Recommended tool for labeling and exporting segments of field audio recordings?

#1

I’m looking for recommendations for a tool for labeling segments of audio in field recordings. These field recordings are done over an extended period of time (hours to days).

Ideally I could:

  • Select segments of audio
  • Label those segments
  • Export all labeled segments into a folder.

So far I’m using Adobe Audition, but it’s not the best when it comes to organizing across different audio files.

Do people have specific tools they like to work with for such tasks?

#2

Ping @dansitu, he might have an idea.

#3

This is a great question, and perhaps it’s something Edge Impulse can help answer in the future. For now, Audacity is a cross-platform open source audio editing tool that provides functionality for annotating audio using a visual editor. You can export a CSV of annotations from Audacity, then use a simple Python script to chop the audio into files with the correct names.

There’s a nice StackOverflow answer that shows how to use the feature. Once you have the CSV, I’d recommend using the Pydub library to cut the files up—it has a wonderful high-level API for chopping and slicing audio files.

I hope this helps!

Warmly,
Dan