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Introduction

This application is provided for use with the RememBird^® audio recorder. It:

• Uploads recordings from the RememBird recorder to your PC
• Lets you annotate recordings with details of your trips, the species seen and recorded
• Lets you search through and play your recordings by date and by location.
• Lets you play recordings from audio field-guides on your PC
• Lets you build your own audio field-guides
• Updates via the Internet
• This application is continually being enhanced and improved. Each time it starts, it checks for updates via the internet.
• If you have any problems, visit www.remembird.com and click on Support to obtain the latest updates and answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
   

Connecting to RememBird

Install this application first, then connect RememBird to your computer using the USB cable supplied.

• Uploading Recordings
• Connect RememBird to your computer, wait a few seconds for the computer to recognize it and then click on the File menu and select Upload Recordings (or click on the first button on the toolbar).
• Location
• For each day on which recordings were made, you are asked to enter or select the location where these recordings were made. If the recordings span more than one location, you can either enter the overall location e.g. enter “Norfolk” if all the recordings are from a weekend spent there or just enter the first location e.g. enter “Home Patch” if the oldest recordings to be uploaded are from there.
• You will be able to split the recordings into multiple trips and refine the locations after they have been uploaded. Initially, each day for which recordings are made is split into a Visit record.
• As recordings are uploaded, they are automatically deleted from the recorder, freeing the space for your next trip.
• You should let the software upload all of the recordings. This may take a few minutes if you have made a large number of recordings. At the end of this process, the application automatically updates the firmware running on the recorder itself. This takes only a few seconds.
• Real-time Clock
• Whenever you connect RememBird to your computer, its real-time clock is synchronized to the computer’s. You are strongly advised to ensure that your PC is time synchronized to an external time server so that timestamps are always accurate. For Windows XP, click on Start, Help and Support and search for “Synchronizing your Computer Clock” for guidance.
• Because you are likely to use RememBird in various countries, it maintains its internal clock in GMT. When you upload recordings, and specify where these were made, the software automatically corrects the time to local time – including daylight savings time where appropriate.
• Normally the recordings are time-stamped using RememBird’s internal clock. However, if you have let the battery run flat or left the recorder without power (e.g. while changing the battery) for more than a few minutes its real time clock may fail. If this has only happened once, the software is still able to deduce the time of the recordings by comparing RememBird’s clock with its own. However, if it has happened twice or more, there is no way that the actual time of the recordings can be determined automatically. In such cases, the software will ask you to specify the date and time of the first recording made after the clock was reset. Subsequent recordings will be time-stamped relative to this one. Enter the time as accurately as you can recall it, using local time at the location you entered when starting to upload rather than G.M.T.

• Main Window

• Contents
• The RememBird main window consists of:
• ·         a menu and, optionally, a toolbar at the top
• ·         the Navigator pane at the left which shows your recordings by date, location or species
• ·         the Recordings pane on the right which shows either a Summary of your recordings for each date or location or the individual Detail of every recording within a particular Visit.
• As you enter and edit information other windows will pop up.
• Changing the View
• You can alter the layout of the window by resizing it or by clicking and dragging the vertical bar between the two panes. To restore the window to its default layout, click on the View menu and select Default View.
•  
• You can remove or restore the toolbar across the top of the window by clicking the View, Toolbar menu option.
• To close the window, click on the cross at top right or use the File, Exit menu option.
• Control
• You control the program by using any or all of:
• ·         Menus which drop down from the top row starting File, Edit …
• ·         Toolbar buttons at the top of the window – just beneath the menu items
• ·         Selecting the view you want by clicking on the tabs across the top of the Navigator and Recordings Panes.
• ·         Expanding and closing branches of the “tree” views shown in the Navigator pane to browse to the recordings you want
• ·         In the Summary and Detail panes you can double-click on entries to drill down from Summary to Detail and from Detail to editing the annotations and information held on them.
• ·         In the Detail pane, you can click on the small icons on the right hand side to delete, chop or annotate recordings one after another without having to move your cursor to the toolbar.
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• If you prefer to use the keyboard rather than the mouse,
• ·         Anywhere a control has a letter underlined, hold the Alt key and press that letter to select or move to that control.
• ·         Use the Tab and Back Tab (Shift+Tab) keys to move through a window in a logical order.
• ·         Most toolbar buttons have a corresponding shortcut key combination. Hold your mouse over the button briefly and the tooltip that pops up will advise you of the shortcut key.
• ·         Most menu options also have a corresponding shortcut key combination shown to the right of the menu option.
• Saving Changes
• Changes you make are not committed to the database until you click on File > Save changes (or exit the program at which point you will be asked whether or not to save the changes you have made). This allows you to recover from mistakes by clicking Edit > Undo unsaved changes. However, it also means that you should get into the habit of saving your changes regularly so as to avoid losing a lot of work.

• Finding Recordings

All recordings are loaded into a database file on your PC. You can find a specific recording or set of recordings as follows:

• By Date
• As all recordings are date and time-stamped, you can view recordings in chronological order.
• ·         Click on the “By Date” tab in the Navigator pane to see several months of a calendar displayed.
• ·         Days with recordings are highlighted in the calendar with a blue-grey background.
• ·         Click on the < or > arrows at the top of this pane to move backwards or forwards a month at a time.
• ·         Click on a date to have the Recordings pane show recordings on and around that date. The date you click on is highlighted in orange. 
• By Location
• Recordings are also indexed by location so you can view them according to where they were made.
• The faunal regions, most countries of the world and all the U.S. states and British counties are pre-loaded into the software so that you can select these directly. The system also knows which time-zone these locations are in so it can present the recordings with their time-stamps adjusted to local time.
• ·         Click on the “By Location” tab in the Navigator pane to see currently defined locations.
• ·         Locations where you have made recordings will show the dates of these recordings beneath them. Click on one of these to view the recordings made there on that date.
• ·         Click on the icon to the left of a location’s name to show or hide locations beneath it.
• ·         Add new locations by selecting File > Add Location or selecting “Other Location” and entering a new location beneath the appropriate parent location.
• ·         If you make a mistake naming a location, add the new location with the correct name then reassign your visit to the correctly spelled version. The incorrect location will be deleted automatically when no visits are assigned to it.
• By Species
• If you have annotated recordings with the names of species, you can find specific recordings by searching for the species.
• If you have an audio field-guide in your RememBird, upload its details once using File > Load Audio Field-guide and you can then select species from the Species tab in the Navigator pane.
• ·         Click on the Binoculars icon on the toolbar, or use Edit > Find from the menus to bring up a search dialog. Enter all or part of the species name that you want to search on and click OK. The Recordings pane will show the next occurrence of that text within the species field of an annotation.

• Annotating Recordings

It is up to you how much or how little you annotate your recordings. As a minimum, you are asked to specify the location that all recordings made on a given day will be marked with as they are uploaded from the recorder.

• Visit Details
• A group of recordings made at a particular site is referred to as a Visit and you can, if you wish, label that set of recordings with:
• ·         Location – choose an existing location or refine one if you want to be more precise
• ·         Observers – names or initials of those with you
• ·         Weather – free format details of the conditions
• ·         Comments – free format field for you to use as you wish.
• Summary View of a Visit
• Each visit shows up as a single record on the Summary view in the Recordings pane. The above details are shown along with the date and time range of the visit. This view also shows how many birdsong and notes recordings are stored from this visit. If you have annotated any of these recordings, their details are summarised here – with the records you have highlighted as being most noteworthy first.
• To Edit Visit Details
• If you want to add or change details of a visit, either
• On the Summary tab:
• ·         click on the visit to be edited
• ·         click on the Edit Visit Information button on the toolbar
• or, on the Detail tab:
• ·         click on the pencil icon to the right of the row showing the visit details – or double-click anywhere over the visit details.
• The Visit Info Editor window will appear and you can edit the details for this visit.
• To Split a Visit
• If you visited more than one location during a given day and wish to split the day’s recordings into two or more visit records, first identify the first recording made at the next site.
• There is often a significant gap between the last recording at the previous site and the first one made at the next site. RememBird highlights long gaps between recordings making it easier to spot when you travelled between sites.
• If there is a row showing “Recording gap of …” that corresponds to the change of site, you can simply click on the Refine Location icon at the right of this message. If the next location is shown on that list simply select it or click on Other Location to choose from the whole list of locations or enter a new location.
• If there is not a gap in the recordings, simply click on the first recording made at the next site and then click on the Refine Visit Location tool on the toolbar.
• To Delete a Visit
• If you want to delete a visit, first delete all the recordings within it. Then click the cross next to the pencil icon in the visit summary line.
• Locations
• You can be as precise as you wish in defining the locations of your trips. RememBird ships with the (current) countries of the world and U.S. states, Canadian Provinces and British counties already defined.
• As part of these definitions, the time zone used in each region is specified for you. Recordings should therefore be displayed with the local time shown regardless of how many countries you take RememBird to before uploading recordings to your computer.
• Individual Recordings
• It is up to you how you annotate individual recordings. You can enter one or more annotations using the Recording Annotator window. This lets you enter:
• ·         Rating – mark this as a one, two or three-star record to help you find your most valuable recordings later. If you clicked the record button as you were recording the audio, each click will show up as a star when you upload the recordings.
• ·         Species – we recommend you enter species names as you would find them in the index of a field guide e.g. “Raven, Common”. The drop-down list will grow to show all your previous entries so you don’t have to retype the full name more than once. You do not have to enter a species name at all.
• ·         Quantity – this is stored as a text field so you can enter more than just a number e.g. “Common”, “1m2f” (1 male, 2 females), “juv”, “2nd Wtr” etc.
• ·         Comment – a free format field for your notes and observations.
• The play and stop buttons on this window make it easy to review the recording in question while you annotate it.
• If you want to add another annotation on the same recording, click the button at the right hand side of the last row to add an extra row.
• To delete an existing annotation, click the trash can to the right of it.

• Listening to Recordings

To play recordings, use the Summary tab and the Navigator pane to find the visit by date or location. Then double-click on the required visit summary to drill down to the Detail tab.

Scroll up and down to find the recording you want.

• Playing a Recording
• Double-click on the recording you want to hear – or click on it and then click the Play button on the toolbar.
• Use the Skip Forward, Skip Backward toolbar buttons to play the next or previous recordings.
• Use the Home button on the toolbar to move to the first recording of the visit.
• Volume Control
• Use your computer’s volume control to adjust the audio level that recordings are played at.
• Recordings are automatically “normalized” such that the loudest part of a recording is always played at the same volume regardless of how loud the original input was. This means that more distant and quieter recordings will be amplified more – and hence the background noise will be louder and the quality lower. However, this should avoid the need for you to continually adjust the volume control on your speakers or headphones.
• Deleting a Recording
• As the recordings play, you can delete a particular recording – even if the next one is now playing - by clicking on the button at the right hand edge of the Recordings pane.
• It is a good idea to delete unwanted recordings to save space.
• Annotating a Recording
• As the recordings play, you can annotate them using the button at the right hand edge of the Recordings pane.
• Chopping a Recording
• Sometimes a recording will contain two or more species or some extraneous noise or silence that you want to remove.
• While the recording is playing, you can click on the Chop Recording button to its right to split it into two at the point currently playing.
• If you make a mistake, use the Undo Unsaved Changes button to stitch the two pieces back together again before moving on.
• Exporting a Recording
• To export a recording as an mp3 file, simply select the recording and click on the Export Recording button on the toolbar (or press Ctrl-E). You can then choose the location and filename under which the recording will be exported.

• Audio Field-guides

You can purchase audio field-guides containing professionally produced collection of recordings. These can be played through RememBird’s earpiece or through your computer when a RememBird containing the guide is connected to it. You can also create your own audio field-guides and download these to your RememBird.

• Playing Recordings from an Audio Field-guide on RememBird
• This process is described in the printed manual that accompanied your RememBird. Simply press and hold the play button for two seconds to start the menu playing then press in when you hear the item you want. Use rewind and fast forwards to move backwards and forwards through the entries.
• Playing Recordings from an Audio Field-guide through your computer
• Before you can play the field-guide on your computer for the first time you must let it “Load” the field-guide. To do this:
• Insert the audio field-guide into your RememBird.
• Connect RememBird to your computer.
• Click on the “Load Audio Field-guide” button on the toolbar (second button from the left).
• Once the guide has been loaded, you can play from it by clicking on the “Species” tab in the left-hand (“Navigator”) pane. Simply click down through the tree of recordings to the one you want to play. Use the Play/Pause buttons to stop and start it playing.
• Building your own Audio Field-guide
• To build your own audio field-guide for RememBird:
• Collect the recordings you want to include into a single folder. These can be in “.mp3” or “.WAV” format. Ideally, they should be mono, 44.1KHz sampled, 16 bit WAV files. 
• Start the RememBird application and click on the “Build Custom Audio Field-guide” toolbar button (3^rd from the left). This starts the Wizard that will guide you through the process. Click the arrow button at top right to move on to the next step as you complete each of the stages below.
• First you must give the guide a name – for example “Owls” – and specify the location of the recordings. You can build as many different guides as you like. To re-open an existing one, click on the arrow next to the guide name and select from the guides shown.
• The application uses a free MP3 encoder known as “Lame”. You must download this before proceeding and specify the location of the lame.exe file in the bottom text box. See http://www.remembird.com/html/lame_encoder.html for the latest instructions on how to do this.
• Next you must label each recording. Normally, each file will be labelled with a Family (e.g. “Owl”) and species (e.g. “Barn”). For birds with only a single name (such as “Osprey”) you can leave the Family column blank. If you label more than one recording with the same family and species name, then you must also give it a title (e.g. “Call” or “Song”). If you only have one recording for a particular species, it is optional whether or not you give it a title. Leaving the title blank will save time when you come to access it.
• Each family, species and title must be recorded so that it can be played to you when you access that item in the guide. This step shows a red exclamation mark against each item that has not yet been recorded. Click on one of these then click the Record button. You have two seconds in which to speak the words shown at the top of the right-hand pane. These are then played back to you and the application moves on to the next one automatically. If you are happy with the recording you have just made, simply keep clicking the Record button and speaking the next announcement. If you want to re-record one, select it from the tree view and click record.
• When you have recorded all the announcements you can build the audio field-guide. Click on the large button and watch it progressing. This can take several minutes for a large guide. Note the success or failure message at the end and go back to the previous steps as necessary to correct any errors.
• When the guide has been built successfully, insert the memory card you wish to use into your RememBird and connect it to the PC. Click on the “Start Download” button.
• Advanced Techniques and Tips
• Be consistent with your titles – that way you won’t have to record so many announcements. Announcements are shared across all field-guides that you build so the number of new announcements that you will have to record gets less as you build up a collection of announcements.
• If you have a large number of files, you may find it easier to build the annotations file in, say, Excel and then save it to the location that the application looks in. The file is a plain text file, with four tab separated fields. For a field-guide called “MyGuide”, the file should be saved as C:\Documents and Settings\username\RememBird\libraries\MyGuide\data.txt. The other files in this directory are generated from this data.txt file as you work through the Wizard.

• Backup

As all of your recordings are held in a single database file, it is important to back this up to avoid your records being lost in the event of disk failure or file corruption. The database is held in the file C:\Documents and Settings\username\RememBird\db\RememBird.dat . This file holds both audio recordings and annotations. Exit the program before taking a backup copy of this file

You should take backup copies of this file up regularly.

Printing

To print out details of a visit, show it in the Detail tab and click the Print button on the toolbar or select File, Print from the menus.

Reference

• Menus
• File
• Upload Recordings (Ctrl-U)
• Uploads recordings from RememBird if it is connected.
• Load Audio Field-guide (CtrlY)
• Reads the contents list from the field-guide installed in RememBird if it is connected. The recordings can then be played from the Species tab in the Navigator pane.
• Build Custom Audio Field-guide (Ctrl-B)
• Starts a Wizard that will walk you through the steps of creating or modifying your own audio field-guide for download to RememBird.
• Save Changes (Ctrl-S)
• Commits changes to the database.
• Print Visit (Ctrl-P)
• Prints details of the currently selected visit.
• Exit (Ctrl-Q)
• Closes the application.
• Edit
• Undo Unsaved Changes (Ctrl-Z)
• Reverses edits and deletions made since the Save Changes button was last clicked.
• Rename Species (Ctrl-R)
• Lets you rename all occurrences of a species.
• Find Species (Ctrl-F)
• Searches for all recordings that you have annotated with a particular species name.
• Edit Locations (Ctrl+Alt-L)
• Lets you edit an existing location or delete it (as long as there are no visits recorded under it).
• RememBird Preferences
• Lets you set preferences that are then downloaded to the recorder. The recorder must be connected in order to change these. Here you can choose:
• How many seconds of recording are kept in memory in “Always Listening” mode.
• How long the recorder stays in “Always Listening” mode after you last pressed a record button
• How long the recorder stays on after your last button press before switching itself off to conserve power
• The compression rates to be used when recording notes and song.
• Whether or not you can listen to the current song recording in your earpiece as you make it.
• View
• Toolbar
• Selects whether or not to display the toolbar at the top of the window.
• Default View
• Returns the layout to the default proportions.
• Action
• Home
• Plays from the start of the first recording of this visit.
• Skip Back
• Plays from the start of the previous recording.
• Start of Track
• Plays from the start of the current recording.
• Stop
• Stops playing.
• Play All
• Plays the currently selected recording from the beginning. (Click on the recording track to play from a point within the track)
• Skip Forward
• Plays from the start of the next recording.
• Edit Visit Information (Ctrl-V)
• Lets you edit the visit information (location, weather, comments, observers).
• Refine Visit Location (Ctrl-L)
• Lets you specify a new location from this recording onwards.
• Delete Recording (Ctrl-X)
• Deletes a recording. Until you next click on Save Changes, you can undo this action (and all others since that point) by clicking on Undo Unsaved Changes.
• Chop Recording (Ctrl-H)
• Splits the currently playing recording in two at the current play point.
• Annotate Recording (Ctrl-A)
• Lets you add details (of species, numbers seen and comments) to a recording.
• Export Recording (Ctrl-E)
• Lets you export a recording as an mp3 file. Simply select the recording first. You can then choose the location and filename under which the recording will be exported.
• Help
• About RememBird
• Shows the version of this program that is running.
• RememBird Help (F1)
• Brings up this help file.
• What’s New
• Shows details of changes to the program.
• Check for Updates
• Looks on the internet for updates to this program. This is done automatically as the program starts so is only needed if you started the program when offline and have subsequently connected to the internet.

• Toolbar

• Upload Recordings (Ctrl-U)
• Uploads recordings from RememBird if it is connected.
• Load Audio Field-guide (Ctrl-Y)
• Reads the contents list from the field-guide installed in RememBird if it is connected. The recordings can then be played from the Species tab in the Navigator pane.
• Build Custom Audio Field-guide (Ctrl-B)
• Starts a Wizard that will walk you through the steps of creating or modifying your own audio field-guide for download to RememBird.
• Save Changes (Ctrl-S)
• Commits changes to the database.
• Print Visit (Ctrl-P)
• Prints details of the currently selected visit.
• Undo Unsaved Changes (Ctrl-Z)
• Reverses edits and deletions made since the Save Changes button was last clicked.
• Find Species… (Ctrl-F)
• Searches for all recordings that you have annotated with a particular species name..
• Edit Locations… (Ctrl+Alt-L)
• Lets you edit an existing location or delete it (as long as there are no visits recorded under it).
• RememBird Preferences
• Lets you set preferences that are then downloaded to the recorder. The recorder must be connected in order to change these. Here you can choose:
• How many seconds of recording are kept in memory in “Always Listening” mode.
• How long the recorder stays in “Always Listening” mode after you last pressed a record button
• How long the recorder stays on after your last button press before switching itself off to conserve power
• The compression rates to be used when recording notes and song.
• Whether or not you can listen to the current song recording in your earpiece as you make it.
• Home
• Plays from the start of the first recording of this visit.
• Skip Back
• Plays from the start of the previous recording.
• Start of Track
• Plays from the start of the current recording.
• Play All/Pause
• Plays the currently selected recording from the beginning. (Click on the recording track to play from a point within the track)
• Skip Forward
• Plays from the start of the next recording.
• Edit Visit Information (Ctrl-V)
• Lets you edit the visit information (location, weather, comments, observers).
• Refine Visit Location (Ctrl-L)
• Lets you specify a new location from this recording onwards.
• Delete Recording (Ctrl-X)
• Deletes a recording. Until you next click on Save Changes, you can undo this action (and all others since that point) by clicking on Undo Unsaved Changes.
• Chop Recording (Ctrl-H)
• Splits the currently playing recording in two at the current play point.
• Annotate Recording (Ctrl-A)
• Lets you add details (of species, numbers seen and comments) to a recording.
• Export Recording (Ctrl-E)
• To export a recording as an mp3 file, simply select the recording and click on the Export Recording button on the toolbar (or press Ctrl-E). You can then choose the location and filename under which the recording will be exported.
• Help (F1)

• Brings up this help file.