Converters

These are standalone programs that convert transcripts from one tool format to another, e.g.

trs - Transcriber transcripts
eaf - ELAN files
vtt - web subtitles (Web VTT)
slt - SALT transcripts
cha - CLAN CHAT transcripts
textgrid - Praat TextGrids
pdf - PDF files
tex - LaTeX files
txt - plain text files
kaldi - input files for the Kaldi automatic speech recognition training system

to↓ from→	trs	eaf	vtt	slt	cha	textgrid	txt
trs		eaf-to-trs	vtt-to-trs	slt-to-trs	cha-to-trs	textgrid-to-trs
eaf	trs-to-eaf		vtt-to-eaf	slt-to-eaf	cha-to-eaf	textgrid-to-eaf	txt-to-eaf
vtt	trs-to-vtt	eaf-to-vtt		slt-to-vtt	cha-to-vtt	textgrid-to-vtt
slt	trs-to-slt	eaf-to-slt
cha	trs-to-cha	eaf-to-cha	vtt-to-cha
textgrid	trs-to-textgrid	eaf-to-textgrid	vtt-to-textgrid	slt-to-textgrid	cha-to-textgrid
txt	trs-to-txt
pdf	trs-to-pdf	eaf-to-pdf	vtt-to-pdf	slt-to-pdf	cha-to-pdf	textgrid-to-pdf
tex	trs-to-tex	eaf-to-tex	vtt-to-tex	slt-to-tex		textgrid-to-tex
kaldi	trs-to-kaldi	eaf-to-kaldi				textgrid-to-kaldi

To use a particular converter, you need to have Java installed on your system. Download the file, and double-click it to run.

If double-clicking doesn't work, you can run the converter from the command line, by entering:

java -jar vtt-to-textgrid.jar

By default converters display a window on to which you can drag and drop files for converting. However, they can also be run in ‘batch mode’, which allows you to automatically convert a list of files from the command line - e.g.

java -jar trs-to-textgrid.jar --batchmode *.trs

Some conversions have configurable output, e.g.

java -jar trs-to-txt.jar *.trs

…will include annotations and participant names in the output text files, but:

java -jar trs-to-txt.jar --textonly *.trs

…produces text files that exclude all annotations and participant names.

The --usage command-line switch prints information about command-line options.

As many formats do not support the meta-data, annotation granularity or ontology of other formats, many of these conversions necessarily entail loss of data. However, mappings are made from one format to another wherever possible.

For notes about specific correspondences or data losses, use the --help command-line switch, or use the Help|Information menu option of the conversion utility concerned.

These use annotator serializers/deserializers to read a file in one format, convert it to an annotation graph, and then write that graph out as a file in another format. As pointed out by Cochran et al. (2007 - Report from TILR Working Group 1 : Tools interoperability and input/output formats) this saves having order n² explicit conversion algorithms between formats; only 2n format conversions are required (as some of these formats above are output-only, it's actually less than 2n).

This exemplifies an approach to linguistic data interoperability called the interlingua philosophy on interoperability by Witt et al. (2009) and uses annotation graphs as an ‘interlingua’ similar to work by Schmidt et al. (2008), except that rather using a third file format as a persistent intermediary, the annotation graph models of the linguistic data are ephemeral, existing in memory only for the duration of the conversion.