The purpose of SNTRecorder is to assist in corpus recording. It was written to make speakers feel easier during the recording process, by allowing them to choose they own pace in pronunciation, but again not allowing sentences to be read too fast. Written in Python, with interface created in Tkinter (Tcl/Tk), it is a multiplatform tool, executable on Linux and Windows. Download SNTRecorder (source code, 48KB).
Assistance during a recording session
SNTRecorder is not a recording software, just a small utility that assists in the process. The best way to understand what this program do read the workflow description (taken from my MA paper about phonetics):
- The project is loaded and the program creates the sentences and the time list, and then shuffles them.
- A user sits in front of the screen and enters the initials.
- The program shows a sentence and a red line in the lower part of the sentence screen. The sentence is crossed out at this step, as a signal to the speaker to read the sentence without saying it aloud.
- The randomly selected time for the current sentence elapses and the red line changes to green, and the text appears normal.
- The speaker pronounces the sentence and presses the “next” key to continue.
- Steps 3 through 5 repeat until all sentences are recorded.
- The program informs that the current session is over and asks if there is need to repeat some items. If answered yes, a window is shown to select the sentences and to repeat steps 3-6 for a given selection. The session ends once there is no re-recording.
- A new user is ready and the cycle restarts.
Speaker logs
The program creates a simple log for each speaker. Here is a sample of a log.
# Started at: 2011-03-11-10:42 # Ended at: 2011-03-11-10:48 # Speaker: ana # Random time: 1-4 # Time scale: 10 Sentence t(1/SCALE s) Next The word "theirs" is spoken. 19.6834339953 10:44:07:607000 The word "abjured" is spoken. 22.7161564864 10:44:16:982000 The word "bait" is spoken. 26.945639852 10:44:23:597000 The word "dare" is spoken. 19.9025319695 10:44:34:642000 The word "fierce" is spoken. 16.5143768762 10:44:42:457000 The word "douse" is spoken. 19.3227666274 10:44:48:136000 The word "bourse" is spoken. 34.6668924964 10:44:54:766000 The word "fears" is spoken. 21.7415600234 10:45:02:441000 The word "Job" is spoken. 18.9044580715 10:45:10:100000
The log is preceded by time and speaker information. Random time indicates the brackets for selecting minimum and maximum values the user will be prevented to move to the next sentence. The log lines consist of the sentence that was shown on the screen, randomly selected time to prevent showing the next sentence, and finally the time when speaker pressed the “next” key.
Project settings, execution and OS difference
To create your own project, just make a copy of sampleproject.py and leave it in the same directory. Then, edit the new file. The comments explain how to change the template sentence and insert new words. The file name (without extension) is you project name in the program. To change min and max time for users to wait between each sentence, edit TIMEMIN and TIMEMAX in project.py file.
To execute the program, go into src folder and type python3 sntrecorder.py. If your’re using Windows you’ll have to provide the full path to the file, usually something like C:\python32\python,exe, but it depends on Python version you are using (must be 3+).
Sound will not work on Linux (clicks for start and end of a sentence, which I doubt you might need). Also, you will need python3-tk library.
Program uses distinct strings for on-screen messages that are editable in language.py, and you can provide localized versions. An example, in Serbian, is already there.
As you can see, this is a small tool that I created to make the recording easier for students. Because this was just one of the tools I developed for my thesis, it is not user-friendly in terms of rich interface settings. But, thanks to open source and portability, you are free to adopt it to your requirements, with only a text editor and some patience. I hope you will find it useful.