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CShulby / plugin_htklabel

A plugin for Praat to read information from a HTK / HTS label file and Master Label Files and convert them back.
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plugin_htklabel

A plugin for Praat to read information from a HTK / HTS label file and Master Label Files.

This software is 100% free to use as you please, but I do ask that you cite its use in any papers:

@software{htklabel,
author = {Shulby, Christopher and Atria, Jose},
title = {htklabel},
url = {http://cpran.net/plugins/htklabel/},
year = {2017}
}

Installation:

This plugin requires some of the existing plugins distributed through CPrAN. If you have the CPrAN client installed on your machine, you can install this plugin by typing

cpran install htklabel

NOTE: this will not work until registration on CPrAN is complete, which should be soon. If this does not work you may clone this repo to your Praat preferences directory.

After that, you should be able to read .lab and .mlf files using the commands in the Open menu, and save TextGrid objects as labels using the commands in the Save menu.

If you do no not have the client you can follow these instructions to set it up and install the plugin as above.

If you cannot install the client, you can still use this plugin, as long as you manually install all of its dependencies (and their dependencies). The full list of dependencies (pointing to their git repositories) is

Plugin Use

Reading files

This plugin provides features to import HTK/HTS label files into Praat. Mainly, this is done through two commands, both available under the Open menu in the Objects window.

The command Read HTK Label File... takes the path to a single label file and will read that into one or more TextGrid objects. The mapping between these two is done so that levels are mapped to tiers and alternatives are mapped to separate TextGrid objects. After the command, all newly created objects will be selected.

Currently, only labels that provide both a start and an end position are supported.

Master Label Files can be read with the Read HTK Master Label File..., which works differently. Since MLF files specify a mapping between filename patterns and files, reading one into Praat will result in a Table object with the information necessary for that mapping. Queries are then performed on this object with the Query path from MLF Table... command available in the contextual menu.

Patterns in MLF files typically use fileglobs, but since in Praat it is more typical to use regular expressions for this purpose, this command supports both.

The query command takes a filename pattern to match, and a value specifying how the pattern should be interpreted: either "Regex" or "Glob".

If supported, the matched file will then be read into Praat, and any newly created objects will be selected. Please note that this mapping can point to any file, not only those used by HTK / HTS.

Writing files

TextGrid objects can be written to HTK / HTS labels using the Save as HTK Label file.... At this point, converting MLF Table objects to MLF files is not supported.

Note that only information that can be stored in the selected TextGrid objects will be saved into the label file. This will not include any coments that may have been there originally.