Chimp & See Talk

Marking off camera vocalizations

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    Remind me again how we classify when there is definitely an animal off camera vocalizing. I would hate for it to get lost in 'nothing there' land when there is clearly data here but what's the protocol?

    Posted

  • ksigler by ksigler moderator

    If there is definitely something near the camera, just not seen, you can use "Other Non-Primate," and then add a comment/tag to explain that it's off camera. As for indicating off-camera vocalization, I don't think we have a specific rule for that. Personally, I don't classify "vocalizing" of off-camera animals, but may add the #vocalization tag if I think it's interesting or significant enough. There were some different flavors of off-camera tags, but nothing locked down.

    For what it's worth, there are many people who classify without sound (by choice or technical limitation), so plenty of off-camera vocalization clips will end up as "nothing here." In my opinion, that's approaching the point where we have to say, "that's good enough" as clips where things aren't seen have (I think) less research value than ones where species can be identified, behaviors observed, etc.

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    I see your point in regards to the research value to the chimp&see project we are working on right now. I'll stick to 'nothing here' in classification.

    I actually was thinking of other researchers down the line who will use this data. Ammie Kalan's passive accoustic research uses other methods but comes to mind. https://methodsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/passive_acoustic_monitoring/
    It seems a shame not to take a few seconds to tag a definite #vocalization for future scientists when I hear it, but would that add confusion to the chimp&see tagging retrieval for the chimp scientists?

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    HI @Snorticus - tagging empty videos with vocalization would be great. I think trying to get a tag going for this situation would be good though - @ksigler - do you remember any of the tags people have used? we could pick one of those!

    Posted

  • akalan by akalan scientist

    Hi @Snorticus, thanks for thinking of my work and you guys are all right that it is definitely worth tagging. I am not so good with tagging ut if you could do at the very least something like offscreencall perhaps (doesn't get mixed up with vocalization tag that way) at least someone could filter thru this at a later stage, for example for any site specific communciation or species monitoring research.
    I am also not even sure what that sound is to be honest.

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    I agree that a specific tag would be useful so it's not confused with the #vocalization tag we already use for species we can see. Unseencall, offscreencall, vocal-only, something else? I kind of like vocal-only as it's short and descriptive. So far I think I have been avoiding any designation unless it is an off camera chimp vocalization.

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    #vocal-only works for me!

    Posted

  • ksigler by ksigler moderator

    Well, you can also combine them... #vocalization plus #off-camera (or #offscreen or whatever) But #vocal-only is straight to the point. Either way, there will be clips where there's something to hear both on and off camera, but I guess regular #vocalization will cover those well enough.

    If we are going to tag clips where there isn't anything on camera (not just slightly out of view, but nothing)... should we tag those like we do fire? No classfication? Or use other non-primate? Or guess the animal? If we know it's a bird off-camera vocalizing, we could be that specific, but data quality may be an issue. Plus, how often do you hear birds in the background? Or is this just for things we think sound interesting or unusual?

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    Since the classification data will be specifically used by the chimp researchers it seems like your suggestion of tagging on talk pages as we do fire would be the way to handle it as vocal only clips don't contain clear data pertaining to species or population count.

    I would think #vocal-only would be treated as a completely optional thing to tag just as we do the location hash tags or other tagging on talk. I only bring it up because there have been several obvious and loud sounds that I thought might be useful for some scientist to review later on and wanted to mark it.

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    Independent from which tag we use, can we please clarify the classification question? I never annotate an animal I cannot see (even if I know it is there and I might even know - as I know another video from this sequence - what it is). And I don't mean here hidden animals - these I try to guess or classify other non-primate. I really mean animals that one can hear off camera (baboon calls at night, loud birds, warthog steps), but are not in the camera focus. Should we classify or just tag?

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    sorry it wasn't clear. don't classify, just tag. Thanks!

    Posted

  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    So did you decide on #vocal-only? I saw some other tags being used and I wasn't sure if those were for a personal collection or if I missed something.

    #drylake

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    Have to say I'm confused too. @MimiA did say earlier in this discussion that #vocal-only works for her but maybe I jumped the gun in assuming we had come to a decision on this.

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    We didn't make a firm decision so jumping the gun is good and just running with it! #vocal-only it is 😃

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator in response to MimiA's comment.

    The issue in question is this collection here: http://talk.chimpandsee.org/#/collections/CCPL0000iq

    Am I not allowed to use this tag? I have reasons why I want to use this one and not vocal-only as this does not exclude intuitively that there is no animal. I explicitely want to state that it is off camera vocalization by something. Even if something is seen in the video.

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    Hi @AnLand as we discussed before, and as people were opposed to only having official tags, we decided that people can use whatever tags they want for their own collections! we would like to keep a list of tags the science team is interested in but people can tag with whatever they want we decided (within reason, using tags like twitter to smash words together isn't really in the spirit of what we are doing here), and the science team will filter out these other tags.

    I never saw a reference to your tag before, sorry if i missed it, but it is also fine, as is #vocal-only - i think its good if the group can decide on which one they would like to become the official tag though.

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator in response to MimiA's comment.

    Thanks, @MimiA! No, you did not miss it before. I planned to collect these videos for while as they belong to the nightchimps and had some time yesterday to go through.

    So, if it is OK and as it's just my own collection, I will keep this hashtag. It is just more intuitive for me.

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    I didn't see the collection associated with AnLand's tag yesterday and had not previously seen that specific tag used or suggested before - thus the confusion. My original reason for starting this thread was to find out how to deal with obvious non-chimp off camera vocalizations that might be of interest later on - so it seems to me we are tagging two different situations anyway.

    Posted