Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator
Chris@0: ===============
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator is a utility program for batch feature extraction from
Chris@0: audio files.  It runs Vamp audio analysis plugins on audio files, and
Chris@0: can write the result features in a selection of formats.
Chris@0: 
Chris@2: For more information, see
Chris@2: 
Chris@179:   http://vamp-plugins.org/sonic-annotator
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: More documentation follows further down this README file, after the
Chris@2: credits.
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: Credits
Chris@2: -------
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: Sonic Annotator was developed at the Centre for Digital Music,
Chris@2: Queen Mary, University of London.
Chris@2: 
Chris@87:   http://c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: The main program is by Mark Levy, Chris Cannam, and Chris Sutton.
Chris@2: Sonic Annotator incorporates library code from the Sonic Visualiser
Chris@2: application by Chris Cannam.  Code copyright 2005-2007 Chris Cannam,
Chris@95: copyright 2006-2014 Queen Mary, University of London, except where
Chris@2: indicated in the individual source files.
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: This work was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Chris@2: Council through the OMRAS2 project EP/E017614/1.
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: Sonic Annotator is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
Chris@2: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
Chris@2: published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
Chris@2: License, or (at your option) any later version.  See the file COPYING
Chris@2: included with this distribution for more information.
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: Sonic Annotator may also make use of the following libraries:
Chris@2: 
Chris@87:  * Qt5 -- Copyright Digia Oyj, distributed under the LGPL
Chris@2:  * Ogg decoder -- Copyright CSIRO Australia, BSD license
Chris@2:  * MAD mp3 decoder -- Copyright Underbit Technologies Inc, GPL
Chris@2:  * libsamplerate -- Copyright Erik de Castro Lopo, GPL
Chris@2:  * libsndfile -- Copyright Erik de Castro Lopo, LGPL
Chris@2:  * FFTW3 -- Copyright Matteo Frigo and MIT, GPL
Chris@87:  * Vamp plugin SDK -- Copyright Chris Cannam and QMUL, BSD license
Chris@87:  * Dataquay -- Copyright Breakfast Quay, BSD license
Chris@87:  * Sord and Serd -- Copyright David Robillard, BSD license
Chris@2: 
Chris@2: (Some distributions of Sonic Annotator may have one or more of these
Chris@2: libraries statically linked.)  Many thanks to their authors.
Chris@2: 
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: A Quick Tutorial
Chris@2: ================
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: To use Sonic Annotator, you need to tell it three things: what audio
Chris@0: files to extract features from; what features to extract; and how and
Chris@0: where to write the results.  You can also optionally tell it to
Chris@0: summarise the features.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 1. What audio files to extract features from
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator accepts a list of audio files on the command line.
Chris@0: Any argument that is not understood as a supported command-line option
Chris@0: will be taken to be the name of an audio file.  Any number of files
Chris@0: may be listed.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Several common audio file formats are supported, including MP3, Ogg,
Chris@0: and a number of PCM formats such as WAV and AIFF.  AAC is supported on
Chris@0: OS/X only, and only if not DRM protected.  WMA is not supported.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: File paths do not have to be local; you can also provide remote HTTP
Chris@0: or FTP URLs for Sonic Annotator to retrieve.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator also accepts the names of playlist files (.m3u
Chris@0: extension) and will process every file found in the playlist.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Finally, you can provide a local directory path instead of a file,
Chris@0: together with the -r (recursive) option, for Sonic Annotator to
Chris@0: process every audio file found in that directory or any of its
Chris@0: subdirectories.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 2. What features to extract
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator applies "transforms" to its input audio files, where a
Chris@0: transform (in this terminology) consists of a Vamp plugin together
Chris@0: with a certain set of parameters and a specified execution context:
Chris@0: step and block size, sample rate, etc.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: (See http://www.vamp-plugins.org/ for more information about Vamp
Chris@0: plugins.)
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: To use a particular transform, specify its filename on the command
Chris@0: line with the -t option.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Transforms are usually described in RDF, following the transform part
Chris@0: of the Vamp plugin ontology (http://purl.org/ontology/vamp/).  A
Chris@0: Transform may use any Vamp plugin that is currently installed and
Chris@0: available on the system.  You can obtain a list of available plugin
Chris@0: outputs by running Sonic Annotator with the -l option, and you can
Chris@0: obtain a skeleton transform description for one of these plugins with
Chris@0: the -s option.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: For example, if the example plugins from the Vamp plugin SDK are
Chris@0: available and no other plugins are installed, you might have an
Chris@0: exchange like this:
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   $ sonic-annotator -l
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:amplitudefollower:amplitude
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:acf
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:detectionfunction
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:filtered_acf
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:candidates
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:percussiononsets:detectionfunction
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:percussiononsets:onsets
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:powerspectrum:powerspectrum
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:spectralcentroid:linearcentroid
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:spectralcentroid:logcentroid
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:zerocrossing:counts
Chris@0:   vamp:vamp-example-plugins:zerocrossing:zerocrossings
Chris@0:   $ sonic-annotator -s vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo
Chris@0:   @prefix xsd:      <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
Chris@0:   @prefix vamp:     <http://purl.org/ontology/vamp/> .
Chris@0:   @prefix :         <#> .
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   :transform a vamp:Transform ;
Chris@0:       vamp:plugin <http://vamp-plugins.org/rdf/plugins/vamp-example-plugins#fixedtempo> ;
Chris@0:       vamp:step_size "64"^^xsd:int ; 
Chris@0:       vamp:block_size "256"^^xsd:int ; 
Chris@0:       vamp:parameter_binding [
Chris@0:           vamp:parameter [ vamp:identifier "maxbpm" ] ;
Chris@0:           vamp:value "190"^^xsd:float ;
Chris@0:       ] ;
Chris@0:       vamp:parameter_binding [
Chris@0:           vamp:parameter [ vamp:identifier "maxdflen" ] ;
Chris@0:           vamp:value "10"^^xsd:float ;
Chris@0:       ] ;
Chris@0:       vamp:parameter_binding [
Chris@0:           vamp:parameter [ vamp:identifier "minbpm" ] ;
Chris@0:           vamp:value "50"^^xsd:float ;
Chris@0:       ] ;
Chris@0:       vamp:output <http://vamp-plugins.org/rdf/plugins/vamp-example-plugins#fixedtempo_output_tempo> .
Chris@0:   $
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: The output of -s is an RDF/Turtle document describing the default
Chris@0: settings for the Tempo output of the Fixed Tempo Estimator plugin in
Chris@0: the Vamp plugin SDK.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: (The exact format of the RDF printed may differ -- e.g. if the
Chris@0: plugin's RDF description is not installed and so its "home" URI is not
Chris@0: known -- but the result should be functionally equivalent to this.)
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: You could run this transform by saving the RDF to a file and
Chris@0: specifying that file with -t:
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   $ sonic-annotator -s vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo > test.n3
Chris@0:   $ sonic-annotator -t test.n3 audio.wav -w csv --csv-stdout
Chris@0:   (... logging output on stderr, then ...)
Chris@0:   "audio.wav",0.002902494,5.196916099,68.7916,"68.8 bpm"
Chris@0:   $
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: The single line of output above consists of the audio file name, the
Chris@0: timestamp and duration for a single feature, the value of that feature
Chris@0: (the estimated tempo of the given region of time from that file, in
Chris@0: bpm -- the plugin in question performs a single tempo estimation and
Chris@0: nothing else) and the feature's label.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: A quicker way to achieve the above is to use the -d (default) option
Chris@0: to tell Sonic Annotator to use directly the default configuration for
Chris@0: a named transform:
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   $ sonic-annotator -d vamp:vamp-example-plugins:fixedtempo:tempo audio.wav -w csv --csv-stdout
Chris@0:   (... some log output on stderr, then ...)
Chris@0:   "audio.wav",0.002902494,5.196916099,68.7916,"68.8 bpm"
Chris@0:   $
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Although handy for experimentation, the -d option is inadvisable in
Chris@0: any "production" situation because the plugin configuration is not
Chris@0: guaranteed to be the same each time (for example if an updated version
Chris@0: of a plugin changes some of its defaults).  It's better to save a
Chris@0: well-defined transform to file and refer to that, even if it is simply
Chris@0: the transform created by the skeleton option.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: To run more than one transform on the same audio files, just put more
Chris@0: than one set of transform RDF descriptions in the same file, or give
Chris@0: the -t option more than once with separate transform description
Chris@0: files.  Remember that if you want to specify more than one transform
Chris@0: in the same file, they will need to have distinct URIs (that is, the
Chris@0: ":transform" part of the example above, which may be any arbitrary
Chris@0: name, must be distinct for each described transform).
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 3. How and where to write the results
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator supports various different output modules (and it is
Chris@0: fairly easy for the developer to add new ones).  You have to choose at
Chris@0: least one output module; use the -w (writer) option to do so.  Each
Chris@0: module has its own set of parameters which can be adjusted on the
Chris@0: command line, as well as its own default rules about where to write
Chris@0: the results.
Chris@0: 
Chris@174: To get help on a specific writer, run Sonic Annotator with the -h
Chris@174: option followed by the writer name (e.g. "-h csv").
Chris@174: 
Chris@0: The following writers are currently supported.  (Others exist, but are
Chris@0: not properly implemented or not supported.)
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:  * csv
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    Writes the results into comma-separated data files.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    One file is created for each transform applied to each input audio
Chris@0:    file, named after the input audio file and transform name with .csv
Chris@0:    suffix and ":" replaced by "_" throughout, placed in the same
Chris@0:    directory as the audio file.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To instruct Sonic Annotator to place the output files in another
Chris@0:    location, use --csv-basedir with a directory name.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To write a single file with all data in it, use --csv-one-file.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To write all data to stdout instead of to a file, use --csv-stdout.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    Sonic Annotator will not write to an output file that already
Chris@0:    exists.  If you want to make it do this, use --csv-force to
Chris@0:    overwrite or --csv-append to append to it.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    The data generated consists of one line for each result feature,
Chris@0:    containing the feature timestamp, feature duration if present, all
Chris@0:    of the feature's bin values in order, followed by the feature's
Chris@0:    label if present.  If the --csv-one-file or --csv-stdout option is
Chris@0:    specified, then an additional column will appear before any of the
Chris@0:    above, containing the audio file name from which the feature was
Chris@174:    extracted, if it differs from that of the previous row. To suppress
Chris@174:    this additional column, use the --csv-omit-filenames option.
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    To make the CSV writer emit the end time instead of the duration
Chris@174:    (for features with duration) use the --csv-end-times option.
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    To make the writer always emit end time or duration, even when the
Chris@174:    feature lacks duration, by using the time of the following feature
Chris@174:    as the end time, use the --csv-fill-ends option.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    The default column separator is a comma; you can specify a
Chris@0:    different one with the --csv-separator option.
Chris@0: 
Chris@174:  * lab
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    Writes the results into a tab-separated label file (.lab).
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    This is equivalent to using the CSV writer with a tab separator and
Chris@174:    the options --csv-end-times --csv-omit-filenames.
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    It supports the --lab-basedir, --lab-one-file, --lab-stdout,
Chris@174:    --lab-force, --lab-append, and --lab-fill-ends options, which all
Chris@174:    behave similarly to their CSV writer equivalents.
Chris@174: 
Chris@0:  * rdf
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    Writes the results into RDF/Turtle documents following the Audio
Chris@0:    Features ontology (http://purl.org/ontology/af/).
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    One file is created for each input audio file containing the
Chris@0:    features extracted by all transforms applied to that file, named
Chris@0:    after the input audio file with .n3 extension, placed in the same
Chris@0:    directory as the audio file.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To instruct Sonic Annotator to place the output files in another
Chris@0:    location, use --rdf-basedir with a directory name.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To write a single file with all data (from all input audio files)
Chris@0:    in it, use --rdf-one-file.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To write one file for each transform applied to each input audio
Chris@0:    file, named after the input audio file and transform name with .n3
Chris@0:    suffix and ":" replaced by "_" throughout, use --rdf-many-files.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    To write all data to stdout instead of to a file, use --rdf-stdout.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    Sonic Annotator will not write to an output file that already
Chris@0:    exists.  If you want to make it do this, use --rdf-force to
Chris@0:    overwrite or --rdf-append to append to it.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    Sonic Annotator will use plugin description RDF if available to
Chris@0:    enhance its output (for example identifying note onset times as
Chris@0:    note onset times, if the plugin's RDF says that is what it
Chris@0:    produces, rather than writing them as plain events).  Best results
Chris@0:    will be obtained if an RDF document is provided with your plugins
Chris@0:    (for example, vamp-example-plugins.n3) and you have this installed
Chris@0:    in the same location as the plugins.  To override this enhanced
Chris@0:    output and write plain events for all features, use --rdf-plain.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:    The output RDF will include an available_as property linking the
Chris@0:    results to the original audio signal URI.  By default, this will
Chris@0:    point to the URI of the file or resource containing the audio that
Chris@0:    Sonic Annotator processed, such as the file:/// location on disk.
Chris@0:    To override this, for example to process a local copy of a file
Chris@0:    while generating RDF that describes a copy of it available on a
Chris@0:    network, you can use the --rdf-signal-uri option to specify an
Chris@0:    alternative signal URI.
Chris@0: 
Chris@174:  * json
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    Writes the results into JSON format following JAMS, the JSON
Chris@174:    Annotated Music Specification. This writer is provisional as of
Chris@174:    Sonic Annotator v1.1.
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:  * midi
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    Writes the results to MIDI files. All features are written as MIDI
Chris@174:    notes.
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    If a feature has at least one value, its first value will be used
Chris@174:    as the note pitch, the second value (if present) for velocity. If a
Chris@174:    feature has units of Hz, then its pitch will be converted from
Chris@174:    frequency to an integer value in MIDI range, otherwise it will be
Chris@174:    written directly.
Chris@174: 
Chris@174:    Multiple (up to 16) transforms can be written to a single MIDI
Chris@174:    file, where they will be given separate MIDI channel numbers.
Chris@174: 
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: 4. Optionally, how to summarise the features
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator can also calculate and write summaries of features,
Chris@0: such as mean and median values.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: To obtain a summary as well as the feature results, just use the -S
Chris@0: option, naming the type of summary you want (min, max, mean, median,
Chris@0: mode, sum, variance, sd or count).  You can also tell it to produce
Chris@0: only the summary, not the individual features, with --summary-only.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Alternatively, you can specify a summary in a transform description.
Chris@0: The following example tells Sonic Annotator to write both the times of
Chris@0: note onsets estimated by the simple percussion onset detector example
Chris@0: plugin, and the variance of the plugin's onset detection function.
Chris@0: (It will only process the audio file and run the plugin once.)
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   @prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>.
Chris@0:   @prefix vamp: <http://purl.org/ontology/vamp/>.
Chris@0:   @prefix examples: <http://vamp-plugins.org/rdf/plugins/vamp-example-plugins#>.
Chris@0:   @prefix : <#>.
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   :transform1 a vamp:Transform;
Chris@0:      vamp:plugin examples:percussiononsets ;
Chris@0:      vamp:output examples:percussiononsets_output_onsets .
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   :transform0 a vamp:Transform;
Chris@0:      vamp:plugin examples:percussiononsets ;
Chris@0:      vamp:output examples:percussiononsets_output_detectionfunction ;
Chris@0:      vamp:summary_type "variance" .
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Sonic Annotator can also summarise in segments -- if you provide a
Chris@0: comma-separated list of times as an argument to the --segments option,
Chris@0: it will calculate one summary for each segment bounded by the times
Chris@0: you provided.  For example,
Chris@0: 
Chris@0:   $ sonic-annotator -d vamp:vamp-example-plugins:percussiononsets:detectionfunction -S variance --sumary-only --segments 1,2,3 -w csv --csv-stdout audio.wav
Chris@0:   (... some log output on stderr, then ...)
Chris@0:   ,0.000000000,1.000000000,variance,1723.99,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
Chris@0:   ,1.000000000,1.000000000,variance,1981.75,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
Chris@0:   ,2.000000000,1.000000000,variance,1248.79,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
Chris@0:   ,3.000000000,7.031020407,variance,1030.06,"(variance, continuous-time average)"
Chris@0: 
Chris@0: Here the first row contains a summary covering the time period from 0
Chris@0: to 1 second, the second from 1 to 2 seconds, the third from 2 to 3
Chris@0: seconds and the fourth from 3 seconds to the end of the (short) audio
Chris@0: file.
Chris@0: