MITSYN Waveform (sound) File Editor Usage and Implementation
Description of MITSYN Waveform (sound) File Editor
The "MITSYN Waveform (sound) File Editor" tool supports the viewing and editing of multiple channel waveform stream files, and manual labeling of events in the waveform files. Many viewing options are available such as which channels to view, view sizes and positions, decimation type, etc. Also available are spectral and spectrogram views.
The main window view is of channel waveforms (viewing a list of selected channels), and the view is usually set to use fixed scaling (for audio, although not for process simulations), so that the scale will stay constant while paging through a waveform stream file. See the View→Waveform View Options dialog for setting scaling.
A position in the waveform stream called the "cursor" is updated or used by many of the commands. The cursor is shown by a yellow vertical bar in all time views whose current scope encompass that time. The cursor can be set by clicking the left mouse button (i.e., its usual "select" function). The current Selection is shown as highlighted in the main window.
A floating window may be shown which shows the waveform of the current "Selection". That view is usually set to use automatic ranging so that the scale will vary with the contents of the channels and thus increase the "gain" for low level signals.
Other floating windows may be used to show a spectrum of the current channel at the position of the cursor, and to show a spectrogram of the current selection.
Cursor, Zooming, and Value Readouts
Clicking sets the cursor at the pointer (may be done in any time view pane including spectrograms). Panels in the status bar show the position of the cursor in appropriate coordinates. In spectral views the position of the cursor is shown (by just hovering the cursor, or by clicking) in relevant coordinates, e.g., frequency.
Waveform channel signals are displayed in a time-compressed format, using one of the available forms of decimation such as Range, First, Max, Mean, or RMS. In the caption for each waveform segment plot is a field shown as "Decimation: nn, type", where "type" is the decimation type and "nn" is in the decimation ratio (how many samples are represented by each plotted point).
Commands to Play and Record from/to the waveform stream file are also included. Obviously a Windows compatible sound card needs to be installed on the host machine to enable Play and Record. Other separate tools may also be used to play and record, such as the Windows "Sound Recorder" and the Windows "Media Player".
Implementation
This Waveform File Editor is implemented using the two major MITSYN Languages, the Scripting language and the Stream Processing (block diagram) language. The MITSYN scripting language is used to implement all aspects of the GUI (the graphical user interface, including all the dialog boxes). All waveform processing (splicing, filtering) and recording and playing is implemented using very simple block diagrams in the stream processing language. Playing audio from all supported waveform file formats and splice/play lists is implemented using a Play block in a simple stream processing configuration, and recording is implemented using a Sampler block in a similar small configuration.
All components of the implementation are included so you may modify and/or extend this tool as desired.