mytextgrid 0.4.0

Create, read, modify and query TextGrid files.

Python package: mytextgrid

A tiny python project for creating, reading, writing and querying Praat annotation files (TextGrid).

The following tutorial will walk you through the basics. For more information, visit the documentation website

Getting started

1. Installation

You can get the lastest release of this package using the pip installer:

pip install mytextgrid -U

After that, you can import the package as in the following line.

import mytextgrid

2. The basics

Reading a TextGrid from a file

To read an existing TextGrid file use the read_from_file() function. TextGrid files come in three formats: long, short and binary. At this moment, only the long format is supported.

import mytextgrid

# Create an empty TextGrid
path = r'C:\Users\rolan\Documents\projects\sentence1.TextGrid'
tg = mytextgrid.read_from_file(path)

Manipulating a TextGrid

# Insert tiers
tg.insert_point_tier("tone")
tg.insert_interval_tier("segment")
tg.insert_interval_tier("word")
tg.insert_interval_tier("phrase")

# Insert points and intervals
tg.insert_boundaries('segment', 0.23, 0.30, 0.42, 0.62, 0.70, 0.82, 0.98)
tg.insert_boundaries('word', 0.23, 0.42, 0.98)
tg.insert_boundaries('phrase', 0.23, 0.98)

tg.insert_point('tone', 0.66, "H")
tg.insert_point('tone', 0.9, "L")

# Add text to intervals
tg.set_interval_text('segment', 1, 'e', 'l', 'p', 'e', 'rr', 'o')
tg.set_interval_text('word', 1, 'el')
tg.set_interval_text('word', 2, 'perro')
tg.set_interval_text('phrase', 1, 'el perro')

Traversing a TextGrid

A TextGrid object is a container that stores one or more Tier objects. Each tier, at the same time, is a container itself and stores only two kinds of objects: Intervals or Points. Depending on that, a tier can be a IntervalTier or PointTier. To iterate through these containers use the for loop as in the following example.

# where tg is a variable that contains a TextGrid object.

# TextGrid info
print(tg.name)
print(tg.xmin)
print(tg.xmax)

# Iterate through a TextGrid
for tier in tg:
    print(tier.name)

    # Iterate through tiers
    if tier.is_interval():
        # For interval tiers
        for interval in tier:
            # Print Interval attributes
            print(interval.xmin)
            print(interval.xmax)
            print(interval.text)
    else:
        # For point tiers
        for point in tier:
            # Print Point attributes
            print(point.time)
            print(point.text)

Writing TextGrid to a file

You can write a TextGrid to different types of files.

# Write to a TextGrid file
path = r'C:\Users\user\Documents\sentence1.TextGrid'
tg.to_textgrid(path)

# Write to a CSV file
csv_path = r'C:\Users\user\Documents\sentence1.csv'
tg.to_csv(csv_path)

# Write to a JSON file
csv_path = r'C:\Users\user\Documents\sentence1.json'
tg.to_json(csv_path)

Creating a TextGrid from scratch

Creating a TextGrid from the scratch is easy, just take a look to the following lines of code.

import mytextgrid

# Create an empty TextGrid
tg = mytextgrid.create_textgrid(name = 'dog', xmin = 0, xmax = 1)

Use the function create_textgrid() to create an empty TextGrid object. In the function, three arguments are required: the name (name) of the TextGrid, its starting (xmin) and ending(xmax) time. The function returns a empty TextGrid object which is assigned to the variable tg. Becareful, the resulting object does not contain tiers.