Bat Recording Manager v12-14.n
Bat Recording Manager is a program to store and display metadata related to recording the ultrasonic calls of bats, although it may also be useful in other areas of bioacoustic recording. When recordings have been analysed and annotated either using Audacity (for longer recordings) or Kaleidoscope (for large numbers of short, automatically triggered recordings), the results of the analyses are read and stored in a local database.
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VERSION 12
Essentially the same as the last version 11, but now rebuilt using .NET 6 instead of >NET Framework 4.8 for improved performance going forward.
12.1.8067 Fixes some problems with creation and initialization of the database when installing to new computer.
12.1.8068 Fixed a bug in display by Bats
12.1.8142 Now incorporates the new improved BatCall Analyser as a separate app and used by BRM. The new BCA has an improved interface with choice of colour schemes and zoomable charts.
12.1.8171 Fixes an occasional crash during import
12.2.8194 Version increase to 12.2 Addition of a major feature to export an entire RecordingSession with its associated Recordings, LabelledSegments and Segment Images, to a .JSON text file which can be re-imported to the same or a different database. The original .wav files are not copied and the OriginalFilePath for the session does not need to exist on the target computer.
12.3.8264 Improved spectrogram generation giving a zoomable, pannable spectrogram window with adjustable parameters. Also improvements to the audio play mode including a broadband playback function - although the latter is a bit patchy with longer segments.
12.4.8297
By default the spectrogram frequency axis is locked and does not respond to zooming or panning, and therefore the mouse wheel of left buttons can be used to zoom and pan the spectrogram horizontally. Labels associated with the segment of file are also displayed below the spectrogram, but inside the frequency space and thse will now not be affected by zooming. If it is necessary to zoom the frequency axis then zoom in and zoom out buttons are provided. Zooming in this manner keeps the bottom of the frequency scale locked to 0. A 'free' button is also provided which unlocks the frequency axis and allows complete freedom in zooming and panning both horizontally and vertically, but this may make take the labels outside the field of view.
12.4.8320 Added the ability to modify the comment from within the spectrogram window, which modifies the database and updates the main display, but does not change the original text file or data embedded in the wav file.
12.4.8428 Improved single shortcut to save labels and exit Audacity during 'Analyze and Import'.
14.0 Added an ability to import and display thermal video data as well as acoustic data. Analysis should be performed using the HMBG ThermalVideoAnalysisTemplate which as an Excel form. Also Dark Sky is no longer operational so weather data is now obtained through Visual Crossing.
14.0.8536 - Initial v14 release
14.2.8782/8824 Now uses .NET 8.0.
This version now includes a re-written version of BatClassify originally written by Chris Scott at Leeds University with John Altringham's team and which was updated in 2017 to 64-bit and nominally had the option of command-line operation. However this option does not seem to work, so I have copied the program into C# under visual studio using NAudio and FFTW3. Apart from some changes of style and those necessary to adapt to C# data types the code operates in the same way, except that the original (mistakenly) calculates Q using the values for blob area/frequency instead of frequency/bandwidth, and this has been corrected in the new code. The new version is purely command-line based, accepting a file as the command line parameter.
In BRM BatClassify can be invoked from the Sessions view, through context menus on the recording session, a recording name, or on a specific Labelled Segment. BatClassify is run separately on each segment in the selection, and the labelled segments are updated with the BatClassify results. In each case the bat or group with the highest score is listed, and following that all bats or groups with scores greater than 0.5. In general only scores greater than 0.9 should be relied upon. The BatClassify results are enclosed in curly braces, with a curly braced section of the segment's comment. These results therefore do not affect the identification summaries for the recording.
When BatClassify is run on a single segment, BatCallAnalyser is also invoked using the parameters identified by BatClassify instead of the parameters derived through the BRM analyser.
BatCallAnalyser v14.2 has also been modified so that interval outliers (which can be common if individual pulses are omitted from the analysis) are ignored or identified as twice or thrice the correct interval.