Using SoundEdit II and Deck II to label digitised field tapes

SoundEdit II allows you to label sound files, and then to access the labelled sections via an alphabetical label list. This can be very useful for hearing a particular sound without having to work through masses of taped material. Labelling is a standard feature of SoundEdit and doesn't need explanation here. However, if you want to get your labelled material out of SoundEdit and usable in other formats, you should follow these directions.

How to segment a Sound Edit file into individual sound files

Assuming that you have labelled a digitised sound file in SoundEdit II (you have to be using version 2.0.7 to do this), and now you want to access the labelled areas of the file as separate files, you will need to save the file in SDII format, using the 'Save as' menu item.

At this point it is useful to change the name of the saved file to something simple, like a hyphen, because the segmenting process will take the file name and prefix it to the label name to create each individual sound file.

Now open Deck II and make a new file by selecting 'File:New'. Open 'File:Add audio to clipboard'. Select your SDII file and click 'All regions', making sure the checkbox 'Make a copy' is crossed.

Click 'Add region', then close the dialog box. Deck II will now proceed to convert all labelled parts into individual files. If there are two identical labels, they will appear with sequential numbers suffixed. This is a time and disk space consuming process. When converting a 4.3 Mb SDII file, the resulting collection of files totalled 1.2 Mb, the difference being that not all parts of the source file were labelled.

When Deck has finished, you may want to use SoundEdit automator or other sound conversion software to convert the files to a standard format, like AIFF.

Pros: Labelling digitised sound files in SoundEdit is straightforward.
Cons: Labels can only be 32 characters long. SoundEdit appears to be a dead-end for your data. It does not conform to standards for data exchange, so the labelled files are only of use within SoundEdit and Deck. This is fine if that is all you want, but if you are considering making data accessible to others, on the web for example, then perhaps you should consider other options.
Current version: (a) SoundEdit 2.0.7, (b) Deck 2.5.1
Platform: Macintosh PPC
Application size:16 Mb (both a & b)
Suggested minimum RAM: (a) 7694, (b) 6934
Documentation: Tutorial and help files together with paper manuals
Author: Macromedia
Available from: Macromedia (commercial software)

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