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+
+Sonic Annotator
+===============
+
+Sonic Annotator is a utility program for batch feature extraction from
+audio files.  It runs Vamp audio analysis plugins on audio files, and
+can write the result features in a selection of formats.
+
+
+A Quick Tutorial
+----------------
+
+To use Sonic Annotator, you need to tell it three things: what audio
+files to extract features from; what features to extract; and how and
+where to write the results.  You can also optionally tell it to
+summarise the features.
+
+
+1. What audio files to extract features from
+
+Sonic Annotator accepts a list of audio files on the command line.
+Any argument that is not understood as a supported command-line option
+will be taken to be the name of an audio file.  Any number of files
+may be listed.
+
+Several common audio file formats are supported, including MP3, Ogg,
+and a number of PCM formats such as WAV and AIFF.  AAC is supported on
+OS/X only, and only if not DRM protected.  WMA is not supported.
+
+File paths do not have to be local; you can also provide remote HTTP
+or FTP URLs for Sonic Annotator to retrieve.
+
+Sonic Annotator also accepts the names of playlist files (.m3u
+extension) and will process every file found in the playlist.
+
+Finally, you can provide a local directory path instead of a file,
+together with the -r (recursive) option, for Sonic Annotator to
+process every audio file found in that directory or any of its
+subdirectories.
+
+
+2. What features to extract
+
+Sonic Annotator applies "transforms" to its input audio files, where a
+transform (in this terminology) consists of a Vamp plugin together
+with a certain set of parameters and a specified execution context:
+step and block size, sample rate, etc.
+
+(See http://www.vamp-plugins.org/ for more information about Vamp
+plugins.)
+
+To use a particular transform, specify its filename on the command
+line with the -t option.
+
+Transforms are usually described in RDF, following the transform part
+of the Vamp plugin ontology (http://purl.org/ontology/vamp/).  A
+Transform may use any Vamp plugin that is currently installed and
+available on the system.  You can obtain a list of available plugin
+outputs by running Sonic Annotator with the -l option, and you can
+obtain a skeleton transform description for one of these plugins with
+the -s option.
+
+For example, if the example plugins from the Vamp plugin SDK are
+available and no other plugins are installed, you might have an
+exchange like this:
+
+  $ sonic-annotator -l
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:amplitudefollower:amplitude
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:acf
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:detectionfunction
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:filtered_acf
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:candidates
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:percussiononsets:detectionfunction
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:percussiononsets:onsets
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:powerspectrum:powerspectrum
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:spectralcentroid:linearcentroid
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:spectralcentroid:logcentroid
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:zerocrossing:counts
+  vamp:vamp-example-plugins:zerocrossing:zerocrossings
+  $ sonic-annotator -s vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo
+  @prefix xsd:      <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
+  @prefix vamp:     <http://purl.org/ontology/vamp/> .
+  @prefix :         <#> .
+
+  :transform a vamp:Transform ;
+      vamp:plugin <http://vamp-plugins.org/rdf/plugins/vamp-example-plugins#fixedtempo> ;
+      vamp:step_size "64"^^xsd:int ; 
+      vamp:block_size "256"^^xsd:int ; 
+      vamp:parameter_binding [
+          vamp:parameter [ vamp:identifier "maxbpm" ] ;
+          vamp:value "190"^^xsd:float ;
+      ] ;
+      vamp:parameter_binding [
+          vamp:parameter [ vamp:identifier "maxdflen" ] ;
+          vamp:value "10"^^xsd:float ;
+      ] ;
+      vamp:parameter_binding [
+          vamp:parameter [ vamp:identifier "minbpm" ] ;
+          vamp:value "50"^^xsd:float ;
+      ] ;
+      vamp:output <http://vamp-plugins.org/rdf/plugins/vamp-example-plugins#fixedtempo_output_tempo> .
+  $
+
+The output of -s is an RDF/Turtle document describing the default
+settings for the Tempo output of the Fixed Tempo Estimator plugin in
+the Vamp plugin SDK.
+
+(The exact format of the RDF printed may differ -- e.g. if the
+plugin's RDF description is not installed and so its "home" URI is not
+known -- but the result should be functionally equivalent to this.)
+
+You could run this transform by saving the RDF to a file and
+specifying that file with -t:
+
+  $ sonic-annotator -s vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo > test.n3
+  $ sonic-annotator -t test.n3 audio.wav -w csv --csv-stdout
+  (... logging output on stderr, then ...)
+  "audio.wav",0.002902494,5.196916099,68.7916,"68.8 bpm"
+  $
+
+The single line of output above consists of the audio file name, the
+timestamp and duration for a single feature, the value of that feature
+(the estimated tempo of the given region of time from that file, in
+bpm -- the plugin in question performs a single tempo estimation and
+nothing else) and the feature's label.
+
+A quicker way to achieve the above is to use the -d (default) option
+to tell Sonic Annotator to use directly the default configuration for
+a named transform:
+
+  $ sonic-annotator -d vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo audio.wav -w csv --csv-stdout
+  (... some log output on stderr, then ...)
+  "audio.wav",0.002902494,5.196916099,68.7916,"68.8 bpm"
+  $
+
+Although handy for experimentation, the -d option is inadvisable in
+any "production" situation because the plugin configuration is not
+guaranteed to be the same each time (for example if an updated version
+of a plugin changes some of its defaults).  It's better to save a
+well-defined transform to file and refer to that, even if it is simply
+the transform created by the skeleton option.
+
+To run more than one transform on the same audio files, just put more
+than one set of transform RDF descriptions in the same file, or give
+the -t option more than once with separate transform description
+files.  Remember that if you want to specify more than one transform
+in the same file, they will need to have distinct URIs (that is, the
+":transform" part of the example above, which may be any arbitrary
+name, must be distinct for each described transform).
+
+
+3. How and where to write the results
+
+Sonic Annotator supports various different output modules (and it is
+fairly easy for the developer to add new ones).  You have to choose at
+least one output module; use the -w (writer) option to do so.  Each
+module has its own set of parameters which can be adjusted on the
+command line, as well as its own default rules about where to write
+the results.
+
+The following writers are currently supported.  (Others exist, but are
+not properly implemented or not supported.)
+
+ * csv
+
+   Writes the results into comma-separated data files.
+
+   One file is created for each transform applied to each input audio
+   file, named after the input audio file and transform name with .csv
+   suffix and ":" replaced by "_" throughout, placed in the same
+   directory as the audio file.
+
+   To instruct Sonic Annotator to place the output files in another
+   location, use --csv-basedir with a directory name.
+
+   To write a single file with all data in it, use --csv-one-file.
+
+   To write all data to stdout instead of to a file, use --csv-stdout.
+
+   Sonic Annotator will not write to an output file that already
+   exists.  If you want to make it do this, use --csv-force to
+   overwrite or --csv-append to append to it.
+
+   The data generated consists of one line for each result feature,
+   containing the feature timestamp, feature duration if present, all
+   of the feature's bin values in order, followed by the feature's
+   label if present.  If the --csv-one-file or --csv-stdout option is
+   specified, then an additional column will appear before any of the
+   above, containing the audio file name from which the feature was
+   extracted, if it differs from that of the previous row.
+
+   The default column separator is a comma; you can specify a
+   different one with the --csv-separator option.
+
+ * rdf
+
+   Writes the results into RDF/Turtle documents following the Audio
+   Features ontology (http://purl.org/ontology/af/).
+
+   One file is created for each input audio file containing the
+   features extracted by all transforms applied to that file, named
+   after the input audio file with .n3 extension, placed in the same
+   directory as the audio file.
+
+   To instruct Sonic Annotator to place the output files in another
+   location, use --rdf-basedir with a directory name.
+
+   To write a single file with all data (from all input audio files)
+   in it, use --rdf-one-file.
+
+   To write one file for each transform applied to each input audio
+   file, named after the input audio file and transform name with .n3
+   suffix and ":" replaced by "_" throughout, use --rdf-many-files.
+
+   To write all data to stdout instead of to a file, use --rdf-stdout.
+
+   Sonic Annotator will not write to an output file that already
+   exists.  If you want to make it do this, use --rdf-force to
+   overwrite or --rdf-append to append to it.
+
+   Sonic Annotator will use plugin description RDF if available to
+   enhance its output (for example identifying note onset times as
+   note onset times, if the plugin's RDF says that is what it
+   produces, rather than writing them as plain events).  Best results
+   will be obtained if an RDF document is provided with your plugins
+   (for example, vamp-example-plugins.n3) and you have this installed
+   in the same location as the plugins.  To override this enhanced
+   output and write plain events for all features, use --rdf-plain.
+
+   The output RDF will include an available_as property linking the
+   results to the original audio signal URI.  By default, this will
+   point to the URI of the file or resource containing the audio that
+   Sonic Annotator processed, such as the file:/// location on disk.
+   To override this, for example to process a local copy of a file
+   while generating RDF that describes a copy of it available on a
+   network, you can use the --rdf-signal-uri option to specify an
+   alternative signal URI.
+
+
+4. Optionally, how to summarise the features
+
+Sonic Annotator can also calculate and write summaries of features,
+such as mean and median values.
+
+To obtain a summary as well as the feature results, just use the -S
+option, naming the type of summary you want (min, max, mean, median,
+mode, sum, variance, sd or count).  You can also tell it to produce
+only the summary, not the individual features, with --summary-only.
+
+Alternatively, you can specify a summary in a transform description.
+The following example tells Sonic Annotator to write both the times of
+note onsets estimated by the simple percussion onset detector example
+plugin, and the variance of the plugin's onset detection function.
+(It will only process the audio file and run the plugin once.)
+
+  @prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>.
+  @prefix vamp: <http://purl.org/ontology/vamp/>.
+  @prefix examples: <http://vamp-plugins.org/rdf/plugins/vamp-example-plugins#>.
+  @prefix : <#>.
+
+  :transform1 a vamp:Transform;
+     vamp:plugin examples:percussiononsets ;
+     vamp:output examples:percussiononsets_output_onsets .
+
+  :transform0 a vamp:Transform;
+     vamp:plugin examples:percussiononsets ;
+     vamp:output examples:percussiononsets_output_detectionfunction ;
+     vamp:summary_type "variance" .
+
+Sonic Annotator can also summarise in segments -- if you provide a
+comma-separated list of times as an argument to the --segments option,
+it will calculate one summary for each segment bounded by the times
+you provided.  For example,
+
+  $ sonic-annotator -d vamp:vamp-example-plugins:percussiononsets:detectionfunction -S variance --sumary-only --segments 1,2,3 -w csv --csv-stdout audio.wav
+  (... some log output on stderr, then ...)
+  ,0.000000000,1.000000000,variance,1723.99,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
+  ,1.000000000,1.000000000,variance,1981.75,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
+  ,2.000000000,1.000000000,variance,1248.79,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
+  ,3.000000000,7.031020407,variance,1030.06,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
+
+Here the first row contains a summary covering the time period from 0
+to 1 second, the second from 1 to 2 seconds, the third from 2 to 3
+seconds and the fourth from 3 seconds to the end of the (short) audio
+file.
+