest (though I don't yet have a strong view) is that for silences it adds a label at the "allowed silence" after the final sound (as Silence Finder now, but always adds a label when selected) and when labelling sounds it simply adds a label at the end of the selection.


What features are lost?

It is not possible to set different "before" and "after" times for sound labels. Is this a big loss? (This feature is available in the Advanced Sound Finder).


Other issues
We would need to be consistent about whether we are numbering the labels (like Sound Finder) or using a text label (like Silence Finder). I would suggest numbering like Sound Finder.