Options

Application settings can be adjusted to your needs.
To adjust project specific settings, see Project settings.

Open the Options dialog with Tools->Options….

General

General:
Open last project on startup

If enabled, after starting the application, the last used project is loaded directly.

Open project tab after closing recording tab
If enabled, when multiple recording tabs are open, always the project tab is activated after closing a recording tab.
If disabled, the leftside tab is activated whether it is a recording tab or the project tab.
Open duplicated recording tab

If enabled, when duplicating or splitting a recording from the recordings tab, directly open the new recording(s) in additional tab(s).

Delete
Recycle files
If enabled, deleted recordings are moved to the recycle bin and are therefore restorable.
If disabled, data of deleted recordings will be lost.
Show confirmation

Suppress the confirmation question before deleting a recording.

Apply to all selected

Ask for each recording or once for all.

Autocomplete

Enable/disable the autocomplete function in the notes fields.

External Tool:

Allows you to specify a third-party software (eg. Audacity) that can open the recording directly from BatExplorer.

Name

Name display in the toolbar button

Command

Path to the EXE file of the third-party software. If the path is empty, the default Windows software is used.

Appearance:
Theme

Switch Light or Dark theme. Restart the application to apply a change.

Colours
No species

Click the circle to change the colour used to display recordings with no species

Custom species

Click the circle to change the colour used to display recordings with custom species text

Export background

Click the square to change the colour used as background when exporting images (e.g. Activity diagram). Depending on the hue of the background colour, the text colour will be black or white.

Recording

General:
Frequency guides
Horizontal lines to facilitate visual discrimination, see Spectrogram tools.
Click Edit to add, delete, change guide frequencies and colours. 1
Click Add and enter a frequency in kHz to add a new guide.
Select a guide in the list and click Remove to delete a guide.
Custom zoom

A custom zoom view can be configured. Apply this view in the Recording Tab by clicking the Zoom to user view toolbutton. Enter the desired size (min/max frequency and length in ms). If use when zooming to call is enabled, this custom view is also used when a call is selected from the list (zoom to call) instead of using the default zoom ratio (0.5 kHz/ms).

When open recording

The initial spectrogram display when opening a recording in the Recording Tab can be configured. Choose one of the following modes:

  • Show full recording

    Show the complete recording, full length and full frequency range (0 .. Samplerate/2)

  • Zoom to call

    Show the loudest call of the recording. Equals to selecting the call from the calls list.

  • Show custom view

    Show a custom display area. Enter a frequency range and a length that suits your needs. Optionally centre this view to the loudest call.

Spectrogram:

The spectrogram display can be influenced within wide limits. Thus, for example the optical detectability of very quiet calls can be improved. Colour palette, luminance and contrast can be adjusted.

General
Show proportion

Display the current frequency to time proportion (kHz/ms) in the spectrogram diagram.

Use projects FFT settings

Disable to use different spectrogram settings (FFT size, windowing function, overlap) for display than for analysis. See Analysis to change corresponding project parameters.

FFT size

Number of samples used per Fast Fourier transformation (FFT) to produce the spectrogram.

Windowing function

Window function used to create the spectrogram.

Overlap

FFT overlap for the creation of the spectrogram.

Auto
If enabled, a dynamic FFT overlap is used depending on the current zoom factor. The higher the zoom factor, the higher the overlap.
If disabled, enter a constant overlap in %.
Colour palette

Choose desired colour palette. To setup the user palette click Custom. Choose a gradient stop (drop) and change its colour by adjusting the colour sliders accordingly. More gradient stops can be added by clicking on the gradient. To delete a gradient stop, select it and press the Delete key.

Log

Apply colour palette logarithmic.

Absolute scaling
If enabled, the colour palette is applied between 0 and 1.
If disabled, the colour palette is applied between 0 and maximum peak of current recording.
Luminance

Adjust colour luminance.

Contrast

Adjust colour contrast.

Spectrum:
Zoom frequency

Enable/disable spectrum diagram zoom. If enabled, the spectrum frequency axis is synchronised with the spectrogram frequency axis.

Scala in dB

Display spectrum in decibels instead of linear level.

Waveform:
Show call pictograms

Enable/disable call pictogram display in overview waveform.

Advanced

Max nbr. of parallel processing tasks

Maximum number of recordings to be processed simultaneously during analysis.

Optimal setting depends on the hardware configuration of the computer used. On multicore systems (4 processors or more) increasing the value can result in faster processing. Usually, a value equal to the number of physical CPU cores works best. Reducing the value may allow working with other programs during the analysis phase, at the expense of the processing time required.

Autobackup

If enabled, the last three versions of BPR (Project file) and BRA (Recording data file) files are preserved for backup reasons. The backup files are extended with “.bak” file extension and are set to hidden. In case of data loss or corruption, in windows explorer enable “view hidden files” and rename corresponding files to restore previous states if needed.

Express project template
Template to use when creating an express project:

Path to a template file (.bpt)

Empty: to use the ‘last used’ template

‘default’: to use the default template

Additional options

In addition to the parameters available in the options dialog, also saved Filters, window positions/sizes, grid columns, audio mode/volume, spectrogram annotations and the like are also considered as “application options”. To change these, use the respective tools and dialogs.

Defaults

Reset application options to factory defaults. You can choose to reset application options to default values or to do a complete factory reset (delete all setting files, like new installation).

Export/Import

Application options can be export to a file for backup or to transfer it to an other computer. Click Export and enter a file location to export. Click Import and choose a settings file to import.

1

Not available in certain editions