Onward into the Abyss

One of our researchers came by to consult me about equipment purchases for a grant whose funding begins on April 1. A new grant is always cause for celebration, but when computer hardware is in a state of flux, it's hard to know what to advise researchers. She really wants to order a new MacBook for her research assistant, based on the built-in iSight. Her research concerns signed languages, so video-conferencing is very useful in collaborations. However, a crucial aspect of the research involves annotation of video files, using ELAN, a program developed at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.

The MPI web page doesn't indicate whether or not the program runs on an Intel Mac, merely that it requires OSX (or Windows or Linux), without specifying any specific hardware requirements. And the latest (bug-fix) release was in November 2005. Furthermore, the web site makes heavy reference to the Java Runtime Environment. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I downloaded and installed the program, scrounged a movie file (though the preferred format is MPEG-1, and despite the fact that the tutorial's author had difficulty with .mov files, albeit in a Windows environment). It was a little difficult to figure out how to do anything with the program, but it definitely runs, and I was able to insert a few annotations, and use the interface to scroll around my movie.