Filtering and more on bird recordings

We've just released more changes to our browse platform. This includes:

• audio band filtering to hear only the frequencies you're interested in
• filters to remove automatic tags you are not interested in
• fixes to the spectrogram
• allowing the resizing of tags

Bug fixes

• videos were occasionally showing with a a white overlay after some searches. This has now been fixed.

For those of you that like to get your information via video, here's a video describing the changes and taking you through a bunch of other features of the bird tagging interface.

Band filtering

This is very cool. We now only play the frequencies that are selected for a tag. That means that often background sounds like wind and rain are filtered out and you can clearly hear the birds that you want to. This is called band filtering - just a band of selected frequencies is played. The frequencies outside the band are still audible but are significantly reduced.

Filters to remove tags

Some recordings can get swamped with multiple tags, making it very difficult to see/hear what is happening. In addition, the automatic identification of birds is by no means perfect. Sometimes it will identify birds that you know aren't in your area. The filters help get around these problems. 

If you are an admin you can access the filters for your group by clicking on the filter icon . You can select the sounds that you don't want to see tags for by simply searching for them in the drop down box. For example here I have selected to filter the unidentified sounds.

Click the filter icon  again to clear the drop down.

Fixes to the spectrogram

• We have increased the resolution of the spectrogram - it is shown as a larger image on a desktop screen
• We have also fixed a bug that meant the tag boxes were showing at slightly the wrong height.
• We've also fixed it to the top of the screen - so when you scroll through the tags, the spectrogram stays at the top. This means you can see the spectrogram of the sound you're tagging.
• When you select a box on the spectrogram the corresponding tag is highlighted and brought into view.

Resizing of tags

We have changed the boxes around a sound so they are easier to click. They now have thicker, slightly transparent lines. When you click them two dots appear in opposite corners that can be moved to change the size of the tag. When you're done click the green tick.